Giving Compass' Take:

• PEAK Grantmaking's Greater Washington DC regional chapter shares insight on grantmaking legal compliance and streamlining efforts from its 2019 fall membership meeting. 

• If you have a foundation, how can you streamline your processes?

• Learn more about streamlining grantmaking for more results. 

PEAK Grantmaking’s Greater Washington, DC regional chapter had a packed house for our 2019 fall membership meeting, which kicked off with a presentation on grantmaking legal compliance, followed by afternoon roundtable discussions on streamlining grants processes.

Leading off: Legal Compliance in Grantmaking, presented by Andras Kosaras, Esq. from Arnold & Porter, which focused on:

  • grantmaking legal basics that funders should be aware of including the mandatory distribution (the 5% minimum of assets in “qualifying” distributions funders must make each year);
  • tipping (an overly-large grant made to a tax-exempt organization which may result in the loss of its public charity status);
  • organizations that can be funded with minimal effort including 509(a)(1), 509(a)(2), and government entities;
  • grants that require additional effort by the funder including non-501c3 organizations, foreign charities, private foundations, individuals, and supporting organizations; and
  • do’s and don’ts of funding groups who engage in advocacy and lobbying.

Next up: Streamlining. Participants had the opportunity to jump from roundtable to roundtable to discuss streamlining efforts about applications and reports, GMS integrations, process workflows, and due diligence. Highlights included:

  • Teams that were integrating new grants management systems into their organizations were finding it difficult to change their organizations so the integrations and acceptance within the organization may happen slower than expected.
  • Many organizations in the room were actively working towards implementing paperless processes.
  • At the roundtable on due diligence, it was expressed that grantees were not always clear why certain due diligence information was needed, so groups are trying to better explain how it is used and why it is important.

Read the full article about grantmaking legal compliance and streamlining by Andrew Brown and Lisa Hahn at PEAK Grantmaking.