Opinion Blog
| May 8, 2008 03:00 PM |
Vision, Leadership, and PartnershipOn Tuesday evening, the famed cartoonist Milt Gross made an appearance at the Council on Foundations annual conference. In a session called Strategic Philanthropy: Theory and Practice, the speaker Paul Brest, president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, flashed on the monitor a cartoon of howling wolves gathered at the edge of a cliff. One of the wolves had taken a break from howling to ask his companions, “My question: Are we making a difference?” The attendees at this week’s philanthropy summit in Washington D.C. met up to ask themselves the same question. As a blogger, I wasn’t privy to many of the intimate conversations among colleagues and close friends in the foundation world. I didn’t hear the uncertainties that were no doubt expressed in whispered voices between conference sessions and at the gala events. Instead, I heard bold proclamations on what it takes to make a difference: namely, the right combination of vision, leadership, and partnership. In his presentation about strategic philanthropy, Brest presented an outline of his foundation’s approach to all three points. For vision, Brest said a foundation must first establish a viable theory of change. “If your theories of change are incorrect, your interventions will only be right by accident,” warned Brest.
He had just finished explaining a case study in New York City in which police implemented a program to reduce crime by arresting people for petty offences. Crime went down, which was the desired effect. During the same time, however, crime also dropped in cities that had not implemented a similar program. In this case, the desired impact may not have been linked to the city’s theory of change. Brest went on to discuss the importance of maintaining an “expected return attitude,” in which every effort is made to assess an intervention’s cost and likelihood of success. Doing so permits grantmakers to recognize and mitigate risks; justify large expenditures with the prospect of high returns; and be candid if and when failure sets in. He also emphasized the need for complete “logic models” to explain how change happens and evaluation criteria to measure success along the way. According to Brest, failure to demonstrate leadership in these respects can result in wasted money, or worse, “unanticipated bad consequences.” In seeking partners, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation looks for grantees and co-funders who share a similar theory of change and demonstrate willingness to candidly assess each program during and following an intervention. Brest’s professionalism commanded respect in the room full of his peers and colleagues. Quiet in his delivery and precise with his words, I was left thinking that calmness is king in vision, leadership, and partnership. On the following day, “Teacher of the Year” and bestselling author Ron Clark tore this hypothesis to pieces during his closing plenary of the leadership summit. Clark, who jumps rope “double-dutch” with his middle school students, delivered half of his speech while literally jumping from table to table in the closing plenary ballroom. I have never seen a more hyperactive successful adult. In an abandoned factory turned state-of-the-art school, Clark has setup a scholastic program that transforms Atlanta’s poorest school children into over achievers. How? By mixing together the same ingredients that Paul Brest documented with Pentagon restraint. Clark’s school has honed and implemented an accurate theory of change. That is children perform best when their instructors have high expectations, maintain rules, believe in their students’ futures, and serve as living role models of creativity, innovation, and free thinking. Clark has created a partnership with his students, their parents, and school staff by winning them over to this theory. Together, they are reaching unlikely heights of academic achievement and preparing “a new generation for leadership in a globalized world.” Clark’s description of his school in Atlanta reminded me of a quote I heard earlier in the day. Andrew Gillum, director of the Young Elected Officials Network commented on the electoral success of young people of color, including himself. “We did the impossible, because we didn’t know what was supposed to be impossible.” At the end of Ron Clark’s Broadway performance renamed a closing plenary, the audience of more than 1,000 grantmakers gave him a standing ovation that extended for minutes. It sounded like wolves howling. They stood up to applaud the fact that at least one among them was making a difference by harnessing the right combination of vision, leadership and partnership.
