HOW TO THINK LIKE A FUNDER

HOW TO THINK LIKE A FUNDER

Join us for an interactive workshop with visiting scholar Becky Lentz aimed at nonprofit leaders and fundraising professionals looking to increase the effectiveness of their donor cultivation efforts. Nonprofit professionals are expected to compete with their peers in “selling” their organizations’ programs and services to potential funders through a wide variety of labor-intensive strategies that only the most resourced organizations can often afford to take on. This session helps participants shift their mindset and increase their understanding of how to find and build enduring relationships with those working from the grant-making rather than just the grant-seeking side of the funding game. Using a framework called the charity-to-change spectrum, the workshop explores examples of how funders working in very different issue areas mobilize their “portfolio thinking” in similar ways.

About the Speaker: Becky Lentz, PhD, is an accomplished scholar, educator, and strategist with more than 30 years of combined experience in the public, private, and social sectors. Most notably for this workshop topic, Becky served as the Ford Foundation’s first full-time Program Officer for media policy and technology. In that role, she stewarded more than $32 million in support of a wide variety of national and international projects across the charity-to-change spectrum that included direct services, mutual aid, knowledge building and mobilization, policy advocacy, and direct action. She currently teaches at the RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service at the University of Texas at Austin as part of the graduate portfolio in nonprofit studies. Lentz developed a series of graduate-level seminar courses featuring many roles that funders play in public affairs. This includes their roles in supporting social movements across the political spectrum.

Funder panel: The workshop with Becky Lentz will be followed by an interview with a panel of grantmakers to provide participants with specific insights about how funders are currently thinking about their strategy and portfolio of grants.