The grant that will help Emory University experiment with a new model of doctoral education started with a conversation over dinner two years earlier.
Lisa A. Tedesco, dean of Emory’s graduate school, and David Nugent, a professor of anthropology and director of Emory’s master’s program in development practice, had been chewing over a big question. In a time when a growing number of students are not finding jobs in academe, how could they make graduate education more relevant? Specifically, could they prepare graduate students to use their knowledge in a more practical way, to combine theory and practice to help solve some of the world’s problems?
Landing a grant involves patience, persistence, and a lot of back and forth to hone an idea until it aligns with both sides’ missions and goals.
They discussed their ideas about how they might do that at a meal following a symposium held at Emory’s graduate school in 2014. Michael Gilligan, president of the Henry Luce Foundation, was at the dinner, too. It turned out that foundation officials were interested in talking more.
Those first conversations sparked an extended dialogue that has led to the start of an interdisciplinary “community of practice” project at Emory that focuses on global skills. It started this fall with 15 students and a $50,000 grant from the foundation.
The way Emory landed the grant illustrates several key strategies to working successfully with foundations. The project had a big idea behind it. It was a partnership rather than a simple giver-receiver relationship. And it involved patience and persistence, with a lot of back and forth between the college and the foundation to hone the idea until it aligned with both sides’ missions and goals.
After that symposium, Mr. Gilligan and the foundation’s new vice president were back on Emory’s campus for an event at the theology school. Sean Buffington, the vice president, who until 2014 had been president of the University of the Arts, in Philadelphia, met with Ms. Tedesco and Mr. Nugent to talk more about doctoral education.
Both sides agreed they were interested in continuing to talk, but no formal proposal was yet on the table. Instead, they had a series of conversations, in person and via phone and email, to see if Emory’s idea would fit with what the Luce foundation wanted to support. Through the discussions, both sides asked questions and sharpened the proposal’s parameters.
“It’s almost like a courtship,” Mr. Nugent said.
Finally, 22 months after that first dinner, Emory submitted the proposal. The 18-month pilot program that the foundation has agreed to finance gathers master’s-in-development students and doctoral students from an array of disciplines for weekly talks on global issues by faculty members from different fields who have done development work in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Students evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each approach and discuss ways they might bring together various approaches in new and innovative ways. In the summer, the students will go with development field workers to those regions to get experience applying their areas of study to global needs, and working with people of different backgrounds.
It’s really about projects that seem particularly innovative, that probably haven’t been tried before, from which we think the field is going to learn something.
One goal of the program is for Emory to identify a set of skills that universities across the country can use to improve how they prepare graduate students for global work. If the pilot succeeds, Emory will go back to the Henry Luce Foundation and request money for the next phase of the program.
“We’re trying to identify the projects we think have the most promise,” Mr. Buffington said. “In higher ed, it’s really about projects that seem particularly innovative, that probably haven’t been tried before, from which we think the field is going to learn something that might provide models for other institutions to emulate.”
Foundations are an important source of support for American colleges. Together, they gave $11.6 billion dollars to higher education in 2015, representing almost 29 percent of the total private giving that year, according to the Council for Aid to Education.
They are willing to take a chance on new ideas that might be too new to be funded elsewhere. And for some sectors, such as historically black institutions and community colleges, which typically have lower alumni giving than many private and research universities, foundations are the biggest sources of private funding.
Foundations vary widely in size and mission, but they tend to share common goals. They want to maximize their impact. They want to be a part of change. They want to fund something that can be shared and scaled up across higher education.
Colleges that have success working with them say that approaching a foundation for money is different from approaching an individual donor, although the importance of stewardship and maintaining relationships is the same. Foundations do not give out of loyalty, but rather because they see an institution that is advancing one of their areas of interest. They are looking for well-matched partners with whom they can have a long relationship.
So how you find the right foundation?
By doing your homework, people who work for foundations say. Researching a foundation — its mission, its areas of support, and its past grants — is critical to finding the right match. Look for one whose mission aligns with your college’s. And when you come across that, look for ways to meet someone there.
“What we are looking for are partners,” says Molly G. Martin, director of the office of the president and organizational development at the Lumina Foundation.
Lumina does almost all of its grant-making proactively, meaning officials know which institutions are working in areas they are focused on, and Lumina approaches them about possible projects. Very few of its grants come from unsolicited proposals.
