Solving Long-Standing Challenges for Foundations and Changing Philanthropy as We Know It
For years, I’ve seen the numerous challenges funders face during the grantmaking process and their frustrations for a better system have only grown over the years. Does this sound familiar?
“I don’t want our applicants to spend so much time applying for a grant.”
“I want to give our applicants a chance to find additional funding opportunities.”
“I want to find groups outside my existing network.”
In 2016, Daniel Katz (Overbrook Foundation) and Molly Schultz Hafid (Butler Family Foundation), separately encouraged me to explore what would happen if we built technology that made it easier for foundations to move money to historically excluded communities. And since 2017, we’ve been building a revolutionary solution that systematically addresses the challenges applicants and funders alike face when trying to seek and distribute funding. Here’s how:
Without JustFund: Applicants spend 20 to 40 hours on each grant application.
Funders deploy their own application questions and use dozens of software solutions to collect responses. That conventional practice requires applicants to spend between 20-40 hours for each and every application, learn new application systems, and repeat this process in perpetuity.
With JustFund: Rather than requiring organizations to complete dozens of separate and time-consuming grant proposals, the JustFund Common Application™ allows applicants to use one application to apply to multiple funding opportunities. Nearly 180 funders have opted into the JustFund Common ApplicationTM saving applicants a combined 38 years of time.
Without JustFund: Applicants can’t easily find additional funding opportunities.
Funders meet incredible projects and organizations around the nation but can’t fund or fully fund them all; yet, they’ve never had a way to share that critical work with other funders.
With JustFund: Funders can invite their networks of other funders to share applications and collaborate to meet funding needs together; and, give their applicants access to apply to hundreds of funding opportunities with one common application.
Without JustFund: Funders want to find groups outside their existing network.
Funders’ existing networks can be limited and there may be other needs that just aren’t on our radars. Foundations are often left asking, “where are these needs and how can we find the ones that intersect with our priorities and interests?”
With JustFund: JustFund Search gives funders access to thousands of common application profiles of projects, organizations, and funds that applied to other JustFunders, documenting the applicants’ chain of custody in the platform. The robust library of applications is searchable using dozens of filters to find prospective grantees that align with your interests and priorities.
JustFund is upending the exclusionary and expensive systems for how we conventionally move money. So many of us have wanted to do better and have been yearning for something more. I’m incredibly grateful to those early advisors who helped get the JustFund concept from its ideation phase to a maturing product offering philanthropy a trusted, viable way to ensure historically excluded communities access the resources they need to thrive.
Learn how foundations are using JustFund, and join this list of visionary and equity-centered foundations on the frontlines of transforming philanthropy, for good.
Foundation Partners (Past and Present):
NorthLight Foundation
Omidyar Network
Democracy Fund
JPB Foundation
Siegel Family Endowment
Raikes Foundation
James Irvine Foundation
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
California Wellness Foundation
Amalgamated Foundation
East Bay Community Foundation
Silicon Valley Community Foundation
Frost Family Foundation
Newman’s Own Foundation
Packard Foundation
Sustain our Future Foundation
Sharing our Power Foundation
Kolibri Foundation
Krupps Family Foundation
Zoom Cares
Request a demo
