The San Diego chapters of YNPN and the Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy (EPIP) are joining forces to bring you a discussion you won't want to miss. This time, we're tackling the overhead myth! "For years, nonprofits have campaigned for funders to end their widespread practice of providing full financial support for programs and services, but scrimping on overhead costs. This practice gives rise to the vexing 'starvation cycle' that constrains nonprofits’ ability to invest in essential organizational infrastructure and creates tensions, and even dishonesty, between grantmakers and grantees." These words come from a recent Stanford Social Innovation Review article titled Pay-What-It-Takes Philanthropy, which offers a radically new perspective on how to fund impact. 

Recently, grantmakers have begun exploring what it would take to fund the real costs of the organizations they support -- that is all of the necessary investments for a nonprofit organization to achieve its mission and be sustainable over the long term. Last year, Northern California Grantmakers, Southern California Grantmakers, and San Diego Grantmakers launched a joint statewide initiative called the Full Cost Project to come up with solutions.