The Essential Skills and Strategies for Grantmakers workshop, held Sunday afternoon, provided grantmakers with knowledge, insight, skills, and tools to be effective in our work. As a new member to Philanthropic Foundations Canada, and as a foundation who is actively funding and providing education around social enterprise, I was curious to attend and to see what I could learn.
The session was a synopsis of a larger multi-day program offered by the Council on Foundations. It was a well-attended session and I thought it would be good to provide some comments from the session that resonated with me:
- – Clear guidelines, clear communication and clear processes demonstrate respect for grantseekers, implementation of strategy, increased effectiveness and thus, good foundation work.
- – The iterative process between grantmaker and grantseeker requires deep trust that is developed over a long period of time. We must be respectful about the relationships we build.
- – Research data shows that the quality of the communication between grantmaker and grantseeker is the single most important factor in the success of a grant.
Therefore, part of the impact we make as grantmakers includes not only providing funding, but building relationships and then sharing our key learnings and best practices. Our impact as foundations will be greater with shared transparency around the work we do in partnership with the charities we fund.
This post originally appeared on the PFC Conference’s blog, which can be viewed by clicking here.