There are many factors going into that issue, but I think the biggest are the bottlenecks within the pipeline that brings money from OP to individual donation opportunities. Most directly, OP has a limited staff and a lot of large, important grants to manage. They often don’t have the spare attention, time, or energy to solicit, vet, and manage funding to the many individuals and small organizations that need funding.
LTFF and other grantmakers have similar issues. The general idea is that just there are many inefficiencies in the grantmaker → ??? → grantee market. The market is especially inefficient for funding opportunities that are small (because the fixed costs of granting remain high) and weird (because the downside risk is magnified for large grantmakers).
Worse, I hear that a big issue is that everyone asks this same question “Why aren’t you already funded by [funders that are not me]?” of new ventures who lack existing personal connections to the big funders, which leads them to never get off the ground.
There are many factors going into that issue, but I think the biggest are the bottlenecks within the pipeline that brings money from OP to individual donation opportunities. Most directly, OP has a limited staff and a lot of large, important grants to manage. They often don’t have the spare attention, time, or energy to solicit, vet, and manage funding to the many individuals and small organizations that need funding.
LTFF and other grantmakers have similar issues. The general idea is that just there are many inefficiencies in the grantmaker → ??? → grantee market. The market is especially inefficient for funding opportunities that are small (because the fixed costs of granting remain high) and weird (because the downside risk is magnified for large grantmakers).
Worse, I hear that a big issue is that everyone asks this same question “Why aren’t you already funded by [funders that are not me]?” of new ventures who lack existing personal connections to the big funders, which leads them to never get off the ground.