Publication of the Month

February 2012

“When Aims and Objectives Rhyme”

How Two of Ireland’s Largest Foundations Found Common Ground and Built a Portfolio of Nearly €60m Without Compromising the Features That Makes Them Distinct

Tony Proscio, Duke Stanford School of Public Policy, Centre for Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society, December 2010

This report analyses the collaboration between two of the largest foundations in the Republic of Ireland, showing how they have worked together in the support of common grantees, despite their different approaches to grantmaking and slightly differing goals. The Atlantic Philanthropies, Ireland’s largest private grantmaker at €47m a year, and the One Foundation, which gives between €8m and €9m in annual grants, have invested some €60m in their common grantees between 2004 and 2010, while pursuing their own interests and programmes. The two foundations have combined forces to achieve a greater impact on the lives of children and youth, as well as for Ireland’s growing immigrant population.

Their joint portfolio includes six grantees as part of the programmes for children andyouth, including Barnardos, Headstrong and the Children’s Rights Alliance. Another five grantees cover the field of immigrants’ needs and rights, including the Irish Refugee Council, the Integration Centre of Ireland and the Migrant Rights Centre. As the report shows, partnership has proven to be powerful and effective, providing grantees with different skills and ways of conceiving solutions. The cooperation becomes even more significant taking into account the strikingly different approaches in the foundations’ operating styles and philosophies.

The One Foundation, EVPA member and host of the 2012 Annual Conference in Dublin, is the first venture philanthropy funder in Ireland. It pursues a high-engagement approach focusing on developing a strategy and a business plan through hands-on support and creating well-run, performance-driven organisations. Being aligned with all VP principles, the One Foundation relies on performance benchmarks and timelines, calling for growth in operational and management processes and usually taking a seat on the grantee’s board. Staff from the One Foundation regularly meet the heads of the grantees, scrutinising growth and analysing unmet targets.

Atlantic Philanthropies, on the other hand, usually stays at arm’s length from grantees’ organisational decision-making and focuses on the interests and strategies of particular programmes, including testing and demonstrating service models and supporting advocacy campaigns.
The difference in operational style often led to disagreements in terms of collaboration and common goals, especially in projects concerning children and youth. While Atlantic Philanthropies aimed to improve the public system, focusing on government policy and funding, the One Foundation’s main goal was to build stronger organisations that could create new services and lobby for better public policy. This led to disagreements during the cooperation process, sometimes overloading the grantees with work in order to satisfy both foundations. In the second area of joint efforts, involving the needs and rights of immigrants, discord was mostly overcome – the two foundations worked to formalise and strengthen the legal rights of immigrants and agreed to support strong advocacy organisations and look for near-term solutions.

The report concludes that the relative informality of the arrangements and the ad hoc partnership led to many difficulties and disagreements in operational and strategic decisions. Nonetheless, through several critical features the foundations have in common, such as geographical position, shared charitable purposes and personal connections, it was possible to align goals and create a collaboration that could be defined by most as “an unnatural act”.

For funders considering collaborating, the report lists six rules derived from the comments of staff members and grantees:

• The goals of collaborating institutions should be similar. The more the goals intersect the greater the potential for a close and consistent partnership;
• Commitment to the partnership needs to come from both top executives and front-line workers during the collaboration. Everyone in the foundation has to see the value-added elements that the cooperation brings to the institution;
• Shared intellectual capital is more important than shared finance. The real engine of the partnership is peer-to-peer interaction;
• Peers from both foundations should create distinctions in roles, interest and responsibilities;
• Collaborations depend on trust as much as on formal agreements. Respectful and supportive conversations are at the basis of every relationship;
• There will always be discord but foundations need to be prepared to overcome disagreements and work jointly on common opportunities and goals.

At a time when collaboration still seems to be a critical issue for many foundations, Atlantic Philanthropies and the One Foundation prove how endorsement from two independent, demanding institutions lends credibility and improvement to grantees. Both foundations and grantees agreed that differences in work and objectives could be complementary and bring more creativity and better results to the supported organisations. As Deirdre Mortell, co-founder of the One Foundation and EVPA board member, puts it: “We add value in different ways according to our strengths, trusting the other organisation to add value on their particular focus: the One Foundation on building high-performance organisations that can do service growth, systems change or advocacy, and Atlantic Philanthropies on programme selection, programme technical supports and evaluation, as well as advocacy methodologies in the Human Rights Programme”.