Grantwriting, Grants and Philanthropic Institutions

I hope I'm not veering to far from the grant writing grant winning side when I tell you about another book that is rich with inspiration and instruciton. This is Joel L. Fleishman's The Foundation: A Great American Secret (2007). A survey of American philanthropy going back to Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, and concluding with a look at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, this is much more than a historical guide to the great tradition of American giving. It is in fact, an analysis of the strategies the great philanthopists have used to assure that their money reaches those causes they hold dear, and that it is used to the greatest effect. This is surely informative to anyone who works with foundations and endowments because it puts a human mind and spirit behind the billions given in non-profit transactions every year. How many of us understand how Foundations come and go (or even that they do come and go)? How do they succeed and fail? More importantly (to the grant seeker), how do foundations select those causes that will have the greatest impact? This book will not only give you the logic behind such decisions, but it will put a human face on them.

Here is an intriguing portion - just a taste - of the last chapter entitled A Prophetic Epilogue: "The twentieth century is the era in which the large private foundation form was born, securely established and robustly replicated across the U.S. landscape. It was perhaps the first time in history that large and unrestricted pools of funds of private wealth had been created to benefit the public interest under independent management. That development signifies a major step, not yet fully recognized, in the evolution of democratic institutions and sociopolitical theory."

I borrowed this book, but I'm going to get my own copy. It's worth the cost and it will be worth the time to read it carefully.

How Do Those Corporate Grants Get Made?

I've found myself reading more about the field. Grant writing is properly called grant solicitation and what we do should be called soliciting grants using proposals. So says Reynold Levy in his excellent book A Candid Account of Corporate Philanthropy: Give and Take, published by Harvard Business School Press in 1999. This is a very informative book, and it treats a subject of great importance with a depth of understanding we should expect from a man who spent 10 years of his career heading the AT&T Foundation. I can recommend it to my colleagues in Grant Writing because it is rich with anecdotal evidence for the importance of corporate giving, the thoughtfulness of corporate giving, and the wisdom with which corporate giving strives to make better the communities where these corporations do business. The book opens with "...My friends, it is unselfish effort, helpfulness to others that enobles life, not because of what it does for others, but more what it does for oursleves. In this spirit we should give not grudgingly, not niggardly, but gladly, generously, eagerly, lovingly, joyfully, indeed with the supremest pleasure that life can furnish." From a speech given in 1923 by Julius Rosenwald, whom many in the arts will known as a patron of Medieval manuscripts and much else.