Why Aren’t Foundations Actually Helping Their Grantees Like VCs?

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Venture Capital firms don’t invest in industries to disrupt — they invest in industry disruptors, and many now support them operationally. Foundations should consider following suit.

Industry disruptor Nancy Lublin, Crisis Text Line Founder. (Photo Credit: Glamour Magazine)

I was recently interviewed by a collaborating team from three high profile foundations/LLCs. Their primary question: “How do we find and cultivate more breakthrough ideas in education?”

This question feels all too familiar from foundations today: a primary focus on ideas and issues, often at the expense of talent support and operational excellence. Grand challenges, RFP’s, and funder-borne calls to serve homegrown theories of change have established an unproductive power dynamic that stunts creative problem solving with grantees, inadvertently (and almost passive-aggressively) steering their efforts. Reporting requirements and restrictions with how dollars are to be used can be distracting, and even crippling.

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The Road to Real Cheese Is Processed

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What Land O’Lakes’ acquisition of Vermont Creamery means for curd nerds like me

I’m not sure Stop & Shop sources goat cheese from this spot in the Cevennes, let alone Vermont. Maybe now they will?

“A pound and a half of Land O’Lakes white American, sliced as thinly as you can.”

“But ma’am,” the deli clerk sighed, “they’ll all stick together.”

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