The kingdoms that costs us billions.

New Year, Same Soapbox. I'll put the deck upfront for the skimmers (pro tip) but read on for some context.

Yes, it's a hacked together draft that was never going to be shared but hey I think it's worth it.

As the New Year starts, I’ll begin, like many of my peers, with a familiar email to my grant researcher contractor. She’s brilliant. I’ll pay her a couple grand to scour the internet and build me a unique list of foundations that might be candidates to give us money. Three other charities that I know of will also pay her for a similar task. Each of us with our own private lists of corporate entities (foundations) legally obligated to give out money, that cost us thousands to produce every single year.??Multiply this across the sector, with most larger charities having teams of grant researchers and writers and the figure gets huge! .27 cents on the dollar.

This year, I’ll also spend tens of thousands of dollars in my time, filling out custom LOI’s to Foundations who may or may not even be interested.

Just like test taking rewards those who are good at tests, this process of grant researching, cold calling, LOI writing, and shmoozing, rewards those who have money, and resources and a certain talent at the process. Not necessarily those who are any more deserving. As a “just barely” (I can’t emphasize this enough) middle aged white man, I tend to be fairly good at speaking “the code” to unlock some of this money, but imagine what about the charity run by one full time, immigrant who barely speaks english (because they speak the language of the people they serve) working their a_s off on the DTES? Does she shmooze like me? (It's a blessing and a curse).

It is not like Foundations or Major Donors are happy with this arrangement either. Burdened either with paperwork, feeling used as a bank account, or trying to understand at the end of the day “what really was the impact they had?” most of the ones I speak to truly don’t enjoy this inefficient, ugly process, which costs (according to the Association of Fundraising Professionals) at least over a billion dollars each year! And this is just “foundations”, never mind all the informal, major donor relationships that exist.

I’ve thought about the solution for a while now. Technically - it’s not hard. It’s about willpower. A desire to change. To do the hard work of not building our own kingdoms, of our own way, and of believing that the people we are trying to serve - with our philanthropy (literally meaning the love of man) deserve better. Would we give up some of our process so that those billions could flow there, rather than on paperwork and process. So here’s a deck that I’ve had for a long time. I’d love nothing more than for someone to steal it, improve it and make millions off of it. Or, if you want to collaborate on it - or want a hand doing it, or tell me how big of an idiot I am for dreaming this way, do that too. But for the love of love, can 2022 be the year we stop this madness?