Windfall Gifts – Resources List
What Really Happened in Their Immediate Aftermath?
Video:
Accompanying Slides: Download here.
Transcript: Coming soon!
Resources on Windfall Gifts and Grants
We recommend these be read following a viewing of the 90-minute webinar above. The webinar features a fast-moving review of the use of these grants in context. You won’t regret the investment of time.
Hidden in Plain Sight: Understanding Capital Structure
This 2003 article from the Nonprofit Quarterly, written by Clara Miller, explains the often-unsung third pillar of sustaining nonprofit health:
Capital structure is sometimes invisible but never absent. There are four principles to remember: First, and fundamentally, capital structure exists in even the smallest nonprofits; ignoring it puts an organization at risk. Second, capital structure always has an impact on mission and program, and on organizational capacity. Third, capital structure is linked directly to a nonprofit’s underlying business, which is distinct from, though clearly related to, its program. Fourth, healthy capital structures are difficult to maintain in nonprofits because there often are restrictions on nonprofit assets; this creates a “super-illiquidity,” or lack of financial flexibility, that makes it difficult to keep the “business” aspects of nonprofits functioning well.
Navigating Game-Changing Grants: A Playbook for Nonprofit Leaders
A tool from Panorama Global for nonprofit leaders, boards, and staff to gain insights and lessons learned from others who have navigated the journey of receiving a large, unrestricted gift.
These gifts are often unanticipated, and nonprofit leaders are presented with a cascade of decisions that compel new ways of thinking and approaching organizational management, people and culture, programming, scale, and donor engagement.
The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s 3-Year Study on MacKenzie Scott’s Giving
In late July 2020, MacKenzie Scott shocked the philanthropic and nonprofit worlds with the announcement that she had given $1.7 billion to 116 nonprofit organizations. The gifts came in the form of massive, unrestricted grants, with a significant proportion given to organizations focused on issues of equity, and were made with no restrictions — only an expectation of an annual three-page letter to the donor for the three years following their receipt.
Download Part One, “GIVING BIG: The Impact of Large, Unrestricted Gifts on Nonprofits,” and Part Two, “EMERGING IMPACTS: The Effects of MacKenzie Scott’s Large, Unrestricted Gifts.”
BUILD Developmental Evaluation (Final Report)
In 2018, the Ford Foundation commissioned NIRAS to undertake a Developmental Evaluation of the Building Institutions and Networks Initiative (BUILD) in an effort to understand BUILD’s impact and influence on strengthening the long-term capacity of up to 300 civil society organizations and networks, primarily in the US and the Global South, that are focused on dismantling inequality in all of its forms.… Our hypothesis proved right—BUILD works. BUILD’s grant structure—multiyear, unrestricted funding combined with dedicated funding for institutional strengthening—is mutually reinforcing, leads to stronger and more resilient organizations, and creates the pathways and conditions for greater impact. We learned that this grantmaking approach is effective for organizations of all sizes, structures, sectors, geographies, and contexts. Simply put, in the words of our grantees, BUILD is a “game-changer.”
Philanthropic Big Bets Database: US Donors 2015 to 2020
This database focuses on U.S. donor philanthropic “big bets” toward social change of $25 million or more and is based solely on publicly available data.