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| May 7, 2008 12:00 PM |
Bloggers Cover the Council on Foundations Annual ConferenceThe Council on Foundations deserves two thumbs up for putting together a thought-provoking leadership summit that attracted philanthropists and foundation staff from across the globe. Unfortunately, their effort to communicate what was happening at the event to people who could not attend was less successful. The homepage of the Council on Foundations does not feature a single headline about the conference. Visitors can click on a text link that redirects them to Philanthropy Today, the Council on Foundations website devoted to covering the event. This website features pictures with captions that read “undefined.” The video section features a screenshot of a media player with the words, “Coming soon.” On the up side, visitors can treat themselves to PDF versions of the conference’s daily print newsletter. Contrast the coverage described above with an anecdote from Kassie Rohrbach, director of the Energy Action Coalition and a panelist on a session this morning called The Millenaials and the Moment: Youth Engagement and Leadership Development. As the organizer of the PowerShift 2007 Conference, her organization provided video training and gave cameras to interested attendees so they could cover the event using social media. The result is this powerful set of videos and this collection of images, created entirely from attendee-generated footage of PowerShift 2007. If I could make one point, it would be that the Council on Foundations can learn from the communications strategies of its youngest members. So what are non-attendees interested in the summit to do? There are two solutions. (1) Sean Stannard Stockton of Tactical Philanthropy, a leading philanthropy blog, organized a blogging team to cover the conference. A group of us has posted more than 30 blog entries, with more on the way. Here are links to the most recent posts:
(2) The Chronicle of Philanthropy also sent a blogger delegation to cover the conference. They have published a Council on Foundations notebook for the last three days. Here are the most recent blog posts from The Chronicle of Philanthropy:
The Tactical Philanthropy and Chronicle of Philanthropy blogging teams have done most of the heavy lifting in getting news out about the conference. And yet, not all bottom-up coverage of an event like this one works out 100 percent. Those of us covering the summit have added the COF2008 tag to our blog entries. Technorati, a tag-based aggregator of blog entries, has confused the Council on Foundations 2008 conference with the Czech Open Fighting 2008 competition, which also used the COF2008 tag. As a result, all of the blog entries from the Tactical Philanthropy blog team now appear alongside videos of the Czech Open Fighting event. I guess crowd-sourcing has its limits.
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| May 6, 2008 02:00 PM |
Philanthropy 2.0: A Video Q&AYesterday at the Council on Foundation’s annual conference, the session entitled Philanthropy 2.0 featured a star-studded panel. The founders of DonorsChoose, Facebook Causes, and The Motley Fool were joined by the East Coast Development Manager of Kiva.org and the Director of Social Investment for The Case Foundation. Roughly 150 people attended the session, choosing Philanthropy 2.0 over a host of other really awesome sessions. Session facilitator Sharna Goldseker, vice president of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, took a quick survey of the audience. The attendees consisted of 30 percent family foundations, 40 percent community foundations, 5 percent corporate foundations, 10 percent private foundations, and 15 percent foundation consultants and advisors. For the first hour of the session, the presenters showcased what they have been doing with web 2.0 and philanthropy. For those who aren’t familiar with the platforms listed above: DonorsChoose.org – A donation site that connects teachers who need supplies for classroom projects with citizen philanthropists interested in funding the projects. (67,400 donors, $1.2 million since 2000) Facebook Causes – A popular application on Facebook that permits anyone to start a fundraiser on behalf of a registered 501c3 organization. (12 million users, $2.5 million raised since 2007) Kiva.org – A community of advocates of micro-finance that permits individuals to make loans to small-business owners in the developing world. (270,000 lenders, $28 million lent since 2004) The Motley Fool – A web 2.0 financial investment community that also runs an annual program in which investors make donations to a select list of charities.
The Case Foundation – A family foundation started by AOL founder Steve Case that has invested heavily in the tools that make micro-philanthropy possible and has run several contests that encourage individuals to become citizen philanthropists. After the presentations, the conversation gave way to a “Q&A” session, in which foundation representatives asked the panel how philanthropy 2.0 could impact their own work. Here is a video of the Q&A. (From left to right: Michael D. Smith, director of social investment, The Case Foundation; Rupa Modi, East Coast development manager, Kiva.org; Tom Gardner, co-founder, The Motley Fool; Charles Best, founder, DonorsChoose.org; Joe Green, founder, Facebook Causes)
Yesterday morning I also attended a session entitled Social Entrepreneurship: New Approaches to Changing the World. The session featured several notable speakers including: Bill Drayton, CEO and chair of ASHOKA; Brian Trelstad, chief investment officer for Acumen Fund; Erich Broksas, vice president of business development for The Case Foundation; J. Gregory Dees, professor of the Practice of Social Entrepreneurship at the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship; and Jed Emerson, project manager of Strategy and Performance for The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation.
