Tuesday, November 10, 2026

Ford announced on November 9 that at least half of its annual program grantmaking budget will be three-to-five-year general operating support, and that starting in 2028 it will commit 5% of that budget to institutional strengthening, an eightfold increase.

The change builds on its BUILD initiative and is part of the foundation's Innovation Agenda.

Luc Athayde-Rizzaro will become director of grantmaking excellence in January 2027.

Cathleen Clerkin, Candid's associate vice president of research, will lead Sector Forward, which is meant to pair Candid's data with research, training, and a shared learning agenda.

An outside governance board of experts and the first "big questions" are to be named in the coming months.

Born moves from directing the foundation's Democracy, Rights, and Governance initiative into a dedicated AI role covering policy, governance, and implications for existing grantmaking.

She previously directed the Hewlett Foundation's Cyber Initiative and was founding director of Stanford's Cyber Policy Center.

Ben Chou remains interim director of the democracy program while Packard recruits a successor.

The sold-out Technology Association of Grantmakers conference runs November 10 to 13 at the Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile, with Wednesday pre-conference sessions on AI for philanthropy leaders, community foundations, cybersecurity, and a Plinth-sponsored hackathon.

User groups are scheduled for Foundant (GrantLifecycleManager), GivingData, SmartSimple, and Salesforce.

The opening plenary, with Grantbook CEO Nikki Barrett, shares the first public insights from the 2026 State of Philanthropy Tech survey, Thursday's keynote is cybersecurity researcher Alissa Knight, and TAG2027 is set for November 15 to 17, 2027.

The November Grantmaking Post says managers can configure progress-report fields to store a separate response for each submission, so quarterly or milestone updates no longer overwrite earlier answers.

Historical Submissions now include a rejection-reason column and any comments recorded at the time.

Coming later: GrantsConnect account-wide contact transfers, moving a request to another program, and Outcomes fields on new forms.

Foundant, GivingData, and SmartSimple each have Wednesday morning user groups, with a Salesforce group as well.

On November 9 the Human Rights Foundation announced its second 2026 grant round from this fund.

Awards include Skyhook Professor, an offline model meant to deliver uncensored information into North Korea; work to run open-weight models privately on personal devices; Enclavia, which aims to make trusted execution environments easier to use for sensitive AI; and support for a Berlin hackathon hosted by the Anti-Corruption Foundation.

llmfit is a free, open-source helper that diagnoses a computer's hardware and recommends compatible open-weight models.

DS4, from open-source developer Salvatore Sanfilippo, is designed to run compressed versions of powerful open-weight models locally.

Enclavia focuses on running applications inside trusted execution environments so material is not exposed to the cloud provider.

The San Francisco Standard reported on November 7 that six of 10 staff in the Mayor's Office of Innovation lost their jobs on Friday.

The $7 million Bloomberg Philanthropies grant was described as the largest Bloomberg had given to a city innovation team and was meant to expand the office.

The city said no positions have been eliminated and that new job descriptions will be posted, but it has not said whether it met grant conditions, received a second payment of up to $2.38 million that was scheduled for November 1, or notified Bloomberg of the personnel change.

The opening plenary, with the first public 2026 State of Philanthropy Tech findings, is Wednesday.

Candid, What Black-led Nonprofits Actually Need: Part 2.

The first full look at an integrated community-foundation platform, following a TAG preview.

Virtual.

Register for live or on-demand.

The session is free.

Grants are $500K-$2M.

Cycle 1 2027 letters of inquiry are due.

Open session on AI governance, cybersecurity, and data trends.

The OMB grant-rule ban tied to the stopgap spending law is still scheduled to expire.

Watch Congress for an extension.

A project grant pays for a defined set of activities and usually comes with a budget, a work plan, and reports tied to those activities.

General operating support, sometimes called unrestricted funding, can be used for staff, rent, systems, or programs as the grantee decides.

Multiyear general operating support locks that flexibility in for several years so the organization can plan.

Ford will put at least half of its annual program grantmaking into three-to-five-year general operating support, which makes flexible support the default rather than a special program.

Starting in 2028, another 5% of the program budget is reserved for capacity needs, including support that can go to the wider ecosystem, such as legal help, digital security, and financial health.

If more awards move to general operating support, forms, payment schedules, and report templates should change too.

Asking for a project budget and a quarterly activity report on an unrestricted grant recreates the old burden.

Know the current mix of restricted and unrestricted awards, and decide whether report and payment templates should differ by grant type.

TAG this week is the time to compare notes on progress-report data models, after Blackbaud described multi-response fields, and on who owns AI policy, after Packard made it a standing advisor role.

The San Francisco and Bloomberg case is a reminder that personnel and scope changes may need funder notice before they happen.

Follow Candid's Sector Forward board and "big questions" once they are named, and treat that as a shared learning feed rather than a one-off report.