GrantCraft offers materials, practical insights, and tools to help you be more effective. Hundreds of grantmakers working in different contexts and types of foundations have contributed their experiences to help create guides, cases, and videos that illuminate the challenges and skills of the craft.

Contributions

Mapping Change: Using a Theory of Change to Guide Planning and Evaluation

Posted on October 26, 2021 by GrantCraft

This brief guide explains why grantmakers use theories of change to guide their questioning, unearth assumptions that underlie their work, establish common language, and develop strong action plans. Contributors to the guide also describe how a theory of change sets the stage for evaluation by clarifying goals, strategies, and milestones… Read More

Open For Good: Knowledge Sharing to Strengthen Grantmaking

Posted on December 15, 2020 by GrantCraft

Knowledge has the power to spark change, but only if it is shared. In this GrantCraft guide, grantmakers share how and why their foundations openly share knowledge as an integral and strategic aspect of philanthropy. Learn from their firsthand experience how to grow organizational capacity and culture for knowledge sharing, address common concerns, and use knowledge exchange to advance your… Read More

Participatory Grantmaking Case Study: Durfee Foundation

Posted on August 25, 2020 by GrantCraft

Questions addressed include: What are your grantmaking and/or strategic priorities (in terms of geographic focus, issue, etc.)? Who decides the grantmaking priorities? The overall strategy for the fund? What’s the process by which these decisions are made? Is the participatory decision-making process the same for all grant types and sizes? If not, why? Who comprises your grantmaking selection panel(s)? How… Read More

Grantmaking with a Racial Equity Lens

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity, GrantCraft

This guide was developed in partnership with the Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity. Highlights Three tools for activating a racial equity lens Your Race/Your Role Questions to ask inside your foundation What’s in the Guide? What Is a Racial Equity Lens? For grantmakers and foundation leaders, using a racial equity lens means paying disciplined attention to race and ethnicity while analyzing… Read More

International Grantmaking: Funding with a Global View

Posted on May 1, 2017 by GrantCraft

In this guide, grantmakers describe the benefits and challenges of bringing a global perspective to their work. The guide explains the regulations that govern cross-border grantmaking and shares the experiences of funders who have coped with working across geographic and cultural divides. It also weighs the merits of working through intermediaries and funding directly outside the United States… Read More

Foundations Moving On: Ending Programmes and Funding Relationships

Posted on November 8, 2013 by GrantCraft

Whether you are part of a family foundation that runs its own programmes, a big corporate grantmaker, a small venture philanthropist, an NGO that re-grants resources from a back-donor, or a mix of any of the above, exits are inevitable. Funders move on, and relationships with grantees, partners, or investees change along the way. Exit decisions and strategies are complicated;… Read More