You’ve seen the headlines. You’ve watched the stock market drop. You’re well aware that the country is in a recession and our economy is the worst it’s been since the Great Depression.
Additionally, late last year, analysts predicted that more than 100,000 nonprofits nationwide could close over the next two years. Many have asked: What does this mean for our region’s nonprofits.
The Women’s Foundation is asking: What does it mean for our Grantee Partners?
The Women’s Foundation has spent considerable time thinking about that question and asking ourselves what role we could play in helping our Grantee Partners remain sustainable over the course of this downturn.
First, we looked internally and confronted our own long-term sustainability. Remaining 100 percent committed to maintaining our grantmaking this year, we made several difficult decisions.
In December, our President Phyllis Caldwell announced the first of these decisions—postponing an office expansion, saying, “This is a time when strategy, smart investing and sacrifice are going to be required of foundations, just as they are of individuals, to ensure that the impact of our giving is as meaningful as possible.”
Further sacrifice came in January, when The Women’s Foundation made the difficult decision to eliminate two staff positions.
At the same time, we meticulously examined operating expenses and made further strategic cuts, including reexamining the costs incurred as a result of meeting space and food. Lastly, cost-sharing mechanisms for employee health benefits were instituted.
Taken together, we believe these decisions will allow us to weather this economic storm and ensure our long-term sustainability.
To that end, now more than ever, we remain focused on our mission to support our region’s nonprofits as they work to change the lives of women and girls.
Many of the organizations we support are small, or just starting to establish themselves. They have lean staffs and do their programmatic work on a shoestring budget. Few have the time or resources to step back from the day-to-day grind and think creatively and strategically about what they need to do to shore up their long-term sustainability.
Our region has demonstrated tremendous leadership in addressing the plight of nonprofits by providing a host of educational, hands-on tools to help “weather the storm.”
The Women’s Foundation is pleased to announce one more tool in this arsenal: a funding opportunity that will provide our Grantee Partners the time and the resources to undertake sustainability planning.
Today, we released a request for proposals (RFP) through our Open Door Capacity Fund. This RFP, open to the majority of our Grantee Partners, seeks to fund sustainability planning and activities and is designed to encourage our Grantee Partners to think outside of the box and ask themselves: How do we make it through a recession and poise ourselves for recovery?
It is our hope that not only will this focus on sustainability help our Grantee Partners to continue to do the critical work they’re doing for our region’s women and girls, but that it may also serve as a model to other funders throughout our region and the nation, and that together, we’ll be able to help turn this challenging time into an opportunity to make the nonprofit sector–and the work it does on behalf of our communities–stronger and more effective than ever.
What are you doing differently to ensure your sustainability?
Jennifer Lockwood-Shabat is The Women’s Foundation’s Vice President, Programs.
