Funders Don't Owe You Anything
Eric and Jonathan debate whether nonprofit entitlement is killing fundraising relationships, and who's really responsible for fixing philanthropy.
There’s a post going around LinkedIn right now where a fundraiser is calling out a foundation for not structuring a grant as multi-year support. The tone is essentially: our work matters, so funders should give us what we need.
That sparked the thorniest disagreement Eric and Jonathan have had on the show. Jonathan’s take is blunt: nonprofits need to stop treating funders as fuel for their missions and start treating them like customers. Not in a transactional way, but in the way a great customer success team operates, deeply understanding what success looks like for the individual program officer.
He’s so committed to this idea that he’s stopped pursuing competitive grants entirely, opting instead for a relationship-first approach where he only seeks funding from partners he’s actually gotten to know.
Eric agrees with the pragmatism, but he can’t let the systemic critique go unspoken. These are organizations with massive tax advantages hoarding wealth, spending down the legal minimum, and investing in ways that sometimes directly contradict their stated missions. Trust-based philanthropy is a structural response to a power dynamic that’s been broken for decades.
Eric draws a parallel to his own decision to stop doing RFPs at Cosmic, and Jonathan admits his approach might be its own quiet act of resistance.
Most fundraisers live in this tension every day… they just don’t say it out loud.
Episode Highlights:
[00:00:01] The LinkedIn post that set Jonathan off
[00:02:00] Why funders should be treated like customers, not fuel
[00:03:00] The long-held power dynamic between funders and nonprofits
[00:04:00] Trust-based philanthropy and where it fits
[00:05:30] Jonathan’s case for relationship-first fundraising
[00:06:30] Why Jonathan gave up on competitive grants entirely
[00:08:00] Eric’s pushback: isn’t this a broken system?
[00:11:30] The RFP parallel: why Cosmic doesn’t do them either
[00:13:30] Understanding funder motivations at the individual level
[00:17:00] When foundations abandon their own stated priorities
[00:20:00] Whose job is it to fix philanthropy?
[00:23:00] Entitlement as an excuse for not being fundable
Notable Quotes:
[00:02:10]: “We need to stop thinking of philanthropic funders purely as fuel for our missions and more like customers that we deeply need to understand and serve in their own right.” Jonathan Hicken
[00:03:10]: “There’s a long-held power dynamic in the space of social impact where funders basically hold all the power because they’ve got the money.” Eric Ressler
[00:05:25]: “If I deeply understand what my funders are trying to do, that puts me in a position where I’m actually seen as an ally and a partner rather than a hungry mouth to feed.” Jonathan Hicken
[00:23:00]: “If you’re commenting on systems change, fantastic. Let it rip. If you’re talking about actually going after money, the entitlement tone is hurting all of us.” Jonathan Hicken
[00:24:15]: “How can we build social impact organizations that are not constrained by resources, but can sit there and imagine and do bigger work and not always be stuck in scarcity or reactivity mode?” Eric Ressler
Resources & Links:
Stupski Foundation — Spend-down philanthropy referenced by Eric; Jennifer Nguyen was a previous guest
Jennifer Nguyen’s article on abolishing philanthropy
Rusty Stahl episode — Recent guest discussing new fundraising mechanisms.
P.S. — Struggling to align your message with your mission? We help social impact leaders like you build trust-building brands through authentic storytelling, thoughtful design, and digital strategy that works. Let’s talk about your goals »
Full Transcript:
Jonathan Hicken [00:00:00]: I think that we need to stop thinking of philanthropic funders purely as fuel for our missions and more like customers that we deeply need to understand and serve in their own right.
Eric Ressler [00:00:15]: Interesting.
Jonathan Hicken [00:00:15]: I get the feeling you got some things to say about this.
Eric Ressler [00:00:15]: I have opinions. As fundraisers, as leaders and organizations doing this work, really understanding motivations and trying to attract right fit partners for our work. But the longer I’ve been doing this work and also just seeing some of the frankly shitty downstream effects from some of these funders who, let’s remember, have tax benefits to being set up this way, have hoarded massive amounts of wealth, so they’re in this position of privilege and power. And so we should hold them to a very high standard.
Jonathan Hicken [00:00:45]: Okay.
Eric Ressler [00:00:45]: Yeah.
Jonathan Hicken [00:00:45]: Are you ready to get into it?
Eric Ressler [00:00:50]: Let’s go. I’m Eric Ressler.
