As a working mom with four kids under seven, I’ve learned to adjust the expectations I have for motherhood. Most days, if my husband and I get to bed before 11pm and our children have been fed (most often chicken nuggets), they have been bathed (at least 2x a week) and no one has entirely lost their mind (it’s me — I’m the problem), we chalk it up as a “success.” This ignores the state of my kitchen, the list of spaces I want to declutter, and the even bigger projects I’d love to tackle in my house and with my family — 1:1 trips, nature walks, reading them the novels that I read as a kid, planning and preparing adventurous dinners, etc. My energy and focus is on maintaining what I’m already doing — not adding more — as much as I’d love to get really creative in how I show up as a mom.
When you’re stretched thin, big ideas generally aren’t on the table. In the nonprofit and philanthropic sector, whether you’re a trusted advisor or staff to a donor, or even a donor yourself, you might find yourself in an annual cycle of wanting to try new things and invest in new areas, and then realizing that your plate is full: you need to continue to maintain relationships with your grantees, evaluate your current impact, and get dollars out the door. Where will you find time for that new and promising seed of an idea?
Unfortunately, limited capacity often limits big bets. To drive equitable change that addresses the root causes of our biggest challenges, we need big bets on new ideas — not “survival mode” thinking. At Building Impact Partners we believe that philanthropy is well positioned to accelerate bold moves. Over the past 10 years we’ve helped our clients get more than $1B out in the field. But, it’s amazing how many funding partners we come across who exist in a frustrating reality where overstretched capacity and other challenges limit resources from flowing to where they are most needed. Maybe you’ve also faced some of the following:
- You’re worried about doing it “wrong”: We’ve heard “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good” – but that’s easier said than done, especially if you’re supporting a donor who is laser-focused on concrete outcomes. How many times have you asked yourself “What if we try this, and it doesn’t work?” By focusing on potential failure, we miss opportunities to envision success and learn more deeply. We know that positive growth and change require a healthy level of risk.
- You are part of a small (or solo!) staff that carries lots of competing priorities: Maybe the donor you’re working with wants to keep their philanthropic team small no matter how big their giving gets, or maybe they don’t want a staff at all. You find yourself stretched to deliver on all the opportunities and requirements of day to day operations, let alone major new projects.
- You’re listening to (and believing) the “experts” at the expense of practical wisdom from those closest to the issues: As we’ve helped clients stand up major new grantmaking initiatives (see here and here, for example) we’ve heard lots of assertions from “experts” that aren’t actually rooted in the real experience of folks working closest to the issues (which is why we advocate for including those voices as a part of the design). Things like “Teachers won’t want to work in the summer,” or “Employers would never guarantee jobs for underserved youth based on a set of objective criteria.” Sometimes these statements are enough to stop you in your tracks when the fear of failure kicks in (see #1).
These barriers are leaving BILLIONS on the sidelines. The 130,000 wealthiest Americans (each with at least $30M net worth) collectively have $15 trillion in wealth. Despite the genuine intentions of many in this group to give meaningfully, collectively they give away only $85B, barely 0.5% of their total wealth, on an annual basis. If these wealthiest Americans gave away even 2% of their wealth each year, that would amount to $300B per year, $215B more than their current total giving. Imagine how much impact and joy that giving could bring for those donors and for all of us in a world that is, literally in some cases, on fire.
For more than 12 years, Building Impact Partners has supported donors and their staff as close advisors to get these dollars off the sidelines. We’ve weighed in on ecosystem strategy and implementation, advised on policy and political landscapes to shape advocacy efforts, and assessed numerous social challenges in search of root causes. We’ve consistently supported donors’ work to move towards a more forward-thinking and risk-taking approach.
But we’ve recently noticed a common challenge across clients both big and small: many of our partners need support executing on their big ideas — defining the problem, proposing solutions, and then actually executing on getting millions out the door — without the administrative burden of directly managing programs and grantmaking. Through these promising and massive initiatives, Building Impact Partners has supported more than $200M in new-program giving since 2022. We are taking a new approach that we call “high-impact grantmaking.”
When our funding partners don’t have the capacity to connect deeply with each grantee or establish a brand new program, we serve as the conduit between our clients and hundreds of folks receiving resources to drive positive and equitable change. Like everything we do, this isn’t an off-the-shelf product — we customize all of our work and our approach to consider both the needs of the community and the desired outcomes of the work. This might look like researching and recommending new areas of giving, building and launching a grant program where we handle all outreach and applicant support, or creating a fund to support a specific issue area that’s new but important to the personal motivations and joy of the donor. And we build specialized, flexible, and diverse teams to support each of these initiatives based on their unique needs.
If I’ve learned anything as a busy working mom, it’s that asking for and receiving help makes me better — not needy or incapable. By building a team around us, we create space and capacity to explore big ideas and to test the limits of our assumptions. We know that in partnership with our clients, we can accelerate the distribution of billions of dollars that will drive us towards the change we wish to see. So, what big bet is still on your to-do list?
