“The Kendeda Fund will be remembered for what we accomplished and how we worked. We will have created new pathways to solve seemingly intractable problems, supported transformative leaders, and worked in ways that simultaneously enhanced people and planet. We'll have done so with grace, curiosity, creativity, caring, and passion. We'll have inspired others in the issues we tackled and how we tackled them.”
—Kendeda’s Spend Out Aspiration
There is no perfect playbook for how to structure a foundation, especially not at a time when unimagined wealth and unprecedented income-inequality exist alongside existential global threats and complex questions around racial, cultural, and gender injustice. But as an organization that showed up, did its best for 30 years, and learned along the way, we feel an obligation to share what we can with those who are interested.
What follows is a reflective, self-reported summary of how we worked, framed as a set of ten choices that distinguished the “Kendeda Way.” In them, we reveal the rewards and sacrifices, benefits and trade-offs that each choice brought. We hope they might open doors for broader discussion across the giving sector, particularly for those facing similar questions about the practice and pace of their philanthropy, or how to structure for impact and fidelity to values.
As Kendeda’s sunset came into focus during our final few years, a number of insights about our journey also began to emerge.
We don’t suggest that spending down is the right path for every organization, or that we have “figured out” how philanthropy should be done. But we are hopeful that our experiences might resonate with other individuals and institutions who find themselves on similar giving journeys.
For more than two-thirds of its existence, the Kendeda Fund operated quietly — as a modest, under-the-radar grantmaker whose donor was anonymous.
In 2009, a Center for Effective Philanthropy Grantee Perception Report rated Kendeda in the bottom quartile of funders for clarity of communications, with many grantees urging the Fund to have a higher profile. Many others encouraged the Fund to create a website at a minimum.
In 2015, as Diana prepared to make her largest investment to date (a $30 million grant to create a living building on the campus of Georgia Tech), the Kendeda team recognized that our founder’s historically quiet style was at odds with our desire to amplify what would become the greenest commercial building in the Southeast. Something had to give. So, we secured a profile feature story with an Atlanta business reporter. Diana and Dena stepped out into the light together to tell their mother-daughter story, positioning Dena as the Fund’s new leader, and lifted Kendeda’s 20+ year veil of secrecy. Anonymous no more, the Kendeda Fund stepped into view with well-crafted media coverage, a first-ever website, a social media presence, and more.
When Tené Traylor joined the team to run our Atlanta portfolio, she set out to spark conversations in Atlanta philanthropy around racial equity. Since then, she has actively used her voice and our institutional privilege as a grantmaker to champion a bold vision for equity. Part of that work involved helping developing grantees build standing and capacity in the broader community, thus de-risking them for future funders. Tené did that in part by standing alongside them in public and private settings and saying: “These are great people, great organizations, great visionaries. They have our full support.” If Kendeda had remained anonymous, Tené would never have supported those transformative leaders in the ways they and their work needed and deserved.
Visibility provided Kendeda with two powerful new tools that we had long lacked while operating anonymously: leverage and influence. Staff were freed from protecting the donor’s privacy, and could direct their attention to deeper engagement with peer funders and grantees alike. We also managed to claim more space with and among peer funders who shared our interests and goals.
Our enhanced profile brought expected challenges, including more unsolicited grant requests, increased calls for collaboration, pressures to assert thought-leadership in and across the Fund’s areas of focus. It also necessitated a dedicated team member to manage all facets of communications, from media relations to digital strategies and beyond.
From the outset, Diana was not interested in building a multi-generation legacy foundation. She wanted to spend out — in her lifetime — and she wanted her “light footprint” values to also show up in her foundation.
A perpetually lean governance structure allowed Kendeda to operate quickly and nimbly, keeping staff focused on the integrity of their grantee relationships rather than spending countless hours on administrative tasks or prep for board meetings.
Throughout its existence, the Kendeda Fund operated with no board whatsoever. Our founder and executive director approved grants on a rolling basis throughout the year. The result? A relatively consistent and frequent distribution cycle, with no deadlines for grantees, no rigid grant cycles, and grants approved weekly or even multiple times per week. Grantees deeply appreciated the relatively straightforward and agile application process. It also meant less organizational friction when we wanted to move large grants or respond quickly to emergent situations.
In 2022, the City of Atlanta was ready to acquire former Chattahoochee Brick Works brick company land as a memorial to victims of convict leasing and site of restorative justice. That plan was imperiled, almost overnight, as the private seller received a much higher bid from an out-of-state buyer eager to develop the site for commercial purposes. Kendeda stepped in with a bridge grant of $4 million in a matter of days, saving the parcel for future generations.
