Grantmaking from the inside

Add another term to the evolving international lexicon of grantmaking: accompaniment philanthropy (AP). AP is a special kind of high-engagement grantmaking, promoting capacity-building at the local-organization and sector-wide levels at the same time. It involves the grantmaker ‘accompanying’, over a long period of time, both stronger and weaker members of a sector to strengthen their performance and reach. The AP grantmaker operates from inside the sector it serves.

Accompaniment philanthropy is being tested in Canada by the five-year-old, bilingual (French/English) Community Economic Development Technical Assistance Program (CEDTAP).[1]

Working at the local level …

CEDTAP helps community development corporations, cooperatives, human-service non-profits, aboriginal organizations and many other groups to access the technical assistance they need to strengthen their boards, build new strategies, create and expand businesses, conduct studies, mobilize capital, or evaluate their progress.

By the end of 2002, the programme will have supported some 200 results-oriented, local initiatives involving both mature and emerging CED organizations, rural and urban. CEDTAP contributes an average of C$14,000 per initiative; community organizations provide 20 per cent of project costs themselves. The support given usually enables grantees to lever significant government funds for project implementation. Local groups use CEDTAP monies to employ consultants, whom they can select from a pool of more than 200 specialists vetted by the programme.

… and at the sector-wide level

At the same time, CEDTAP works with pan-Canadian networks to strengthen the capabilities of the CED sector as a whole. It does this by disseminating innovative models and techniques, generated by local projects, across the communities, practitioners, sector bodies and policymakers in CEDTAP’s sphere of influence. It does this through the internet, publications and meetings; it is also setting up an electronic portal on CED knowledge to enhance this process. With like-minded sector and government partners, CEDTAP sponsors the production of new CED tools and policy research, and organizes regional and national CED meetings. It works as, and is seen to be, an active and important member of the sector.

Both peer and grantmaker

However, sector strengthening ‘from the inside’ is a complex matter. In a field as under-resourced and sometimes fractious as Canadian CED, CEDTAP’s steadfast commitment to pluralism in forms of CED practice has been crucial to its success, as has the ability to manage tensions and competition among sector members, and that occasionally directed at itself. All joint activities must be structured as ‘win-win deals’. Yet, as a grantmaker, CEDTAP must remain free to objectively (and sometimes critically) assess the performance of both local and national CED organizations, even while it seeks to work with these same organizations as peers. The programme also works jointly with corporations and governments, balancing its roles as both funding partner and CED advocate. CEDTAP staff are thus highly engaged, in multiple roles, at both the local and sector levels.

For its part, the McConnell Foundation has also been highly engaged, first in co-designing, and then in continuously assessing and improving, CEDTAP as a grantmaking instrument. Along with other allies, the Foundation is aiding the programme’s effort to raise C$5 million in new corporate and government funds in order to reach 500 communities over the next five years. McConnell also supports CEDTAP’s long-term goal of helping the CED sector to raise C$100 million in new money by 2010.

As CEDTAP is operationalizing it, accompaniment philanthropy shares a number of features with venture philanthropy, including extensive engagement by the grantmaker; consistent focus on innovation, results and capacity; and long-term commitment. In its support for weaker as well as stronger players, it in some respects echoes traditional philanthropic practices. But its ongoing dialogue and partnering with the sector create a kind of ‘permanent Salzburg Seminar’,[2] where sector strategy and a common agenda evolve, organically, through ongoing, real-work interactions between the grantmaker and sector leaders. In the end, AP’s most significant feature may be the grantmaker’s location inside the sector. This is at once the most challenging, and the most promising, dimension of the approach.

1 CEDTAP is funded by the J W McConnell Family Foundation and managed by Carleton University.
2 The 55-year-old American-Austrian educational institution that promotes the free exchange of ideas among high-performing professional peers from diverse disciplines and cultures.

A co-founder of CEDTAP, Edward Jackson is Associate Professor of Public Administration and International Affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He can be contacted at Edward_Jackson@carleton.ca

For more information
www.carleton.ca/cedtap