In “Keeping in Touch, Building Trust – A Funders Report from the Virtual Front Lines,” Jennifer Negron, program officer at The Pinkerton Foundation, shares the importance of building relationships with the people and organizations they help fund and how the organization approached virtual “site visits” in the midst of the pandemic.
We immediately assured our grantees that we understood the need for all the changes and that we would work with them as they reinvented their programs. Internally, we knew we had to change, too, but we struggled with how to stay close to our grantees when we could no longer see them face-to-face. What would a virtual “site visit” look like? How could we continue to build those all-important personal relationships that lead to positive outcomes? We certainly don’t claim to have all the answers, but what follows are a few strategies we have implemented to allow us to keep in touch with our grantees and build meaningful relationships that inform our work.