{"id":1392,"date":"2019-08-06T12:05:35","date_gmt":"2019-08-06T12:05:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/idronline.org\/2020\/12\/23\/big-grant-big-learnings\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T07:30:54","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T02:00:54","slug":"big-grant-big-learnings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idronline.org\/kn-in\/big-grant-big-learnings\/","title":{"rendered":"Big grant, big learnings"},"content":{"rendered":"

When it comes to funding organisations, I’m a big believer in product diversity: there should be different forms of grant making and different sizes of grants available in the sector; which is not necessarily the case right now.<\/p>

We have players who are sending small amounts of money a year, over a long period of time. And given the kinds of problems in the world, we might not make much headway if this continues to be the primary approach we follow.<\/p>

There is also a sense that philanthropic organisations—foundations in particular—want to fund the next new thing, and want to be the only ones doing it. But what happens when the new things are no longer new? Or, when a once-new approach is found to be effective, where is the funding to scale it?<\/p>

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Philanthropic organisations want to fund the next new thing, and to be the only ones doing it. But what happens when the new things are no longer new?<\/p><\/blockquote>

We realised that there was a space that needed to be filled.<\/p>

In 2017, Bridgespan did a chart for us (MacArthur Foundation<\/a>) that mapped out philanthropic gifts. It showed a lot of activity in the below USD 10 million segment. But between USD 10 million and USD 100 million, there were three dots on the graph.<\/p>

The 100&Change<\/em><\/a> competition—which seeks to grant USD 100 million to an organisation seeking to address a significant problem—was our attempt to create a product to fill this gap. Having conceptualised, managed and completed the first challenge, here are some of our learnings from the process.<\/p>

Related article: From ‘chequebook giving’ to bold philanthropy<\/strong><\/a><\/p>

1. Listen to external voices<\/h3>

Julia Stash, president of the foundation, often says we must recognise that we are not always the smartest people in the room. Her philosophy was that we should be willing to commit our resources to a problem we did not pick, engage external voices to tell us what was possible, and have them design the solution.<\/p>

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In our experience, there are two ways to engage external voices: One is to let the organisations and their teams tell us what they want to do. The second is to engage several people from outside of the foundation and let them play a pivotal role in the process. And because in this project we were theme agnostic, the people we approached were smart, critical thinkers—those who could look at the proposals we received and make an assessment based on the criteria we had set out—that the solutions be meaningful, verifiable, feasible, and durable.<\/p>

2. Help organisations refine their plans<\/h3>

Of the 1,900 applications we received, 800 met the basic eligibility requirements. A top 200 had plausible plans for how they could deploy USD 100 million. They all needed extra help though with refining their plans—which included additional research, project development, and authentic engagement with communities of interest. Once we got to our finalists, we brought in technical experts to help them build out robust plans. Even the biggest organisations were a little weak on their plans of how they were going to deploy USD 100 million.<\/p>

3. Provide longer time frames<\/h3>

Initially we thought the time frame for organisations to implement their USD 100 million projects could be between three and five years. And what we saw was that all the applicants essentially asked for five years. We soon learned that organisations would take five years to yield results because they would spend the first six to nine months figuring out how they would use the money, working out the terms, building their own capacity and so on.<\/p>

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Photo courtesy: rawpixel.com<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p>

4. Put some structure in place<\/h3>

While the organisations themselves chose their projects, partners, and deliverables, we asked them to formalise some of the elements of the approach.<\/p>

For example, in the case of organisations that had applied as collaboratives, we asked that they sign MoUs with their potential partners as part of their application. We received several complaints initially, because it’s a lot of work to get an MoU done. But it proved helpful because the organisations said that prior to this, they had not had conversations with the partners about how they were going to divide up the money, and this process helped them streamline partner relationships.<\/p>

5. Identify possible risks upfront as best as you can<\/h3>

There are different kinds of risks that programmes of this size could face:<\/p>