Jonathan Hicken [00:00:50]: I’m Jonathan Hicken.
Eric Ressler [00:00:50]: And this is Designing Tomorrow.
Jonathan Hicken [00:00:55]: All right, Eric. There was this post on LinkedIn the other day that nearly had me throw my mouse against the wall. It was from a fundraiser, I’m not naming names, that was talking about how this foundation wasn’t structuring a grant in a multi-year way, and it was a call for foundations to structure their giving in a way that met that particular organization’s needs. And it came off to me as totally out of touch and very entitled with an assumption that the work is so important that the funders should acquiesce to our needs. And the first thought that came to mind was, “No, dude, it’s completely the other way around.”
Eric Ressler [00:01:40]: Mm.
Jonathan Hicken [00:01:40]: And so I wanna unpack this idea that funders actually don’t owe us anything as nonprofits and what that actually means. At the end of the day, I think that we need to stop thinking of them purely as fuel for our missions and more like customers that we deeply need to understand and serve in their own right. And what I mean by that is the individuals — we can bring this down to a human level. The individuals that are working at these foundations, they have goals, they have objectives, they have strategy that they’re trying to execute. And when we put them in the position that somehow they are not doing right by us, I think that just causes separation in the industry that I don’t think is healthy for anybody.
Eric Ressler [00:03:00]: Yeah. Okay. I think this one’s super thorny. That’s my first take on this one. Thorny, complex, nuanced, use your word, because I can make counter arguments for every argument you just made. So there’s a long-held power dynamic in the space of social impact where funders basically hold all the power because they’ve got the money, right? That’s the general power dynamic. And Jen Nguyen, who we had on the show from the Stubski Foundation, who is clearly an institutional funder — they’re unique because they’re a spend-down philanthropy. This is not the Stubski’s point of view, but it’s Jen’s point of view that philanthropy in and of itself should just be abolished because the structure is so broken. It’s not my take necessarily. I respect Jen’s take and I think that there’s a lot of really good reasoning behind her take on that. She just wrote an article about it, which we’ll link to in the show notes.
I think where this comes from and where we can loop into the movement around trust-based philanthropy, which sounds like this person on LinkedIn was advocating for, is that there is this power dynamic inevitably between someone who has resources and someone who needs resources that’s gonna be there, right? Let’s just acknowledge that there’s gonna be a power dynamic there. And there’s been traditionally a lot of funding that comes in that’s just open call or invite only, however it comes in, there’s a grant opportunity and you can get this. And it becomes this competition, essentially. And a lot of upfront work is required by nonprofit organizations to even win the grant. If they get it, it’s restricted. So they don’t actually have the right resources or structures to do their best work. They’re being pushed into a system and it’s elective, right? They don’t have to apply for the grant, but these organizations need funding to do their work. So I guess I should just come out and say I’m generally a proponent for trust-based philanthropy. I think it is a better way of doing this. I don’t think that’s necessarily at odds with your key takeaway.
Jonathan Hicken [00:05:00]: Yeah, me neither.
Eric Ressler [00:05:00]: So maybe we could just start there and get into some of the details.
Jonathan Hicken [00:05:05]: Yeah. Something that’s coming up for me is where’s the onus of responsibility for changing these things? And I think for me in my position as a fundraiser, as an executive director, I feel like it’s counterproductive to be villainizing my funders rather than spending the time to deeply understand what it is that they’re trying to do and the impact that they’re trying to have, because if I deeply understand that, that’s going to make me more competitive, and that puts me in a position where I’m actually seen as an ally and a partner rather than a hungry mouth to feed.
Eric Ressler [00:05:40]: Okay. So I think that’s a really important distinction, which is we can do both. We can work with funders to be better funders, and we do that by being partners with them, and not expecting them to just bend to our will. Because really at the end of the day, there’s a shared objective here, or there should be, if the partnership is healthy, where there is some impact in the world that you as a practitioner or organization are working to make, and that an aligned funder feels like you are a good fit to help make, right? But I’m gonna push back in a couple ways here. One, I just wanna — my understanding is you’ve basically given up on this style of fundraising.
Jonathan Hicken [00:06:25]: Yeah. We don’t go after these huge competitive grants anymore.
Eric Ressler [00:06:25]: So tell me more about why you made that choice.
