Another example involves potential reputational risks. This occurs most commonly with corporate donors or controversial philanthropists. A stark example is that of the Sackler family in the US. For decades they have been generous funders of art galleries and museums in the US and Europe, usually requiring the family name to be prominently displayed on halls, wings, or whole buildings. As awareness has grown of the family’s role as owners and directors of the company largely responsible for the OxyContin drug crisis across the US, recipient organizations have been scrambling to sever all ties.¹³

Corporate donations can be problematic for many nonprofits. Some nonprofits, particularly human rights ones, such as Human Rights Watch and Global Witness, don’t take any corporate funding. For others, corporate funding is an important and legitimate source, within bounds. The situation becomes problematic when the association with the company undermines the nonprofit’s credibility or integrity.^* Turning to art galleries and museums again (their public profile makes them attractive to donors and protesters alike), these are often targeted by climate campaigners for accepting sponsorship from oil and gas companies.¹⁴

Sometimes corporate donors are investing (in part or whole) to burnish their reputations by association with a worthy cause. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, but the more problematic the corporation’s reputation, the more generous it may be as a funder—and the more challenging for a nonprofit to balance needed funds over reputational risk.

Good due diligence is important, as is a thoughtful policy on donors. But these don’t really help with the borderline cases. With those cases, you need to compare potential reputational risk with the benefit to be gained from the funding. You can perhaps reduce the risks by insisting on the funding being unrestricted—showing support for the organization’s mission as a whole—as opposed to being restricted to a particular program the funder wants to highlight. A willingness to provide core funding can demonstrate good intent by the donor. And obviously the corporate donor should have no ongoing say on how you implement your programs.

In the end, as with many other decisions, you need to weigh the wider interests of your cause and mission, apply your values, and consult widely. You can look to the behavior of peer organizations. Which other nonprofits are funded by the corporations in question and what are their considerations? You can engage your board, and definitely should if there is real potential for reputational risk.

CASE STUDY

Establishing a Policy on the Funding That Your Nonprofit Will Accept

FRIDA is a nonprofit that aims to “provide young feminist organizers with the resources they need to amplify their voices and bring attention to the social justice issues they care about.” This support takes the form of grants as well as opportunities for learning, convening, and movement building. As a feminist organization focused on helping activists to upend unequal power structures, FRIDA acknowledges the inherent tension between the traditional philanthropic sector, which exists in large part because of inequalities it opposes, and the organization’s need to fundraise in order to have greater impact. In order to adhere to its values, FRIDA has created a “resource mobilization ethics policy”¹⁵ that it uses to maintain transparency and discipline around fundraising and set boundaries around the types of money the organization is willing to accept. It was developed through consultation with FRIDA staff, board, advisers, grantee partners, activists, and peer organizations.

The policy sets out FRIDA’s approach to fundraising and its processes for making decisions about whether to accept a gift. It specifies which staff can make decisions about gifts and establishes a Resource Mobilization Taskforce, which includes staff, advisers, and grantees and meets periodically to review questions about specific donors. It describes the type of donors FRIDA hopes to work with: donors who align with its values, are open to learning, and recognize their own wealth and privilege. It also sets out a list of “non-negotiables”— donor traits or activities that FRIDA would never accept funding from. These are largely focused on donor activities that could compromise FRIDA’s or its grantee partners’ work, that go directly against FRIDA’s mission and values, or that are actively and directly doing harm to people or the environment. FRIDA also lays out its intention to positively influence donor behavior, acknowledging that a decision sometimes needs to be made about whether engagement with a “less-than-perfect” donor might be worthwhile. It sets forth a set of questions to guide these discussions.

THE POWER OF PUBLIC GIVING

I don’t want to end this chapter talking about reputational risk. Fundraising can and should be more uplifting than that. I’m also conscious that in this chapter I’ve focused mainly on giving by philanthropists and governments, over giving from members of the public. So let me share a story about the power of public giving, very different from the story I opened this chapter with. While the opening story was about one of my joyful nonprofit experiences, this one is about one of my most moving experiences, in deeply distressing circumstances.

When the British MP Jo Cox was brutally murdered, there was an overwhelming outpouring of public grief and anger in the UK. Members of the public sought out ways to honor Jo and all she had stood for and to support her young family. I joined with a small group of Jo’s friends to set up an online fundraising page for those who wanted to contribute. Her husband, Brendan, decided that none of the money would go to the family. Instead, the funding would be directed to three causes “closest to her heart,” to support her legacy. The first cause was the White Helmets, a courageous volunteer organization providing emergency search and rescue and medical evacuation for civilians under attack in cities in Syria. The second was Hope not Hate, which campaigns against racism and extremism in the UK. The third was Royal Voluntary Service, which provides voluntary services for the elderly across the UK, including in Jo’s constituency.

