Grant Making Gets Personal for Employees of a Md. Foundation

At first blush, the luncheon held here this summer by the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation was pretty routine. A trustee gave a speech, the work of grantees was highlighted, and folks tucked into plates of baked chicken and steamed vegetables. Just another workaday philanthropic gathering in a rented conference room.

But then Christina Laumann, the foundation’s receptionist, stepped up to the microphone to discuss the $10,000 in Weinberg grant money that she had awarded to a domestic-violence charity. Soon enough, Nakia Gary, an executive assistant, was at the podium introducing the leaders of a youth debate league she had tapped to receive $10,000. Then there’s Marci Hunn, Weinberg’s program director for workforce development, described a grant she gave, not to a job-training charity but to a hospice.

By the time the chicken was swapped out for a fruit-plate dessert, 16 Weinberg employees had stood at the podium describing charities they had personally selected to receive $10,000 in foundation money.

Robert Kelly, the Weinberg trustee who opened the luncheon, playfully called the gathering “our most funnest event.”

The event is part of one of the foundation world’s most unusual grant-making efforts. At Weinberg, one of the nation’s wealthiest foundations, nearly every employee who has been on staff at least a year, no matter his or her job title or day-to-day duties, selects a local charity to receive $10,000. (The chief executive and trustees don’t make such gifts because they make plenty of other grant decisions.)

A Bigger Picture

The lunch announcing the awards is “the single most important day for the foundation because the staff come together in a meaningful and emotional way,” says Rachel Monroe, Weinberg’s president. “You see your colleagues at their best and brightest—people who you may assume have a different skill set able to step up and do unbelievable work with integrity.”

Part of the foundation’s mission is supporting charities that provide direct services to needy people in Maryland. For Donn Weinberg, the board chairman, the employee giving program, now in its fifth year, is an effective way for all the staff members to connect with this effort in a visceral way.

“If you are a receptionist and your day-to-day role is answering the phone and doing certain paperwork, you can get lost in those details,” says Mr. Weinberg. “But if you have an opportunity to research and select a grant, then what you are doing is very much the same thing as the program directors and trustees. You can see the bigger picture of what the foundation is all about and how your daily duties fit in to the overall goal.”

Rising to the Challenge

The idea of getting employees involved in giving decisions originated in the foundation’s Honolulu office, where it has been a regular event since the mid-1990s. A trustee brought the idea to Maryland in 2007.

Employees must choose Maryland charities that serve the poor and have been operating for at least three years. The beneficiaries must supply audited financial documents and demonstrate they get their money from diverse sources.

It is not uncommon for an employee grant to go to a charity that has received foundation support in the past, but it is still the employee’s job to vet his or her would-be grantee and present a written case for support to the trustees.

“They go on a site visit, meet with staff and volunteer leadership, and see the inner workings,” says Ms. Monroe “Then they write up a due-diligence report, which can be many pages.”

That process may take an employee eight to 12 hours, time for which he or she is paid and freed from normal duties. In five years, Ms. Monroe says, foundation officials have never rejected an employee grant proposal because it failed to meet Weinberg’s standards or fit its mission.

“At first the paperwork was confusing, but then I studied it for a while and it was pretty easy,” say Ms. Laumann, who made a grant for the first time this year and chose the House of Ruth Maryland, a Baltimore charity that helps victims of domestic abuse. “When you are doing something good for someone, you rise to the challenge.”

Jennifer Jordan, a program assistant, gave her recent grant to Dress for Success Baltimore, a charity that provides professional attire to poor women to improve their job prospects.

“The gift program allows you to have more passion in your work, more drive, more motivation,” Ms. Jordan says. “It’s not just paperwork but real people and lives that are helped.”

‘A Wonderful Benefit’

As a program director, Ms. Hunn evaluates grant proposals and charities on a daily basis. But the employee-giving program allows her to broaden her scope beyond her focus on job-training programs. Her latest grant went to a hospice that had provided care for the husband of a former co-worker.

“It’s a wonderful benefit for all of us, whether you are involved in grant making or not,” she says. “I don’t know that I could afford to personally give $10,000.”

Over the years, Ms. Monroe has received numerous calls from the leaders of other foundations inquiring about the employee grants, though she is not aware of any that have copied the idea. “We have a very small staff compared to some of our peers, and that makes the program more manageable,” Ms. Monroe says. The employees’ grants totaled $160,000 this year, a small part of the nearly $100-million the foundation gives away annually.

“I’m sure there are ways it could be adapted for groups with more employees,” she says. “We see it as team building in the most positive way that’s also focused on the mission.”