Publisher's Synopsis
This book is for anyone who wants to understand how to be an impactful grantmaker. Perhaps you've started a foundation or work for one and want to ensure you do a great job. Perhaps you're unsure if you want to start a foundation or where to start. Or you're feeling imposter syndrome - that you're simply not qualified to make such high-stakes decisions under such high levels of uncertainty. Maybe you're not directly involved in a foundation at all but want to understand what grantmaking is all about. If any of these descriptions rings true, this book is for you.
In this handbook you will (a) learn about the key decisions that all new foundations and grantmakers have to make regarding their scope, structure and strategy, (b) be equipped with a set of decision-making tools to help you make these decisions [and others], (c) explore the nonprofit best practices you'll need to both employ and look for when deciding which projects to fund.
This book was written by members of the team at Charity Entrepreneurship, an organisation that has helped launch 30+ evidence-based charities and has coached 13 leaders from nascent and mature foundations alike to increase their effectiveness as grantmakers. The book is the distillation of everything the Charity Entrepreneurship team has learned in their decades of collective experience both running and teaching effective nonprofit practices. It functions as the textbook for the Impactful Grantmaking Program and is designed to help you understand the mindset of the most effective grantmaking leaders and how they run their organizations to maximize impact per dollar donated.
You'll learn about:
- How to use and combine different kinds of evidence to make decisions
- Non-profit best practices like theories of change and monitoring & evaluation
- Considerations for deciding where to direct your funding (cause areas, locations and types of recipients) so that you can have as much impact as possible
- How to structure your organization for impactful grantmkaing
- Considerations for deciding how quickly to deploy funding, how much to spend on staff vs. the grants themselves, and how involved to personally be in your grantmaking
- Strategic decisions like how much risk to take in your grants, whether to use open or closed applications for grants, and how to incorporate considerations like 'counterfactuals' and 'leverage'
- Vetting individuals, organizations and their plans to determine who to hire and who to give grants to
