Since attending and presenting at Exponent Philanthropy’s 2023 Annual Conference in October, I’ve spent some time reflecting on how foundations and non-profits relate to one another and engage in social change. In particular, I’ve been thinking about the challenges grant-makers experience in understanding and demonstrating the ‘difference’ they make. In my own session and in others, I was struck by two types of related, recurring questions about data and reporting.

The Anxiety of Data

One set of questions centered on grantees. What kind of data do foundations need and want to ask of their grantees? And in what amounts? These questions often reflected a concern about the ability of grantees to provide such data and the burden such requests might, therefore, represent. Some expressed discomfort with exercising this power over grantees and how it might reinscribe race, class, and gender dynamics they might otherwise seek to disrupt.

The other set of questions centered on the responsibility of fiduciaries: the family members or other trustees who authorize a foundation’s activities. What kind of data do they need and want to govern the allocation of their resources? Similarly, what kind of data do they need and want to have confidence in those who recommend such allocations and in those with whom they are entrusted? These questions, too, reflected considerations of power.

Privately, some professional staff expressed discomfort with the kinds and amounts of data their trustees wanted from grantees and the pace with which they wanted them. How to respect and meet the expectations of source funders, while minimizing the data burden on grantees—and, in some cases, honoring a commitment to do so? To be sure, it was not only professional staff who raised this issue. Several family members and other trustees expressed similar concerns, citing differing views and levels of influence within the boardroom.

The two sets of questions reflect an ambivalence—anxiety, even—about who is accountable to whom in the relationships that both constitute philanthropy and secure its social license. The foundational politics and ethics of these relationships are outside the present scope. Here, I would like to introduce a principle and a perspective that may nevertheless help some foundations negotiate them more transparently, simplify their approaches to data and reporting, and, in doing so, take steps to resolve the ‘data dilemma.’

Read the full article about data and reporting in philanthropy by Deborah Chay at Exponent Philanthropy.