Looking past the overhead, funding the infrastructure
Nonprofit organizations’ fundraising success is all too often measured on one too-highly-weighted metric: the ratio of program expense versus administrative expense, or what is often referred to as overhead.
“What that metric actually measures is how little an organization invests in itself,” wrote one fundraising expert earlier this month. “Overhead is not the opposite of impact. Overhead is the infrastructure of impact.”
At Texas 2036, we’re living proof.
Our partners support us in many ways, with both restricted and unrestricted gifts. Increasingly, however, they choose to give in a way that trusts us to deploy resources where they matter most, not just to programs, but to the people, systems and expertise that make those programs possible. That kind of generosity has changed what we’re capable of.
Unrestricted support has allowed us to be nimble, responding to emerging priorities as they have arisen. It has allowed us to deepen our policy bench significantly, adding advisors across energy, health and economic mobility, and education and workforce.
We’ve also expanded our research and data analysis capacity, bringing on additional senior research analysts whose work sharpens everything we produce. Heading into our second decade, these aren’t administrative line items. They are the foundation of our influence.
Building out capacity through unrestricted gifts
Unrestricted giving funds the infrastructure of an organization, and at Texas 2036, our entire mission centers on the infrastructure of Texas itself. Education. Healthcare. Transportation. Workforce development. Water and power. Disaster resiliency. Fiscal responsibility and government accountability.
When you invest in our capacity, you’re investing in the people and systems working to strengthen the very foundations every Texan depends on.
Our President and CEO David W. Leebron often talks about “Return on Impact,” the idea that every dollar invested in Texas 2036 should translate into smart, data-informed public policy that reaches Texans at scale. Thousands of Texans on some issues. Hundreds of thousands on others. Millions, when the moment and the work align.
That return doesn’t come from programs alone. It comes from an organization built to deliver impact, one with the talent to understand complex systems, the analytical rigor to produce credible research, and the policy expertise to turn evidence into action.
When you fund the infrastructure, you’re not funding overhead; you’re funding what’s possible for Texas as we approach our bicentennial and enter our third century.
What if the most powerful gift you ever made was the one that funded everything else?
The donors who will shape Texas’ next decade aren’t just funding what exists today. They’re investing in the capacity to tackle what’s coming, challenges we can already see and ones we can’t yet anticipate. To those who already give with that kind of trust: your fingerprints are on everything we produce, and your partnership means more than we can adequately express.