Why You'll Want to Celebrate this Grant Maker
We huff and puff about our funders, especially the corporate ones. They can be opaque and inaccessible. Many don’t even disclose their funding interests. In the spirit of year-end optimism, get to know the Truist Foundation.
This philanthropy reflects the pandemic and racial reckoning that characterized its 2020 founding, after two regional banks merged to become Truist Financial Corporation. It blends its parent’s economic development core with the input of would-be grantees and a commitment to undeserved communities, to the tune of over $170 million to date.
In the spirit of the season, here’s my second annual celebration of funders that are doing the right thing. In Truist’s case, you’ll cheer its accessibility, transparency, and clarity.
Give and Take
The Foundation’s small team, led by President Lynette Bell, began by talking to nonprofit leaders about their organizations’ critical needs. Staff continues to rely on front-line professionals to inform strategy, believing that they are more proximate to solutions.
When solid internet access became a must-have in the early days of the pandemic, many small businesses and communities needed better broadband connections to stay afloat. The Foundation had no idea the scale of this problem until it heard from the Internet Society, an advocacy organization. Soon after, Truist Foundation granted it $1 million to expand internet awareness, training, and broadband within five Southeast U.S. regions.
What a powerful example of a foundation open to learning from those who are experts on the ground. The board’s support of this strategy highlights the benefits of an organization born in the era of trust-based philanthropy.
It will be exciting to see what this culture of learning breeds as the Foundation evolves. Its lack of bureaucracy stands to quickly get funding to the most urgent and promising solutions.
It has additional lessons for its peers.
Major Grants
Just when you thought major grants required connections, Truist comes along and seeks out the sector’s best-kept secrets. It’s a reminder to keep your organization’s website polished and its LinkedIn profile active.
Foundation staff proactively reaches out to organizations capable of innovation and scale. Its awards fall into a larger array of issue areas than its open portal invites (read on to learn more), including thriving communities, education, and disaster relief and recovery. Many are multi-year.
Did someone say multi-year?
Savvy funders set bold strategic goals. This one understands that even first-time grantees need multiple years to show demonstrable progress.
Talk about holiday cheer!
Predictable Priorities
Truist’s invitation-only process doesn’t mean you can sit back and wait. When you spend time weaving funder-centric messaging into your organization’s communications, you improve your chance to get on the radar.
Which angles are most likely to catch staff’s attention?
It won’t surprise you to know that when I ask foundation leaders to describe their best funding partnerships, Truist’s priorities reflect those of many major grant makers, especially corporate ones. You might even say they sound business-like:
Clear, strategic vision
Qualitatively- and quantitatively-driven plans
Relatively stable financials
Existing philanthropic investors
Evidence that the work is driving change
On that last point, expect bonus points if your organization tracks its service recipients for at least two years. The most sophisticated funders want to see that your impact is not fleeting.
What’s great about this list is that your efforts to showcase each item will draw attention from many philanthropies, not just this one.
Open to All
Truist Foundation has another road to major grants, and that’s modest awards.
When you land on Truist’s website, you’ll see a button that reads, “Apply for a grant”.
The Foundation considers its open portal a differentiator that supplements the range of partners beyond what invitation-only grantees can achieve. So, if your organization falls into one of its two interest areas— building career pathways to economic mobility or strengthening small businesses, I’ll excuse you if you stop reading and toggle to that page right now.
In case you’re among those who view foundation jobs as “cush”, you should know that Truist’s small staff reads and reviews each submission that comes in via its open portal. I suspect its employees empathize with the crush of work that applicants experience in their daily routines.
One thing I’ll include on my Truist wish list: a user-friendly database of all awards, so that potential applicants can determine their place in the mix. Most corporate funders can stand to do the same if they want to be full partners with the nonprofit sector.
A Grant and a Gift
If you’ve been reading Major Grants for long, you know I’m a big proponent of finding opportunities to tout philanthropy’s best.
Major corporate partnerships are not easy to come by, but when you find the right one, the benefits on both sides can be significant—and can go far beyond grants. Since our topic here is those cash awards, I applaud Truist’s tiny team for landing so quickly on a nimble, generous model with big aspirations.
It’s a gift to us all.