For 50 years, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation has supported leaders and organizations around the world working to improve the lives of children, families, and communities— and to restore and protect our planet. Each year, we take a close look at our grantmaking data to examine how we are investing our resources to make progress on the issues we care about most.
Today, we are pleased to share with you our review of our 2014 grantmaking.
At the Foundation, we review this grantmaking data along with what we’re learning through on-the-ground experiences, grantee interactions, external evaluation results, and research. Taken together, this information helps us make informed decisions about the way we work and how we invest to increase our programmatic impact.
2014 was a celebratory year for us as together with our partners, we reflected on five decades of grantmaking. In 2014, we provided 858 grants, totaling $296 million, to support our grantees in their important work.
Our work is grounded in a commitment to continually listen, learn, and adapt to meet the unique needs of our partners. Over the past year, we heard from both our grantee partners and from the philanthropic field, a growing interest in examining the value of unrestricted funding and long-term support. In response, as we prepared this review of 2014 grantmaking, we took a deeper look at these two areas and included data on both our grants’ designated purpose (project-specific or general support) and on grant duration (one year or multi-year).
As you’ll see in this year’s report, the Foundation’s use of general operating and multi-year grants has remained relatively consistent over the past five years. We know that multi-year, unrestricted funding provides the flexibility necessary to grow major initiatives, and we are looking for more opportunities to provide this type of support. We also believe that targeted, shorter-term grants are critical to tapping into new ideas and leaders. When considering project grants, we work with our grantee partners to ensure they are well-aligned with an organization’s mission and capacity. When it comes to grantmaking, there is no one-size-fits-all approach, and we continually strive to structure grants that meet the needs of our grantees, our programs, and the people and communities that we all want to serve.
We encourage you to explore our review of our 2014 grantmaking and share thoughts and ask questions through the feedback button on the site. Thank you for your ongoing partnership and commitment to learning together.