Jonathan Hicken [00:06:30]: Well, because rather, what I prefer to do is to go seek out individuals and organizations and build relationships first. So we don’t go after these massive calls where I know that hundreds or thousands of other organizations are gonna apply. Because I have no relationship there. I don’t necessarily understand that foundation’s needs or their goals or the way they think or the way they show up or who they’re looking for. I don’t know any of that stuff. All I have is a website with the requirements for the grant, right? And to me, this comes down to dollars and cents too. How much time and money am I gonna put into this thing with what percent chance that I’m gonna get this grant? I would much rather put my time and effort into developing relationships that is gonna give me a really high chance of getting the gift rather than spinning my wheels on these organizations I know nothing about.
Eric Ressler [00:07:25]: Right. Okay. So I’m gonna keep going on this thread. Doesn’t that feel like a broken system?
Jonathan Hicken [00:07:30]: No, not at all.
Eric Ressler [00:07:30]: So you think it’s okay that these organizations who have gathered wealth in our society, largely because founding organizations have built them as, just be real, a tax haven for the most part. They’ve got all of this wealth and power. They exist legally and in spirit to do good, and they are not spending down, in many cases, more than 5% a year, and they have the ability to. And the structure basically means that you have to have some kind of in to get money because you either already are successful enough, or because you have a personal relationship with a program officer, or because you’ve been funded by someone that they know in their network. And as much as a lot of these orgs pay lip service to being really research-backed and objective about who they fund, that’s not usually how it actually happens in the real world.
So I don’t think these things are necessarily exclusive, right? I do agree to your point around you shouldn’t just expect to get money just because your mission matters. There is a healthy amount of competition. It’s not a zero sum game either. So I don’t think this means that every nonprofit who has a worthwhile mission is just deserving of all the foundation money in the world, and at the same time, I do think some of these structures are inherently not as effective as they could or should be.
Jonathan Hicken [00:09:00]: Okay. Let’s separate the fact that philanthropy has to exist in society from the way that we as leaders and fundraisers are going after that money. ‘Cause I agree with you. At a moral level, how do we get to this place where this is the system that we have to operate in?
Eric Ressler [00:09:20]: Yes.
Jonathan Hicken [00:09:20]: Okay? Yes. Okay. Fine. Fair enough. All sorts of questions arise with that, right? Major shout out to Stubski for their work.
Eric Ressler [00:09:30]: Yeah.
Jonathan Hicken [00:09:30]: On a personal level, I’m like, yeah, fuck yeah. I hope more foundations operate the way they do. Mackenzie Scott. Right? Great. Love that. Fantastic. But for us as individuals who are seeking the money to expect that from every foundation out there right now, I think is a waste of time and frankly just a not very smart way of going about fundraising.
Eric Ressler [00:10:00]: Yeah. So I would agree that that’s not a pragmatic strategy, right? Is to hope that philanthropy is going to fix itself. And look, I mean, we had Rusty Stahl on the show recently who is trying to advocate for some new fundraising mechanisms to fund the people. Like any systems-level issue, there’s a need for the kind of people who see that system and say, “Fuck that,” and work to change the system. But that is long, hard, decades-long work usually.
Jonathan Hicken [00:10:20]: Sure is.
Eric Ressler [00:10:25]: And then there’s the pragmatic, “Well, we gotta get the important urgent work done within the broken system.” And so what I’m hearing from your point of view is less, “Oh, the philanthropic system is perfect. We should stop complaining.” And more, this is the way it is, so either your work should be changing that or your work should be figuring out how to operate within the constraints that exist. Is that generally your point?
Jonathan Hicken [00:10:45]: That’s exactly my point. There are people who are already funded by a foundation, right? And let’s say you’re going out for a renewal or for an extension of that support. By all means, go have that conversation with your program officer about restructuring the flow of the money. That is an opportunity where, yes, you can express to your funder that this isn’t quite working for us, but there’s already a partnership that exists. There’s already a relationship that exists, and that is meaningful feedback for that foundation to hear from their grantee about what’s working or what’s not.
