Giving Compass' Take:

• Melissa Greiner highlights grantmaking shifts that foundations are making in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

• What permanent improvements can you make to your grantmaking in this pandemic? 

• Find out why you should increase your giving during this time. 

In March 2020 as the shutdowns began and crisis rolled across the country, we at WizeHive saw our nonprofit community put the brakes on programs and quickly launch new ones, confident in their missions yet open to how they could better serve right now. And we knew we could help. WizeHive was honored to offer no-cost workspaces of the Zengine platform to existing clients launching new or expanded programs directly related to COVID-19, and thrilled that many utilized this offer to make their recovery and response efforts more efficient and impactful. Working in tandem with them to scale urgently needed programs provided amazing insight to the current struggles of grantmakers, and some of the best practices nonprofits are utilizing to become successful.

The programs they ran – or in many cases are still running – ranged greatly in terms of constituents, the communities, and even the countries focused upon. But we saw many common themes emerge as well, far beyond simply the desire to help.

Here are four of them.

  1. Finding a new way to serve an established mission: “Pivot” is one of the biggest 2020 buzzwords in the nonprofit sector, as organizations rush to be responsive and play a part in the changing world.
  2. Increase giving as much as possible.
  3. Look for new ways to grow funding.
  4. Go beyond the grant: It can be easy, as a grantmaking organization, to focus primarily on the grants and funds themselves, as they are the main driver of impact for most programs. But the other elements of a strong grantmaking program – community, support, transparency, accountability – are more valuable in times of crisis than ever.

Read the full article about grantmaking shifts for the COVID-19 era by Melissa Greiner at PEAK Grantmaking.