The Peery Foundation, headquartered in Palo Alto, California, was founded in 1978 by Silicon Valley real estate investor Dick Peery. Its focus is on high impact philanthropy, and it primarily invests in early to mid-stage social entrepreneurs who are working on poverty-related issues.Giving Compass staff had an opportunity to sit down with Jessamyn Shams-Lau and Dave Peery of The Peery Foundation, to ask them about what has made their philanthropic efforts so successful.

Q. What is your secret sauce? What are you doing that you think others should know about? What have you learned that you want to share?

The Peery Foundation has committed in principle and practice to grantee-centric giving.

This involves flipping the traditional paradigm of philanthropy, which is donor-centric. So much of philanthropy involves giving money but taking time from organizations: time to manage, track, and report on progress.

Being grantee-centric means “putting a lot of trust in the grantees, being self-aware of your resources capabilities, networks, and what’s realistically possible for you to provide as a funder,” said Peery.

“This allows us to determine what our support should look like to best enable success,” added Shams-Lau. “We bear that in mind as we think about anything we do, from due diligence, to the application process, to the level of support and partnership, where we meet, everything.”

Says Peery, “as a family foundation, we don’t need to get so deeply entrenched in our own processes and bureaucracies that we can’t serve our partners well.”

Q. Why is this important -- why does it matter?

Not every donor or foundation that wants to achieve impact needs to drive change. The approach you take needs to take into consideration how much time, knowledge, and other resources you can contribute along with your money. Says Peery, “our family is not deeply versed in the challenges in the social sector, and is not best positioned to go out and solve problems. We choose to get behind those who are.”

Q. How do you do this?

Being a grantee-centric funder can manifest in many ways.

Importantly, the foundation has actively hired people who have experience in the sectors where the grantmaking is directed. They have been fundraisers or administrators in organizations in the sectors they support, and have insight and empathy as a result of their experience. They also look for staff who will foster a culture of service towards our grantees, and allow staff the time to truly make that happen.

“Many of our conversations are about ‘how can we help you?’” said Peery. The staff serve as allies and advocates for grantees. “We spend a fair amount of time on building relationships with peer funders so we can understand others’ priorities and help our grantees access other resources.”

Q. Any best practices to share?

To hold itself accountable to this ethos, the Peery Foundation created a tool called Funder Feedback, “to create more feedback loops so we could hear frank feedback from organizations we’re  trying to help,” said Peery.

In the footer of every email, there is a link, similar to an Uber driver rating system. This provides a quick and easy way for grantees to provide anonymous feedback.

“We review and discuss the feedback we get on a quarterly basis,” said Shams-Lau. “This allows for more frequency than some of the other tools we’ve used.”

This tool acts as an early warning system, surfacing issues in a timely manner. According to Lau, “it also signals to our grantees that we’re open to criticism. It sets a tone with every email that we send out that we want to hear from grantees.”

Q. Anything else we should know? 

“We try to take a really human approach,” said Shams-Lau. “Our staff sends cards and gifts for big milestones, treat the people we partner with as the valued partners they are.”

“We feel like one of the best ways to be grantee centric is in the type of capital we can provide,” said Peery. “We mostly do unrestricted, multi-year funding.”

Peery simply wants organizations to be able to focus on their mission if it aligns with the foundation’s goals and mission.

According to Peery, every funder has a choice to make upfront: “lead, or follow and get out of the way. I think there are times when we lead. But it's critical to be self-aware with each investment, and determine what the best approach will be given the organizations' needs and our capacity."