In my experience, orgs work much harder to get donations from a “grantmaker” than from an individual.
I made my first big donation in 2015, where I donated $20K to REG. I talked to a bunch of orgs in the process of trying to decide where to donate. Some of them didn’t respond at all, and many of their responses were shallow.
A few months later, I took a philanthropy class at Stanford where we split up into groups and each group was responsible for figuring out where to donate a $20K grant. The level of communication I got from nonprofits was dramatically different. Orgs bent over backwards to be as communicative and helpful as possible.
My experience was that orgs didn’t put much priority on a $20K grant from me as an individual, but they jumped at the possibility of a $20K grant from a Stanford Grantmaker.
For my future donations, I’m considering whether I should rebrand my emails: I could tell nonprofits something like “I’m reaching out as a representative on behalf of the Greatest Happiness Fund, a grantmaker that focuses on supporting effective charities” (Greatest Happiness Fund is the name of my DAF). Maybe I would get better responses that way. It feels a little manipulative though.
In my experience, orgs work much harder to get donations from a “grantmaker” than from an individual.
I made my first big donation in 2015, where I donated $20K to REG. I talked to a bunch of orgs in the process of trying to decide where to donate. Some of them didn’t respond at all, and many of their responses were shallow.
A few months later, I took a philanthropy class at Stanford where we split up into groups and each group was responsible for figuring out where to donate a $20K grant. The level of communication I got from nonprofits was dramatically different. Orgs bent over backwards to be as communicative and helpful as possible.
My experience was that orgs didn’t put much priority on a $20K grant from me as an individual, but they jumped at the possibility of a $20K grant from a Stanford Grantmaker.
For my future donations, I’m considering whether I should rebrand my emails: I could tell nonprofits something like “I’m reaching out as a representative on behalf of the Greatest Happiness Fund, a grantmaker that focuses on supporting effective charities” (Greatest Happiness Fund is the name of my DAF). Maybe I would get better responses that way. It feels a little manipulative though.