Eric Ressler [00:11:25]: I think about this sometimes from my point of view as an agency owner. A common but broken approach for hiring an agency is to put out an RFP, right? “Hey, everybody, we have this project. We’re looking for submissions to a proposal.” It’s very similar to applying for a grant. We basically don’t do RFPs at Cosmic for a very pragmatic reason. And I believe that, and I’ve written about and spoken to people individually and publicly about, hey, just like pretty much every agency owner who’s ever been through an RFP process, hey, this actually isn’t the greatest way to hire people like us. There’s a better way to do this. And it is very similarly about partnership. I have similarly pragmatically decided we’re not gonna do that. We are gonna work with people who are certainly should be doing their research and talking to multiple agencies and seeing who’s the right fit, but who are approaching it from a peer-level partnership from the beginning and not a “Well, it has to be this many pages and this set type and you have to have these professional references and know we won’t meet with you before you submit.”
How are you supposed to do that and do good work, right? That’s similar to, I think, sometimes nonprofit leaders and fundraisers, maybe especially ones who are early in their career, think, okay, well, I’m just gonna write a bunch of grants with people I have no real connection or relationship to and I’m gonna mold our work to fit the requirements of the grant because that’s just how we have to get money, right? That’s not a good strategy. And I’m not saying — I mean, we work with organizations that are 90-plus percent grant funded, but that’s not how they do their grant work, right? There’s a much deeper relationship and networking-based approach to doing it. So it’s both at some level, but I’d be really curious to hear more about how you think about, okay, if you flip the script and say, “We’re not entitled to this money,” whether it’s from a major institutional philanthropy or a major donor or a community member who’s giving what to them is their best gift, but might not be a lot of money — I’d like to hear your thoughts around understanding the customer and thinking about it that way.
Jonathan Hicken [00:13:20]: So everybody’s got a motivation. Individual motivation, organizational motivation, whatever makes them tick. And I don’t think that we spend enough time in the sector deeply understanding what that is for our funders. I think we’re generally better at that with individual donors, right? Because it’s a person. And you can ask them, “Why do you care about this?” When you’re asking a program officer, well, they’re gonna give you the company line, right? So it’s a little less personal.
But when I think about my time in tech and for-profit, business-to-business — I ran a customer success team and so much of our time we spent as a team asking our customers and trying to deeply understand what success looked like to them at their own job. I’ve worked with Adam from HubSpot and I’m like, “Adam, what’s gonna make your boss think you’re doing a great job and what’s gonna get you a raise?” Down to that level of what makes Adam work well? And then of course, I wanna understand what HubSpot’s goals are too so we can demonstrate that our product is helping them achieve both individual-level and company-level success.
I think the same thing needs to happen with foundations. Understand deeply what this individual that you’re working with needs. Maybe that’s a program officer, maybe it’s the CEO, maybe it’s somebody in between. Understand deeply what they care about, and then also at that organizational level. And it’s more than just their three goals that they’re stating on their website, right? It’s deeply understanding what they’re tracking, what success looks like, what are they trying to improve at. That level, I think, is really important so that when you put your proposal forward, you are addressing things that is speaking to a human and speaking to a team of people who are trying to get something done.
Eric Ressler [00:15:30]: Hey, friends, real quick before we continue today’s episode, I’m Eric Ressler, founder and creative director at Cosmic. Cosmic is a creative agency purpose-built for nonprofits and mission-driven organizations. For the last 15 years, we’ve helped leaders like you nail your impact story and sharpen your strategy, but we’re not here to just leave you with a fancy slide deck and a pat on the back. We roll up our sleeves and help you bring our ideas to life through campaigns, creative, and digital experiences. Our work together helps you earn trust, connect deeply with your supporters, and grow your fundraising and your impact. If you value the thinking we share here and want it applied to your biggest challenges, let’s talk at designbycosmic.com. All right, back to today’s conversation.
Eric Ressler [00:16:15]: I think about that when we’re exploring client partnerships at Cosmic, and sometimes people have a really clear answer about that for the organization and personally, but I would say in more cases than not, that requires facilitation. It requires two skills that I’ve been really trying to lean into and acknowledge that I’ve developed over my career, which are deep listening and relentless curiosity. To me, to be a good designer, you have to be really good at both those things, to be a good strategic person doing this work in a meaningful way, those skills are gonna translate to almost any position in a good way, I think. On the flip side, I do think there is some reasonable criticism for some of these organizations that articulate they have a focus area or a mission, articulate they have standards and details about who they will and will not fund and all those things, but they’re loosely held.
