Beyond the Money: The Power of a Question
We’re highlighting this story from our recent six-year impact report: Journey to Justice.
Surdna’s Resilient Organizations Initiative (ROI) began with a simple question: “Whose needs are being served by our financial due diligence process?”
To help think this through, Jonathan Goldberg, Surdna’s then vice president of learning and impact, connected with Rodney Christopher and Jennifer Pedroni of BDO—a nationwide accounting, consulting, and service firm (and Surdna’s auditor). They later joined forces to serve grantees.
“Our grantees, most of which are led by people of color, are doing excellent work, but often lack access to steady funding streams and reserves, which causes some funders to reject a grant application,” says Jonathan. “We partnered with BDO to find the causes and solutions to these financial challenges and offer tailored consulting so that our grantees can build a solid financial plan for the future.”
Today, BDO offers Surdna and AFF grantees financial planning and support for stabilizing and/or growing their organizations.
Soojin Son, senior manager at BDO, describes how they begin working with grantees—asking questions and listening to understand an organization’s current state, challenges, and ways they need support.
“I think one of the things that comes before these bigger changes is a sense of being heard,” Soojin says. “Smaller organizations sometimes feel like they’re alone in their challenges,” she continues. “But because we’ve worked with so many organizations across a spectrum of sizes and mission areas and geographies, we can tell them that what they’re going through, we’ve heard from so many other leaders of other nonprofits. Something that for us sometimes seems like every day, mundane, small changes, can have a really large impact.”
Leaning into a longstanding practice of building trusting, authentic relationships, and capacity with and for grantees
In addition to BDO’s offerings, Surdna’s Resilient Organizations Initiative, which launched in 2022, provides cohorts of grantees leadership training as well as fundraising and technology assistance. The initiative builds upon Surdna’s longstanding practice of “beyond the money” support as listeners, collaborators, capacity-builders, conveners, connectors, communicators, and helpers.
Surdna’s Senior Program Officer for Philanthropy, Sophy Yem, co-created the Resilient Organizations Initiative with Jonathan. She’s particularly excited about the management training program.
“The Institute for Nonprofit Practice program is essential to ROI because it empowers leaders and organizations to thrive, not just survive,” says Sophy. “By investing in leadership development, organizational resilience, and financial health through ROI, these programs build the capacity for mission-driven organizations—particularly those led by people of color—to drive real, sustainable impact in their communities.”
At its heart, the Resilient Organizations Initiative is an effort to lead with our values and deepen trust-based and racial justice philanthropic practices by listening to grantees, asking questions, and evolving our grantmaking practices.
Learn more about our Resilient Organizations Initiative, and read our latest impact report.