Guessing What the Funder Wants

Not long ago, while sorting through old files, I came across a document from earlier in my career that I had not looked at in years. It reminded me of an incomplete recipe, the kind where the ingredients are listed but key instructions are missing, leaving you to guess at the steps and timing. That feeling of trying to make something work without clear guidance would later become familiar to me on both sides of the table: as someone who has held the power to fund, and as someone who has depended on it.

The document contained draft responses to questions submitted by potential applicants to a request for proposals I had helped prepare. At the time, the exercise felt routine. Applicants had asked dozens of questions, and our job was to respond clearly and consistently before the submission deadline.

Reading the document again years later, I noticed something I had not fully appreciated then.

What I was seeing had a name I did not yet have at the time. I have since come to think of it as philanthropic mystique: a condition in which the real criteria for funding decisions remain only partially visible - implied through tone, emphasis, and omission rather than stated directly. It is not the same as simple opacity because opacity is a closed door. Mystique is a door left slightly ajar, inviting interpretation while withholding enough that only some applicants can read what lies beyond. It rarely emerges from indifference. More often, it is caution - a desire to be fair, to avoid steering, to preserve the appearance of openness. Sometimes it is something more structural: foundations operate under reputational pressures, board scrutiny, and concerns about being seen as endorsing the wrong actors or ideas. In that context, specificity can feel like exposure. Broad, elastic language preserves discretion. Ambiguity becomes a protective layer - not because funders want to mislead, but because clarity carries its own risks. But its effects are real, and they are not evenly distributed.

The questions themselves clustered into predictable categories. Some asked about scope -geographies and target populations. Others sought clarity on programmatic boundaries or approaches. Some focused on monitoring, learning, and adaptive management. Others addressed application structure and compliance. A final set tried to understand how proposals would actually be assessed.

In many ways, our responses were strong.

We were administratively clear. We explained page limits, eligibility rules, annexes, and geographic flexibility with authority. Applicants could easily see what would make a proposal non-compliant. We also emphasized flexibility and co-development, signaling that technical approaches and geographic focus could evolve through collaboration after selection.

But another pattern became visible on rereading the document.

Many answers were careful but they were also non-answers. When applicants asked practical design questions, we often referred them back to earlier responses or general sections of the RFP. We avoided signaling strong preferences about how proposals would be judged or which trade-offs mattered most. Even when questions touched on substantive issues, such as the role of nutrition-sensitive agriculture or the meaning of district saturation, our responses stayed high level.

At the time, this restraint felt responsible. It preserved procedural fairness and avoided steering applicants too directly.

Looking back, I see something else.

Organizations with prior experience working with us - those who had been through earlier rounds, who had relationships with program staff, who had absorbed the same unstated preferences in other spaces - would have recognized the signals. For them, our responses were incomplete in ways they knew how to complete. For organizations newer to the field, or to this institution, the signals were largely unreadable. They were left to optimize for what felt safest rather than what they truly believed. The playing field was not level, and our commitment to procedural neutrality had done little to change that. If anything, it had obscured the tilt.

This is where mystique takes hold. When expectations remain only partially visible, organizations begin to optimize for interpretation rather than insight. They try to decode what the funder might reward: which phrases feel safest, which approaches carry the least risk, which uncertainties are better left unspoken. Proposals grow more cautious and dissent softens. Learning is reframed as success. Energy that could be spent grappling with complex systems is redirected toward guessing how decisions will be made.

It is like trying to cook from an incomplete recipe. The ingredients are listed, but key instructions are missing. How long should something cook? What texture are you aiming for? What trade-offs matter if time or ingredients are limited? Experienced cooks may infer the answers from context while others are left guessing. And only the cook bears the cost if the dish falls flat, while the author of the recipe remains elsewhere, tasting only the final result.

Over time, this shapes behavior across the field. Innovation becomes cautious. Proposals begin to resemble one another. Organizations learn, quietly, that success depends as much on interpreting funders as on understanding the realities they are trying to change.

The irony is that much of the philanthropic and development sector now speaks openly about shifting power. Yet mystique quietly preserves it. When expectations remain implicit, it is grantees - not funders - who absorb the cost of uncertainty. And the cost falls hardest on those with the least accumulated knowledge of how a particular funder thinks.

Funders hold power because they control resources. Humility does not require pretending otherwise. In fact, humility may require acknowledging that power openly and using it responsibly.

One way to do that is through clarity - though not the kind that scripts answers or narrows the range of acceptable ideas. Clarity in this sense means reducing unnecessary guesswork about how power is exercised. It often appears in small, specific choices: naming which questions matter most; being explicit about trade-offs; explaining how decisions will be made, not just who will make them. It means distinguishing between flexibility in design and silence about how power will be exercised. Flexibility can coexist with guidance. When preferences remain entirely implicit, flexibility becomes something only the experienced can use well - and what looks like openness quietly becomes another form of advantage for those who already know how the game is played.

Clarity also involves narrating power rather than pretending it is absent. Funders can acknowledge real constraints - board mandates, risk tolerance, time horizons, budget limits - instead of allowing them to operate invisibly. When constraints are named, organizations can design accordingly. When they are hidden, organizations compensate through speculation.

None of this guarantees better ideas. But it does change where effort is directed - toward the substance of the work rather than the decoding of signals.

I have since come to think of philanthropic mystique in simple terms: it is what happens when organizations spend more time interpreting funders than understanding the systems they are trying to change. The cost is not just wasted effort. It is a field that learns, slowly and without quite noticing, to prize legibility to power over honest engagement with the problems it set out to solve.

Humility in philanthropy begins with recognizing this dynamic and choosing clarity instead.

When I look back at that old document now, I can see the care we took to be fair and compliant. I can also see the ambiguity we left behind - and who it left behind with it. The organization we eventually selected had worked with us before. They knew how to read the silences. I am not sure that is a coincidence.

Like an incomplete recipe, the choices we leave unspoken shape how the work unfolds - and who bears the taste of success or failure.