When we were a young foundation, our grantmaking process was pretty simple. Once a year we’d open up an application, nonprofits would send in their requests, and a committee would review everything and decide how to divide up $10,000 among the programs we felt we could support. As our assets grew, so did our grant budget—and the number of requests coming in. For a long time, we stuck with that straightforward approach and were able to help many nonprofits with grants ranging from $1,000 to $5,000.
But I remember asking myself: When will our grantmaking really start making a bigger difference? Nonprofits are out there working hard to improve our community, and donors want their giving to be truly impactful. Eventually, we realized it was time to get bold. We needed a systems change—an overhaul that put relationships at the heart of the process and helped us better respond to community challenges as well as proactively capitalize on opportunities to strengthen the community.
Long story short…
Phase One (2021): We talked with donors, brought nonprofits together, and hired a consultant.
Phase Two (2022): We sketched out a new grantmaking framework based on what we learned, and we invited people to join an effort we called The Way Forward—something we believed could be transformational. The response was incredible: $2.5 million was pledged to flexible permanent community resources known as Funds for the Community.
Phase Three (2023–2025): We began implementing the new framework. We continued to accept nonprofit requests, but we also shifted to being more proactive—inviting partners to collaborate, because big issues don’t belong to just one organization or donor, progress takes a village. We launched, tested, adjusted, built momentum, tweaked, etc. By February 2025, after two years of fine tuning, we rolled out a new concept proactively allocating a large percentage of our grant budget to a few initiatives: sharing our time (staff and board involvement), our talent (back‑office support), and our treasure (multi‑year grants totaling $155,000). We selected our first group of high‑impact partners:
- OCAN (Otsego Career Access Network)
- Otsego Housing Task Force
- START (Services, Tools, Assistance, Resources, Talents)
Phase Four (2026 and beyond): Like many nonprofits, we often found ourselves so busy doing the work that we didn’t always carve out time to tell the story of the progress being made. That’s why I’m excited to share part one of a four‑part series about what has unfolded since we began this systems‑level shift back in 2021. Below you will see our first feature, an update on the Otsego Career Access Network. OCAN seeks to connect every individual in Otsego County with access to opportunities for advanced training and education. If you were a donor to the Way Forward Campaign, thank you for being part of this progress. If you are a volunteer on the OCF grant committee, board or OCAN Leadership Team, thank you for your dedication. If you are inspired to further the mission of OCAN by sharing your time, talent or treasure please reach out and I will help connect you to opportunities to share your gifts.
With gratitude,
Dana Bensinger
OCF Executive Director
Phone: 989-731-0597 – Email: dana@otsegofoundation.org
