New York
Philanthropy and the federal government are still working out the kinks in their relationship as they try to work together to help proven programs grow.
Teach for America has learned the hard way that government money can be as difficult to count on as private donations, David Gergen, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, told participants at the 2010 Inaugural Conference on Scaling.
The organization received $18-million in this year’s federal budget. Mr. Gergen, who is a Teach for America board member, said that the group was talking to officials at the Department of Education about a $50-million allocation for 2011 but that the money got caught up in the political backlash against earmarks.
So the budget request President Obama sent to Congress earlier this year eliminated the money designated for Teach for America and added it to a larger pool of competitive grants for teacher training and recruitment.
The challenge of working with government will only grow as budgets tighten in coming years, said Mr. Gergen.
“Partnership with government is going to continue to be hard,” he said. “We should pursue it but with a sober recognition there will be curves ahead on the road that you can’t see coming.”
The government has its concerns as well.
The Investing in Innovation Fund is a $650-milllion grant program run by the Department of Education to expand innovative school-improvement projects. Applicants can get up to $50-million, and winners will have to match 20 percent of the awards with private money.
When the program was getting started, the department had hoped that foundations would organize a joint fund to provide the match money, James H. Shelton III, assistant deputy secretary for innovation and improvement, told the audience.
“What we found was that the notion of pooled funding is anathema” to grant makers, he said. “People just had a base reaction to the idea.”
Twelve foundations have pledged $506-million that they will use either to provide a match to winners or to support promising applicants that do not win government money. But each foundation will choose which projects to support. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation, for example, will provide $4-million to rural school districts.
Mr. Shelton said he “was torn” about the results of the collaboration between the department and philanthropy.
“You know, there’s a lot of strings to that $500-million,” he told the audience, “but it’s a completely different way of thinking about what it means to do this work.”
The foundation world is at a critical point, and the way grant makers work with one another and with government is changing, Nancy Roob, chief executive of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, told conference participants.
“I would like to encourage all of us to take it piece by piece and try to build it incrementally,” she said. “It’s going to require major structural change in the sector, and that’s not going to happen quickly.”
3 Responses to Philanthropy and Government: at Times a Bumpy Partnership
bill__huddleston - June 21, 2010 at 9:21 pm
The Combined Federal Campaign generates more than $250 million annually to thousands of local, national and international non-profits.All the money is unrestricted.All the money comes without strings. There is an application process, and Federal public donors have to choose to support your non-profit, but there is NO RED TAPE on the back end.Not bad for a government program.Regards,Bill HuddlestonThe CFC Coachwww.cfcfundraising dot comnew email: billhuddleston1 at gmail dot comP.S. Workplace giving remains the only type of non-profit fundraising that is subsidized, low-risk and high leverage.
geri_stengel - June 22, 2010 at 12:02 pm
I had the happy task of coaching one of the entrants in the Business Plan competition at the Social Impact Exchange Conference on Scaling as well as attending the conference. The key messages I came away from both experiences were:Nonprofits need to get out of their “silos” and collaborate;Nonprofit leaders need to learn how to think in a businesslike (not necessarily profit-making) manner.Changing any culture takes time and a lot of hard work. The culture that encases nonprofit funding is at a cross-road: It has to change, as just about every speaker at the conference pointed out.Let’s accept the need to change, even embrace it, and then make the change methodically so we avoid or have Plan Bs for the many problems that could arise, such as those noted in your article.The key to success — as with any business undertaking — is planning.
ppcllc - June 22, 2010 at 11:51 pm
No, Geri, the key to success is to have government get the hell out of the way. “Partnership” with government leads to dependence on government. Have we learned nothing since FDR?