Giving Compass' Take:

• The author provides advice for donor engagement with nonprofit organizations.  Donors that put more time into learning about the people doing the work will be happier with the progress. 

• How can more donors adopt these attitudes so that nonprofits can feel empowered by the work they're doing and donors feel that the work is sustainable? 

• Read about how to balance the power within donor and organization relationships.  

Most of the time when I used to accompany the founders of nonprofits to meet different funders, especially corporates, nobody was interested in the story and journey of the founders–the struggles they had gone through, the sacrifices they had made, the challenges they faced; all they cared for was sustainability, replicability and scalability.

But without understanding the founder’s journey, background and mindset, it’s hard to understand the nonprofit and what it will achieve over time.

People who do not understand the context will look at their balance sheet and say, “they have been working for 12 years and don’t seem to have done much”. Donors don’t always understand the local situation and its complexities and will judge the nonprofit by parameters that are applied in the mainland; they must realize that a worm’s eye view is as important as a bird’s eye view.

We understand where the nonprofits are coming from: if they spend their time doing paperwork, when will they do the actual work? Their passion is to work on the field, with the communities. The paperwork is therefore kept to the minimum.

Once you’ve spent time with a nonprofit, you might see gaps that are invisible to them. Funding both what they ask for and what helps fill these gaps is important. As donors, we might not have the experience that founders have, but we might be able to develop the understanding of what is required; experience and understanding are two different things and it’s possible to have one without the other.

Read the full article about donors putting people first by Nimesh Sumati at India Development Review