In the early 2000s, Hughes Spalding hospital, primarily serving Atlanta’s Black children, suffered from a lack of investment and care, especially when compared with the Children’s Hospital of Atlanta (CHOA), serving many wealthier, white children on the north and east sides of the city. As Children's Health of Atlanta and Hughes Spalding negotiated a critical agreement to move management and improve hospital care, Kendeda quickly committed about $20 million to retrofit and build a new Hughes Spalding Hospital, to be operated by CHOA instead of Grady.
Lean governance allowed us to make funding decisions quickly. When grantee needs emerged, we acted fast and responsively, unburdened by board schedules or organizational bureaucracy.
Our single-approver grant decision process meant we lacked broader input that a diverse board would have provided. Recommendations from fund advisors (program officers) carried outsized weight and may have limited our breadth of perspective on funding decisions.
Given Kendeda’s staffing model, built around a small, senior-level program team with minimal back office support, we spent significant time aligning on organizational values and programmatic guardrails, but little energy on synchronizing details, methods, or strategies across programs.
Despite stylistic differences, our staff maintained harmony through frank discussions and idea-sharing on regular team calls (“Here’s how I am doing it. What about you?”). We borrowed ideas from one another, partnered where it made sense, and consistently re-centered at team retreats. Bi-weekly, virtual “watercooler” calls with loose or no agenda also gave us valuable time to informally compare notes and align.
Kendeda never had an organizational standard for what to include in a grant write-up. We kept them short and focused on the critical issues. As such, they varied widely. Sometimes, they had detailed risk analyses, other times a focus on leadership, and other times a deeper discussion of how an approach would benefit the broader field or sector in which a prospective grantee operated. Financial analysis also varied widely in our grant write-ups, sometimes focusing on leverage, support provided by other peer funders, rapid growth or decline, or an organization’s audit.
Another example of our flexible approach concerned board service. Some funders intentionally “take” a board seat when they make a large investment. Others intentionally restrict board service by staff. In Kendeda’s case, we allowed our fund advisors to make decisions best suited to their (and their grantees’) unique needs and goals.
Another example was our approach to an area of interest of Diana’s – supporting the next generation of emerging leaders. Rather than creating a branded leadership program like many foundations, we asked Fund Advisors to be sensitive to how their grant portfolios might best support next generation leadership development. Some of us made grants to organizations specifically to fund such work. Some invested in existing grantees’ succession plans. Others focused on adding new grantees helmed by young and emergent leaders.
Fund advisor autonomy – especially related to grant recommendations, write-ups, and review and approval timelines – freed program staff from undue administrative burdens and excessive busy work. This freedom provided great flexibility for our program team, leaving more space for deeper grantee engagement, collaboration and thought partnership.
Without a template for making and approving grant recommendations, Kendeda’s record-keeping was inconsistent and variable across programs. This created significant challenges for historical documenting and archiving. Fund Advisors may also have missed key weaknesses in their analyses of prospective grantees because of the unsystematized way we analyzed materials.
As a donor, Diana was patient and loyal, which fueled long-term relationship-building with our grantee partners and formed a foundation for deep trust.
This foundation of trust began with our staff. Once we had our core staff on board, we worked hard to ensure Kendeda was a place they wanted to stay. We provided above-market compensation and benefits (verified by an external study), highly flexible work schedules (including remote working long before the pandemic), and re-aligned annually based on a set of articulated values.
As our spend-out date approached, we also worked hard to retain core staff (an approach aided by a generous “stay-to-the-end” bonus structure). These strategies encouraged long-term staff to bring long-term mindsets to their portfolios and partners.
Staff also brought a long-term relational mindset to their engagement with grantees. With individual grantees, we brought a consultative mindset to our work, with a “noses-in, fingers out” orientation.
Notably, Kendeda never undertook anything resembling the sweeping, organization-wide strategic planning process common in most staffed foundations that can lead to churn and insecurity with grantees.
Instead, fund advisors articulated high-level programmatic goals and strategies at the outset of their portfolio design. They then lightly refreshed their strategies (or not) annually. As a result, most of our portfolios have had the same core strategies all along - for up to a decade or more in some cases. This helped ensure long term continuity and the stability of our relationships with our grantee partners.
During its final decade, Kendeda retained its core staff with little change. Many of our grantees benefitted from multi-year support that went far beyond the check alone. Often, we provided deep consultative support for our grantees (strategic planning, convening, match-making with other funders, communications support, and more) that would not have been possible in a world where funding was short term and personal relationships lacked the needed time to grow and develop.
A small staff with little turnover for a decade may have limited our perspective and worldview. The absence of program associates and support staff also meant fund advisors were responsible for all aspects of grantee management, from the highest strategic thinking down to the block and tackle of grants administration. Even as our commitment to racial equity grew, a deep commitment to existing staff meant we forfeited the opportunity to bring in a more diverse team that better reflected our programmatic areas.
