The Insider's Guide to Grantmaking: How Foundations Find, Fund, and Manage Effective Programs

Chapter Fourteen

Initiative-Based Grantmaking

One of the traits of organized philanthropy that is endearing or infuriating (depending on one's point of view) is its tendency to live focused on the future and in ignorance of the past. This tendency is good, of course, in that philanthropy should be confronting the human ills that loom ahead. It is bad, however, in that grantmakers are often clueless—or at least poorly informed—about their own history. A perfect example of this situation is found in the way in which each succeeding generation of program officers “invents” initiative-based grantmaking. And they do invent it, in the same way in which Columbus “discovered” America—and the twenty million people who were already living there.

Initiative-based ...