I’m just gonna go ahead and put it out there. Chan Zuckerberg Initiative had some pretty strong opinions about who they were gonna fund and what they stood for, and they were really quick to let go of those as soon as Trump was elected again. I don’t have any problem with individual people at that organization who are doing their best work in philanthropy and wanting to do good and came in in earlier days where maybe that was a little bit more true, but these stated motivations and alignments are not always as clear or as real as they are stated. And so then funder priorities just change on a whim at times. And hey, that’s just the way the world works at some level, right? So again, back to the entitlements — you gotta be pragmatic about, I’ve seen over and over again clients who have multi-year relationships with funders, sometimes seven years long, and all of a sudden, oh, our priorities changed, best of luck to you.
Jonathan Hicken [00:18:00]: Bye.
Eric Ressler [00:18:00]: And it’s like, wait, that was a third of our operating budget, and you gave us three weeks’ notice, right?
Jonathan Hicken [00:18:10]: Yeah, but that can happen with an individual donor too, right? That’s not unique to a foundation. That happens — you need to build a business that can withstand those changes. That’s part of the job, I think.
Eric Ressler [00:18:20]: 100%.
Jonathan Hicken [00:18:25]: And someone like Chan Zuckerberg — they should be held to account for their priorities changing. I don’t waste my time with that, right? And that’s — I’m looking for organizational partners who do have a clear sense of self. And do know where they’re headed, and those things could change, and I need to be ready for that. But that’s on me to deeply understand the partner I’m looking for.
Eric Ressler [00:18:50]: Yes. I mean, I agree. And I think this is why I started by saying this is thorny. ‘Cause I think it is. Because I do agree that both can be true. As fundraisers, as leaders at organizations doing this work, we need to be doing the things that you’re talking about. We need to be really understanding motivations and trying to attract right-fit partners for our work who are doing this work. There are funders out there who, institutional funders and philanthropies, even if the money came in in less than ideal ways at the beginning, have turned that money into incredible impact. So I don’t want to come off as being anti-philanthropy, anti-foundation, but the longer I’ve been doing this work, the more I do question — a lot of these structures are bullshit. And I’ve been seeing more and more of that, interviewing some really awesome people even on our show and meeting them through the networks and also just seeing some of the frankly shitty downstream effects from some of these funders who, let’s remember, have tax benefits to being set up this way, have hoarded massive amounts of wealth, have invested that largely in things that are not necessarily good for the world and maybe even directly at odds with their stated mission. So they’re in this position of privilege and power, and so we should hold them to a very high standard.
Jonathan Hicken [00:20:00]: Yeah. Whose job is that?
Eric Ressler [00:20:00]: Whose job in the world is that?
Jonathan Hicken [00:20:00]: I mean—
Eric Ressler [00:20:05]: I think it’s — is society an acceptable answer? I think it’s—
Jonathan Hicken [00:20:10]: Designing Tomorrow, Eric and Jonathan—
Eric Ressler [00:20:10]: Well, here’s why I think I’m sticking up a little bit for your LinkedIn example. Shouldn’t it be all of our jobs? If we care about this work, if we care about this sector being the best version of itself that it can be, which I know you do and I know we both do, we have to be holding all of this at the same time at some level.
And look, you as executive director at the Seymour Center, you’ve got mouths to feed, you’ve got impact to make here locally. How much of your time should you spend thinking about this? Probably very little. But there’s a counterpoint to be made there too that’s like, these systems persist because no one says, “Hey, this sucks. Let’s do it a different way.” So I think there’s a lot to chew on here. And this is why I come back to — I think both can be true. I think you can be pragmatic. I think you can continue to say, “Hey, foundational institutional funding isn’t a fit for us for these reasons. This system works for us. We’re gonna double down on that.” And I know when you are talking to local community members and partners who are giving to you, you’re doing the same thing, right?
But yeah, whose job is it to fix philanthropy? That’s a big one, man.
Jonathan Hicken [00:21:20]: Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe as we’re talking, my little act of resistance is just bowing out of it, right? Of I’m not gonna play this game. I’m gonna look for people who wanna do good work together and if it works out, we’re gonna do it. And if not, that’s okay too. Maybe that’s my little contribution, right, is I’m just not applying.
Eric Ressler [00:21:40]: Yeah. Well, and I think that there’s no one way of doing this work. That’s something I’ve definitely learned.
Jonathan Hicken [00:21:45]: For sure.
