Author’s note: This is the sixth article in a series of 12 describing mistakes I’ve made in building a foundation.  My hope is that they are helpful to you in your own philanthropic efforts.

Roots and Wings. My Mom loved this phrase and used it to encourage my brothers and sisters about how we raised our children.  She asked that we give them each roots of our example and teaching while being careful to also give them wings when it came time for them to fly.

This thought came back to me when considering how to describe a major mistake our foundation made as we learned to “serve those who serve the poor.”  And since our manner of service is to engage, rather than to just provide money, we soon realized the nonprofits we assist became like our children: easy to fall in love with and enable, but difficult to empower. [more]

The business disciplines we teach nonprofits are best taught through direct engagement, just like my parents’ best lessons were taught, and so we immerse ourselves in our partners’ organizations for a period of up to 5 years.  The aim is twofold: First, to leave each partner with tools they didn’t have before we arrived, and second, to plan well in advance for our departure so as to ensure that we are truly building long-term organizational capacity.

And of course, just as with parenting, things aren’t as easy to do as they are to say.

Our Foundation’s Managing Director, Bill Leamon, uses two charts to show what is traditional in our business and what we intend to do differently.  This first chart represents how we view the traditional approach to social investing. 

The first couple years we are empowering them effectively but if we simply increase our investment of money alone, we believe the law of diminishing returns eventually kicks in.  Take note of the “Enabling Partnership” in years 3 and 4; I’ll come back to that shortly.

This second chart represents how Bill leads us to take a less traditional and, we trust, a more productive approach with our work.    

Over a five year period, our intention is to take each of our 15 partners through this cycle.  During the first year of friendship, we invest a bit of time and money to assure compatibility and coachability while we also together define the most important issues to solve.    

If that works, we spend years 2 and 3 investing heavily in time and money to make them more effective in achieving and expanding their mission impact.

Then we spend our last year together investing our time and treasure in a more sustaining fashion while we prepare to watch “our children” fly on their own.

Since Bill is about the smartest guy I know, and an academic, these charts are perfect in theory.  And of course, they rarely play out so cleanly.  This is

especially true in engaged philanthropy because donating money without an equal investment of time can give the illusion that the sustainable progress is being made.

And all too often, as is the case with a favored child, a favored charity becomes enabled, or over-dependent on a single donor.

I’ve never made it a secret that my favorite charity is International Partners in Mission who serves the very poorest of the very poor.  Their CEO, Joe Cistone, was/is/always-will-be my service hero.

The problem, which Joe and I still struggled with as recently as a week ago, is that seven years into our partnership, I realized they were relying on us too heavily.  Worse, our significant investments of time and money were taking away from our foundation’s ability to build similar capacity with other organizations.

And so we’ve slowly, lovingly decreased our investments in IPM, as the chart above outlines, moving from “Friend” to “Partner” and then back to “Friend,”– leaving IPM ultimately stronger due to the programs and people we developed together during the peak “Partner” years.

Tomorrow morning my wife Alice and I will get onto a plane to visit the youngest of our three children.  Our kids are now 32, 30 and 27 and Alice and I do “visiting month” at least twice a year.  It’s to remind each of them, as our parents did for us, that they are rooted in love.

But this weekend, just like in the last few weeks with the other two, we must very careful to not direct or guide our boy.  Just as we gave him the roots of our love and our teaching, we must give him the wings he deserves as well.    

The lesson I’ve found in building our foundation is that it’s no different when we serve our nonprofit partners.  That is, to be effective in each relationship, we must find the balance between empowering and enabling. 

We must give both roots and wings.

And as is true in any worthy cause…it’s never easy.

Peace,

Tim McCarthy