Acknowledging the Complexity

“Both grantors and grantees tend to pay insufficient attention to the risks and complexities of pursuing an endowment strategy. An organization may not have matured to the point, organizationally or financially, where an endowment makes sense. And it may not have the capacity to raise endowment funds while concurrently soliciting core and project support. Most importantly, building an endowment carries risks, because, in the end, it may not produce the anticipated revenue.”

The trouble is that the idea of establishing an endowment can seem deceptively simple. Not only do endowment grants require more careful planning and analysis than some might imagine, but they also offer more options, variations, and alternatives than might be apparent at first. Grantmakers looking for ways to create or support a long-term asset for their grantees have many more choices than simply to endow or not to endow.

Takeaways are critical, bite-sized resources either excerpted from our guides or written by Candid Learning for Funders using the guide's research data or themes post-publication. Attribution is given if the takeaway is a quotation.

This takeaway was derived from Providing for the Long Term.

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