Blog

Written by Clare Butterfield, Executive Director

This year’s Christopher Family Foundation Grantee Partner Convening was particularly memorable for a few reasons. First, we migrated the event west toward the communities where our grants are focused. Our thanks to The Hatchery for hosting us so beautifully, and to the Cajun Cafe, one of their entrepreneurs, for catering with such care for detail.

We had 80 participants sign up to attend this year from our grantee partners, which was a big increase over prior years. Our apologies to those who attempted to register in the last few days prior to the event when we had reached capacity. We will try to build in a cushion next year so that last-minute registrants can be accommodated. You were missed.

The focus of our conversation together was two-fold. First we asked our grantee partners to reflect on how the moment we’re in was affecting their work. We did expect to hear about hardship and uncertainty with budget freezes, and grants being made and then revoked. But what we mostly heard was conviction in the work that our grantee partners do, and resolution to continue to do it. The nonprofit sector is full of people who feel that their work is a vocation, and that was clearly reflected in the responses to this question.

We also asked our partners what they wished they were seeing from philanthropy right now. I don’t think the list would surprise anyone in a grantmaking role, but it bears repeating:

• Provide unrestricted, multi-year funding
• Fund collaborations between orgs
• Fund capacity building for staff
• Come see the work; be actively involved
• Increase the payout rates
• Be connection builders and conveners
• Make the application process less cumbersome and streamline the renewal process
• Don’t research what’s already been researched. Move more quickly into action

At CFF we’ve been working to implement all of these practices, and we will continue to try to improve the way we relate with our grantee partners to be inclusive, transparent, and equitable in our approaches, and to allow grantee partners to focus their resources on the work they do, not on meeting our needs as a funder.

I was very touched and surprised when the CFF team took over the microphone at the meeting and asked our friends Cheryl Collins from Holy Family School, Manny Rodriguez from Revolution Workshop, and Hester Bury from Northern Illinois Food Bank, to share a word about what my tenure meant to them and their work. My thanks to everyone who snuck that part of the program in. It was enormously kind and I appreciate it.

Convening is one of the powers of philanthropy, and convening in interesting places with good nourishment is a pleasurable thing to be able to offer to our hard-working grantee partners. Thanks to everyone who joined us. We were excited to see new ideas for collaboration crop up at multiple tables and we encourage you to act on them in the weeks to come. This is a good time for our sector to hold together.