Ms. Martin says colleges interested in working with Lumina should become familiar with its work and find gaps, because Lumina, like other foundations, does not want to duplicate what is already being done. If institutions are using Lumina-created materials and resources, the foundation usually hears about it, she says.
For foundations that accept letters of interest or proposals from colleges unsolicited, foundation leaders and college administrators say applicants should learn all they can about the group, including its current work and history. Study the funding guidelines on websites and documents closely. Pitching an idea outside of a foundation’s area looks unprofessional. And a foundation isn’t likely to fund an exact replica of a grant it has already given; it wants to use its resources to create new models.
Foundations’ funding priorities can change over time, and colleges should pay close attention to those shifts. Changes can result from the evolution of a foundation or a shift in the foundation’s board. At the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, which support private higher education, the board had a generational change in membership and used the transition to re-evaluate what it wanted to fund, says Nancy J. Cable, the group’s president.
“Just because you got a grant there 10 years ago doesn’t meant you will now,” Ms. Cable said.
One area that Arthur Vining Davis is moving into is projects that advance interfaith understanding in innovative ways, which the foundation sees as a central way to do good in the world. The group had previously supported theological education more generally.
Ms. Cable, like many other foundation leaders, has deep experience at colleges. She was an interim president of Bates College, vice president of Davidson College, and worked as a senior administrator at the University of Virginia.
Before approaching a foundation, Ms. Cable says, it’s important for colleges to know themselves. College officials should have a deep understanding of their institution’s priorities, and be able to articulate them well. That will help a foundation see where its mission and the college’s might align.
To start, have a conversation or an email exchange with a foundation officer. That way you can try out ideas, see if there might be areas of overlap, and assess where you might be able to work together before you and your staff spend time putting together an elaborate proposal. Make sure you are prepared to talk about how your institutional mission can fit into the foundation’s areas of work.
At Arthur Vining Davis, Ms. Cable and her employees will take exploratory phone calls, which she says are useful for both sides.
This fall, for example, she received a call from a medical dean who was generally seeking funds. The two of them discussed shared interests and the foundation’s movement into palliative care. The conversation ended with the dean considering refining a pitch and coming back to the foundation in the spring with a proposal tailored to that area of medicine.
“Those are worthwhile calls for us,” Ms. Cable said. “Sometimes really cool ideas begin to emerge because of these conversations.”
Once a college finds shared ground with a foundation, getting money is not a quick transaction.
Foundation officers and college officials who work with them advise being open to change, as both sides ask questions and trade ideas before a formal request for funds is submitted. Changes could include the scope or length of time for a project, how results will be assessed, and even whether another institution might be brought in as a partner.
Once a college gets a grant, a foundation often sees that as the beginning of a relationship. Foundations expect reports on a regular basis, often annually, and they will want to continue to be a part of something if it produces results that can be shared.
Walter M. Kimbrough, president of Dillard University, has been in contact with Lumina since he was an administrator at Albany State University more than a decade ago. He nurtured the relationship over time, getting to know a foundation officer and accepting offers to speak at the group’s meetings. This year, Lumina gave a grant to Dillard and three other historically black colleges to identify practices and policies that might improve graduation rates and help close gaps between underrepresented minority groups and white students in attaining a college degree.
Foundations are ‘looking at moving the needle on a larger scale.’
“It’s a long process,” Mr. Kimbrough says. “Some of it’s just time.” Through the years, while he was at different colleges, Mr. Kimbrough made sure he always had data to share about the progress his institution was making on graduation rates and other measures of his students’ academic progress. That, he says, helped him show foundations what they could help build on.
He also kept in mind what kind of projects each foundation was interested in. “They’re looking at moving the needle on a larger scale,” he said.
Building relations can mean staying in touch even when a college gets turned down for a grant proposal.
“We’re constantly thinking about stewardship, and that includes if we don’t get a gift,” says Patricia Massey Hoke, director of corporate and foundation relations at Davidson. When that happens, the next step is to go back and ask the foundation, “Are you open to continuing to have a conversation?”
Davidson was recently approached by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation to apply, along with several other colleges, for a grant to help high-achieving low-income students. Davidson’s proposal was not chosen, but the college was able to get feedback from the foundation about what might have made their project a better fit for the organization.
“We don’t consider it a loss,” she said. “It’s still a fantastic opportunity just to have that.”
In the coming months, Davidson’s president will travel to the foundation, which is located in Lansdowne, Va., to meet with its president and talk more about serving students with financial need. The conversation continues.