By the end of the day, I felt compelled to draw up a list of seven tips I had heard for foundations looking to “push the envelope” of philanthropy. The following ideas come from the two sessions I attended and an interview with Bill Somerville, author of Grassroots Philanthropy: Field Notes of a Maverick Grantmaker.
Here are the suggestions, in no particular order:
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| May 5, 2008 01:30 PM |
The Davos of Philanthropy: First ImpressionsYesterday, I arrived at the Council on Foundation’s annual conference entitled, “Philanthropy’s Vision: A Leadership Summit.” For the next four days, I will post a round-up of my experiences at the conference for readers of the opinion blog at the Stanford Social Innovation Review. As a micro-philanthropy consultant and blogger, I have focused most of my attention on the tools that make small-scale grant-making possible, including DonorsChoose, Kiva, and Facebook Causes. But micro-philanthropy also encompasses new ways of thinking about donor engagement, the grant-making process, and program evaluation. I’m looking forward to using the Council on Foundation’s leadership summit as an opportunity to focus on these other issues. Here are a few questions I have going into the conference:
I expect to find some clues in the next few days that will help me piece together a few initial answers to these questions. For the duration of the conference, I will be wearing my blogging hat only. I’ve committed myself to asking questions, listening, and learning from the incredible gathering of people. Of course, I have my own experiences and ideas to bring to the debate. But I’ll be leaving my preconceptions at the door. I’m entering the conference with fresh eyes on an issue that’s very dear to me. Day 1 Round-up: May 5, 2008 I find myself on the edges of what could easily be called the “Davos of Philanthropy.” Roughly three thousand attendees have flown in from across the globe to discuss the current and future states of global philanthropy. A few phrases from the opening statements of Steve Gunderson, the Council on Foundations executive director, jumped out as worth noting:
Gunderson’s remarks were followed by a video essay from Roger Rosenblatt, contributor to the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. Rosenblatt’s vision of the future of philanthropy jives 100 percent with the potential I see in micro-philanthropy to transform traditional philanthropy into a vibrant, inclusive and very public force for good. The big ideas of Rosenblatt’s video testimony:
That the Council on Foundations chose to feature this video statement from Rosenblatt in the opening session suggests that there’s interest in broadening participation in philanthropy. I’m excited to ask attendees what they thought of the message, and whether it resonated.
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| May 5, 2008 11:17 AM |
Who are you? How do you know?Psychologists love questions about identity and its multiple dimensions—from attitudes to behaviors. Geneticists are also ready to weigh in about your identity with different perspectives and data. Demographers will chime in—disaggregating you along various dimensions. Historians and biographers have something to say, cross-referencing what others will say about you with the written record and whatever paper trail you may leave. Religious communities and traditions also may claim part of you, sometimes regardless of whether you claim them. You may identify with a single race or ethnicity or with many of them, and this may shift over time or remain steadfast. Gender identity, though singular for many, is more fluid and plural for others. Answers to the questions, “Who are you? And how do you know?” may vary depending on who asks you and when you answer. Why am I talking about this? Today I went to two conferences. First, the Jewish Funders Network, where questions and discussions revolved around funding Jewish identity. Everyone agreed that there are multiple ways to identify as Jewish and multiple ways people come to those identities. The conference was held at Sixth & I, a 100 year-old synagogue that, like so many in big cities, spent decades as an African Methodist Church. It was recently renovated back into a synagogue, and now thrives as a Jewish cultural hub and house of worship for Jews of every denomination. It sits in D.C.’s Chinatown. Then I took two subways and one cab ride to the National Harbor, a brand-new, man-made city emerging on the horizon south of D.C. the way Oz rose over the poppy fields. Overlooking the Potomac, the conference center encases a fake mini village with a glass wall several stories tall and about a football field in length. There, the Council on Foundation‘s Philanthropy Summit--with its 2900+ people from 40 countries, three hip-hop groups, two gospel choirs, and one Chinese lion dance—was just getting underway. As I checked in for the conference, I watched the council’s staff members apply banner flags to the nametag; you know, the multicolored ribbon-thingies that say “Foundation Board Member,” “Moderator,” “Presenter,” “Newcomer,” and so on. I saw at least 12 different ribbons and I wondered if anyone was wearing a foot-long name tag with all of these identifiers attached. These ribbons, intended to mark you for the benefit of others, address the aspect of identity, which is assumed, assigned, or placed on you by the outside world, the setting in which you find yourself, or the context in which someone meets you. Even the simplest question, “Who are you?” has many possible answers. As we embark on philanthropic programs perhaps we should acknowledge the dynamism, uncertainty, and relativity of our endeavors. Data may not be as standardized as you might want to think. That fact should not thwart anyone’s gusto for good work. On the contrary, questioning our assumptions, probing the data, considering the sources, and re-calibrating our measures are vital to learning and making progress.
