New Attitudes, Old Practices: The Provision of Multiyear General Operating Support, a new study from the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP), examines the state of practice in philanthropy. What CEP found is that even though foundation leaders’ attitudes about general operating support have shifted over the years, practices have not.
Among the report’s findings, the data shows that:
- The most frequently mentioned benefits of multiyear GOS grants, according to nonprofit leaders surveyed for the study, are strengthening a nonprofit’s ability to plan for the future (66 percent), creating more opportunity to focus on the work (30 percent), and building capacity to invest in staff (26 percent).
- While 58 percent of foundation CEOs surveyed report that their foundations provide some multiyear GOS, they generally do so for few grantees — only 11 percent of those providing multiyear GOS report providing it to more than half of their grantees.
- The data did not reveal any common significant barriers foundation leaders face in providing or increasing their provision of multiyear GOS; rather, the explanation seems to be that it doesn’t fit with the foundation’s approach, simply hasn’t been prioritized, or, for a subset of community foundations, isn’t seen as possible.
This report is accompanied by two companion publications: Making the Case: Foundation Leaders on the Importance of Multiyear General Operating Support and Making It Happen: A Conversation Guide. Making the Case includes profiles of five foundations that participated in interviews for this study: the California Wellness Foundation, the Claneil Foundation, Foundation for a Just Society, Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, and Paul Hamlyn Foundation. Making It Happen provides resources for foundation leaders and boards seeking to start providing, or provide more, multiyear GOS grants.
CEP is hosting a free webinar diving deeper into these resources on Tuesday, October 27 from 2-3 pm ET. The conversation will delve into the approaches of two of the foundations profiled in Making the Case, as well as explore the role of flexible grants in philanthropy's response to the compounding crises of the current moment.
The data for this study was collected prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Ford Foundation provided funding to support this research, as well as support for CEP’s current efforts to examine whether and to what extent foundation practices are changing because of a dramatically changed context. Stay tuned for the release of those findings later this year.