Despite heavy involvement in fundraising processes for over ten years, I've never myself sat in the seat of a grantmaker. So when the opportunity came up to join Thirty Percy's 'sprint team' I jumped at the chance to learn more from the perspective of grantmakers.
As we came toward the end of our second week we took time to review how Thirty Percy currently processes grants, from grantee recommendations through to signing off the grant agreements.
Too Good to be True?
We talked through the various stages and I found myself plunged back into the memories of my own changemaker application process almost exactly five years beforehand. I remember the moment I first learned about the changemaker grant and that I might qualify for it. I remember my sheer disbelief, the feeling that it must be too good to be true, and the anxiety that I would in some way mess up my chances because this was grant-making unlike I had ever experienced it before and I didn't know what 'the rules' were.
It also took me back to one of the darkest times in my life, running an organisation where the role was eating me alive. For various reasons, including a total dedication to the work as is common in justice movements, leaving that job felt completely impossible. That was until Thirty Percy offered to fund me as an individual, rather than my role, and I realised that I was not just a cog in the machine of climate activism. With the financial backing Thirty Percy gave me, I realised that I could contribute to activism in my own ways, on my own terms, and work from an empowered place that was far more likely to have meaningful impact.
The Death of the Old Way
I quit my job, but that was only the beginning. The grant enabled me to begin truly listening to what was really going on inside me, and that gift of rest, trust and resourcing to invest in myself suddenly meant I could no longer keep pushing on through in all sorts of aspects of my life. The toll of having operated in 'survival mode', as many of us in justice movements do, suddenly caught up with me and I collapsed, along with many aspects of my life outside of 'work'.
This collapse is one of the best things that has ever happened to me because it's how, with the help of Thirty Percy, I have been able to rebuild a contribution to the world that is so much more meaningful than before. Death is a natural part of rebirth, unpleasant as it can be, and my old ways of working and being in the world needed to die in order for what I really needed to be doing in the world to emerge.
But this, I am now realising by occupying a different role in this process, is a huge responsibility for grant makers knowing their decisions change the course of lives, movements, and even the world. An ethical grant maker will feel the weight of that heavily, as I know Thirty Percy does, and yet will also need to find ways not to be immobilised by that responsibility.
What’s Good Enough?
A sprint is a fascinating antidote to this immobilisation which plagues the philanthropic world so weighed down by the responsibilities it bears. It’s rapid, responsive and has a strong focus on ‘good enough’, but it works because of the huge amount of strategic thinking and sitting with uncomfortable questions that have happened in designing the idea of a sprint in the first place.
Distributing resource perfectly is an almost impossible task, but I feel deep gratitude for how Thirty Percy engages with these dilemmas, and I am excited to see what might be possible as we do our very best with this next round of sprint funding.
Written by Jo Musker-Sherwood, burnout prevention and recovery specialist and former Thirty Percy Changemaker Grant recipient.