Grantees Resource Hub

In this hub we have gathered information, tools and case studies to help every grantee move towards and access flexible funding. It will help you with the questions you need to ask and outline how best to work with funders to find ways to move towards more flexible funding, enabling you better to define, set and achieve the goals you have as an organization, large or small.  

What is Flexible Funding?

Flexible funding gives non-profits the freedom to allocate funds where they need it most and the autonomy to be proactive and respond most effectively to every new challenge and opportunity that arises. When grantees are able to switch to more flexible arrangements, such as unrestricted and multi-year grants, it gives them the freedom to operate at their most effective for those that need them.

Benefits of Flexible Funding

When you never quite know how much funding you will get, or on what terms, it will inevitably impact the effectiveness of your planning. Flexible funding changes all that, empowering organizations to invest in critical areas such as infrastructure and innovation; essential to effectiveness but often overlooked. Strategic planning is another casualty of inflexible funding, and lack of it limits organizational resilience, and the ability to properly resource and deliver every objective.

Definitions

  • Expenses directly attributable to specific projects.

  • Expenses necessary to run an organization that are not directly tied to a specific project

  • The rate sometimes offered by funders with project funding as a contribution towards overheads or administration costs, generally termed “indirect costs”. This is often offered as a percentage of the direct programme costs that are being funded.

  • Flexible funding is about trust and sharing of power; trusting grantee partners to know how best to apply their funding. After all, they know what they’re doing and are best placed to decide how to apply funding.

  • Project-restricted funding policies can starve grantees of support with the costs of running their organizations. Naturally, funders want their money to be spent on projects, but if the organizations delivering that funding aren’t able to retain staff or even keep the lights on, they can’t do that effectively. So, funders need to be made aware of the lasting impact of underfunding of running costs and infrastructure on the ability to deliver to projects.

    Learn more

Key Resources

It can be daunting to present the case for flexible funding, whether you’re in negotiations with new funders or you have a long history of working together, and you’re asking for change. We’ve put these resources together to help you create compelling cases for flexible funding, including training, real life examples that demonstrate successful outcomes and materials that help you answer the questions funders commonly ask.

Indirect Cost Coverage Template

Learn to negotiate and calculate indirect costs effectively with our downloadable "Indirect Cost Rate Template". Mastering this will ensure you cover essential operational expenses adequately.

Multi-Year Funding Guide

Explore strategies to secure and manage multi-year funding. Such resources provide stability, allowing you to plan and execute long-term projects without the constant pressure of re-funding.

Indirect Cost Rate Guide

Explore definitions of direct, indirect and shared costs to help you with the Indirect Cost Coverage template.

Learn from others

  • Questioning the effectiveness of standard funding methods

    What does it mean to be a social justice funder? Nearly a decade ago, the Ford Foundation set out on a journey to answer this question from a new angle, interrogating not only what it was funding but also how it was funding.

    Read more

  • Responding to changing circumstances

    One of the Oak Foundation’s core values is to learn continuously. The foundation’s history reflects that it has indeed continued to learn and grow – maintaining its responsiveness to changing circumstances and willingness to adapt.

    Read more

  • Celebrating young people as an asset in Nigeria

    Nigeria has one of the largest populations of young people in the world. Onelife Initiative for Human Development does not consider this growing population a socioeconomic burden on the country but rather a key asset to advancing the development agenda and unlocking a future in which they can thrive.

    Read More

Media Content

We’ve created a full media toolkit with useful posts covering all the issues involved and introducing some of our case studies.

Webinars and Workshops

Stay informed about upcoming educational opportunities designed to enhance your funding literacy and operational expertise.

Funder insights

Benefit from firsthand advice from funders on fostering productive, enduring partnerships. Learn what funders value in successful collaborations.

Practices to explore

There are many ways to move towards flexible funding; here we take a look at ways to change for both immediate and long term results.

Indirect Cost Recovery

All-In Project Support

Flexible Programmatic Funding

Targeted Growth Support

Multi-Year Flexible Funding

Flexible Support

What to ask funders

Funders can be anywhere on this spectrum of flexibility, to challenge them to take a look at their practices and make changes, ask your program officers these questions:

  • Are you able to fund indirect costs at the actual rate provided by the grantee?

  • Are you able to increase fixed indirect cost coverage rates (or create sliding scale) for project-based grants?

  • Are you able to add general operating support money to project grants? 

  • Are you able to provide more flexible project support by moving away from direct vs. indirect budgeting all together?

Funders open to have these conversations or make changes based on these questions above can use the Funding For Real Change website to support their journeys.

