What grantmakers can learn from expert’s new book

Genevieve Timmons has published a revised edition of her book Savvy Giving, a decade after it first forged paths for a generation of philanthropists and grantmakers.

Speaking with Grants Management Intelligence at the official launch of the book at the Australian Community Foundation’s Community of Giving headquarters in Melbourne, Ms Timmons highlighted three trends in the book that that will affect grantmakers:

• the maturation of grantmaking as a profession
• a massive influx of philanthropic funding and the creation of large grantmaking teams
• a major reassessment of the power dynamics of funding.

Helping grants professionals

While Ms Timmons’ book is largely aimed at explaining the world of philanthropic giving, it holds lessons for every grantmaker, she said.

She said the book’s audience comprised at least two kinds grantmakers: “One is the well-seasoned staff person, and the other is the staff person who's been given the job and is trying to make sense of it.

“I'm keen for everybody who's got the role to do a double check and ask, ‘Is what's in Savvy already clear to me, or are there areas where I could do more of a ‘I don't know what I don't know’ and think about it.”

Grantmakers should examine the “questions, challenges and issues” raised in the book while accepting the constraints they faced from their boards, their bosses, and their place in the grantmaking ecosystem, she said.

Whether readers were new entrants to the field or had been grants practitioners for 20 years, they would learn about their areas of strength and weakness, while newer grantmakers would gain information about important basics such as grantmaking agreements and pathways.

Grantmaking is scaling up

Ms Timmons said a major change since the first edition was the size of the philanthropic grantmaking sector, which entailed greater professionalism.

“There's big money coming into philanthropy now,” Ms Timmons said.

Whereas in the past philanthropic giving was managed by individuals or families, with a handful of staff, now larger foundations boasted teams of up to 80 people.

Ms Timmons said funders – whether in philanthropy, government, or elsewhere – still needed to apply four fundamental lenses to ensure effective giving:

• practical management
• creativity
• values and alignment
• learning loops.

“Anyone giving money, whether they're a government or corporate private charity, your philanthropic trust, everybody needs to balance those four pieces of the work.

“What they look like in detail will vary enormously, but you can't just be good at all the practical. You can't just be good at the creative. You can't just have values. And if learning loops are not in place, there's a big risk that you don't know what you're doing.”

“We have to know the fundamentals, otherwise we're risking wasting money and sometimes doing damage.”

Future philanthropy needs to devolve power

Ms Timmons said that in traditional philanthropy “a few wealthy individuals” made all the key decisions, but that was changing with the devolution of decisions to larger grantmaking teams, diverse giving structures and “new narratives” relating to power dynamics, including First Nations issues.

Ms Timmons has dedicated one chapter to “relationships at the heart of philanthropy”.

“Ten years ago, people were interested in the mechanics, like ‘How do we do this? Where do we go?’ Now there are discussions around power,” she said.

“Who comes to the table to make the decisions? Do we have a lot of people who ‘look like us’… or do we actually harness specialist knowledge?”

First Nations philanthropy was “a great gift to us to be recognising and thinking about”, she said.

Ms Timmons warned that “organised giving is not for the faint hearted” but said she hoped her book would inspire anyone “with money in their pocket” and anyone who wanted to learn about philanthropy. She also aimed to help experienced philanthropists to understand where they sat on the philanthropic continuum.

More information

Read this exclusive extract from the book

Savvy Giving is published by the Australian Community Foundation