When I started working at The Presser Foundation two years ago, part of my mission and my responsibility was to increase the level of transparency in the Foundation’s external communications.
This work included a great deal of effort at the beginning (and continuous monitoring and updating now). At the time, it involved reviewing the Foundation’s existing platforms (its website, annual newsletter, press releases) and devising a plan to increase transparency. That work entailed establishing social media platforms, creating a quarterly newsletter plan, assessing the press release platform, reviewing the Foundation’s external connections at local and regional newsletters and membership organizations, working with a contractor on a redesigned website, and establishing a weekly blog post calendar.
Becoming more transparent has also included updating the Foundation’s applications and reporting requirements, convening grantee partners regularly in the virtual Next Movement Idea Forum, and presenting at conferences and forums. You can read more about our initial transparency work via this blog post for Philanthropy Network Greater Philadelphia.
What I want to share now is that while part of the transparency work involves opening up the doors in qualitative ways e.g., sharing about a partner on the Foundation’s blog, being open about the Foundation’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at a national conference and on its website, and sharing other efforts on social media, there is also a data element of transparency that the Foundation has more recently engaged in.
That work entails analyzing data internally and capitalizing on sector resources and partnerships.
Internally, it includes posting numbers and percentages for each grantmaking program over the past five years on the Foundation’s website. For example, a pie chart illustrates the amount given and percentages for each grantmaking area in 2022-23. A bar graph shows how much has been given to the Advancement of Music grantmaking area in every year since 2018. Publishing these numbers gives helpful context to the Foundation’s grantmaking each year as well as trends over the past five years.
In terms of ways of boosting transparency through external partnerships, I would highly recommend Candid as a wonderful resource for foundations. One opportunity that Candid offers is its eGrants map feature. If a foundation assembles the data, Candid will put together a (free) interactive grant map that illustrates funding given in each U.S. state (and international countries, if applicable), how much is given, the number of recipients in each particular state/country, and much more. For example, you can see that from 2020-2023, The Presser Foundation gave $8.9 million to 153 recipients via 582 grants in Pennsylvania. And that’s only one way to understand the data – there are multiple more ways to dice and splice them.
Also offered by Candid’s GuideStar program is the opportunity to earn a Seal of Transparency. For background, every nonprofit that has a 501(c)(3) tax status (that includes public charities and private foundations) has to file a 990 (public charity) or 990P-F (private foundation) (as an FYI, there are other forms of 990 depending on the size and complexity of an organization and their relevant activities, but that’s an entirely different topic). Each nonprofit organization has a GuideStar profile; once its 990 has been made public and shared with GuideStar, that 990 is added to the platform. The platform is searchable by nonprofit, geographic area, and much more.
A nonprofit can go “above and beyond” though and fill in its profile with greater details and earn different “Seals” depending on its level of transparency. The more information provided, the higher level of Seal is given. Seals range from Bronze to Silver to Gold to Platinum. The Foundation currently has a Gold Seal, so there’s a great deal that the Foundation has shared. We encourage all of our grantee partners to fill in their profiles, as funders can use nonprofits’ GuideStar profiles to have questions answered about certain characteristics of nonprofits that they those nonprofits may not have to answer in grant applications.
On that – one of the newest Candid opportunities is its Demographics via Candid tool. The focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has increased in recent years, particularly after the murder of George Floyd. This Candid blog post goes in greater detail about the tool, but basically, foundations can send a list of their grantees’ names and EIN numbers and receive aggregated and organizational data about their grantees’ staff and Board demographics, as well as the various Seals that each organization has. It’s an amazing resource and one that The Presser Foundation hopes to use to further its own centering DEI efforts, which are outlined on the Foundation’s website.
With all that being said, there is more that we can do. We’ve had summer interns assess our communications platforms to figure out ways for the Foundation to better center DEI. We’re considering adding a searchable grant directory to our website. We’ve looked into the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s Grantee Perception Report. We hope to add our own staff and Board demographics to our website. We’re open to other ideas as well, so feel free to send any that we haven’t discussed here. We will consider these ideas and more within the context of comprehensive strategic planning set to launch in February 2024.
Whether you’re a large-staffed funder or a lean one, consider using these tools and opportunities. The Presser Foundation has active and engaged Trustees and non-Trustee Committee Members plus two full-time employees, one part-time, and 1-2 temporary, part-time employees (an academic year Graduate Music Fellow and summer intern/s). We are able to put all of this together without losing or shifting focus on Theodore Presser’s vision and wishes – funding the musical arts in Greater Philadelphia and across the nation through the Scholar Awards program. We’re able to prioritize the 100-year-old focus on supporting music while also evolving and becoming more transparent in a changing philanthropic world.
