Non-monetary aid earns high praise for the Hartford Foundation

When it comes to providing "assistance beyond the money" the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving is one of the three best in the country, said a study by The Center for Effective Philanthropy.

The nationwide study of 418 foundations listed the Hartford Foundation, Winter Park Health Foundation of Florida, and the Wallace Foundation of New York City as "three exemplar foundations" that provide a high proportion of their grantees with  comprehensive non-monetary assistance in the form of management and technology training.  

According to the report, "Just 10 percent of grantees receive assistance in these ways that make a meaningful difference."
 
In contrast, through its Nonprofit Support Program, the Hartford Foundation provides assistance to 60 percent of its grantees. The assistance "often begins as soon as a nonprofit knocks on the Foundation's door and may continue after the grant monies have been spent," said the report. 

"We hope to achieve a broader, long-term capacity within organizations to accomplish their mission, a capacity that goes beyond a single grant," said Chris Hall, Hartford Foundation vice president for planning and strategy, in the report.

According to Chris, providing such assistance is crucial to the Hartford Foundation's impact goals. "We can only meet our mission to the degree to which nonprofits have the internal capacity to be successful and to meet their missions. So we think it's really important to go beyond just the grantmaking to provide even more in-depth assistance into organizations."

The non-monetary support also can have direct monetary benefits. The report cites one grantee who credits the Hartford Foundation's assistance beyond the grant with positioning his organization for some crucial funding. "I don't know if we would have gotten that multimillion-dollar investment from a national foundation if we hadn't been on the front end of some capacity building and planning that the Hartford Foundation had supported," he said.

The Center for Effective Philanthropy report can be viewed at www.hfpg.org/cep.