Evolving Organizational Ties in Postsecondary Grantmaking: Drivers of Philanthropic Networks

Abstract:Foundations impact education by investing in advocacy nonprofits or by donating directly to universities. Yet, research is underdeveloped exploring the organizational processes guiding philanthropic granting networks at the state level. Using grant data from the most active foundations in Michigan, we employed separable temporal exponential random graph modeling to investigate how financial relationships between foundations and grantees change over time. Findings demonstrated that ties are greatly influenced by how many grant contracts an organization has, with many more likely to create and maintain relationships if they had many previous ones. Moreover, we found differences in the ways national and place-based funders operated along with growing field-level support for intermediaries.