General advice

General advice from other grantees

Introduce your full organization’s needs to support objectives, even if the grant is structured as a project. Define for your funder what “flexible funding” means to you, the ways it will be used, to eliminate confusion. Equip regrantors with data to make the argument to their grantmakers for longer-term funding.

Tell your program officer that you’d value presenting your work to the board and prepare to show the positive impact of general operating support on advancing your shared mission as well as realistic timelines for change.

Get one of your multi-year, flexible funders to share their experience with others; invite funders to meet with you as a group to discuss long-term objectives (e.g., CEO Sixto Cancel of Think of Us routinely does this). Be candid at the outset about what helps and hinders.

Tell the longer story when reporting on a project (the broader goals, interventions, and impact) to inspire your funder to broader thinking and support.

Let your program officers know what services you value most. Point out where their processes create bureaucratic thickets. Cite examples of funders with whom you’ve experienced less bureaucracy and more trust.

Provide funders your theory of change and multi-year vision and connect your strategy to both, demonstrating the arc of change and funding required to fuel outcomes versus outputs. If you are invited to complete a GPR, participate—funders that seek feedback take it seriously.

Provide funders your theory of change and multi-year vision and connect your strategy to both, demonstrating the arc of change and funding required to fuel outcomes versus outputs. If you are invited to complete a GPR, participate—funders that seek feedback take it seriously.

Reject restricted funding where it will hobble you, and explain clearly to the funder just why.

Testify to the need for ongoing multiyear, flexible funding to strengthen your organization for the next crisis and build resilience through retaining staff, building skills, and developing creative contingency and response plans.

Hold regular update calls with funders to grapple with issues and share the impact of long-term flexible grants, like MacKenzie Scott’s, to inspire other funders. Join or create ecosystem networks to strategically advance the movement to build funders shared understanding of excellent grant practice.

 

  • “For many years, all of our strategic plans were either done by me with some pro bono support or an inexpensive consultant or boardled. Only now, because we have multiyear funding, do we have the resources to create a robust multiyear strategic plan and the financial plan that goes along with it.”

    Monisha Kapila

    Co-CEO, ProInspire

  • “Foundations need to be more thoughtful about who they bring into program officer roles. Do they have any relevant implementation background or ‘doer’ experience?”

    Matt Forti

    Managing Director , One Acre Fund

  • “We look out for trust itself. Do you trust that I will manage the program and funds well? Or you are giving me a contract that has so many dos and don’ts, I’m almost on trial. Can I purchase a glass, or must I first seek permission, attach documentation, so you can look at everything before you can allow me to buy a glass?”

    Julius Mukunda

    ED, CSBAG (Uganda)

  • “We're going to do this together. We're not your implementing agency. We're co-creating partners. We believe in the same overall goals and strategic direction, so let us forge a partnership rather than a funder-grantee relationship. You'll learn from us and we shall learn from you.”

    Aidan Eyakuze

    Executive Director, Twaweza

  • “It's important to have that initiative from funders to understand those contexts we are in and that indirect costs are a constant need embedded in the pathway of any organization that is having an impact.”

    Sara Montes

    Colectivo Raíz

  • “We're not-for-profit but we're also not for losses, which is fundamental. I think the way the system is set up, it expects nonprofits, grant recipients, to take losses all the time and that's not fair.”

    Felicia Davis Blakely

    CFW, President & CEO

  • “Our theory of change is if you actually holistically support these organizations and the communities – the leaders and the organizations themselves – it actually increases the efficacy of those organizations.”

    Felicia Davis Blakely

    CFW, President & CEO

  • “What we eventually put [for IDC] is not what they really are. Once we come up with the budget, we take it down. Some [funders] say we can’t have more than 7%, 10%. It’s a very subtle way of saying, ‘We don’t care how you get the job done. Just get the job done.”

    Sola Fagorusi

    Onelife Initiative

  • “I believe that how power flows, and funding as a marker of that power, is actually the biggest barrier to achieving the positive societal change that we seek.”

    Lisha McCormick

    ED, Last Mile Health

Feedback and Questions

Your insights are invaluable. Share your funding experiences and challenges to help us refine our support strategies.

Resources:

Resetting the Grantor-Grantee Relationship, SSIR article on how changes in behavior and mindset can strengthen grantor-grantee relationships

https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_nonprofit_starvation_cycle

Building Strong, Resilient NGOs in India: Time for New Funding Practices, Bridgespan article on the underinvestment in nonprofits in India, and better funder practices that can change this

Seven Habits of Excellent Work with Grantees, Hewlett Foundation guide for foundation staff to help them create strong, mutually respectful and highly productive relationships with grantees

My Organization Is a Testament to Why Unrestricted Funding Matters, Chronicle of Philanthropy opinion piece by Nicholas Turner, president of the Vera Institute for Justice