A challenge for philanthropy is balancing two opposing approaches to grantmaking. The first emphasizes multipronged efforts at solving a problem through focused and coordinated portfolios of grants. This more centralized approach usually requires a high degree of involvement by a foundation's staff in the design of programs. The second approach is to listen to the field and respond to ideas that flow from potential grantees. This approach encourages local solutions to local problems.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has primarily followed the more centralized approach, at least in its national programs. However, even when the Foundation determines the area that it plans to fund, it seeks to incorporate locally generated ideas by inviting local agencies to send ideas for projects they think are important.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Local Funding Partnerships (LFP) was founded twenty years ago when an esteemed former staff member of the Foundation, Terry Keenan, recognized this need for a new model of grantmaking: partnering a national foundation with ambitious local funders and organizations, "No big foundation had ever done anything like this. But who knows better what’s needed and where it's needed than the local foundations?"

LFP falls squarely in the camp of bottom-up grant making. It is a collaborative effort between local foundations and RWJF where both partners fund worthy projects developed at the local level.

The history of Local Funding Partnerships offers lessons for philanthropy about the importance of local ownership and control of programs, developing open lines of communications among partners with sometimes differing agendas, and establishing equality in relations among people working for large national foundations and smaller local philanthropies.

2000 – Volume III (chapter 9) tells the story of the beginning of the Local Initiative Funding Partners program.