Senior Associate Public Profit Oakland, California, United States
Magic Cabinet funds cohorts of three nonprofits in the same community, who collaboratively share $2.5 million over five years to support their ongoing capacity building needs. This grantmaking approach combines four key values: trust-based philanthropy, participatory decisions, nonprofit capacity building, and long-term investment.
Public Profit’s initial evaluation of Magic Cabinet focused on the foundation’s grantmaking approach, cohort model, and relationship with grantees. In essence, we tried to answer whether this unique grantmaking approach was working in the ways the foundation intended. The answer from grantees was a resounding “yes”! Our developmental evaluation then shifted to explore the ways funding supported nonprofits’ capacity, and how that capacity influenced their ability to survive through the initial stages of COVID-19.
To further share power with its grantees, Magic Cabinet asked Public Profit to form an Evaluation Advisory Group (EAG), comprised of five nonprofit partners, to inform the next phase of evaluation at the foundation. The goals of the EAG are to 1) uncover the similar and different ways the organizations are developing through the influx of capacity building funds, and to 2) forward organizational learning for the foundation and their grantees.
Taylor will share two key moments from this evaluation capacity building engagement, and what evaluators in similar settings can learn: >Developing a Theory of Philanthropy, which in turn guided an evaluation of how the foundation lives its values through its grantmaking, and >Facilitating a participatory process for nonprofit partners to explore what capacity building, strengthening, and success means for their individual organizations.
