My foundation continues to surprise me. It was announced today that RWJF has a YouTube channel. Not a regular YouTube surfer, I checked it out and it's mainly videos that have been produced about grantee work for promotion of the fantastic activities our grantees are doing. Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/user/rwjfvideo and feel free to make comments. Maybe we'll get into the "top views" without the need for piano-playing cats...
Don't Go It Alone!
Attending the Council on Foundation's annual conference always reminds me how important it is to develop a strong professional network. The problems that we are tackling are bigger than any one foundation and it is only through our collective efforts that real change can occur. The days of foundations funding pilot projects that are fully funded by the government to move to scale are long gone. The relationships that were built or renewed during the conference and during the exceptional pre-conference programs this year (the Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy, Association of Black Foundation Executives, and COF's CEO and Trustee pre-summit were all wonderful this year) are critical for my ability to strengthen cutting-edge grantmaking in Minnesota. The reminder that I give to you and to myself is to not wait another year to renew those relationships. Pick up the phone, read a report from one of your colleague foundations, visit an interesting foundation when you travel out of state. The conference is just a step, an opening of opportunity, for the positive change we can create together.
Opportunities seized and lessons learned
Wow! Whoever coined the phrase “time flies” knew what they were talking about. As I write this, it’s been a few days since the end of my year-long internship with the Field Foundation and what a ride it has been! There were lots of hugs and cake to go around and I realized at that moment this was just one aspect of the job I would miss the most: The feeling of family. The small size of the foundation made it the ideal training ground for learning the field. Officially entering the field of philanthropy a year ago I realized how fortunate I was to be able to practice my craft immediately. Knowing how scarce jobs are in our field, the chance to be a program officer from day one was a blessing. I can’t begin to tell you how nervous I was those first few weeks—learning the ins and outs of program work (the organization’s capacity to carry out a program); analyzing a nonprofit’s finances (a surplus may preclude a case for funding-who knew?); arguing for or against funding support in our weekly staff meetings (which sometimes involved very vigorous dialogue); the site visits and the correct way to probe for the answers I need (what’s their sustainability plan for the program?). Not to mention speaking in defense of my grants at the first board meeting (which was nerve-wracking). As is my nature I over-prepared but everything turned out fine. By my third board meeting I was very much at ease.
It has been a robust and exhilarating learning experience. With that education came a comfort and rapport I established with my grantees (yes I will always consider them “my grantees”) which to this day I maintain. Some program officers out there may frown on this “too close for comfort” feeling but allowing myself to develop relationships with organizations facilitated my ability to do my job and do it well. I truly saw this as a partnership and collaboration. Treat others the way you want to be treated and you will never go wrong.
So, as I embark on the next rung of my career ladder (I have an interview scheduled with a major corporation in their philanthropy area), I need to thank the staff at the Field Foundation for their guidance, their nurturing and the confidence they instilled in me to be a better program officer. This truly was a “stretch assignment”. Because of this mentoring my executive director has spoiled me for any other boss! Wherever I land I’ll be okay.
Paulette Pierre is a Program Officer intern at The Field Foundation of Illinois. She has a graduate certificate in Non-Profit Management and Philanthropy from Loyola University and is currently pursuing her MA in Interdisciplinary Studies at DePaul University.
I am all #COF09'd out
Well it is finally over. The Council on Foundations put on an amazing annual conference in Atlanta. I had a great time, met a lot of you, and learned a ton but I can honestly say I have never missed my own bed more than I did yesterday. There is only so much philanthropy talk that one woman can take before she goes mad. That being said I want to give a special thank you to Chris Cardona from TCC Group and Jason Franklin from the 21st Century School Foundation for sharing their perspective and insights from the conference. I'd also like to thank Dan Pallotta-the author of Uncharitable, Hildy Gottlieb- author of the Pollyanna Principles, and GrantCraft for donating books and gift certificates for my twitter contest. Special congrats to @jessamynlau, @danavshelley, @kivie, @mollina, @philaction, @bsttrach, @gilliangonda, and @nachristine who were all winners in the twitter contest. There are three $15 gift certificates to GrantCraft left for the first three commenters who posts a link to their favorite piece of COF09 coverage from any blog or news source in the comment section below.
