Funding Partners in Mission

Imagine Chicago has been blessed with extraordinary funding partners, in spite of never having had a development person on our staff. We have looked for partners in mission rather than program funders, who are prepared to make multiple year commitments consistent with multiple year change processes. Securing such commitments has made it possible for Imagine Chicago to concentrate its staff resources and time on project development, implementation and evaluation.

1) What makes a good funding partner?

From Imagine Chicago’s experience and perspective, our best funding partners:

· Show profound respect and enthusiasm for grantees, which in turn creates in us the courage to do difficult work;

· Ask good and provocative questions, including questions about what long-term outcomes we are trying to accomplish and how we can tell if we’ve gotten there;

· Encourage articulation of the next appropriate step, which builds on what has already been created. They are not out to fund something different just to be sexier, but rather to encourage our next bold steps, even where outcomes are uncertain;

· Are as interested in learning, as they are in success. They hold us accountable, but make us feel we have a partner committed to our own growing edge. Good funders realize we learn from mistakes – where we struggle, where we get stuck. They are with us in a learning network;

· Communicate a very high level of trust in us as an organization struggling to make something challenging work. They’re investing in the struggle to make it happen, not some formulaic programmatic agenda on their side, of which we are a little piece;

· Connect us to others from whom we can learn and to whom we can contribute.

· Bring interested parties, including other funders, into conversation about:

Such learning forums are strengthened by including not only interested intermediary organizations, but citizen activists who are often untapped resources. Invite each person to bring a young adult with them. Think together about different levels of possible and expected impact.

· Fund development of e-learning networks to create workable models for sustained informal learning which stimulates and connects social entrepreneurs and civic imagination across the city, country and world.

· Identify and make visible interested partners in the funding community, so individual organizations don’t have to search web sites to figure out who in the funding community cares about these issues.