Ford Foundation Makes Changes to End Nonprofit Starvation Cycle - with Tiffanie De Gannes and Jim Gallagher, Ford Foundation; Part II of “Smashing the Overhead Myth Once and for All” Series

In this second installment of our series, Smashing the Overhead Myth Ones and For All, you’ll get an insider’s view of how things are changing inside the Ford Foundation, one of the largest private funders in the world, as their team seeks to provide more equitable and effective grants to the organizations they support in the U.S. and around the world.

Our guests today are the ones making challenging operational decisions, guiding changes to organizational policy, practice and culture, and executing important internal change management at the Ford Foundation.

Tiffanie De Gannes is Senior Manager of Operations at Ford Foundation. She serves as lead on complex projects and initiatives, as well as bridging the gap between operations and program teams to ensure alignment on organizational priorities.

Jim Gallagher is Director of Grants Management at the Foundation, where he oversees Ford’s grant managers in the US and around the world. Jim has 20+ years of nonprofit and philanthropic management experience and expertise in domestic and international grantmaking, organizational capacity building, financial planning, team building, and systems implementation. 

Tiffanie and Jim were both part of the Ford Foundation team engaged in the Funders for Real Cost, Real Change learning collaborative. We spoke at length about that effort In the first installment of this series, Season 4 Episode 3 with Rodney Christopher. If you want to go in order, pause this episode, listen to Season 4 Episode 3, then start this one again.

This episode touches on the practices of talent-investing related to Respect and Root Causes – Respecting nonprofit workers and addressing the Root Causes of the deficit of investment in the nonprofit workforce. To learn about the Eight Practices of Talent-Investing, listen to Episode One of this season. And we invite you to learn from all the amazing past guests of Fund the People - A Podcast with Rusty Stahl. All resources & links mentioned in the show can be found on our episode show notes page or at fundthepeople.org/ftp_podcast. Find all the episodes of this podcast plus our blog, toolkit and other resources on our website, fundthepeople.org.