When We Become "The Man"

I had the pleasure of attending the Next Gen party last night at the COF Conference. It is always a great opportunity to catch up with colleagues, eat some great food, and pick up Emerging Practitionersin Philanthropy S.W.A.G. This year the party was hosted by COF as part of their work with the Next Generation Task Force to institutionalize the Council's commitment to next gen issues. I applaud the Council on this work to move this work from the sidelines to the core but a small piece of me misses being the outsider. In previous years, EPIP especially, made an effort to bring young people together in an authentic way. Connections were made and support was offered. The EPIP Next Generations parties had titles like "An Intergenerational Transfer of...Fun" and more "emerged" foundations leaders would attend the events as a show of support for the next generation of foundation leadership. It always felt like a young people's revolution to get a place at the table. This year was a little different because we have a place at the table. The Next Generation Task Force is a long term commitment that extends outside of getting more young people to the annual conference and more and more young people are on regular Council committees. I ask that all of the groups that have been working on this issue for so long like EPIP, Resource Generation and 21/64 take some time to appreciate all that they have done to get the field to this point but I ask all of us to not get too comfortable with progress. There is still more work to be done to have authentic leadership from young people in the field and a fun party with fake bouncers to reinforce the "hip jazz club" vibe is just one step in many.

Time of Change or Time of Crisis?

Throughout the COF Conference there has been two competing themes. One theme sounds a little bit like this "it will take most foundations until 2017 to get to 2007 asset levels, assuming a healthy (and unlikely) 10% return." The room groans and starts scribbling down numbers. People compare their investment strategies and then remind each other that foundations have a lot more to give than silly things like money. We convene and train and release reports and are a lot of fun to have around at a dinner party. "We can still be relevant", we cry. We commit to making a 6% payout, forgetting to mention to ourselves and to grantees that 6% this year is still, much, much less in actual grant dollars than 5% last year. We return to our hotel rooms disheartened and call our CFO to figure out how much we can cut from our budget, so that perpetuity doesn't actually mean, when the money runs out in 2015.

The second theme of the conference is change. There is excitment in the air that some amazing changes are happening politically, socially, and economically. We have a federal administration that is asking the philanthropic sector to offer solutions to our country's most pressing needs. Stimulus dollars are coming to our communities and foundations across the country are coming to the table to make sure that the new dollars don't exacerbate current inequalities, foundations'  traditional Lone Ranger approach to grantmaking has been replaced with a renewed spirit of collaboration and an honest look at the root causes of systemic issues, and economic challenges have made all of us look for new ways to streamline and improve our business model. Each of these changes will improve the way that our institutions interact with our grantees, our government, and our communities.

Now isn't the time to cry over what we were, it is the time to rise up to the potential of what we can become.

To Change the World, Start With One

 

In Tuesday's session on Philanthropy's Role in Linking Social and Personal Transformation, the transformation of individuals was described as a central strategy to creating social change. Foundations often shy away from the "soft" side of change, but by ignorning the indovidual you risk developing unsustainable movements. The speakers described how their organizations created an environment where personal transformation is nurtured.

ForestEthics has taken a long term view when it is planning staff development acticities. The organizations invests in communications training, meditation techniques, and intensive leadership development programs. The purpose of this investment is to ensure that the movement has sustainable leaders. For this organization, the professional development budget of staff is one of the last expenses to be cut.

Ng'ethe Maina, Executive Director of Social Justice Leadership, described how his organziation engages multiple staff members from 50+ organizations that participate in multi-year development cohorts. This wide and deep model ensures that change sticks.

Indivdual transformation is key to organizational and community transformation. By supporting the development of sustainable leadership, philanthropy can have a lasting impact.

Innovation among Affinity Groups - What's Your Role?

I arrived on Saturday and spent the first 36 hours making the rounds of affinity group events: ABFE, AAPIP, HIP, and the "All for One" reception sponsored by 17 affinity groups. As someone who worked for many years in the affinity group field, I enjoyed the chance to catch up with old friends, and to reflect on how the AG movement has evolved. At a time when collaboration is more of a watchword than ever, affinity groups have special relevance, as they have always held the promise of making collaboration real. But that promise can be hard to realize. The traditional business model for affinity groups has been a combination of foundation grants and member dues (which are usually paid by the foundations at which members worked), and as the number of national foundations with portfolios dedicated to building the field of philanthropy began to dwindle several years ago, AGs began to feel the pinch. In the last 10 years, there's been significant turnover in the AG world, as some prominent groups (National Network of Grantmakers and Women & Philanthropy) ceased to exist as independent entities and a host of new, unstaffed AGs emerged. The funder fervor for fellowship and mutual support has hardly dimmed, but the extent to which such networks can exist sustainably as independent 501c3's has come into question.

So it's been exciting to see how a number of long-standing affinity groups have turned challenge into opportunity and developed innovative ways of layering original programming onto their core work of convening funders with mutual interests. The examples I know best include Funders for Lesbian and Gay Issues, which in the 90s (when it was called the Working Group) developed a national partnership program with community foundations to help them incubate LGBT field-of-interest funds. Hispanics in Philanthropy followed soon after with the Funders' Collaborative for Strong Latino Communities, which leveraged a national membership network through a matching-funds model to multiply the level of funding targeted to grassroots Latino groups. (Full disclosure: I worked for HIP during this time.) And then Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy developed a National Gender & Equity Campaign and a civic engagement fund for AMEMSA communities (my new favorite acronym, worth a google), and began incubating and hosting giving circles. More recently, the Association of Black Foundation Executives launched a fellowship program for emerging leaders that has brought together some of the best and brightest new leaders of color and provided coaching, convening, and support for original research project (I think that's how I met Trista, in fact, when she was an ABFE Fellow).

All of these projects - and there are many more from groups like EPIP and others - have in common the idea of moving beyond the traditional business model of a membership association to leveraging a network of committed funders in pursuit of value-added philanthropic projects. So it was interesting to see the ebb and flow of energy at this year's pre-conference AG events. Of course attendance at the conference overall is down, but for some groups the size of the rooms in which they help events were quite small compared to years past, while for others new programming generated record crowds. Innovation is hard work, and it can be difficult to focus on the new at a time of economic downturn and the threat of retrenchment among funders. But the best AGs have weathered crises before, and I'm looking forward to seeing what forms of innovation this new moment inspires in affinity groups.

But they can't do it alone. All of us who are members and friends of affinity groups need to keep supporting these networks and providing the ideas and initiative that fuel innovation. How have affinity groups helped you in your professional development? What ideas do you have for they can stay relevant and fresh at a time when travel and professional development budgets are being slashed?

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. He is a former staff member of Hispanics in Philanthropy and a former consultant to Women & Philanthropy, Disability Funders Network, and the Joint Affinity Groups.