How The Upwork Foundation Keeps it Simple

At The Upwork Foundation, we are driven by a singular mission: to close the global opportunity gap by connecting marginalized communities with life-sustaining knowledge work, no matter their location. Inspired by the Pledge 1% movement, Upwork donated common stock to The Tides Foundation in 2018, in connection with Upwork’s IPO. The Foundation donates between $500k to $1.5M each year to organizations that align with our mission and annual funding objectives.

Since our inception in 2018, we've distributed $4.6 million to initiatives focused on education, upskilling, and work placement. We aim to be strategic in our grantmaking while avoiding the pitfalls of strategic philanthropy, meaning that we want to apply rigor to our grant-making decisions without overcomplicating our theory of change and reporting requirements.

We believe in the tenets of trust-based philanthropy, created to rectify the power imbalance between grantor and grantee and to put more trust in nonprofits to build (and evolve!) their programs around the needs of the communities they serve.

And yet. We have to align our ambitions with our capacity. Our team of two, and our modest philanthropic assets, can only reach so far.

For this reason, we revisited our funding strategy in 2022 with the support of BSR to clarify our values and develop a grant-making strategy that we could both believe in and sustain. What emerged from this process was not a wholly new or novel take on corporate philanthropy, but rather a more intentional approach that prioritized three principles: Keep It Simple, Listen and Learn, and Make Incremental Improvements.

Keeping it simple

We’ve learned from previous years that simplifying our grant-making strategy and processes helps our team as well as the nonprofits who look to us for funding. In 2024, we’re focused on two main tactics to make our grant-making more manageable for everyone.

Low applicant to grantee ratio

On its face, gatekeeping who can apply for a grant seems exclusionary and some funders believe that increasing the number of grant applications they receive makes their process more competitive, and therefore, more rigorous.

However, for funders like us, with finite philanthropic assets, inviting more organizations to apply for funding decreases the chance that any applicant will receive a grant. At Upwork, we limit the number of nonprofits that can apply for funding to both set expectations and save everyone valuable time.

In 2024, our goal is to fund one in three organizations that we invite to submit an application. We make sure to consider those that are not already in our network by enabling any nonprofit to submit a brief interest form on our website. When our grant cycle closes, so too does the form, ensuring that organizations don’t waste time telling us they’re a fit for funding that’s no longer available.

Stress test our application and reporting requirements

We structure our grant application and reporting requirements with one primary question in mind: Do we really care? It sounds dismissive but in practice, it’s a question that helps us think critically about our own motivations and expectations.

Do we care what an organization's mission statement is (or would we rather dig straight into the specifics of their program)? Do we need to know what portion of their income goes to overhead (or do we just want to see a clear approach to managing revenue and costs)? Do we need to dictate which metrics they report on (or can they tell us what metrics matter)?

If we don’t care what the answer is, we won’t ask the question.

Listen and learn

One of the benefits of limiting the number of organizations that can apply for funding is that we can spend more time with each applicant. For example, we offer one-on-one feedback sessions to every applicant after we’ve determined our grantees that year.

Not everyone takes us up on this (57% of the organizations who did not receive funding in 2022 and 2023 booked a session). However, through these conversations we have an opportunity to give specific feedback on how we feel an application could have been improved and share what other factors went into our decisions.

Though these conversations also enable nonprofits to share feedback with us, we wanted to get broader input from our applicants on our grant-making strategy and processes. In March of this year, we surveyed all organizations that applied for funding in the last two years. Not surprisingly, we received more positive feedback from nonprofits that had received funding than from those that did not, but both groups helped us confirm what’s working and identify areas where we can further improve. Of all respondents:

• 91% felt that The Upwork Foundation team was available to answer their questions before, during, and after the grantmaking process.
• 90% felt that our grant application was easier to understand than other applications they’ve submitted. However, several respondents pointed to places in which our application was repetitive and recommended that we offer a webinar to walk applicants through each question.
• 87% felt that our grantmaking strategy was clear, while 13% said that we should be clearer in defining our focus area and the terms we use in our application.
• 69% of respondents that opted for a feedback session after not receiving a grant said that feedback was very useful, 23% that it was somewhat useful, and 8% that it was not useful.

Incremental improvement

Striving for improvement is, of course, our goal. But our focus on incremental change is what defines our approach. Small adaptations are less costly and time-consuming than complete overhauls, allowing us to direct as much time and resources to grant-making as possible.

In practice, this means that our philanthropic strategy and annual grant cycle will look very similar not just next year but until 2028, when the last of our initial equity grant is disbursed. We will, however, make a few adjustments to the way we support applicants in 2024.

This includes setting office hours for applicants, holding feedback sessions earlier in the year, and crafting the sessions around each applicants’ specific questions and concerns. We also plan to implement an annual applicant survey to better track the impact of these incremental changes over time, as well as the shifting needs of our nonprofit partners.

Learn more about The Upwork Foundation’s 2024 grant-making strategy at https://www.upwork.com/about/values/foundation.