Lawrence Foundation accepting grant applications for variety of nonprofit programs

• Date: 01 October 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/nba.30849
• Published date: 01 October 2020

OCTOBER 2020 NONPROFIT BUSINESS ADVISOR

3

© 2020 Wiley Periodicals LLC • All rights reserved

DOI: 10.1002/nba

organization unsupported. Equally important and

related is the need to invest in the recruitment and

advancement of people of color at every level in their

careers. There are plenty of resources to help, like

Fund the People’s Talent Justice Report.7

5. Leverage untapped resources. You could start

by examining the Billionaire Census 2020 released

by Wealth-X in June.8 It reveals that just over 10% of

the world’s billionaires have donated or pledged sup-

port in response to COVID. That leaves about 90%

that haven’t yet donated! What if these individuals

want to do something, but nobody has given them a

clear call to action? Who better than well-connected

philanthropies to effectively tap this group or their

nancial advisors? Like your asset base, their net

worth undoubtedly took a hit. But 2020 has also likely

given them a clearer sense of their privilege and the

many problems that need solving right now.

Just when we need leaders the most, the nonprot

leadership exodus will accelerate. As the Nonprot

Finance Fund’s CEO Antony Bugg Levine said in

the Wall Street Journal this past spring,9 “the sys-

tem sets them up to be fragile.” With over half not

having money reserves for more than a month to

three months, he thinks many won’t make it. This

isn’t a surprise. Their uphill climb just got that much

steeper. But the solutions are right in front of us. The

pandemic is laying bare so many wrongs and how

things must be made right—like putting people and

social justice at the center of our work. We must ac-

knowledge and shift culture and power dynamics. We

must disrupt these longstanding patterns of scarcity.

By changing how the philanthropic sector operates

in fundamental ways, nonprots will not just limp

along in a near-failure state, bleeding leaders along

the way. Instead, funders will help position people

and organizations to succeed. ■

For more information

Kris Putnam-Walkerly is a global philanthropy advi-

sor, speaker and award-winning author of Delusional

Altruism: Why Philanthropists Fail To Achieve Change

and What They Can Do To Transform Giving.3 For more

information,

References

1. Smith, M. (2019 Sept. 17). Nonprot leadership at a crossroads.

Nonprot Quarterly. Retrieved from https://nonprotquarterly.

org/nonprot-leadership-at-a-crossroads/.

2. Putnam-Walkerly, K. Delusional Altruism. Westlake, OH: Putnam

Consulting Group. Retrieved from https://putnam-consulting.

com/delusional-altruism/.

3, Putnam-Walkerly, K. (2020). Delusional altruism: why philan-

thropists fail to achieve change and what they can do to

transform giving. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

4. Nonprofit Finance Fund. (2018). 2018 State of the non-

prot sector survey. Retrieved from https://nff.org/learn/

survey?mod=article_inline.

5. Le, V. (2019 June 14). Why more and more leaders of color

are leaving nonprots - and what we can do about it. Open

Democracy. Retrieved from https://www.opendemocracy.

net/en/transformation/why-more-and-more-leaders-color-

are-leaving-nonprots-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/.

6. Garry, J. (2019 Sept. 24). Too many boards abuse their power.

Let’s change that. Chronicle of Philanthropy. Retrieved from

https://www.philanthropy.com/article/Too-Many-Boards-

Abuse-Their/247206.

7. Fund the People and the Center for Urban and Racial Equity.

(2019). 2019 Talent justice report. Retrieved from http://

fundthepeople.org/toolkit/tji/report/.

8. Wealth-X. (2020). The billionaire census 2020. New York:

Wealth-X.

9. Morris, B. (2020 May 11). Nonprots face bleak future as rev-

enue dries up amid coronavirus. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved

from https://www.wsj.com/articles/nonprots-face-bleak-

future-as-revenue-dries-up-amid-coronavirus-11589223487.

Lawrence Foundation accepting grant applications

for variety of nonprot programs

The Lawrence Foundation is currently accepting

proposals for funding under its general grant program.

The next deadline for funding is October 31, with

grants ranging between $5,000 and $10,000.

The foundation’s funding interests are diverse and

include both program and operating grants. Grant

categories are as follows:

• environment (open to U.S. headquartered or-

ganizations operating programs in the United States

or elsewhere in the world),

• human services (U.S. only),

• disaster relief (open to U.S. headquartered

organizations responding to disasters in the United

States or elsewhere in the world on an occasional

basis) and

• other programs (open to U.S. headquartered

organizations operating programs in the U.S. or

elsewhere in the world).

Applications are welcome from nonprot organ-

izations that qualify for public charity status under

section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, as

well as public schools and libraries.

For more information visit https://

thelawrencefoundation.org. ■