It seems that at the end of the year, every year, budget issues start to come up more and more. Families discuss their finances: How much should we spend on holiday gifts? Should we buy the plane tickets to visit grandma? What about making charitable donations before December 31 - and getting a tax deduction? While these discussions are going on across the kitchen table, corporations are undertaking the same exercise across conference room tables and asking the same kind of questions: where are we against our plan for this year and how much budget will we have next year? It seems that it’s the time of year when everyone tries to juggle all of the competing financial needs without dropping a ball that has to be caught.
As a foundation, we’re doing the same thing. Our budget gets divided up a lot like everyone else’s: 1) the gotta dos, 2) the wanna dos and 3) the wish we could, but can’t dos. We have multi-year commitments to fulfill and core partnerships that we know we will fund; these are the “gotta does,” much like a family has mortgage payments and utilities. Of course, we make grants throughout the year as nonprofits request support, and we set a budget for how much we will distribute in each of the different areas we support. It’s akin to treating each grant program we have like a child with an allowance to spend. They can use it for whatever they want - that is, what ever they “wanna do”, but as I tell my real kids, “When it’s gone, it’s gone.”
And finally, there are the multitude of very worthwhile causes, organizations and people we would like to be able to support, but we just can’t. This may be because a nonprofit is working in an area that is outside our focus on healthy, affordable homes and sustainable communities. It may be because a request is related to our focus area, but we don’t think it will produce enough impact or it is too expensive for the outcomes the nonprofit is anticipating. Our deciding not to fund a request may also be for a reason entirely unrelated to the nonprofit and the request - maybe we’ve already made a number of investments in that city or the timing doesn’t work.
At the end of each year, in fact throughout each day, we are all making choices, and that’s all the more true when it comes to money. And as we think about charitable giving, the requests seem to grow as we near the end of the year - it is, after all, the season of giving. So in thinking about what we’ve done this year, what we’ll be able to do during the remainder of it and what we’ll plan to do in 2010, I hope that we’ve made sound decisions. We know that there are more organizations, more causes and more people who need - who deserve - grants than we would ever be able to support. We can always wish for additional money, but knowing that our budget is unlikely to increase in the near term, I hope that we’ve made the most of the funds we do have, that we’re correct in defining what we must do and chose well when we decide what we are able to do.
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