Giving Gifts Through Long-term General Operating Support¹ - Diane Feeney

I was 21 when my parents created a family foundation so their five children could learn about philanthropy. (They called it the French American Charitable Trust, or FACT, because my mother was French and we did some funding in France.) Over the next few years they endowed it with $40 million.... Over time, FACT’s board and staff adopted [these] guiding principles:

  • Focus: We focused exclusively on supporting community organizing to address poverty and inequality. We accepted no unsolicited proposals so staff time could be devoted to building relationships rather than to wading through mountains of paper
  • Offer long-term unrestricted support: Nearly half the 60 organizations we funded received general operating support for ten years or longer.
  • Build grantee’s capacity: Because our groups needed help with organizational issues such as management, administration, finance, and board development, we created an innovative capacity-building program that gave grantees this non-monetary help.

For FACT, following these … principles produced profound rewards. Here’s one example: In 1996, we gave $30,000 to the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE). The group was three years old with a budget of $250,000, and we were one of their first funders. By 1999, our annual grant to LAANE was up to $100,000, and today the group has a budget of $4 million and a staff of 44. Through an unusual combination of community organizing, research, economic analysis, and policy advocacy, they have been able to successfully tackle many job issues affecting poor communities.

We’ve cheered as they won city-wide victories that benefitted hundreds of thousands of people, including legally binding living wage ordinances and community benefits agreements with developers.

See the full guide here.