This publication provides an opportunity for grantmakers to focus on nurturing a productive culture that makes them more able to support nonprofits in their missions to create transformational change.
Every organization experiences moments when it has opportunities to tend its culture and to cultivate a more productive one — a culture in which staff and trustees are performing at their best and it is doing everything it can to make sure nonprofits are resilient, successful and strong. Paying attention to culture doesn’t have to happen only at huge, earthshattering moments in the life of an organization or its operating environment. Foundation leaders and staff have opportunities all the time to tend and shape the culture of their organizations.
A productive internal culture aligned with a foundation’s mission and goals is essential to support nonprofit resilience and success. In other words, if we are striving to have more impact, we should look not just at our external strategies and theories of change but also at how our organizational behaviors, assumptions and values either support or potentially undermine what we are trying to achieve. Although this level of intentionality, awareness and alignment is often missing, many leaders in both the corporate and nonprofit sectors have identified it as a key to organizational effectiveness.