How the Grunin Foundation’s Transparent Strategic Planning Process Led to Deeper Relationships with Community

The Grunin Foundation embarked on a strategic planning process to ensure its funding strategies were aligned with its capacity building work and equity framework. While they always funded in a relationships-focused way, they were surprised to find that putting more—though still minimal—processes in place helped strengthen their relationships with grantees and nonprofits in the community. Grunin Foundation Director of Communications Kelly Fliller outlines the foundation’s transparent planning process and its outcomes. 

The Grunin Foundation is a family foundation co-founded in 2013 by Jay and the late Linda Grunin, whose son, Jeremy, serves as president. The foundation has a staff of five and board of nine (five family and four community members) located in Toms River, New Jersey.

In 2023, we underwent a comprehensive strategic planning process. Our impetus for exploring a new strategic plan came a year earlier when we realized that our funding, capacity building, and Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging (EDIB) strategies were operating separately, and that we needed to be more connected to the communities we serve in the Central Jersey Shore to truly carry out our work equitably.

We spent nine months engaging in conversations with community and undertaking deep internal work to develop our strategic plan for 2024–2026, refreshing our mission, vision, values, strategic priorities, and funding process and priorities. Specifically, working so closely with community meant that we gained surprising insights into how our grantmaking process was perceived.

Strategic Planning Process—Learning from Community

Overall, this journey aimed to transform our organization, resulting in a more integrated and comprehensive approach that would seamlessly tie all our work together.

In 2020, the vast existing racial inequities highlighted by the pandemic, followed by the murder of George Floyd, prompted many in philanthropy to reexamine their practices and commitment to equity, the Grunin Foundation included. We invested in building an EDIB framework, with the support of Idea2Form, meant to serve as a lens for all foundation decisions moving forward. This was intended to be integrated into every fiber of our work, but when we realized it was operating separately from our funding and capacity building programming, it was time to take a step back and work with experienced strategic planning consultants.

With board approval and following an extensive search, we partnered with the Novalia Collective (Novalia), to commence the strategic planning process in April 2023. We started with learning from our local community. Novalia facilitated discussions with a group of nearly 50 community leaders (split into nine, 1.5-hour sessions) gathering input on community needs, moments of community pride and thoughts about Grunin Foundation’s strengths and opportunities for growth. Former and current grantees, and those with no prior relationship with us were included. To provide comprehensive representation of the community’s collective wisdom and perspectives, there was diversity across a multitude of organizational and personal demographics. To maximize transparency, our staff were not in the room. We gave participants a $75 stipend for providing their time and valuable input.

Novalia also held separate discussions with our board and staff. Compiling all input, they provided us with a findings report which we used to help create our strategic plan. Transformative information came from our opportunities for growth. Transparency is one of our core values and integral to all we do. We value the transparency of others when providing us with feedback, especially when it’s about something we can improve. We are committed to proactively addressing perceptions about the foundation and are always working towards greater openness and inclusivity. And with this report, we began our internal work as a team under the facilitation of Novalia.

Surprising Insights into Our Grantmaking Process & Other Outcomes

The Grunin Foundation has always been a relational funder, providing financial support to grantees while building and nurturing strong, collaborative relationships. We saw ourselves as approachable, and receptive, with open lines of communication and no formal application process for the ease of potential grantees. We learned, however, that some who were unfamiliar with us perceived us as intimidating, unapproachable, and unwilling to fund their organization due to our funding pillars (arts, education, and healthcare) and grantees at the time. This prompted us to take a deep look into our “open” grant approach, which had essentially meant no application process at all. Our intent was to eliminate the burdens and barriers of a formal application, but the impact was confusion and a lack of both transparency and clarity to those with whom we did not have an existing relationship.

A New Focus on Outcomes

We took this feedback not only to heart, but to action and shifted our pillar-based funding to a more holistic, outcomes-based approach that allows us to better address the complex, systemic challenges that arose in the listening sessions. We recognized the intersections of various issue areas and approaches that were needed to address the community’s most pervasive issues and needs, and now focus on specific outcome areas that collectively strive for an equitable, just, and vibrant Central Jersey Shore.

General, Multi-Year Operating Support

We also shifted to general operating support grants instead of programmatic funding, focusing on multi-year support. We understand the importance of flexible funding to empower nonprofits to be more adaptable, innovative, and sustainable, putting trust in organizations to use dollars where they feel it is most needed. This type of funding enables organizations to navigate the evolving nonprofit landscape, respond to community needs, and achieve greater impact.

A More Structured Application Process & Greater Access to Leadership

We put a funding process in place and made it clear and accessible on our website, including our decision-making rubric. Having a process brings clarity and helps to build trust and relationships. With it, we aim to remove barriers and create a safe environment where people feel comfortable approaching us. Our team is also intentionally showing up more in community.

We now have a process that is fully relational and based on a series of informal meetings (versus a formal application). While we have always funded without a formal application, now we ask a consistent set of questions to gauge how well an organization’s mission aligns with our goals. We provide those questions in advance, but are clear that these are informal meetings that do not require preparation.

Additionally, our Executive Director, Heather Barberi, provided open access to her calendar for organizations to set up introductory meetings. We know we don’t have the funding for every request, and these questions will help us make the most equitable and transparent decisions with the funding we do have. Even if there isn’t a funding alignment, we are always happy to provide connections to other resources or make introductions where we can. We have introduced nonprofits to other funders and organizations to foster collaboration and additional funding opportunities. of funding, organizations might find value in our capacity or coalition building work, and we can help with connections to other groups or explore alternative ways to provide support.

Writing and Launching the Strategic Plan

Novalia did an incredible job facilitating conversations and provided us with supporting documents to help us write our strategic plan. Because we wrote the plan ourselves and poured our collective heart and soul into it along with the spirit of the community, it became a living document that we own and use in our daily operations. It is so much more than just words on paper.

We launched our plan in February of 2024 in a few phases, starting with a fun celebration for our board members and participants from the initial community listening sessions. Next, we hosted a webinar for our current grantees, then two additional webinars open to the public. Several Zoom “office hours” were offered for anyone to jump on and ask questions. We updated our website with clear language, webinar recordings, and resources. We are also adding an online grants directory for even more transparency around our funding.

Since the launch, we have had over 100 meetings with nonprofit organizations at the Central Jersey Shore and we value every minute of connecting with and learning from community. This plan has been a labor of love with moments of joy, challenging conversations, ambitious dreams, and a commitment to forging a new path in collaboration with community. We will regularly review and adapt this plan over the next three years to ensure its ongoing relevance and effectiveness. The work does not end here, and we are grateful for the opportunity to continue working alongside the Central Jersey Shore community now and into the future.

If we can leave you with one final piece of wisdom, it would be this: asking for feedback can be scary, but it is also one of the most valuable tools for gaining community trust and effectively carrying out your work. For us, feedback, especially critical feedback, is what helps us to better understand community needs and where we can help make deeper impact. Ask, listen, and move to action!

Kelly A. Fliller is the director of communications at the Grunin Foundation. 

The views and opinions expressed in individual blog posts are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the National Center for Family Philanthropy.