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Impact Maximisation through Supported Regranting: a Funding Strategy Hack
4 min read · Nov 7, 2024
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TL;DR: Supported regranting programs combine funding with strategic support to boost grantees' effectiveness, acting as an impact multiplier and creating a bespoke, high impact giving portfolio for aligned donors.
As part of Funding Strategy Week, we wanted to highlight a giving strategy for mid- to major donors that I think is underutilised, inspired by this post. Disclosure, we work and fundraise for the mentioned program, but think it’s genuinely an underutilised strategy and the example feels useful to illustrate our thinking.
Across the effective animal advocacy movement, we see a lot of reliance on charity evaluators and pooled funds hosted by meta-charities like Giving What We Can and EA Funds in order to achieve impact. We appreciate that these funds facilitate effective giving and make it easy for donors to do so, and feel they provide a benefit to our movement. One area I see where greater impact might be achieved is through supported regranting programs housed within advocacy organisations.
In recent years, we’ve been involved with the Open Wing Alliance (OWA) regranting program, which is a program of The Humane League (THL) (Alex as a leader and Caroline as a fundraiser). OWA’s mission is to support new and emerging organisations focused on reducing suffering for laying hens and broilers through corporate campaigns. (Note that THL also has a supported regranting program focused on US Policy work as well.) Regranting organisations like OWA do more than provide direct funding to grantees: they invest in the capacity-building, strategic guidance, and networks that allow grantees to thrive over time. Based on feedback from large funds and direct observation, organisations that have been OWA grantees tend to achieve sustained, higher-impact results compared to similar groups funded directly without additional capacity-building support. In this way, supported regranting programs act as impact multipliers, making the effective animal advocacy movement stronger as a whole, and maximising the success of grant funds compared to traditional pooled funds at meta-charities.
Supported regranting programs serve a unique role in the EA ecosystem. They combine financial grants with tailored support, such as training, strategy advice, and network-building opportunities. This dual approach offers two main advantages:
This additional support effectively creates a thoroughly evaluated, intentionally supported portfolio for grantmakers who chose to give to these programs. In a sense, it’s outsourcing giving strategy to the program experts who are closest and most embedded in the work. Of course, supported regranting programs don’t exist for every intervention within our movement, but where they do exist we think they make exceptional giving opportunities.
Despite these benefits, many funders focus exclusively on supporting regranting organisations’ outgoing grants rather than funding the operational infrastructure that enables these organisations to provide holistic support. Operational costs cover the systems, staff, and resources needed to train, advise, and support grantees effectively. This is not “overhead” in the conventional sense, but rather a core part of what makes regranting effective.
When donors support the operational side of regranting, they’re not just funding administrative expenses. They’re enabling critical functions that create that impact multiplier effect. For instance, OWA’s operational costs allow us to host training events, develop new tools for campaign strategy, and run a robust mentorship program—all of which directly contribute to grantees’ success in corporate campaigns. Grantees with this level of support are often able to achieve results faster and sustain them longer.
As the EA community continues to innovate in its approach to philanthropy, we should expand our framework to consider the unique advantages that supported regranting programs provide. Just as we’ve recognized the value in supporting “overhead” for high-impact organisations, we should recognize the operational and programmatic support needs of regranting programs that drive impact across entire movements.
Supporting the full range of functions within regranting organisations can empower these groups to amplify the effectiveness of all the organisations they work with, creating a stronger, more capable ecosystem. By funding both regranting organisations and their grantees, donors can maximise their impact toward tractable causes while building a more impactful movement for change.
Reading this post as someone not really in the animal-advocacy or grantmaking spaces, this sentence triggers the question: why do funders take that stance?[1]
Presumably they have some reason for thinking the grantmaking functions are above their bar but the holistic support functions are not. Without knowing their rationale, it is difficult to evaluate what is functionally an implied response to that rationale. Advocacy pieces are fine, but if I were considering a donation then I would want to be confident I understood both sides of the dispute rather than dismissing the views of "many funders" without an attempt at understanding them.
(Of course, if the funders won't tell you what the rationale is, then there's not much you can do to respond!)
It's not clear where operational costs directly and essentially related to grantmaking (e.g., evaluating grants, accounting, etc.) fall into the dichotomy. I'll assume for now that operational costs directly and essentially related to grantmaking are in the same category as the grants themselves.
Thanks for the question and feedback Jason, that's a point well taken! I think my main response is that this is less of a dispute, and more of simply a strategy that, from my perspective, lacks awareness and understanding across the effective animal advocacy movements, and I imagine across other movements as well though I'd love to hear from folks in EA but non-EAA movements.
We do see a mix of behaviors from grantmakers - some who solely fund grants, and some who fund both grants and the associated program support. For those who only fund grants, I think it's a mix of rationale. Some grantmakers have specific grantmaking priorities to, say, direct funding to a particular region of the world, and they find our grants to be an efficient way to do that. We're definitely still grateful for that support, and it is highly impactful. Some grantmakers who solely fund grants I think are simply not aware of all that goes into making those grants successful, and those are conversations we try to have with funders when we're able. But your comment is a good reminder to me as a fundraiser to gain a deeper understanding of that behavior.
I think this post was aimed less at our existing funders who may or may not be funding grant program support, and more at other funders who might be looking for ways to create efficiencies in their funding strategy and maximize impact. But that may not have totally come across, so again thanks for the points here!