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| May 1, 2008 10:07 AM |
MicroEnergy Credits Corporation: Catalyzing Clean Energy for the BoPIt is impossible to argue against the need for reliable energy at the BoP. Energy drives every facet of society, from nourishment to communication. According to the UNDP, at least 1.2 billion people suffer from energy poverty, which has profound impact on health, education, and livelihoods. Increasingly, people are calling for the new energy models in developing nations to be “sustainable” and drawn from “clean” and renewable sources. The accepted belief is that if we can get developing nations on a path of adopting clean technologies, they can completely leapfrog the dirty, self-perpetuating system we have created in the west. However, there are barriers to establishing renewable energy projects at the BoP, on both the supply and demand side. One recently-launched for-profit social enterprise that hopes to revolutionize financing in this field is MicroEnergy Credits Corporation (MEC), and I had the wonderful pleasure of conversing with its founders, April Allderdice and James Dailey, last week. Allderdice and Dailey both have impressive resumes, from Peace Corps to Columbia Business School to McKinsey and Grameen; they have the research and the on-the-ground experience to move this field forward. MEC realizes that even though clean technology pays off in the long-run compared to conventional sources, very few BoP consumers can afford to pay high up-front costs when they are concerned with day-to-day survival. According to Allderdice and Dailey, BoP consumers “cannot afford to pay extra for environmental or even social benefits, and therefore adopt traditional energy.” And let’s be honest, who are we to tell others that they should sacrifice their meager income to save a planet which we are primarily responsible for destroying? In addition to the high up-front cost, there has not traditionally been a local broker to provide financing to the poorest and the most remote clients who do want to adopt clean energy projects. That is where MEC hopes to create change. MEC’s solution is to use existing Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) and the recent developments in the carbon credit markets on the supply side to facilitate the adoption of clean energy at the BoP. According to Allderdice and Dailey, “Putting a significant portion of the world’s population on a clean energy path could have a huge impact in the long term, and is an opportunity that should not be wasted.” Their idea has been well-received, by both the Tomberg Family Philanthropies and the judges at the Global Social Venture Competition. To provide financing on the ground, MEC will go through the MFI network, since MFIs are embedded in the community, especially rural off-the-grid communities that need decentralized solutions. This is a very timely post, as Derek’s post last week highlighted in CGAP Senior Advisor Katharine McKee’s article on microfinance and climate change, which said that “A number of respected MFIs and networks – including ACCION, BASIX in India and Equity Bank in Kenya – are exploring products to respond to climate change.” MFIs have expertise in structuring deals, establishing appropriate loan repayment schedules and interest rates. According to Dailey, “MFI field officers meet with millions of households every week; they are a channel to market for financial services, and financed energy services are a natural outgrowth.” MFIs such as ACCION and Grameen have also proven to be incredibly scalable, and they can spin off renewable-energy focused businesses; the most notable example of this has been Grameen Shakti, a member of the Grameen family that provides renewable energy technologies for rural households. Allderdice recently worked for Grameen Shakti, and says that it is “currently scaling faster than Grameen Bank was at year eight.” The other piece of the puzzle on the supply side is to provide incentives to the MFIs through the evolving world of credits for renewable energy projects. Carbon finance is a valuable source of capital, yet it is a complex and evolving field that is difficult for the traditional on-the-ground MFI to tap into. In order to reduce the transaction costs of carbon financing, “MEC provides MFIs carbon revenues on a per unit basis for each system they finance. This gives them near term access to finance for the seed costs of starting an energy program. As their program scales up, they can pass on the subsidy to end users which enable them to achieve greater volume by reaching poorer clients.” Allderdice and Dailey have developed two credit instruments, Microfinance-originated Carbon Credits and Millennium Development Goal (MDG) credits. With the first, MFIs can receive revenue when they lend for energy systems that create verified carbon emissions reductions, such as solar PV systems, improved cookstoves and biogas digesters. With the second, MFIs can receive MDG Credits when they lend for an intervention that enables an MDG household to meet all or part of an MDG. According to Allderdice, “There is no established market in MDG credits yet, but MEC is building the infrastructure to enable it.” When I asked the founders about the possibility of using Kyoto-established Clean Development Mechanism credits, which I wrote about last month, they said that “MEC’s unique