We expected to raise perhaps tens of thousands of dollars for these worthy causes. But within a day, members of the public had donated over £500,000 ($700,000). Within a month the effort raised £1.5m ($2.1 million), and almost £2 million ($2.8 million) by the time we closed it a couple of months later. More than 46,000 people made donations. This comment from one donor was representative of many: “I didn’t know her but it is obvious that she touched so many people in many parts of the world. We have lost a huge talent, a truly genuine and caring human being. I hope everyone can continue with her philosophy of love and not hatred. RIP Jo.” Another said, “[I] pray your family gets comfort in this dark hour. I am an immigrant, who found hope in your words of tolerance, compassion and love; in a world where we are written off by many as evil invaders, benefits scoundrels, rapists and terrorists.”¹⁶

We distributed £500,000 to each of the three causes, and the balance was used to launch the Jo Cox Foundation to advance Jo’s legacy and support a range of issues she deeply cared about—an effort that continues to this day.

FUNDER ACTION POINTS

Build Resonant Relationships to Encourage Giving

Be at the forefront of fundraising efforts for your nonprofit.

Align funders to your cause through resonant relationships.

Understand the difference in power between funders and grantees, and work to build a more equal, trust-based relationship.

Be prepared to turn down funding if it will pull you off mission, or come with unacceptable conditions or risks.

^* Boards take many shapes, as we explored in chapter seven on boards. They can comprise subject matter experts, donors, professionals (e.g., lawyers, accountants), representatives of the communities being served, and others. Some have a much more active role in fundraising than others.

^* On transforming the donor–grantee relationship, see Jeffrey C. Walker, Jennifer McCrea, and Karl Weber, The Generosity Network: New Transformational Tools for Successful Fund-Raising (New York: Deepak Chopra Books, 2013).

^* See, for example, Daryl Grisgraber and Marin Belhoussein, “When Local Leaders Speak, We Need to Listen: USAID Puts Forward Its Vision,” Oxfam website, November 9, 2022, https://politicsofpoverty.oxfamamerica.org/when-local-leaders-speak-we-need-to-listen-usaid-puts-forward-its-vision/. See also Funding Frontline Impact, www.fundingfrontlineimpact.org.

^† See, for example, Alison Powell and Michael John, “Releasing the Potential of Philanthropic Collaborations,” The Bridgespan Group website, December 14, 2021, https://www.bridgespan.org/insights/philanthropic-collaborations.

^* For example: Rachel Millard, “Save the Children Rejects $1M Ukraine Donation from North Sea Oil Company,” Daily Telegraph, March 22, 2022, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/03/22/save-children-rejects-1m-ukraine-donation-north-sea-oil-company/.

CHAPTER 10

Peer Organizations and Networks

Collaborate to Scale Impact

I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.

—Frederick Douglass¹

The challenges nonprofits take on are among the toughest that societies face—hunger, disease, climate change, armed conflict, racial injustice, gender inequality, and human rights abuses, to list just a few. With almost all of these challenges, a single nonprofit, no matter how effective it is, can achieve only so much on its own. But by bringing others together in support of your cause, you can accomplish significantly greater change.

A compelling example of this is Girls Not Brides, the global partnership to end child marriage. I had the honor of serving on the organization’s board for a number of years and got a firsthand look at the power of its collaborative model.

“Child marriage” is too innocuous a term for a practice that ensnares an estimated twelve million girls under the age of eighteen around the world every year.² One in eight girls in developing countries is married under the age of fifteen.³ This practice condemns millions of girls every year to lives of increased suffering, discrimination, and violence. It forces them to drop out of school. It traps girls and their families in a cycle of poverty. It increases rates of maternal mortality—when girls become pregnant before their bodies are ready, they are at high risk of complications during pregnancy and childbirth, which endanger the life of both mother and child. And it is a big obstacle to gender equality and the unleashing of women’s potential to contribute to society.^*

Yet at the beginning of the last decade, this issue was receiving scant international attention, despite the fact that nearly 40 percent of girls in the world’s poorest countries are married as children, impacting some 650 million women.⁴ An organization founded by Nelson Mandela decided to change this. The organization, the Elders, has eminent global figures as its past and present leaders, including Nobel Peace Prize laureates Desmond Tutu, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Kofi Annan, and Jimmy Carter. Its CEO at the time, Mabel van Oranje, identified child marriage as a pressing global human rights issue receiving far too little attention, and one that high-profile leaders could shine a spotlight on. The Elders agreed and launched the Girls Not Brides campaign in 2011. In 2013, the campaign became a nonprofit organization under Mabel’s leadership.

Girls Not Brides’s model is explicitly collaborative. It is a genuinely global partnership. Nonprofits around the world with a commitment to end child marriage can join the partnership, which, at the time of writing, included more than 1,600 member nonprofits from over one hundred countries.⁵ Mabel describes its philosophy this way: “When working to end child marriage, we can all make a difference, but nobody can do it alone. By working together, we can have more impact than the sum of the parts.”⁶

Girls Not Brides operates as a “backbone” organization, providing its partners with research and learning resources on child marriage. It amplifies the voices of girls at risk of child marriage. It helps set up country-level partnerships to support partners to advance their own efforts and advocacy to their governments. It elevates the issue of child marriage to the highest global levels and helps generate funding and other resources for the cause.

