Proxies for Trust.
I’ve just reviewed about 75 grant application forms designed by philanthropists to determine if a charity is worth further consideration and potential funding. These forms serve as initial filters. In some ways they’re a short-cut for trust, a short-cut to determining impact. There’s (unfortunately) an abundance of charitable opportunity and limited time and (more importantly) time. We need tools therefore to give us a shortcut to trust.
These tools are proxies and they are invaluable if they work in finding the winners — the organizations who will make outsized impact (however we define it) for our investment.
“We need proxies. You’re not allowed to read the book before you buy it or taste the ketchup before you leave the store. We rely on labels and cultural cues to give us a hint about what to expect. We do judge a book (and a condiment) by its cover, all the time. And hiring and managing people is far more important and risky than buying ketchup. So we look for proxies that may give us a clue as to how someone will ultimately contribute to our project.” — Seth Godin.
The question isn’t whether we should use proxies to evaluate if a charity is a “good fit” for an eventual gift. The question is whether our current proxies, which are built upon a major philanthropy fundraising paradigm of grant applications, major donor galas, pitches and proposals etc are indeed working? Do these proxies help or hurt our sector, our objectives as donors, charities or (most importantly) those depending on those services?
I’m not sure they do. I do know that the process overall is inefficient, ineffective, and inequitable, with ample evidence supporting each of these flaws. Neither the majority of philanthropists nor charities are satisfied with the current system.
The good news is that we can make things better, by making better proxies, by redesigning better processes and (most importantly) by listening well to one another.
So long as there are people invested in funding “good” and those invested in doing good, it’s not too late to re imagine a process in which the measurements we’re using are actually creating the impact we’re hoping to have.
Our time, our money and the good we’re all trying to create are too important to get wrong on false proxies.
PS. Dan and I are building WellFunded.io. It’s a tool designed to empower Philanthropists — whether they give through their Foundation, DAF or just their credit cards with the tools they need to make it easy and understandable, while also giving charities a common grant application framework — we’re calling a Portrait- to increase the equity, efficiency and effectiveness of philanthropy.
If you’re a charity — I’d love for your input on our Common Grant Application and for you to be one of the first 25 to launch with (for free of course). Email me at jeff@wellfunded.io.
