One of the oldest and largest community foundations in the country, the Boston Foundation, just announced that it will take a different approach to grantmaking in the upcoming year.
In particular, more grantmaking dollars will be shifted toward general operating support for area nonprofits, as opposed to purely programmatic grants – a shift guided by the results of a strategic analysis of the foundation’s grantmaking.
The foundation announced that it will still provide grants for specific projects, though the funding pool will diminish. It will also stop having deadlines for grant applications – offering a rolling submission process instead – and will increase its large, multi-year grants to organizations for general operating support.
In addition to the priority shift, the foundation announced that it has redefined its goals and objectives to pursue greater impact and accountability.
The new areas of focus will be education, particularly for low-income youth of color; health, including a focus on chronic preventable diseases; neighborhoods, particularly sustaining and promoting vibrant and safe communities; arts and culture; and economic competitiveness.
These areas of focus are part of the foundation’s two new primary goals, which are to ensure that greater Boston residents are successful and thriving, and that greater Boston communities are vibrant.
"At a time when every nonprofit is finding its resources constrained, this strategy gives the maximum flexibility to organizations to identify their goals, tap their own expertise and move forward," said Claudio Martinez, executive director of the Hyde Square Task Force and a member of the Boston Foundation Board. "It speaks directly to the need for dependable, longer term support, providing real partnership at a time when we need that more than ever."
In the 2009 fiscal year, the Boston Foundation donated $86 million in grants to nonprofits.