G r ant m aki ng: W hat ’s our Ca se f or Suppor t ?

Cathy Cooney, Program Director

Montana Community Foundation

Long-term Grantmaking Goals

• CF boards will be thoughtful and deliberate in their grantmaking goals and strategies.

• CF boards will adopt professional grantmaking procedures, such as due diligence, site visits and monitoring.

• CF boards will showcase their grantmaking effectively to encourage more giving, especially legacy giving.

Today’s Goals

Learn more about each other’s grantmaking.

Help the CFs Council for Montana understand the “landscape.”

Get some new ideas to share with your board.

My Motto for Today

Giving away money is easy; Giving away

money well is difficult!

Ice breaker

• Who are you?• What CF are you from?• Share something about your grant program that

you are proud of.• Share something about your grant program that

you want to change/develop.

Q: What is our “Case for Support?

A: We are better at giving away money!

How do donors make charitable

contributions?

What value do we add?

1. We are strategic in our grantmaking

Set priorities, goals

Use data, input from community

Consider impact

Assignment

In groups of 2-3, share your CF’s grantmaking strategies.

1. Does your CF have a grantmaking strategy?

2. If so, how did your board come up with the strategy?

3. Has it helped your board be more focused, effective in making grants?

4. How? Tell us your story.

Time to Stretch & Move!

2. We use professional grantmaking practices

Application & Guidelines

Due Diligence for both the proposal & the organization

We do monitoring, ask for reports.

We do capacity building, beyond the grant award.

Assignment

In groups of 2-3, share your grantmaking practices.

1. Describe your grantmaking process.

2. What do you do to keep learning and improving your grant programs?

3. Who is involved before, during and after your grant cycles and what are their tasks?

4. Share your stories about challenges and successes.

3. We tell our grantmaking story to inspire donors.

We solicit reports, stories, photos from our grantees.

We have ways to share these with donors, prospective donors (Facebook, newsletter)

Our board members know stories they share with others.

We honor our donors’ legacies by telling their stories.

Assignment

In groups of 2-3, share how you inspire donors to support your grant programs.

1. How do donors know about your grantmaking program?

2. What do you do to engage donors in your grantmaking?

3. What new ideas have you considered?

4. Do you have a good donor story to share?

What’s next?

Philanthropy Northwest

“Best Practices in Grantmaking”

February 27 & 28

First Interstate Bank (video conferencing facilities)

Missoula & Billings

What concerns, questions have we not addressed today?

1.2.3.4.5.

Want to continue the discussion or learn more?

1. Community Foundations of Montana Google Group

2. MSU Extension website-CF Page

www.msucommunitydevelopment.org/rcdi/index.html

3. Community Foundations Council for Montana