Eric Ressler [00:21:45]: Even, and this comes down to what kind of org are you? Because you are a place-based organization, you have the ability to earn income. Not all issue areas have that ability, right? So some orgs really need that institutional funding because there isn’t a market-based approach. It’s really hard to raise from individual giving. It’s the kind of work that’s important but not sexy. Someone’s gotta fund that stuff if we think it’s real. So I think that my general take on this is that if we’re going to have institutional philanthropy that is not government, or that is government money, we should be consistently trying to do it better. To me, that seems obvious. Does that mean we need to be entitled about, oh, my mission’s important, so I deserve money? No, I don’t think those two things are the same.
Jonathan Hicken [00:22:35]: I think we just need to be really clear then when we are expressing our feelings about the system. Especially if we are a practitioner in the social impact space. To be really clear about when you’re talking about system change and when you’re talking about real grant-seeking work, because I can see if you’re commenting on systems change, fantastic. Let it rip. If you’re talking about actually going after money, the entitlement tone I think is hurting all of us. Do better work to better understand your funders.
Eric Ressler [00:23:15]: I think it can be, not always, but can be an excuse for an org that is not fundable. There are, let’s just be real, a pretty big percentage of social impact organizations and nonprofits that aren’t viable, just like there’s a number of businesses and startups that aren’t viable. The world is brutal.
Jonathan Hicken [00:23:35]: That’s how it works.
Eric Ressler [00:23:40]: And so I think that challenge, that competition, if you wanna use that word, there’s a certain amount of it that’s healthy. And I don’t think that means we should just accept the way this has been done traditionally, because I think there are emerging ways that are not just don’t just feel better and sound better, but actually just work better, right? When there are these orgs and these funders who have said, “Hey, you’re right, this sucks. How else might we do this work in a meaningful way, not just because it’s progressive, but because it’s actually more effective at the end of the day in terms of creating the kind of impact we wanna make, and how can we build social impact organizations that are not constrained by resources, but can sit there and imagine and do bigger work and not always be stuck in scarcity or reactivity mode.” We’re talking about the hardest problems in the world here. We have to think big about it. So I don’t know. I could keep going on the nuance of this. And I don’t have good answers for all of it either. It’s something I think about a lot and every time I feel like I have a really solid take on it, there’s some counterpoint that I’m like, “Ugh, that’s also true.”
Jonathan Hicken [00:24:45]: Yeah. I mean, this is one of those where I really wanna hear from listeners on the way you’re thinking about this and the relationship with your funders, because I see the argument for both. This episode topic came out of a place of frustration for me, where I was like, “Come on.” So it’s actually a little cathartic to talk this out with you, right? To be like, okay, yeah, actually this is — that particular post came from a real place, right? It wasn’t just someone whining.
Eric Ressler [00:25:10]: Right, right. And what I’ll say is your perspective on this is relevant regardless, right? Because approaching it that way is naturally going to lead to finding better, more aligned, more sophisticated, more progressive funders who are going to give you better support and gifts and partnerships.
Jonathan Hicken [00:25:30]: Yeah, I think so.
Eric Ressler [00:25:35]: So we don’t need to choose. And so I think it’s just, be clear about what is your place in this world and what feels right? Hey, if you wanna speak up and do it, do it. And if Jonathan thinks you’re a little entitled, who gives a shit, right? And I do think, to be clear though, there is a way to do that that’s constructive, and then there’s a way to do it that’s performative.
Jonathan Hicken [00:25:55]: Yeah, yeah.
Eric Ressler [00:25:55]: And so maybe the person you saw was a little bit more performative and felt a little bit more entitled in a way that was just like, oh, I need attention, or maybe they’re just venting. Who knows, right? A thorny one. One of our thorniest ones yet.
Jonathan Hicken [00:26:10]: In fact, I think this might be the biggest disagreement we’ve had on the show yet, so that’s good. All right. It’s good.
Eric Ressler [00:26:15]: Let’s keep going.
Jonathan Hicken [00:26:15]: All right. Well, this is a good one, Eric. Thank you so much.
Eric Ressler [00:26:15]: All right. Thanks, Jonathan. If you enjoyed today’s video, please be sure to hit like and subscribe or even leave us a comment. It really helps. Thank you. And thank you for all that you do for your cause and for being part of the movement to move humanity and the planet forward.
I appreciate this topic and happen to be writing next week’s Substack about a similar angle. Not only do foundations not owe our particular organizations anything, but there are behaviors we all undertake that actively make grant makers’ jobs harder. I don’t feel pity for those foundation staffers but think that both sides can do a better job of making the philanthropy sector work better.