Nonprofits Don’t Win Alone: Seven Lessons from the Endeavor Fund
When funders listen deeply, trust grantee expertise, and remain flexible in support, they create the conditions that nonprofits need to thrive.
In March 2023, the Walter & Elise Haas Fund (W&EHF) launched the Endeavor Fund, a $24.5 million, seven-year grant.
Seven organizations were awarded $3.5 million each in multi-year general operating funds: East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, East Bay Community Law Center, La Cocina, Oakland Kids First, Oakland Promise, Young Women’s Freedom Center, and Youth Organize! California.
The Endeavor Fund prioritizes three key tenets: supporting efforts to close the race and gender wealth gap, increasing nonprofit worker well-being, and operationalizing trust-based philanthropy through deep listening and trusting grantees to pursue their missions on their own terms.
Rather than imposing restrictions and burdensome reporting, W&EHF acts as a learning partner, holding annual learning conversations with each grantee to track progress, challenges, and lessons.
This report synthesizes findings from the fund’s third year of operation, drawing on 63 cumulative hours of learning discussions, two cohort gatherings, surveys, and ongoing engagement.
The learning occurs amid an unpredictable environment. In early 2025, the nonprofit sector faced significant headwinds—financially and politically—all while demand for services grew, particularly among vulnerable populations served by EF grantees.
Despite these challenges, EF grantees remain committed to the communities they serve and are steadfast in enacting their missions. They leverage long-term strategic plans to maintain focus, use grant flexibility to strengthen their financial positions, and draw inspiration from their cohort.
Key lessons from the learning conversations reveal critical insights about effective nonprofit work and grantmaking:
Building trust is earning trust
W&EHF’s consistency and accountability to the Endeavor Fund cohort is what generates trust with grantees, and what allows them to be vulnerable, share critical insights, and ask for support.
Marathons, not sprints
Grantees are building community-informed, long-term strategies, committing themselves to the long-haul work of closing the race and gender wealth gap.
Infrastructure matters
Organizations are collaborating and leveraging collective strengths through backbone support systems and shared infrastructure, recognizing the greater impact of multiple organizations working on concurrent solutions.
Flexibility fuels resilience
Grantees describe these flexible grants as anchor funding that enables innovation, pivots, and organizational stability while leveraging general operating support with other funders.
Community over competition
The Endeavor Fund cohort creates a rare non-competitive space where grantees with long-term support from the same funder can build authentic community with one another.
Organizations need allies to support worker well-being
All Endeavor Fund organizations raised wages, expanded benefits, and iterated organizational culture and practices for worker well-being, yet nonprofit leaders remain stymied in their efforts by restrictive funding conditions.
Beyond-the-grant works best when it is grantee-directed
W&EHF can provide meaningful, tailored, and systemic support by listening and directing additional resources to grantees.
The Endeavor Fund model shows what becomes possible when philanthropy makes bold bets focused on nonprofit and community self-determination, ultimately enabling lasting systemic change. Nonprofits thrive when strengthened and sustained by funders who are willing to listen, adapt, and model trust-based practices throughout the relationship.
When funders commit to learning with and from grantees, relationships deepen and support becomes more responsive and effective. This approach surfaced an unexpected benefit: this reciprocal partnership transforms both funder and grantee, leaving each stronger and more deeply aligned with the communities they serve.
Executive Director Jamie Allison shared the following reflection about the Endeavor Fund’s effect on the Walter & Elise Haas Fund:
While this report centers on what we have learned about the conditions that enable nonprofits to operate in their winning condition, the Endeavor Fund has also fundamentally changed us. Fully embracing trust-based philanthropy required meaningful internal shifts—structural, cultural, and operational. We redesigned roles and job descriptions to emphasize facilitation, learning, and accompaniment. We reorganized our staffing model to be less hierarchical and more collaborative, with program and administrative staff sharing responsibility for advancing the Fund’s work. We created new practices that deepen relationship—office hours, one-on-one support, more frequent touchpoints—responding directly to what grantees say they need. In short, the Endeavor Fund has made us a more adaptive, relational, and community-centered institution. We are better for it.
Access the full report to learn how strategic partnership and flexible funding fuel nonprofit innovation and worker well-being.
