In this second installment of our series Smashing the Overhead Myth Ones and For All, you’ll get an insider’s view of how things are changing inside the Ford Foundation, one of the largest private funders in the world, as their team seeks to provide more equitable and effective grants to the organizations they support.
Our guests are the ones making challenging operational decisions, guiding changes to organizational policy, practice and culture, and executing important internal change management at the Ford Foundation. I'm pleased to chat with Tiffanie De Gannes and Jim Gallagher.
Tiffanie and Jim were both part of the Ford Foundation team engaged in the Funders for Real Cost, Real Change learning collaborative. We spoke at length about that effort In the first installment of this series, Season 4 Episode 3 with Rodney Christopher. If you want to go in order, listen to Season 4 Episode 3, then come back to this one.
This episode touches on the practices of talent-investing related to Respect and Root Causes – Respecting nonprofit workers and addressing the Root Causes of the deficit of investment in the nonprofit workforce. For more about these, listen to Season 4 Episode 1, where I introduced the 8 Practices of Talent-Investing. We invite you to enjoy our catalog of conversations from Seasons 1-3, plus our blog, toolkit, and other resources, here at fundthepeople.org.
Resources from this Episode:
- Funding for Real Change
- Ford announcement of new IDC rate
- Increasing Ford Foundation's Indirect Cost Commitment
- IFR4NPO - An initiative to develop internationally applicable financial reporting guidance for non-profit organizations.
- Humentum Report - How international funders can stop trapping their grantees in the starvation cycle and start building their resilience.
- Tiffanie De Gannes on LinkedIn
- Jim Gallagher on LinkedIn
- Ford Foundation on LinkedIn
- Ford Foundation on Twitter
Tiffanie De Gannes Bio:
Tiffanie De Gannes is Senior Manager of Operations at Ford Foundation. She serves as lead on complex projects and initiatives, as well as bridging the gap between operations and program teams to ensure alignment on organizational priorities. With an extensive background advising senior executives across various sectors, including nonprofit, corporate, academia, and philanthropy, she has special expertise in producing quality results for complex initiatives at the enterprise level engaging multiple stakeholders with a focus on change management.
Jim Gallagher Bio:
Jim Gallagher is Director of Grants Management at the Foundation, where he oversees Ford’s grants managers in the US and around the world. Jim has 20+ years of nonprofit and philanthropic management experience and expertise in domestic and international grantmaking, organizational capacity building, financial planning, team building, and systems implementation.