Philadelphia funders need to ‘step up and lead their colleagues’

Regional foundations are trying to figure out how to collectively reduce the impact of poverty. But collaboration is hard, and poverty is an intractable and resilient urban problem.

That’s why Philanthropy Network Greater Philadelphia has convened its members and devised an action-oriented agenda called Sparking Solutions. Last month, Philanthropy Network released a report analyzing member data (mostly from 2014) and progress made from investments made across five issue areas surrounding poverty:

• Grade Level Reading ($19 million)
• Youth Safety and Youth Development ($16 million)
• Access to Health Care ($10 million)
• Homelessness ($5 million)
• Hunger and Healthy Eating ($5 million)

“I would call this information a snapshot of where investments are targeted,” said Executive Director Maari Porter. “Looking at some of the lessons we’ve learned, some [investments] were more successful than others and that’s normal. It’s a test for what works and what doesn’t work with funder collaboration.”

Sparking Solutions, Porter said, aligns with the city’s Shared Prosperity plan to reduce poverty in the Philadelphia, and the city is listed as a “key partner” to funders working across a number of issue areas. It will take a cross-sector effort to get the job done, but one of the major takeaways from this report is that there needs to be more funder leadership before real progress can be made.

“A couple of funders really need to step up and step out and lead their colleagues,” Porter said. “This works best when someone takes the lead.”

That means leading funders need to keep bringing stakeholders together, and that will require a clear understanding of what collaboration costs.

A collaboration of 10 different funders, Porter said, will result in respective staff time dedicated to executing 10 different reports on 10 different deadlines with 10 different requirements. That’s just not time-effective, nor is it cost-efficient. Those processes need to be streamlined to prevent nonprofits and service providers from getting tied up while collaboratives move toward producing desired outcomes.

“Collaboration is expensive. It’s time-consuming,” Porter said. “But it’s worth the effort.”