Public Infrastructure for an Equitable Future
Client: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Year: 2020
Over the course of 18 months, Onside Partners and Ang Hadwin researched five types of public infrastructure (broadband, electricity, parks, transportation, and water) to understand the root causes of the poor conditions of infrastructure in the United States and what philanthropy could do about it. This report details six solutions that philanthropy could support to create more equitable public infrastructure in the future.
For a short summary, check out our 2021 piece in the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
Governance Analysis: How 10 Participatory Grantmaking Initiatives and Funder Collaboratives Work
Client: Mosaic
Year: 2019
Participatory grantmaking is an important tool for shifting power and decisionmaking from philanthropy to people working on the frontlines of an issue. A key to success for this form of grantmaking is ensuring that the governance structure meaningfully operationalizes power sharing. This report summarizes research and analysis on the governance structures of 10 initiatives organized as participatory grantmaking endeavors, funder collaboratives, or a blend of both.
Transparent Accounting of the Life of the Digital Trust Foundation
Client: Digital Trust Foundation
Year: 2019
Onside Partners was instrumental in the design, operations, and grantmaking of the Digital Trust Foundation, established in the 2014 litigation settlement of Lane v. Facebook. By 2018, the Foundation had spent down its corpus, disbursing just under $6.5 million in grants with an estimated administrative overhead of less than 6 percent. This report provides our transparent accounting of how the Foundation was managed and the money was spent.