Effective Grantmaking

/Effective Grantmaking

Learnings from Working in a Rural Community

Since the 2016 election, Americans have suddenly woken up to the importance of “rural America.” Academics are looking to better understand and study populations, reporters are featuring countless stories on people living in rural areas and governments are looking to increase support to these areas.  The populist upsurge forced our attention away from the heavily […]

Our Experience with the Social Innovation Forum

Over the past year, SmarterGive’s has worked with the Gisela B Hogan Foundation to develop a new strategy focused on early childhood. For our first grant in this new space we sponsored a track, “Addressing Adversity in Early Childhood” at Boston’s Social Innovation Forum, a local non-profit incubator and capacity builder.  Early childhood is a new […]

Less is More When it Comes to Philanthropy

If you have $100 to give, do you give it to one organization or divide it among five?  Do you give it all at once or over time? Recently, I have noticed a trend among many of my clients in the number of organizations they support and the amounts they provide in financial support.  Each […]

Catalyzing Impact With the Rigor of Business

Philanthropy has changed dramatically over the past fifteen to twenty years. What is fundamentally different, is that donors and innovators are now taking best practices from the private sector and applying them to the social sector.  They are applying a level of business rigor to the social sector that was previously unprecedented. This application has led […]

Identifying High Impact Non-Profits

 

In the United States, there are more than 1.5 million registered non-profits. The number is overwhelming, and it means as a donor, you have to weed through a lot of organizations to determine where to give.   Most donors want to support high performing organizations, but it is difficult to assess the performance of an organization […]

The Highly Leveraged Philanthropic Dollar

Do you know that not all dollars that non-profits receive are equal?  In fact, where dollars in the social sector come from is actually quite important.  Private philanthropic dollars are unique and provide a distinctive opportunity for leverage when philanthropists take advance of this opportunity.

The majority of social sector activities are funded by two sources, […]

Organizing Your Giving: The Philanthropic Portfolio

“I give to people when asked, and I support a lot of different causes, but I’m not sure I’m really meaningfully involved with any causes. There is little to no organization around what I support, and I have no idea the type of impact my dollars provide.” Does this sound like you or someone you […]

Debunking the Myth of Overhead

Choosing which charity to give money to can be a difficult decision. You want your money to go to a worthy cause and to ultimately provide as much impact for your intended recipients as possible. The problem is that in addition to paying for worthy activities like sheltering the homeless or caring for the sick, […]