In the past 4 or 5 days I’ve gotten countless emails from foundations.

Emails telling me that their staffs are working hard from home, that they understand what I’m going through, and that they’re happy to extend my deadline by a week, and oh look at this they’ll even help out by creating a brand new donor advised fund, competing directly with me for donors, and creating an undoubted set of guidelines, hoops, and qualifications for me to have access.

I don’t know how to tell you this, but I don’t care where your staff is working from. Everyone is working from home; you telling me about your staff’s hardships adds nothing to the conversation.

I also don’t need you to tell me how hard it is. My income just fell off a fucking cliff, all our actors are out of work because they’re servers because our society thinks artists need to suffer, no one can visit their elderly mothers, and it’s entirely possible that no one will ever feel comfortable going to the theater again.

But, gee, thanks for the one week extension on the grant that I may or may not get sometime next fall.

Why have I not seen a SINGLE foundation offer the best, and obvious oh my god, solution, which is to suspend all applications through June, or possibly through the end of the year, and to upend your giving calendars AND JUST GET MONEY INTO OUR HANDS.

Arts clients are going to have a very unpleasant landing–they fell off a cliff, remember? And they don’t know how far away the bottom is. Social service clients are struggling with the need to deliver services to clients without access to technology. It’s a mess.

The best thing the philanthropic community could do for them is put me, the grantwriter, out of business and just send renewals without the need for elaborate applications.

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