On November 9, the Wall Street Journal released its Philanthropy Report with thinking about the state of the world for donors and nonprofits. There's some pretty interesting "stuff" providing a number of insights that could likely prove beneficial to both boards and execs who live this stuff daily.
One item in particular merits a "shout out". This is Pablo Eisenberg's treatise for Foundations to behave different if not better with nonprofits. The treatise "What's Wrong with Charitable Giving -- And How To Fix It" offers 7 recommendations that pretty targeted for Foundation boards' consumption. Here's my interpretation of Mr. Eisenberg's recommendations.
1. Give more than the law says you have to give, especially now when there's so much more need.
2. Increase general operating support -- essentially recognize that management and governance and even the rent are all part of the picture of getting services out the door AND, nonprofits can, for the most part, figure out how best to spend their money -- giving to mission vs. restricting monies can still accomplish a foundation's goals.
3. Increase multi-year funding -- to do otherwise is expensive and unproductive for nonprofits
4. Adopt rolling grantmaking -- in other words, don't just make grantmaking decisions once or a few times a year, that's really inflexible and unresponsive to reality
5. Don't just give to the big organizations -- others may do equally if not more important work
6.Focus where there aren't resources and consider sharing the wealth
7. Reduce the red tape especially around evaluation -- it's too cumbersome and in his point of view -- Foundations don't even do it
So these sound like some pretty good actions to take -- at least from the nonprofit's point of view.