Great conference coverage was also provides by legions of twitterer and great bloggers including Rosetta, Sean, and the new COF blog, Re-Philanthropy.
Who's Managing the Other 95%, and What are They Charging You?
I've always found compelling the argument that foundations, which put so much attention into how their 5% (or more) payout is invested in grantees' work, could do more to look at how the other 95% of their assets are invested. There are many levels to this issue, and an underattended panel yesterday on "Emerging Liquidity Issues for Foundations" addressed one that is particularly timely: when endowments shrink, how available are investments for grant commitments? As the title of the session implies, in this strange new world where the financial-services industry has been turned inside out, the assumptions funders make about the seemingly simple transaction of turning investments into cash to make a grant may be called into question. The panelists, Jeffrey Haber, Controller of the Commonwealth Fund, and David Nee, Executive Director of the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund, shared a wealth of examples of challenges foundations are facing with regard to liquidity. Certain types of investments are changing the terms of liquidity, sometimes several times within a few months. For foundations invested in hedge funds, concerns arise about when money will be available to convert into cash, and some funds have even begun "metering" - charging more to withdraw after 20% of funds have been withdrawn. These funds are concerned about large withdrawals en masse as investors seek safer havens for their money. Some foundations, faced with having to sell assets whose value is significantly lowered in order to make payout, are trying instead to get short-term loans (!!) to meet their grant commitments, on the idea that the interest paid on the loans would be less than the lost value of selling assets toward the bottom of the market. The experiences of foundations seeking to secure such loans have been "remarkably divergent", according to Haber. Also divergent have been the experiences of foundations with fund-management fees. One audience member shared a successful experience, in which his foundation, which was in the 3rd year of a set of 5-year grant investments, chose to maintain its existing grant commitments rather than try to renegotiate them, and as a result sought savings in other places, such as investment-management fees. They were able to renegotiate these with their investment managers, making it easier for the foundation to meet its existing grant commitments.
These are not topics with which I'm conversant, so the session was a fascinating learning experience (and I don't doubt that I've failed to capture the full nuance of a rich discussion) and an eye-opening look into the types of discussions that are happening at foundations across the country.
The discussion put me in mind of one of my favorite non-philanthropy blogs, Marginal Revolution. It's two economists from George Mason University who write about every topic under the sun, from the quality of Portuguese cuisine to arguments about using fiscal policy to get out of the recession. A recent post revisited the work of J.M. Keynes, the touchstone of thinking on the idea of an economic stimulus whose work first became influential during the Great Depression. The post looks at what is (apparently) a pivotal chapter in Keynes' key work, which points out that all investors buy into a "convention" or assumption that in terms of the economy, "the existing state of affairs will continue indefinitely, except in so far as we have specific reasons to expect a change." All the rosy projections of the intergenerational transfer of wealth a few years ago were based on that convention, indeed much of our economy and society have bought into this convention. But the last eight months have shown us what the world is like when the convention no longer applies. The Marginal Revolution post is a bit of an uphill climb, but worth it. Key passage, directly from Keynes:
"It has been, I am sure, on the basis of some such procedure as this that our leading investment markets have been developed. But it is not surprising that a convention, in an absolute view of things so arbitrary, should have its weak points. It is its precariousness which creates no small part of our contemporary problem of securing sufficient investment."
Precariousness, indeed. As they like to say on Marginal Revolution, these are "sentences to ponder." What would it look like to plan philanthropic investments for a world where the convention of "business as usual, indefinitely" doesn't necessarily hold?
Chris Cardona is a Consultant at TCC Group, a thirty-year-old consulting firm that provides strategic planning, evaluation, grantmaking services, and program design and implementation to foundations, corporate giving programs, and nonprofits.