Peer Skill Share

The Pierce Family Foundation has structured a unique program called Peer Skill Share, designed to invest in the professional skills of nonprofit employees, who are not only serving their current employer agency, but are likely to continue as skilled workers in the nonprofit sector. We see this program as not only building the capacity of specific agencies at this time, but also building the capacity of the sector overall, by our providing professional development to individual nonprofit leaders.
 
The Foundation arranges for and supports nonprofits help each other via "skill share" sessions where grantees can get one-on-one advice from peers on specific needs. Since there is time involved on both sides, PFF offers both the volunteer trainer and the trainee a $200 stipend, to get together for a couple of hours at one agency or the other, and address the requested topic. To determine needs and matches, twice each year the Foundation surveys its grantees and asks them to name two or three things they could use advice on or help with from a peer, and two or three areas where they have expertise which they would enjoy sharing. (Agencies do not have to offer something themselves in order to request a colleague's help or time). Foundation staff then review the responses, and make the obvious matches simply by letting the organization with a particular need know who responded to the survey with a corresponding type of expertise. When a need is expressed that does not have a corresponding offer, sometimes Foundation staff will reach out to a particular resource person our staff knows might make a good match on a requested topic; sometimes the list of un-matched requests is circulated to grantees overall, asking if anyone can respond to any of the open "We Could Use Help With..." requests.
 
Once matched, it is up to the two organizations to arrange a date and work out details on their own.  The sessions usually last one or two hours, structured as "house calls." Once completed, the Foundation simply requires a one- or two-paragraph email reporting on the session. As soon as we receive that feedback, we cut the stipend checks to each Grantee Skill Share partner agency.
 
Topics selected by grantees have been wide-ranging and matches have often been between organizations that might otherwise not cross paths. The Peer Skill Share program enables grantees to get the kind of help they most value--focused, tailored to their specific need or to an individual staff person, typically on-site at their own home base--and compensated rather than costing something For the Foundation, it's a low-cost way to provide targeted technical assistance; we see an important additional benefit coming from the relationships that are developed across nonprofits, enabling organizations to become much more familiar with each other than they might otherwise be, and with their counterpart in staff positions at other agencies.
 
Some of the topics that have been the focus of Grantee Skill Shares have included: