Candid, the leading nonprofit social sector data provider, is built on the ideas of transparency and sharing information for the greater good. It’s no surprise, then, that he pulled back the curtains on his plans for the $15 million he received from MacKenzie Scott and Dan Jewett last year.

In an open letter from CEO Ann Mei Chang, Candid outlined its intention to use the first two-thirds of the funding it received for three things: developing its products and platform, creating an innovation fund to incubate the next generation of ideas and recognize its staff for meeting the unprecedented challenges of COVID-19. The funding increase comes at an important time for Candid, as it implements a 10-year vision under the leadership of a new CEO and responds to major industry changes and challenges.

Candid is one of dozens of philanthropy support and nonprofit organizations that have received a big boost from Scott, including the Center for Effective Philanthropy, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, and the Bridgespan Group, which also advises Scott and Jewett. As is the case with all of the couple’s investments, the disclosure of amounts and details was left to the discretion of the beneficiaries.

Candid’s decision to detail funding figures and plans – a practice that hopefully will gain momentum among others – offers a glimpse of what the organization has on its agenda. for the future, and some actionable insights into how Scott and Jewett’s giving is shaping Infrastructure philanthropy.

The evolution of Candide

Best known for its GuideStar tools and online foundation directory, Candid provides some of the most comprehensive data on the social sector – “where the money comes from, where it goes and why it matters” – and helps to strengthen transparency on trillions of dollars in philanthropy. activity around the world. The nonprofit was created when the Foundation Center and GuideStar merged in February 2019 with a mission to provide the information philanthropists need “to do good.”

Leading foundations such as Bill & Melinda Gates, Charles Stewart Mott, and William and Flora Hewlett joined other supporters in providing the nearly $27 million in costs needed to create the new entity, with a early development support from Fidelity Charitable Trustee’s Initiative and the Lodestar Foundation, which works to build social sector capacity. Today, Candid reports an operating budget of approximately $40 million, 85% of which comes from revenue generated from its programming and services. Grants and contributions make up the balance.

In July 2020, a year and a half after its creation, Candid had developed and shared the global vision that it expects to pursue until 2030. The document describes the significant challenges of the sector, including an “inefficient and arbitrary”, lack of up-to-date information and declining levels of trust. His vision centers on strategies such as collecting real-time data, cross-checking information across siled categories, and improving understanding of the industry.

Today, its research, collaboration and training tools and platforms attract half a million users each month.

Under new management

In October 2021, a few months after Scott and Jewett’s funding announcement, a new CEO arrived. A social innovation expert with a background in technology, government, and the nonprofit world, Ann Mei Chang spent the first two decades of her career working as an executive at Google, Apple, and Intuit. From there, she became the first executive director of the US Global Development Lab, which harnesses innovative practices from Silicon Valley, universities and the private sector to accelerate solutions to the world’s most intractable problems. He now sits at USAID, where Chang served as Chief Innovation Officer.

Although the initial visioning process preceded her, Chang considers it broad and ambitious enough to achieve impact, and said she has wide latitude to take the “bold” steps she deems necessary to achieve success. She also had time to put her arms around operationalizing Candide’s vision and understanding the terrain. Final decisions on how the organization would use Scott’s funding, for example, weren’t made until a May board meeting.

For now, she sees Candid’s main challenge as “too many opportunities,” with dozens of ways to support the industry manifesting in multiple products that “burst” staff and users. Gathering a sequel will mean making tough decisions about “what works and what doesn’t”, with the overall goal of “doing certain things very well”.

Chang is currently focused on results that drive innovation, working with the board, executive team and an impact task force. Innovation, Chang said, is usually not found in a single transformative idea, and instead involves finding the North Star of what an organization is trying to accomplish, then using the talents of staff and partners to “let a million flowers bloom”.

Speak

While it makes sense for an organization named Candid, there are a number of pros and cons to making Scott and Jewett’s support levels and plans public. Groups that receive very large sums may fear that small donors will no longer feel valued. Those who receive smaller amounts in donation categories may not want to give the impression that they do not compare well to their peers doing the same work. And there’s also the potential to drive competition rather than collaboration.

Part of it comes down to the time and attention it takes to digest such a large donation and identify the best ways to use game-changing support, especially when actions may highlight gaps. Even those who do show up generally stick to the broad outlines.

At the same time, Scott and Jewett’s vote of confidence may shine a light on work that may have gone under the radar, especially in underfunded areas. The hope is that the public uplift will attract new supporters and encourage trust in organizations and communities that have been overlooked by funders in the past.. Scott’s message was clear about encouraging further investment.

Often the response of beneficiaries varies by cohort. All but one of the Support for Veterans recipients proudly and promptly announced the funding. But there weren’t many reports from indigenous groups or global investments made in Brazil, for example.

Candid’s support was part of the June 2021 “Seeding for Ceding” tranche, which also included 70 other organizations working in nonprofit philanthropy and management, with the aim of strengthening the sector’s infrastructure. To date, few have made public dollar amounts or details of how they plan to use the funding, including Charity Navigator and BoardSource.

Contrary to the trend, Chang said going public was a “pretty easy decision” for Candid. “We stand for transparency, and greater transparency will allow the industry to do more good,” she said. “We can all learn from each other, collaborate and use information to make better decisions.”

Although Scott and Jewett avoid regular grant reporting requirements, they do ask grantees for an annual one- to three-page letter about accomplishments and how the funds are spent. Chang said it was an easy letter to write – and a Candide decided to share it publicly.

Still, she acknowledged that Candid is in “a privileged position, with a strong financial footing,” and therefore can risk sharing ideas that don’t present “its best foot” in front of a wider audience.

where does the money go

The letter set out details of the three areas where Candid had committed two-thirds of Scott-Jewett’s funding: platform, people and innovation.

The platform and product integration will be funded at $9 million over three years, but users can expect to see changes sooner than that. Chang said Candid is taking a “very gradual” approach to upgrades, and the first version with more features will be introduced this year, with more to follow.

The vast majority of users, 99%, currently access Candid for free, and 3 million users are signed up for free programming. Data availability is currently tiered, granting paid accounts more detail. As for what will and won’t be free in the future, Chang said that in principle, Candid never wants cost to be a barrier, especially for smaller organizations that have taken steps toward transparency by claiming their Candid profile and sharing enough exclusive data to earn a gold seal. It’s also re-evaluating a pricing model to give smaller organizations — those with a budget of $1 million or less — a path to entry.

Candid also announced its decision to use Scott funding for staff bonuses, an uncommon practice in the industry. The pledge to acknowledge a difficult time for Candid’s 200 employees was enlightened before Chang’s arrival, but his understanding is that the gesture came from observing the particular stresses and strains of COVID-19 and a desire to recognize their work and give them a little “breathing room on the crosswinds through their lives.”

The new innovation fund created by Candid is perhaps the best illustration of how the Scott-Jewett brand of trust-based philanthropy benefits organizations, as Chang recognized that bold risk-taking cannot happen. only without fear of reprisals, and in full knowledge of the facts. movements will succeed.

Chang’s mindset on innovation has developed over two decades in Silicon Valley, and she prefers to cast a “wider net” on smaller ideas, then quickly pivot to what works. Its approach to finding the best big bets for the social sector is based on bold risk-taking, against which a lack of flexible funding creates a bias.

While it’s too early to share examples of what’s to come, Chang provided two examples of the type of initiatives Candid has explored, one that worked and one that didn’t. One was a personalized mobile alert on tenders, which did not drive meaningful engagement. The other was a training program for trainers, which will program expansion beyond staff capacity. It went well and attracted a number of registrations.

Like most other organizations benefiting from Scott and Jewett’s work, Chang recognized the critical nature of unrestricted funding in Candid’s decision-making. It allows organizations to take risks, invest in critical needs like human capital, fail and talk about it.

For the sake of philanthropy, hopefully more organizations will.