Does Networking Place a Big Burden on You or Your Foundation in Terms of Time and Resources?

Mary Kaplan, vice president of program at the Endowment for Health in Concord, New Hampshire: We struggle personally to do all the listening sessions in a one-month period. It’s grueling and exhausting to listen. We do two a day and drive in between and eat our meals in between. But we do that because, while the conversation might be skewed a little by what is going on that particular month, we’re at least trying in an unscientific way to provide some similarity between places. All staff must attend at least one session, and they usually go to more. Our board chair also encourages our board members to go. I have told this story to other foundations and they usually respond by saying, “You spend that much time doing that?” It’s only four days a year, and I actually think I should spend more time doing it.

Anne Vally, special initiatives officer at The James Irvine Foundation: We underwent strategic planning a few years ago, and when we looked at how we handled unsolicited requests, we learned that less than half of one percent of unsolicited contacts became grants. We felt that if we were to be truly open to organizations coming to us and saying, “I’ve got a project that I think aligns with your funding priorities,” there needed to be a method by which they could do that and have a realistic chance of being funded. A tension for us is that new organizations are often smaller in budget size, yet the average grant in our core portfolio is $250,000 — a number that doesn’t work for small organizations. We also value having a lean program staff and low administrative costs. The New Connections Fund is one way we try to balance these pressures. It’s a fairly small fund, about $3 million a year, but between the two rounds we get about 500 applications and end up making about 100 grants. We keep transaction costs low by having less interaction with grantees. For example, we provide web-based resources to coach applicants through the process, rather than offering individual help from a program officer. We also have an application template, and we review the applications in teams.