Recoverable Grants @ The Boston Foundation

Reimagine Your DAF. Multiply Your Impact.

Many of our community’s most pressing social and environmental challenges are also some of the most expensive to address. Channeling resources to these challenges requires us to think beyond traditional grantmaking. The Boston Foundation’s Recoverable Grant Portfolios allow donors to have more impact with the portion of their donor-advised fund (DAF) invested for long-term charitable giving.

Our portfolios have allowed donors to easily support diversified sets of pre-vetted, local organizations advancing equity in our community via recoverable grants, which are contributions with the potential for repayment back to a DAF and that allow the re-granting of funds in the future.

A “third way” to deploy your DAF

Recoverable grants change the traditional, binary paradigm of “giving from” and “investing” your DAF, expanding your philanthropic toolkit. They allow you to support the impact areas you care about most while enabling you potentially to reuse those charitable dollars in the future.

High social returns alongside potential return of capital

Recoverable grants are a uniquely valuable form of charitable capital that allows impact-driven organizations to expand their reach to marginalized communities and individuals that have been historically disinvested. Organizations in our portfolios have been vetted to ensure a strong track record of returning capital and achieving impact objectives.

Learn how to make recoverable grants part of your portfolio.

This webinar for Boston Foundation donors lays out the opportunity recoverable grants provide, and how you can make them a part of your philanthropic portfolio.

Hear from other donors and recoverable grant recipients:

  • “We’re really excited about recoverable grants because it unleashes flexible, low-cost capital allowing us to provide capital to businesses who otherwise don’t have access to it.”

    Glynn Lloyd, MCCI, Recoverable Grant Recipient

  • “Recoverable grants provide indispensable working capital to the organizations we support and allow us to deploy much larger amounts than we would otherwise.”

    Karen Ansara, Donor

  • “I see recoverable grants as an opportunity to have a multiplier effect on my giving–allowing my dollars to be used over and over. The recoverable grant portfolios have allowed me to expand my philanthropy and support many more organizations and people in the issues I’m passionate about, but would not have been able to do by myself.”

    Jimmy Ellis, Donor

  • “The risk is really in not doing the work. Recoverable grants allow us to fill a capital gap in the community and get dollars into the hands of people who have a vision for their neighborhood.”

    Moddie Turay, MHIC, Recoverable Grant Recipient

  • “As I’ve gained experience with these products, and my focus on sustainable philanthropy, I’ve shifted my mindset to invest my DAF along a spectrum. All investing has risk, return, and has impact – whether positive or negative. I’ve realized how much more positive impact I can realize by investing in between" traditional investments and grant making.”

    Dwight Poler, Donor

  • "Recoverable grants increase your charitable mileage by giving you a chance to recycle capital… while making modest grants periodically, I got frustrated seeing money sitting in our DAF and wanted to make a bigger impact sooner."

    Paul Gannon, Donor