That Moment When You Realize the Rules Are Made Up
Carrie Avery, President & CEO, Durfee Foundation
When I stepped into a leadership role at the Durfee foundation, I was transitioning from a career as a lawyer. I started by asking what the rules were. In an effort to orient myself with the governing laws of private foundations, I discovered that there are actually very few. We have to give away 5% of our endowment, we have to give to 501(c)(3) organizations or get special dispensation from the IRS to give to individuals, no self-dealing, and that's about it. Many of the philanthropic structures — RFPs, onerous applications, opaque decision making processes — are things that foundations have decided to do; they are not required. (This is specific to private foundations; there can be different rules for government funders and other entities.) I think a lot of people come into philanthropy, look at how most foundations operate and think this is how it has to be done. But at Durfee, we have long asked the question: “What if we start with what we want to accomplish, and find the smoothest route to get there? “
Durfee’s sabbatical program is a good example of that question in action. We make grants to leaders of nonprofit organizations to enable them to take a three month break from work, to disconnect from leading so that they can replenish and rejuvenate themselves in a “rigorously non-productive” way. We also work closely with the organization to make sure that the next tier of leadership is ready to step up. The program was born out of listening to our grantee partners and nonprofit leaders. We said: “We recognize that you experience tremendous pressure as a community leader; what do you need to allow you to keep on doing this amazing work?”
For example, one of our recent sabbatical applicants is a CEO who has been leading his organization in South LA through the pandemic and racial reckoning. He lost his father to COVID and wants to take the sabbatical to go to his father's homeland of Costa Rica. He shared that he hasn't had adequate time to grieve, nor do anything except lead the organization through an extraordinarily difficult time. The sabbatical will give him time and space to connect with his relatives in his father’s home country, while recharging for the work ahead.
For the sabbatical program and the others, we try hard to have a clear and not overly burdensome application process. If we find while reviewing applications that we’re getting off-base answers, we assume we haven’t asked the right questions. Alums from our programs sit on our grant selection panels. We invite phone calls from declined applicants to give feedback. We solicit, sit with, and act on the feedback we receive.
As a trustee I have a fiduciary responsibility to protect the foundation, but I try to avoid defaulting to the most protective, opaque language in our grant contracts. I try to figure out how to protect the foundation while also being trust-based in a legal setting, which is a fun challenge. We don’t get it right all the time. But when we approach mistakes with a spirit of humility and curiosity, rather than a sense of having messed up and needing to hide, that’s where the trust comes in. That’s where we get to say, “Wow, how fascinating. We thought that this was the way to do it, but look how much we’ve learned instead.”