The Kendeda Fund benefited from a network of support organizations who efficiently and effectively deepened our internal capacity.
We contracted out all back office and grants administration functions to Foundation Source.
VCG Benefits and HR Advisors handled benefits planning and procurement. Investment/wealth management work happened outside the foundation via the donor directly. For most of the year (and for most years), our small staff, supported by the firms above, capably managed Kendeda’s operations and workflow. This approach suited Diana’s preferred way of doing business – lean, trustful, collaborative, and informal.
When a surge of new work became imminent, however, we quickly sourced additional consulting capacity with skills and experience suited to the task. Our choice to bring in time-limited outside help kept our overall staff numbers low while providing extra and precise support when and where we needed it most.
In 2018, as the Fund fortuitously found itself benefitting from bull-market returns that created an unanticipated $100 million asset windfall, we brought in consultative support to help us plan and execute a set of “big bets” in four giving areas, most of which fell outside our established programs. More traditional funders might have used such financial gains to hire additional staff and beef up existing portfolios for higher giving over multiple years. We instead chose to lean into new work and issues Diana had long considered but never acted on.
Similarly, in 2020, as the Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design at Georgia Tech was in its final phase of construction, we brought in surge capacity for communications. Why? To ensure our $30 million investment in the South’s greenest building was positioned effectively in the media to reach other funders, designers, and builders of future capital projects.
Lean operating costs (consistently less than 5% of our grants budget) meant more money for grantmaking. Hiring senior-level consultants saved staffing costs during unanticipated periods of need. The deep consulting talent pool now serving the philanthropic sector also made finding experts with just the right skills easy.
We had to take extra care to ensure our chosen consultants understood Kendeda’s unique organizational values and work style and we experienced occasional culture-fit challenges. Team members might have wanted or benefited from more robust, consistent feedback and performance management and we had no HR department and few clear-cut personnel policies.
Like many funders, we faced a fundamental conundrum that pitted our donor’s interest in maintaining a small, lean organization with her values around investing deeply in community-based organizations across a wide-range of issues.
The Challenge: How could we stay operationally small while at the same time going programmatically big?
We solved the problem by strategically using intermediaries to regrant dollars. Fund advisors arrived at this solution independently rather than from a top-down mandate. While partnerships and pass-throughs, including intermediaries and donor collaboratives, aren't uncommon across philanthropy, they comprised around 10 percent of our grantmaking.
In our gun violence prevention work, roughly 12% of our grantmaking flowed through the Fund for a Safer Future, a prominent 35-member collaborative focused on preventing firearm violence through evidence-based local, state and federal solutions. Closer to home, in our Southeast Sustainability portfolio, we used the Southeast Sustainability Directors’ Network (SSDN) to regrant nearly $5M to 20 community-level programs furthering adoption of sustainable practices in that region.
Intermediaries and collaboratives allowed us to move significant funding to community-based groups without adding significant grantmaking capacity or overhead. The approach also facilitated meaningful partnerships with other funders pursuing similar strategies.
These types of pass-through strategies sometimes leave funders one or more degrees removed from grantees ultimately doing the ground-level work. Deep trust is required. Oversight of intermediaries can also be time and labor-intensive, pulling on the fund advisor in unforeseen ways.
The Kendeda Fund has never had a monitoring and evaluation department. What we did have was deep curiosity.
While an unusual choice for a foundation averaging $40M a year in grants, it wasn't for lack of interest by our donor. As a late-in-life college graduate who majored in cultural anthropology, Diana is a deeply curious person with a predisposition for life-long learning. But as a philanthropist, she simply didn’t see the need to embed evaluation expertise within Kendeda.
Instead, we often chose grantees already invested in self reflection, continuous learning and organizational-improvement…then we would invest in that learning.
In our Girls’ Rights portfolio, American Jewish World Service was committed to learning and adjusting with agility. Nearly one-third of our grant to them focused on the organization’s learning and research agenda. Our trust-based relationship with them allowed Kendeda to learn alongside them, rather than measuring how effective they were.
Architects, contractors and operators engaged in deep, agile and collaborative learning to successfully create a fully certified Living Building at Georgia Tech.
When grantees are in control of their own learning and evaluation, they can retain that knowledge in perpetuity, far beyond the length of their connection to any single funder. Beyond the cost savings of not having an evaluation department, doubling down on grantees’ preferred evaluation schemes allowed us to invest in approaches (from outcome harvesting to randomized control trials) as diverse and customized as our grantees chose to design them.
Lacking a coordinated, overarching measurement and evaluation strategy, we are hard-pressed to quantify the impact of Kendeda’s investments within individual programs or across them. To the extent that learning and evaluation happened, it primarily transpired one grantee/organization at a time. Telling a bigger impact story proved a persistent challenge.
