Monday Morning Checklist:
How Do I Work With Grantees?
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The questions posed on this website aren’t the kind you ask, and answer, once and for all. On the contrary, the odds are that you’ll find yourself coming back to one or more of them at various points (and in various combinations) throughout your philanthropic journey. And yet, you can’t ask questions forever; sooner or later you must make decisions. So how can you tell whether you’ve wrestled with a question sufficiently to move on? In our experience, each of these questions has some relatively clear indicators of progress. If you can check many of these markers off your Monday morning to-do list, then you’re probably well on your way to giving smart!
- You invest in due diligence to ensure that your selection process is as rigorous as the circumstances of the grant require.
- Organizations you turn down for funding would say they were treated fairly and with respect.
- You and your grantees have shared goals; if asked “What’s an ‘A’?” you would have similar answers.
- Your grantees would select you over other donors, all else being equal.
- Grantees trust you enough to come to you, unsolicited, with serious problems.
- Organizations you’ve ceased to fund would say you ended the relationship as thoughtfully as you began it.
- You have a reputation for following the Golden Rule in your philanthropy: you treat others as you yourself would want to be treated.
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