(Illustration by Gracia Lam)
The problems philanthropy seeks to remedy are big, messy, and complicated. Yet far too often, we try to combat them with simple responses. Faced with child hunger, we focus on giving children food; but we don’t connect that work to creating a national minimum wage, even though the vast majority of food-insecure children in the United States have working parents. We try to fix homelessness without embracing foster-care reform, despite knowing that half of Americans experiencing homelessness spent time in the foster-care system. We create initiatives to alleviate the climate crisis by promoting recycling and beach clean-ups, without building in advocacy for substantive policy changes that stop pollution at its source.
This partly stems from philanthropy’s structural challenges. Foundations can only fund initiatives that have nonprofit partners capable of enacting them. And, when it comes to measuring impact, it’s far easier to focus on outputs (such as the number of bags of garbage collected from a polluted river) than on systems change (such as a law that would prohibit corporations from dumping garbage in the water supply).
But some of our reliance on simple solutions in the face of complicated issues is a by-product of how foundations are set up in the first place. We segment them not only on the basis of geography and mission, but also on the basis of whom we seek to serve. When foundations explain what they do, the answer is usually, “We fund women’s issues” or “We’re focused on scholarships for at-risk kids.” Seldom is the response, “We look for creative and expansive ways to make the world a better place.”
At The Eisner Foundation, we decided to change that. We decided to work in a simultaneously more expansive and interconnected way, and we feel our efforts have dramatically increased our impact.
Breaking Down the Silos
Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner and his family founded The Eisner Foundation in 1996. For nearly 20 years, the foundation focused on children’s charities, primarily in Los Angeles, with the occasional grant to aid older people. Focusing on a single population seemed to work for us, until the graying of America made the limits of our approach clear. The growing number of older adults presented a unique opportunity to help children and youth in new and innovative ways, by capitalizing on older adults’ years of experience and, for those who have retired from the workforce, available time. We also saw the opportunity to help older people, who are happier and healthier when they are active and engaged in their communities.
So, in 2015, we made two changes. First, we decided to support programs that seized on this demographic change as an asset rather than a liability. The conversation around aging was becoming rife with alarmist terms like “the silver tsunami” and visions of a society burdened by ever-growing Social Security and Medicare costs. Few considered the massive opportunity at hand: The chance to keep older adults engaged in both the workforce and their communities for longer than ever before and to utilize their talents. There was no reason for people’s decades of professional and life experience to become irrelevant once they turned a certain age; indeed, there was a moral imperative to engage them as tutors, mentors, and community volunteers, and we wanted to support organizations that did just that.
Second, we decided that separately funding charities for children and older adults was limited and outdated. A new intergenerational focus would allow us to more effectively improve the lives of both older and young populations, and communities as a whole. We based these changes in part on research showing that when nonprofits and governments focus on serving multiple age groups simultaneously and using each group as a resource to provide opportunity for the other, they can create more lasting social change.
Now, six years later, we give about $8 million annually to organizations that apply intergenerational solutions to the challenges young and older populations face. The goal isn’t simply to get the two groups—kids and seniors—in a room together and wait for magical outcomes to appear, but to support concrete opportunities for each generation to benefit from what the other has to offer. With this in mind, we’ve awarded grants to preschools housed inside senior centers, mentoring programs of all kinds, youth volunteer programs that regularly reach out to homebound seniors, and organizations that provide resources to grandparents looking to adopt their grandchildren.
Of course, we’re not the only foundation to shift to a more holistic approach. For example, the Weingart Foundation originally focused on increasing the capacity and sustainability of organizations working in health, human services, and education. After a series of listening sessions with grantees and other stakeholders, however, it decided that achieving lasting, systemic change meant going beyond efforts to fight poverty and expand opportunity for underserved communities; it meant addressing economic and racial inequities, and in 2016, it changed its focus accordingly. Similarly, The James Irvine Foundation completed a three-year strategic shift in 2020, moving away from a typical, program-based model to one that directs all efforts toward a singular goal: a California where all low-wage workers can advance economically.
Beyond the Decision to Fund Multigenerational Solutions
It’s clearly possible for foundations to broaden their focus and reorient their work to achieve more lasting impact. But while making the decision may be relatively easy, the process of actually enacting change is much harder. Below are four lessons based on our experience for funders and philanthropists interested in expanding their mission.
1. Make new connections. Most foundations are risk-averse, and when they find an organization that does good work, they stick with it for a long time and don’t seek out new partners. But foundations that choose to shift their missions usually need to start over.
Declining funding to longtime grantees we knew did good work but no longer matched our objectives was gut-wrenching at times. We had conversations with all our grantees and worked to be flexible with those interested in pursuing or deepening an intergenerational approach to their work, but in some cases, we sadly but amicably needed to part ways. On the positive side, changing our focus and goals allowed us to discover and invest in some amazing new groups in our own backyard. For example, we learned that the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Los Angeles Harbor was bringing in retired volunteers to work with the young people it served, with incredible results. It’s since become a close partner and continues to integrate new intergenerational activities into its operations.