Foundations are not immune to being influenced by friends and peers. Sometimes, the instinct to take cues from those we respect is normal and healthy. Other times, not so much.
Because our donor’s primary identity was never “philanthropist,” she was often inspired by other philanthropies.
Still, she rarely felt pressure to do something just because others were doing it. Many of the structural and operational norms that seem to be common practice for other foundations, the Kendeda Fund simply did not do.
This list included everything from the type of office space we rented to not producing annual reports or responding to media surveys aimed at ranking funders.
FOMO avoidance left more time for focusing on our core goals – making smart grants and building trusting relationships with our partners.
Some of our choices reduced the level of visibility others had into our work. We missed some opportunities to highlight our grantees or spotlight the issues we cared about.
Sometimes, big, existential challenges require big, ambitious bets. And Kendeda was no shrinking violet when it came to making large, scale-jumping grants. When Diana believed a large grant was justified, she was willing to take an outsized risk.
Unlike some of the enormous investments currently making headlines in the giving sector, however, Kendeda often took a different approach before making “game-changing” grants. On more than a half-dozen occasions, we began by offering a planning grant to a partner organization before following up with a larger investment.
The rationale behind this approach was simple. Before pouring a potentially disruptive amount of dollars into a nonprofit partner’s work, we should first help ensure the organization is prepared to receive it and has a vision for its highest and best use.
Organizations used planning grants to dream and co-create with internal and external stakeholders, to travel to visit like-minded organizations, or to bring in additional capacity. We did not offer planning grants for evaluative purposes. Rather, they gave space and time for the organizations to vision, align and plan internally for a large grant.
We made a $200,000 planning grant to the Georgia Justice Project to prepare for a subsequent $5M grant, a $100,000 planning grant to the Native American Board School Healing Coalition to prepare for a $10M grant, a $75,000 planning grant to WAMU to prepare for a $5.3M grant, and a $600,000 planning grant to AJWS to prepare for nearly $50M in subsequent grantmaking.
Unencumbered by any Board processes, Diana was able to make decisions quickly, and commit big dollars to solve big problems with zero bureaucratic friction. When planning grants were a part of that, our approach provided nonprofits the space and time to think strategically before a larger infusion of funds. They allowed grantees to pause, assess needs and capacity, and hire planning consultants when necessary before moving forward with confidence and alignment. The planning grant process also allowed Kendeda to move larger sums into smaller organizations with less fear of disruption or upheaval.
Time and time again, our ability to deliver larger-than-normal grants in order to help partners meet critical needs or urgent challenges was strengthened through the planning grant process. By design, planning grants require more administrative steps, consultation with the grantee, and time to move from an initial idea to a fully realized project. Despite our assurances to the contrary, some grantees may have viewed the two-step process as a “test” of sorts, as though they were being asked to jump through hoops unnecessarily. Planning grants also sometimes necessitated more board involvement, which carries a cost in terms of staff time for the nonprofit.
One of the more unique aspects of our culture involved how grants were perceived and valued, independent of their dollar amounts or the portfolio from which they originated.
Even though some of Kendeda’s programs disbursed more than $20 million annually, with others one-tenth that size, our team and our donor treated each portfolio equally. We had little to no hierarchy or competition between programs, no sharp elbows or internal jockeying for resources.
Gifts large and small typically received similar scrutiny (though we did have a no-application process for grants under $25,000). More importantly, all received similar levels of attention from our staff. By way of illustration, it was not uncommon for us to spend as much time on a team call discussing a $50,000 grant as we would a $5 million gift. All fund advisors had equal airtime, titles, and access to Diana.
Each holiday season, as a gesture of gratitude for the staff’s hard work, Diana invited each team member to make a $10,000 grant to a nonprofit of their choosing. There was no expectation of alignment with Kendeda’s program goals, no rules or constraints. The only requirements were that the recipient organization be a 501c3 in good standing and that their mission meant something to the team member personally. On the last team call each year, team members would share stories of who they’d selected and why. It was consistently one of Diana’s favorite calls of the year – a clear indicator that a $10,000 gift carried as much power and weight as a grant worth millions more.
The equal valuing all portfolios and grants contributed to a team culture with little or no competition. It also fostered a culture of collaboration and partnership between fund advisors, unlocking unexpected alignments and shared investments between and among program areas. Grantee survey results also suggest that partners felt seen and valued, regardless of their grant amount.
One could argue that larger grants demand higher scrutiny and more due diligence than smaller ones. While we were not negligent in our vetting, we may have sacrificed the ability to “get more” out of some investments by moving them to approval too quickly.
