Hey Benjie. Yes, it definitely seems that seed funding is the hardest part and that's often when the conveners don’t yet have established relationships with donors or funders. What we've seen as that seed funding often comes from individual donors or small discretionary pools from foundation staff. And the search isn't necessarily for the donors directly but for “connectors,” people who are engaged in the issue and do have relationships with donors.
Actually, with pool funds, I’ve seen the opposite in some cases. As I allude to in the article, pooled funds often liberate individual funders from their own internal restrictions and boundaries, liberating them to work in different ways and take more risks. And often the use of power can be really helpful. There is an example that I can't talk about but it involves some very large international funders who used their power on behalf of field leaders to create a more equitable governance framework. And there's the case of Mosaic where we supported the creation of a governance framework through which the pooled fund is actually co-managed by both field leaders and funders.
Great post, Russ.
Two notes of concern:
1) even seed funding is hard to find
2) pooled funds appear to have sizable resources to make sizable impact BUT, BUT, BUT they also centralize power
Hey Benjie. Yes, it definitely seems that seed funding is the hardest part and that's often when the conveners don’t yet have established relationships with donors or funders. What we've seen as that seed funding often comes from individual donors or small discretionary pools from foundation staff. And the search isn't necessarily for the donors directly but for “connectors,” people who are engaged in the issue and do have relationships with donors.
Actually, with pool funds, I’ve seen the opposite in some cases. As I allude to in the article, pooled funds often liberate individual funders from their own internal restrictions and boundaries, liberating them to work in different ways and take more risks. And often the use of power can be really helpful. There is an example that I can't talk about but it involves some very large international funders who used their power on behalf of field leaders to create a more equitable governance framework. And there's the case of Mosaic where we supported the creation of a governance framework through which the pooled fund is actually co-managed by both field leaders and funders.