On a recent day when snowfall slowed the normal bustle of Midtown Manhattan, Lowell and Jennifer Hoos Rothberg, the dynamic executive director of the Einhorn Family Charitable Trust, had a leisurely two hours to continue their longstanding dialogue about how funders can pay careful heed–not just lip service–to what their grantees need for improving performance.
As we reported this time last year, EFCT is deeply admired by its grantees for practicing what they preach about supporting their pursuit of high performance. EFCT has taken a “fewer, deeper, longer” approach that allows them to build respectful, trusting relationships with their grantee partners. No funder has ever managed to transcend the inherently unequal power between grantor and grantee. But Rothberg and her small team of listeners and learners have come as close as we’ve ever seen.