2. Study. Then study some more. Becoming a subject expert is essential for funders that want to take on an expanded, multi-issue approach. There isn’t usually a roadmap to effectively funding new areas of innovation; funders have to define the path for themselves and know what they’re talking about, and that takes research.
We began by asking ourselves: What are the latest innovations in the field of intergenerational solutions? What does the research say? What are the demographic trends that buttress our efforts? Which programs work, and which don’t? We read extensively and met with everyone we could identify who had knowledge about intergenerational programs—not only so that we could make good grants, but also to gain trust in this small-but-growing community. We talked to researchers at Stanford and the University of Southern California who understood trends in longevity. We spoke with nonprofit leaders like Naila Bolus at Jumpstart, who was running a children’s organization but trying to incorporate seniors into her work. And we sat down with experts such as Donna Butts at Generations United and Nancy Henkin at Temple University, who had been working in the intergenerational field for a long time but weren’t in philanthropy.
As a result, we became subject experts in a way we never could have if we’d taken a generalist approach to grantmaking. In particular, we learned that to be successful, intergenerational programs must be intentional in the ways they bring older and younger participants together—a program can’t simply put them in a room and wait for meaningful connections to happen on their own. Programs also need to see both groups as resources and measure the impact on both. Without extensive discussions from experts in the field, we wouldn’t have gained the depth of knowledge we needed to effectively support and promote intergenerational efforts.
3. Rethink fundamentals. Foundations that make a major mission shift need to rethink many aspects of how they operate and what they will need to do to accomplish new goals. In other words, they need to reject a “this is how we have always done it” management mentality and examine everything through a new lens.
At the Eisner Foundation, we redesigned our website, our social media pages, and our logo to reflect our new intergenerational mission. We also changed our application materials, the boards on which we served, and who we hired and for what positions. At the same time, starting over with mostly new grantees gave us freedom to take more risks in choosing who and what we funded. We funded advocacy for the first time. We invested in research. We started a grants program for small nonprofits without the proven track records we usually seek in more established partners. We could be what we wanted to be.
But of course, like any “new” organization, we made a few rookie mistakes. Organizations we funded without proven track records at times failed to deliver, and one even folded despite our six-figure grant and championing of their work. We invested in research that sounded promising to us to advance the intergenerational field but that had little value to the general public in the end. Even so, our board had confidence that we as a staff knew where we were going and that the path we had chosen was the right one. It stood by us, even when we stumbled a bit, and helped us find surer footing.
4. Consider changing grant sizes. Foundations with a newly blank docket may also consider changing the size of the grants they offer, including potentially making fewer but larger grants.
Before switching our focus to intergenerational initiatives, we mostly made general operating grants of around $100,000 to grantees each year. We were reluctant to turn people down once we were working with them, unless they had a leadership change or an obvious decline in performance, and this practice reinforced the size of our grants. Because the grants were relatively small, the stakes were lower, and we were less likely to insist on a seat at the table. We felt we didn’t have the right to propose or recommend new ideas. We were “giving” rather than “investing.” But with our new freedom, we decided to give larger amounts to fewer organizations. We even made several seven-figure grants.
The larger funding amounts gave our grantees the flexibility, security, and courage to pursue innovative and entrepreneurial approaches. They also emboldened us to take that seat at the table when offered and to share our viewpoints with organizations and help them head off potential difficulties. We became partners instead of just donors. For example, at Motion Picture and Television Fund, an organization that supports members of the entertainment industry, staff are creating an innovative new software program to better facilitate an outreach program for checking on the wellness of older adults. We made a large gift early on, allowing us to take part in the planning process, brainstorm potential future applications, and connect other grantees to the project it scales.
In addition, we now call and visit organizations we fund more often and are intentional about developing partnerships through a trust-based approach. We have fewer grantees, but they get our undivided attention and our full commitment. Many have even asked us to be part of their strategic planning processes, giving us an opportunity to collaboratively envision their long-term future.
Choosing Complexity
Changing the focus of The Eisner Foundation to intergenerational programming allowed us to address at least two—and sometimes three or four—problems simultaneously. Today, we aim to improve early childhood education and reduce older adult loneliness and isolation. We are thinking about affordable housing shortage, foster care, and social justice at the same time. We believe this change has made us smarter and stronger and allowed us to be a more informed and more strategic grant maker.
Do all foundations need to make the kind of major changes we did? Of course not. But all funders should at least explore how they can become more impactful grant makers. They should examine where they can make more significant gifts, and support projects in research and advocacy that can have sector-wide significance. And if it takes a mission change to do that, they should be open to new directions.
Foundations that reorient their work in this way will likely confront challenges they didn’t anticipate—but then, if they had, it might have stopped them from moving forward. Indeed, committing to a change in mission and facing the challenges that accompany it is sometimes the best and only route to staying vital.
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Read more stories by Cathy Choi & Trent Stamp.