The Brown Sisters Foundation offers challenge grants in order to generate leverage for organizations facing critical junctures, planning for the future, testing a hypothesis, or seeking to respond to unique opportunities.
We are proud to report that our 2009-2023 grantees have raised an average of $6.50 for every dollar invested by the Brown Sisters Foundation, and frequently surpass their fundraising goals.
Read on to understand the two types of leverage that the Brown Sisters Foundation seeks to create for grantees: missional leverage and financial leverage.
Missional Leverage: Strengthening your ability to advance your mission
We are specifically interested in the following types of project proposals:
- Projects that will help build the organization’s resiliency and long-term sustainability in support of its vision and mission.
- Capacity-building requests that support expansion, transition, or retooling operations to develop a more sustainable model.
- Program, human resource, or capital requests that will enable an organization to reach its market in new ways, expand services to its existing market, or reach underserved groups that fit the organization’s mission. We will consider existing, expanded, or new program requests.
- Development capacity-building requests that strengthen an organization’s ability to connect with and increase donations from its existing donor base and tap into new donor pools.
- Social entrepreneurship ventures that will allow an organization to simultaneously become more sustainable and further its mission.
For more on our focus areas, click here.
Financial Leverage: Understanding BSF Challenge Grants
We believe that, when used strategically, a challenge grant can help excite and energize donors as organizations position themselves for the future. The vast majority of BSF grants have a challenge fundraising component.
Challenge grants can mean different things to different organizations. For the purposes of Brown Sisters funding, eligible proposals should include a challenge fundraising component, in which the organization commits to raising a certain amount of new/increased dollars as a condition of being awarded BSF funding.
The Foundation typically observes a minimum challenge of 2:1, but will consider each request on a case-by-case basis and work closely with each organization to identify appropriate matching/leverage amounts that reflect the organization’s situation and fundraising capabilities.
BSF challenge grants should:
- Use the BSF challenge as a platform to strategically reach a specific donor group that has not given (or has under-given) in the past, such corporate donors, private individuals, lapsed donors, national foundations, alumni, etc. The organization should focus on whichever donor group(s) that are of strategic importance to them.
- Raise the funds from new donors, lapsed donors (who previously gave but have not given in recent years), or increased donors (existing donors at an increased amount, with the difference between the past gift and the increased gift counting towards the challenge).
- Access these gifts from multiple donors. The grant agreement will stipulate that no single donor should make up more than 50% of the challenge amount. There is no “target number” of donors to contribute the challenge funds, so long as there are more than 2 and no single donor makes up the majority.
In most cases, the challenge funds are to be raised during the grant period (Nov 1-Dec 31 of the following calendar year, 14 months), but prior to the use of some or all of the BSF grant funds. In specific cases where this policy does not support the project timeline and sequencing, the grant agreement will indicate if the grant funds may be released prior to the challenge funds being raised. This determination is made on a case-by-case basis. Please note that funding that has already been committed prior to the grant award is typically not considered part of the challenge funds.
For example:
- ABC agency learned in late October that they were awarded a 4:1 challenge grant from BSF. The BSF grant will fund an innovative pilot program that they think will be very impactful for their service population. To raise their challenge funds, ABC decided to focus on lapsed major donors — people who used to give, but stopped giving in recent years. The BSF grant is for $25,000 and for their challenge, ABC is committing to raise $100,000 from lapsed major donors during the grant period (Nov 1-Dec 31 of the following calendar year, 14 months).
- The grant award letter notes that the funds will be awarded to ABC agency now, but should be deposited in a separate account. The letter also notes that once 50% of the challenge funds are raised, then 50% of the grant can be released for use, and that when the remaining 50% has been raised, the remainder of the grant can be released for use.
- Upon learning that they were awarded the grant, ABC agency begins a strategic fundraising effort, reaching out to lapsed donors, sharing with those donors that they have been awarded a challenge grant from BSF specifically to re-engage supporters with whom they’ve fallen out of touch.
- As ABC agency reaches their fundraising milestones throughout the grant period (or if they encounter any challenges that they want to troubleshoot), they communicate with the BSF team about their progress.
