Jessie Ball duPont Fund - 25 Years of Giving

Administering the Fund and Developing a Philosophy of Grantmaking

As Hazel Williams planned her retirement and the new generation of trustees took charge of governing the Fund, they knew they needed to add full-time executive and program staff to help them. In 1986, they hired the Fund's first executive director, who soon began building program staff.

Together, trustees and staff examined the Fund's first decade of grantmaking activity, its purpose and practice. They changed both.

The trustees took a radical step by adopting a policy against supporting endowment, building requests and operating support. They chose instead to support the expansion of organizational capacity and helping so-called eligible organizations meet societal needs. The trustees also adopted a policy that would allow support for public academic institutions, but in no case would support be given to a public institution for institutional development needs. They showed their creativity when they adopted a statement on partnership grants, allowing eligible organizations to work with ineligible organizations as long as doing so fit the mission of the eligible and the eligible committed its own resources to the partnership.

These new trustees met regularly, making grants several times a year, rather than annually, and for multi-year in addition to single-year periods. They kept proposal requirements short and to the point.

Between 1987 and 1989, the Fund's trustees asked eligible organizations what they thought about the policy and practice changes and engaged in a critical internal examination. Results of this "communications" audit revealed the need for a clearly articulated mission statement, grantmaking objectives and grant application instructions. As a result of the audit's findings, the trustees initiated creation of a general information brochure, a graphic design for the Fund, a periodic publication in addition to regular publication of an annual report, and provided a toll-free telephone number. In addition, the staff began providing assistance in drafting proposals, hosting periodic regional meetings of the eligible organizations and working to support all of the eligible organizations without necessarily making a grant to each one.

Equity and fairness, always important to the trustees, became watchwords, guiding both which organizations should receive support and for what purposes. The internal review showed that 105 organizations had not received funding since the Fund began making grants in 1976. In response to this finding, trustees and staff set out to develop a set of Fund-directed initiatives. To guide the purpose of these initiatives, the trustees met with small college presidents and heads of independent schools, heads of nonprofit agencies and church leaders. The Fund's initiatives - one targeting small colleges and independent schools, one for nonprofit agencies and one for churches and religious judicatories - were born.

The initiatives, which began with the small liberal arts college initiative in 1990, contain common elements: each includes discretionary dollars, professional development opportunities and technical assistance dollars. Taken together, they insure that almost all eligible organizations receive some support from the Fund over the course of three years. They also place discretionary dollars in the hands of those who lead these organizations and build a deeper, trusting relationship between the Fund and the organizations. All three initiatives have been reviewed by outside evaluators and continue to receive extraordinarily high marks from eligible organizations.

Devolution of public funding decisions from the federal to state level coupled with the passage of 1996 welfare reform legislation led the current trustees and staff to develop a deeper appreciation for the environment in which Fund eligible organizations operate, and the challenges they face in their attempt to address seemingly intractable social challenges.

In this environment, the eligible organizations, more than ever, needed support in growing smarter, more capable and more strategic about their work. The Fund recognized this and added new and thoughtful emphasis to its work around organizational capacity building.

At the same time, the Fund found its strength in convening parties - both eligible and non-eligible organizations - around issues and encouraging discussion, exploration and consensus building. It also began to confront the challenges facing philanthropy in America and the role of the independent sector as it relates to government and business.

Today, at the end of its first 25 years, the Fund's trustees and staff view their grantmaking in a broader context. The consideration no longer is focused narrowly on the organization. Organizations now are viewed as part of a community and the work of the organization is seen against the landscape of that community. Moreover, that landscape view now encompasses the independent sector as well as government and business sectors.

The Fund recognizes now, more clearly than ever, that its work is about helping its eligible organizations build healthy communities. This shift in perspective is reflected in the Fund's new mission statement, adopted on its 25th anniversary: investing in organizations and communities that were important to Jessie Ball duPont.

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