Why We’re Tripling Our Grants

Back in March, when the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation began to grasp the severity of COVID-19 and its impacts on the people and places we care about, we began to brainstorm ways to mitigate the harm. We asked our grantee partners about the pandemic’s implications for their work. We asked the leaders of community development finance organizations how their borrowers are faring. We sought ideas from other foundations taking creative approaches to stanch the bleeding.

What we’ve heard is dire. Nonprofits are cancelling vital fundraising events and outreach activities central to their missions. They tell us some foundations are pausing their support, even though their grantee partners are not pausing their work. They are working twice as hard to help their communities weather the crisis, while continuing to advance justice in the most important political year of our lifetimes.

Certain that this pandemic will reshape our economy and society in fundamental ways, we responded by tripling our grantmaking for 2020. From democracy to policy advocacy to economic opportunity, our partners’ missions are more critical than ever. The pandemic is tearing down our current socio-economic frameworks; with the right kinds of support, our partners are ideally positioned to create a more equitable foundation on which to rebuild.

Even as repercussions continue to manifest, several organizations are already pivoting from despair to opportunity. In this strange new reality, they are figuring out new and different ways to advocate for policies that support low-wealth families, halt deportations, register new voters, encourage census participation, plan for redistricting, and prevent bankruptcies and foreclosures.

Many other foundations have also made significant adjustments, with the potential to imagine a new kind of relationship with our grantee partners: more resources and general support, fewer grant restrictions and reporting requirements. Nonprofits have been calling for these best-in-class practices for years; hopefully we will see permanent shifts in grantor-grantee relationships and power imbalances, leading foundations to become better partners for the people who do the on-the-ground work that advances their missions.