The efforts of Girls Not Brides and its many hundreds of partners have been transformative for the issue of child marriage, which now gets much greater attention and action from international organizations like the UN, and from governments around the world. The partnership’s growing profile and influence were recently highlighted when three of the world’s leading philanthropists and activists for gender equity, Michelle Obama, Melinda French Gates, and Amal Clooney, launched the “Get Her There” campaign to end child marriage and “support transformative organizations such as . . . Girls Not Brides.”⁷ The campaign will further accelerate mobilization of resources and attention being devoted to ending child marriage.

WHY COLLABORATE?

The power of nonprofit collaboration can best be seen by comparing what success looks like for a business to that for a nonprofit. Peak success for a business usually means dominating its chosen market and marginalizing (or absorbing) the competition, so that it can generate ever greater profits, and hence maximize its financial returns. Think Microsoft or Amazon.

For a nonprofit, success is about advancing the purpose for which it exists and achieving significant impact. Achieving that impact is (or should be) more important than your organization’s specific role in making it happen, or the attention it receives for doing so. For example, if your purpose is to reduce homelessness or food insecurity in a particular city, you’ll presumably celebrate if that is achieved, regardless of how prominent your nonprofit was in delivering that outcome.

Effective nonprofit leaders understand this. They know there is only so much their organizations can achieve on their own. There are very real obstacles to nonprofits aggressively scaling the size and reach of their organization. For a start, unlike businesses, nonprofits rarely generate their own income. Scaling a nonprofit requires them to secure more donations and other forms of income. That, in turn, usually requires them to spend a greater proportion of their income on fundraising (as they pursue more difficult-to-obtain funding or more challenging funders or smaller service contracts), reducing the percentage available for their programs.

Given these obstacles, nonprofits should think of scale in terms of impact, not just organization size. And they should look to scale impact through collaboration and systems change rather than organization growth alone. You can grow your impact by mobilizing and influencing others to work to the same ends. Bringing together powerful coalitions, building movements, creating networks and federated structures, and advocating collectively are all ways to scale impact. If your goal is social change, you’ll be much more likely to achieve it if lots of people and organizations are aligned with you and pulling in the same direction than if you proceed alone.

Of course, building networks or coalitions can be hard, as it requires agreement around shared goals and/or tactics. Reaching agreement can often require surrendering a significant degree of control or agreeing to do something differently, and leaders—especially those who are very set in their visions—can struggle with that. So, let’s look at some of the ways collaboration can be achieved through networks. First, some terminology. I’m using “coalition” and “network” interchangeably here, to refer to groups of organizations coming together around a common cause or issue. These groupings can be more or less formal. Another commonly used term is “movement,” though a movement is usually broader and more organic in scope, inclusive of a wider range of constituents, including networks, individuals, organizations, and other groups. Tremendously important for social change, movements are largely beyond the scope of this chapter, so we’ll focus on networks and coalitions.

IDENTIFY SHARED INTERESTS

To build a network, you need a group of organizations to agree to work on a common issue. You may be dedicated to similar causes, or you may have completely different causes or ideologies but shared short- or medium-term interests. The key is to get agreement on specific things you want to do together. For example, in the modern slavery space, many groups regard all sex work as highly exploitative (even if it’s done consensually by an adult) and hence seek to legally abolish the commercial sex industry. Other groups think if adults chose to engage in sex work, their choice is valid and they should receive protections just like workers in any other industry. These are fundamentally different stances. But all these groups are united in their belief that anyone who is forced or coerced into the sex industry, or under the age of eighteen, is experiencing human trafficking and should be helped to get out of that situation. When these groups unify around this shorter-term interest in supporting survivors to exit trafficking situations, they find plenty of opportunities to collaborate.

Or you may have shared endpoints but fundamentally different approaches to achieving them. The challenge here is to find common ground on issues that advance your collective objectives and leverage one another’s strengths to get there.

All of this will be easier if the groups trying to collaborate share similar philosophies and approaches, but it doesn’t need to be so. In fact, some of the most powerful coalitions are those that bring together organizations with fundamentally different philosophies around a shared issue. The child sex trafficking case is one example. US prison reform is another.

CASE STUDY

Unlikely Allies Come Together to Push for Criminal Justice Reform

The Coalition for Public Safety is an effort to reform the US criminal justice system that relies on collaboration across ideologies. In its own words, “In an unprecedented way, we bring together the nation’s most prominent conservative and progressive organizations to pursue an aggressive criminal justice reform effort.”⁸ Its members include conservative groups like Americans for Tax Reform, Freedom-Works, Faith and Freedom Coalition, and Right On Crime, and more progressive ones such as the American civil Liberties Union, the Center for American Progress, and the Leadership conference on Civil and Human Rights. Its funders include both Koch Industries and the Ford Foundation, which generally sit on opposing ends of the ideological spectrum.