approach will create extremely high quality transparent, and verifiable carbon credits that will first be sold on the voluntary markets and as CDM policies evolve, MEC will be among the first to tap the CDM markets.” Well, I guess that there is my answer for the possibility for CDM credits in the short-term. The hope for the future is clear – to put households and communities on a clean energy path that allows them to be owners of their own reliable and renewable systems. This is what Allderdice was able to see first-hand during her work with Grameen Shatki in Bangladesh: “some villagers now use solar for electricity, light, tv and radio and biogas for cooking and heating. They are full owners of their own energy generation, without being susceptible to the price of oil, or the fallibility of the electric grid. And they enjoy the environmental benefits of clean, silent, reliable, continuously renewing energy. As their income increases they are demonstrating a preference to buy another solar panel for a fan or a color tv — rather than switch to a diesel genset, or pay a high connection fee for unreliable grid connected service. Once they are on the clean energy path, there is less incentive to get off it.”
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| April 30, 2008 11:23 AM |
Root Causes vs. Facebook Causes
The attention lavished on these platforms is a net gain for micro-philanthropy. With each blog post, more people find innovative ways to support grassroots initiatives. Recently, even mainstream media outlets such as MSNBC (Facebook Causes), Oprah (Kiva), Steven Colbert (DonorsChoose), The Wall Street Journal (Change.org), and CNN (SixDegrees) are covering micro-philanthropy. It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement that surrounds these initiatives. But maintaining a critical lens is equally important. I am concerned that few, if any, social action platforms are currently leveraging the self-organizing potential of social media to address the root causes that make online social activism necessary in the first place.
As food for thought, here are two excerpts from Wikipedia’s entry for “root causes”:
As legions of digital natives start to self-identify as citizen philanthropists, they should be given online tools that permit them to do more than donate to an existing organization or recruit friends to a cause.
The following exemplify deeper level corrective actions that social action platforms could facilitate:
Will platforms like Facebook Causes, DonorsChoose, Kiva, Change.org, and SixDegrees render top-down organizations obsolete? Do they bypass old-school methods of fundraising and grant-making? Have they planted the seeds for a society composed of highly motivated micro-philanthropists?
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| April 29, 2008 02:58 PM |
“I’m Not on Earth to Build Pillsbury United”What do you say to a nonprofit leader who can’t let go of their brand? “I’m not on Earth to build Pillsbury United.” I couldn’t have said it better, Tony Wagner, long-time executive director of Pillsbury United. Tony is a founding member of a unique collaboration of five human service agencies which formed the Metropolitan Alliance of Connected Communities or MACC Commonwealth, on Jan. 1, 2006, a consolidated service organization. Tony and four of his colleagues realized that they needed to put their clients – and not their brands – first. Their organizations were not as efficient individually as they could be together. So they joined forces. They call themselves a hybrid operation, but to me, they’re what strategic restructuring experts call a “management service organization.” MSOs are hot right now because they might lower operating costs for individual nonprofits and guarantee each organization’s independence. You could gain the benefits of a merger without losing your autonomy. The five organizations in MACC, whose combined budgets total $35M, jointly provide administrative functions such as accounting, office technology, and human resources. Their goal is to operate more efficiently and to share best practices to benefit their clients. Yet they still maintain their independent identities, governance structures, and programs. Initially, the group started out small, with three nonprofits; later two more joined the group. Today, there are seven members of the collaborative. All five of the founding members were human service agencies focused on self-sufficiency programs for families and communities experiencing similar government and philanthropic budget cuts. That kind of mission and operational alignment created synergies for the collaboration and eased the collaboration process quite a bit. The results show that the collaboration is meeting its goals. At the end of 2007 – after just one year of operation - the MACC Commonwealth agencies reported that their members served 1,000 additional clients and saved their members $200,000 in annual costs. These are impressive results. The MACC Commonwealth has been so successful, in fact, that it has drawn notable attention including a paper published by the Humphrey Institute that won first place at a national conference on nonprofit best practices. Tough times call for new thinking. Tony Wagner said it best, in an article in the Minneapolis-St.Paul Star Tribune: “Our primary purpose is to serve people, to serve communities.” Right you are, Tony.
