Waiting for GOS

It took a few years of fundraising for me to see the dangers of project-based grantmaking. If a donor will give you $50,000 to create a puppet show, you start to dream of felt and glue guns, even if it has nothing to do with your mission or strategy. This sort of funding seldom includes money for salaries or the electric bill, so while the initial check will help with short-term cash flow, those funds usually flow right out of the organization & into the project. Most arts organizations are so strapped for cash that they're vulnerable to taking on projects that drain resources and pull them away from their missions. On the other side, foundations and individual donors rightfully want to see results from their giving, and operations giving seems to be just throwing more cash into a bottomless pit. Internally, it's easy for fundraisers and administrators to become so enamored of an opportunity for a gift or a grant that they make promises that the organization' s program staff can't or simply don't want to keep. All non-profits need to keep this balance, but few do it successfully.

The grantmaking community is well aware of these problems, which have been around for a very long time and have no clear solution, at least not yet. One of the best places to look for an overview is this site, part of the Grantmakers for Effective Organizations main site. Their 2007 publication on general operating grants is linked here--it's been an important text in the debate as you can tell from this article in this past Sunday's NYT.

PCMI specializes in capacity-building grants & programs--sort of a middle ground between program-specific grants and general operating. A PCMI grant might pay for a few years of a salary for a new position in marketing or development or administration, or it might help pay for a study or work with a consultant about how an organization would run better--only hoping to enhance the core business of the groups that work with us. But we're always curious about better ways to help...