Funders as Partners in Community Success
“We are the city of the future, but what future will it be?” – Mayor Steve Adler
In his recent State of the City address,Austin Mayor Adler spoke about the many challenges resulting from Austin’s booming growth over the past several years – traffic congestion, access to affordable housing and other issues that are all too familiar. Austin has become a victim of its own success and it’s a city reaching a critical turning point. Mayor Adler states:
“We have the problems of a great town that is suddenly becoming a great city. So we have to learn to do big things. The scale of what faces us as a city is forcing us to adjust the scale of how we address our problems.”
With the needs of our community continuing to increase, many local nonprofits continue struggling to keep pace with the social challenges that come from rapid growth. According to the 2015 research report, 81 percent of nonprofits reported an increase in demand for their services. How can the nonprofit sector be expected to do “big things” if they’re bogged down with the day to day?Nonprofits are critical to solving entrenched social issues, but they cannot do it alone. In order to “adjust the scale of how we address our problems,” as Mayor Adler puts it, nonprofits need to foster lasting partnerships with government, business and especially the funding community. The relationship between nonprofits and funders is critical and must continue to dramatically evolve. Over the years, we’ve seen an evolution of the funder-grantee relationship. In addition to approaching the nature of the relationship more collaboratively, many Austin-area funders:
Address barriers to greater nonprofit success head-on.
Funders are listening to their grantees’ needs and are offering opportunities that better equip them to meet their missions. For example, grantees from the St. David’s Foundation recently participated in Mission Capital’s multi-day Outcomes Management Intensive designed to help organizations more accurately measure the outcomes of programs and services in a compelling way.
Act as ambassadors for their grantees.
Just as in sales, a referral is the highest compliment you could give a nonprofit – and coming from a funder, that referral could be worth its weight in gold. Forward-thinking funders, like the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, help their grantees connect with one another and members of the funding community to spark dialogue, find synergies, and generally better deliver on their missions. They’ve supported Mission Capital’s work for many years and continue to find creative, collaborative ways to partner with their grantees and other area funders.
Are willing to take (calculated) risks.
Mayor Adler states, “Inherent in seeking solutions that are big enough for our problems is increased risk.” Our community won’t be successful at solving our challenges if we are too risk averse – this is true of nonprofits, as well as area funders. Nonprofits need to develop a higher risk tolerance, but they can’t do it without the assurance that their trusted funders will still be there even if they try and fail. One local example of this is The RGK Foundation, whose own mission calls for seeking creative investments: “By seeking innovative projects in the area of health, education, human services and community affairs, the Foundation strives to advance knowledge, improve society and help realize human potential.” RGK was the first multi-year supporter of Mission Capital’s Mission Accelerator. They took the risk to invest in an entirely new program that takes a handful nonprofits through a rigorous, multi-month program to fast-track growth and impact. As the first-of-its-kind in Austin, the nonprofit accelerator program (a concept adapted from venture start-up incubators and seed accelerators), we couldn’t be certain that it would be received in the nonprofit space. Now in its third year, the program continues to grow, demonstrate success and have a meaningful impact on local nonprofits.Mayor Adler concludes his address with this call to action:
“To do what Austin needs us to do, we have to be better versions of ourselves, more willing to fail in the pursuit of progress, less afraid of doing what has never been done before. If we find the courage to lead our city to where it’s asking us to go, if we can work together to do big things, then we will be a great city.”
Mission Capital is inspired by this call and echo it in our community to funders, nonprofits and everyone coming together to do the “big things” Austin needs.