Giving Compass' Take:

• Rudi Navarra, writing for Medium, discusses the work of Solutions Project, and its efforts in testing rapid response grants to see if they could provide fast funding relief to organizations. 

• Will donors start to adopt rapid response grantmaking? What are the key differences or points of concern?

• Read about rapid response funding in social justice work. 

As social movements and grassroots move at a faster pace, philanthropy is stuck playing an even greater game of catch-up. We cannot help but ask how can philanthropy stay relevant in a world that is moving so fast? Deliberation and due process are important values in making smart grant decisions, but what strategies can be put into place that allow for a quick philanthropic response?

Solutions Project has carefully weighed this tension between the urgent need for funding in the field and the due diligence needed to thoroughly vet a grant proposal. In launching its Fighter Fund in 2016, Solutions Project sought to experiment with these questions to see if we could be both intentional and swift in our grantmaking. We wanted to test if rapid response grants were just a one-off of support that did not amount to much or if could a series of grants could be like drops in a bucket slowly amounting to a larger strategy and broader support a networked movement.

There are many stories of success (and failure) to share throughout our grants. Stories like the support of organizing in rural electric cooperatives and using c3 resources to support the campaigns of new board members. This small grant originally in 2016, then again in 2017, has unlocked an entire subsector of work for those focused on the intersection of clean energy and democracy. In addition to uncovering new strategies within the work, our rapid response grants have helped spark or catalyze new coalitions and configurations of allies destined to make a deeper impact than before.

Read the full article about rapid response grants  Rudi Navarra at Medium