How Funders Can Build Network Capacity

A grant usually pays one organization to run one program. A lot of social problems do not fit that shape. Climate change, school systems and child malnutrition involve many groups, none of which controls the whole picture. Funders who see this have started asking a different question: how do we help the connections between groups work better, and not only the groups themselves?

A 2011 guide called Catalyzing Networks for Social Change: A Funder’s Guide tries to answer it. It was written by Diana Scearce of Monitor Institute and published with Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO). About 80 network practitioners helped shape it. Its ideas came from a learning group called the Network of Network Funders, which Monitor Institute started in early 2009 and which grew to more than 40 grantmakers.

Funders as conveners

The guide says funders need to act as conveners, champions and matchmakers, in addition to moving money. That means paying for the connective tissue: meetings, shared spaces, and people whose job is to link others.

A life cycle in four parts

The guide lays out a rough life cycle for a network (five stages, grouped here into four), with a different kind of support at each:

• Know the network. Before funding anything, map who is already connected, who holds influence and who is missing. The Community Foundation for Monterey County used social network maps of local communities to start conversations about how groups could coordinate.
• Knit the network. Connect people and give them more than one way in. One example is the monthly “Network Nights” held by Making Connections Louisville, where residents shared food and conversation. Another is goodWORKSconnect.org, an online meeting place the Lumpkin Family Foundation built for the nonprofit capacity-building community.
• Organize and grow it. Pilot shared work, set up simple structures if they are needed, then widen participation.
• Transform or hand off. Judge what the network achieved, then either refine its purpose or pass its tools and knowledge to others.

Pay for the weaver

One practical point stands out. Networks need someone whose time is set aside for introducing people, bringing newcomers in and helping participants act together. The guide calls these people network weavers, and says foundation staff sometimes fill the role.

Start with what exists

Gayle Williams of the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation offers the guide’s simplest advice: do not create new networks, start with existing groups. Look for efforts that are already close to making a useful connection and amplify them.

Judge networks by network standards

Standard due diligence asks about budgets, staffing and program outcomes. The guide suggests added questions for networks: Does information move through it? Are different perspectives present? Can a newcomer join and become useful quickly? It also admits that proving a network works is hard, since networks sit inside complex systems and few agreed measures exist.

What to take from it

If you fund or advise people who fund, three things are worth trying. Map before you build. Put money into the shared space and the weaver, not just the projects. And add network-health questions to your usual review. The guide calls itself a first version and invites readers to share what they learn, which is a fair description of where the field was and, in many places, still is.

Sources

• Diana Scearce, Catalyzing Networks for Social Change: A Funder’s Guide (Grantmakers for Effective Organizations and Monitor Institute, 2011). Licensed CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. https://jimjosephfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Catalyzing_Networks_for_Social_Change.pdf
• Grantmakers for Effective Organizations: https://www.geofunders.org