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| April 28, 2008 10:41 AM |
Bully! The Scourge of Nonprofit Boards, and What to Do About ItLike every other human organization, a nonprofit board of directors is subject to being dominated by an internal bully. Nonprofit boards are actually more at risk of bully dominance than other groups, because the only compensation for serving is psychological. For most board members, the psychological reward is the consciousness of doing good in good company—but for some, satisfaction can only flow from being utterly and completely in charge. The bully turns a nonprofit board into a corporation of one, and deprives the executive director (ED) and the agency of everyone else’s expertise and skills. Here are three common forms of nonprofit board bully, and what to do about them: The Martinet Bully: Often a man, and often the board chair. He is determined to import the standards of the business world to the nonprofit sector whether they’re applicable or not. His methods involve an exaggerated concern for efficiency: meetings start early, whether or not people are there, and discussion is foreshortened with a remark such as, “We’ve got the report--let’s just vote.” In the short term, the ED should gently say, “I’m not sure everyone’s been heard from yet.” In the medium term, give the martinet a project he can handle by himself which will keep him out of others’ way. In the long term, find someone else willing to serve as board chair who will practice for that position by deliberately sticking a spoke in the current chair’s wheel when he starts running over the rest of the group. The Expert Bully: “I’m on 33 other boards, and it’s always done this way.” He or she shuts down others’ opinions with a look of condescending pity for those lacking experience. Interestingly, this brand of bully is rarely willing to serve as board chair (too busy with the other boards, perhaps). In the short term, the board chair and ED should make sure they know of at least one example of things being done differently, and mention it. In the medium term, give the expert a project that can be handled exactly as the expert bully pleases. In the long term, identify and work to empower other board members in specific areas of governance--personnel, say, or taxes--and thus gradually reduce the scope of the expert’s terrain. The Passive-Aggressive Bully: “You can do it that way if you want, but then I’m going to have to quit.” This one arises most frequently at the pivotal moment when an agency is finally adopting a minimum gift. The bully hopes to make everyone else feel guilty for having too much money and not enough sympathy for poor little Passive-Aggressive. In the short term, the board chair and ED can pretend not to hear what’s been said. In the medium and long term, ask other members of the board to pretend not to hear what’s been said. The only way to handle these bullies is to ignore them.
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| April 23, 2008 12:02 PM |
Telling StoriesWe all know that telling stories is an effective and fun way to inform others about our programs—what’s worked and what hasn’t—and to garner support for them. But telling stories about our organization and staff is just as important, since it helps to create community. Stories are powerful because they can:
To tell stories internally (to people from the organization, and not those served), you could:
When it comes to telling stories from the inside, imagine a ladder whose rungs are: blogs, podcasts, videos, live chat, and so forth, all of which contribute to elevating the story. How have you told stories from your organization? How could you add to the stories of your clients ormembers with your staffers’ stories?
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Peter Deitz is a micro-philanthropy consultant and the founder of 
Lucy Bernholz is the Founder and President of 
Grace Augustine is a research associate with the William Davidson Institute, an educational institute focused on researching and supporting organizations in emerging markets. She writes for the NextBillion blog and has an interest in economic development and clean technology for the world’s poorest citizens.
Each day in the philanthropy blogosphere, somebody spills some digital ink covering the emergence of new platforms for social action. Online communities such as 
Jean Butzen, 
Kelly Kleiman, who blogs as 
Amy Sample Ward’s passion for nonprofit technology has lead to her involvement with 