Good Works

Extremely proud of our client OneStar Foundation for this great strategy work completed during a very challenging year!

We Are One Texas: Defining OneStar’s New Vision, Mission & Beliefs | A Letter from the CEO Around this time last year, I was laying out ambitious plans for a fresh start with the dawning of a new decade. I think we can all agree that 2020 did not go as expected! Despite the many challenges we have encountered this year, I am proud of how OneStar and our partners have responded—including...

Thought this quote about HOPE from Thornton Wilder was appropriate right now, especially for those working to help others in the midst of all the crazy in our world right now.

"Hope is a projection of the imagination; so is despair. Despair all too readily embraces the ills it foresees; hope is an energy and arouses the mind to explore every possibility to combat them...

In response to hope, the imagination is aroused to picture every possible issue, to try every door, to fit together even the most heterogeneous pieces in the puzzle. After the solution has been found it is difficult to recall the steps taken—so many of them are just below the level of consciousness."

Every funder and nonprofit needs to read this article. I especially loved:

1. “Along the way, however, we began starving nonprofits of the flexible resources they need in favor of funding our outcomes. Milestones became millstones as nonprofits tried to meet our priorities and often-unfunded mandates.”

2. “Organizations need support for their mission. Funding strategic planning, staffing or evaluation efforts rather than specific programs or narrow outcomes, meets that need and yields a greater return on that investment, positioning the nonprofit to move the needle on their area of focus.”

Opinion: Stop Starving the Nonprofit Sector — Community Foundations Public Awareness Initiative Dallas Foundation President and CEO Matthew Randazzo outlines several actions foundations can take to better support their grantees, both now and for the long-term.