• What are my values and beliefs?
• What is "success" and how can it be achieved?
• What am I accountable for?
• What will it take to get the job done?
• How do I work with grantees?
• Am I getting better?

• gain strategic clarity and articulate your personal definition of success;
• uncover the complex and unique issues that are likely to affect your philanthropic endeavors;
• develop feedback loops that you can use to continually improve; and
• think about which nonprofits you want to fund and how you can best partner with them for success.

Philanthropy question 1: What are my values and beliefs?

• Think about your motives for giving.
  Understanding why you want to give will help define how you want to give, including how personally engaged you want to be in your philanthropy.
• Decide which values and beliefs will anchor your philanthropy.
  Consider the people, places, problems, pathways or philosophies that you care about most.
• Determine who else will be involved your philanthropy, and in what ways.
  Family members, advisors, staff, and everyone else with whom you’ll work will bring their own aspirations to the table. Getting clear about your own aspirations and communicating them with others will make it easier to work together.

Philanthropy question 2: What is "success" and how can it be achieved?

• Think about the outcomes you hope to achieve.
  Defining success involves translating your aspirations into specific outcomes. Give thought to who you want to help, which geographic areas you will focus on, and how long are you willing to wait for results. As yourself what you are trying to achieve, and articulate those goals in the most concrete terms possible.
• Thoroughly research the issue you hope to influence and the factors that affect it.
  To get the most out of your investment, do your homework. Find out which philanthropists, nonprofits, and government agencies are already working on this issue or similar issues. Ask yourself what seems to be working and what isn't.
• Think about whether success is feasible.
  What will it take—really—to reach your goal? Look into how much other funders have spent on similar initiatives, and what kind of results have they gotten.

Philanthropy question 3: What am I accountable for?

• Consider how you can best use your financial resources to achieve philanthropic impact.
  Besides making direct grants, you can fund crucial supporting activities (such as publicity), invest creatively by putting your balance sheet to work (through debt or equity), or support for-profit activities that create social good.
• Brainstorm whether there are non-financial resources you can use in service of your philanthropy.
  Your time, expertise, and unique personal networks can be extremely valuable in the right circumstances.
• Define the boundaries around what you are willing to give in service of your philanthropic goals.
  Give careful consideration to your own expectations, tolerance for risk, and where each initiative fits in your philanthropic portfolio.  This will enable you to identify a commitment level—both financial and otherwise—that is commensurate with the task at hand. Armed with these answers, you can define a role for your philanthropy that both contributes to the outcomes you want to see and matches your personal circumstances and preferences.

Philanthropy question 4: What will it take to get the job done?

• Consider whether you are structured for success.
  As a philanthropist, you have choices about how to build your own capacity for impact. For example, you will need to decide whether to outsource capabilities or hire staff to support your work. For institutions, there are further questions about boards, governance, and organization design that support impact without undue cost.
• Think about what the nonprofits you fund require in order to be successful.
  Nonprofits need more than just checks. To execute with excellence, grantees need the right people and the right organizations in place. This requires attention to recruiting, retention, development, and leadership, which philanthropists can help facilitate.
• Find out what investments in capacity (or “overhead costs”) your grantees need to thrive.
  Focusing on outcomes, not nonprofit overhead, is key to philanthropic success. Unfortunately, a phobia of nonprofit overhead is all too common in the philanthropic arena. Consider choosing a different path and instead work with your grantees to understand the people, systems, and processes that are critical to getting results, and to understand how you can support building that capacity.

Philanthropy question 5: How do I work with grantees?

• Identify a process for sourcing potential nonprofits to fund.
  Typically, there are four major ways to find nonprofits that you’d be interested in funding and then whittling those options into a short list. You can seek recommendations from your established relationships, you can do your own research or evaluate existing research, you can seek out respected opinions, and you can solicit requests for proposals from interested organizations.
• Do the appropriate screening of potential grantees.
  The process of conducting the research into a nonprofit you’re considering funding, what some call nonprofit due diligence, in an extremely crucial part of the philanthropic process. As you learn about your potential grantees, a few questions are paramount: Does the organization’s mission align with your personal philanthropic goals? Is the organization well positioned to carry out the proposed project? Can you work well together? The answers to these questions (and others) indicate whether you can successfully partner with a particular nonprofit.
• Identify the appropriate structure for the grants you make.
  Once you have identified an organization you might want to support, think about how you would structure that support. What type of grant would you offer? What size grant will you offer? What would the requirements be? You’ll need to create details answers for each of these questions.
• Select, or make the choice to fund a specific nonprofit.
  Making the final decision to fund a specific grantee is clearly a crucial part of the philanthropic process. In situations where there is one decision maker (an independent philanthropist, for example), this process is fairly straightforward. A more complicated decision-making environment, such as a family foundation, needs a formal decision-making process. Such a process will clarify who has the final authority to make the decision, how input will be considered, and what each stakeholder's role will be.
• Decide on how you will support your grantees.
  As mentioned above, the nonprofits you support are crucial to the results of your philanthropy. If they aren’t successful, it’s nearly impossible for you to achieve philanthropic success. That’s why learning how to truly partner with your grantees, including supporting them in a way that creates the best conditions for success, is so important. One key aspect of doing this is to fund nonprofit overhead in an appropriate way.
• Identify how you will sustain your support, that is, decide on continued grantee funding or responsibly exit from funding a nonprofit.
  Once you have supported a grantee for the agreed-upon term, you will need to make decisions around sustaining, that is, deciding whether to renew your grant, to exit but provide some sort of transitional support, or to exit without providing support. Each option has specific ramifications you will want to consider with great care.

Philanthropy question 6: Am I getting better?

• Give thought to how you will know whether your philanthropy is heading in the right direction.
  Reflect on both your grantees' performance and your own strategy to understand the connections between your activities and the outcomes you expect. This can help you identify where learning matters most—and how to learn best with and through your grantees.
• Think about where measurement can help you.
  The key is to focus on what data will directly inform your decision-making, and to be realistic about what numbers can tell you and what they can’t.
• Brainstorm ways to learn from your experience.
  The endless need for philanthropic dollars as well as the lack of competition means that you must impose standards of excellence upon yourself. This means acknowledging "failures," learning from others, and investing in experiments.