Northern California Grantmakers

NCG is excited to announce the release of our 4th Snapshot of Philanthropy: The Christensen Fund.

NCG’s Snapshots of Philanthropy Series

NCG’s Snapshots of Philanthropy is a special year-long series that aims to better demonstrate the scope and impact of our members’ work. These short “snapshot” stories showcase the positive impact organized philanthropy has in northern California, and will be used to educate external audiences about why our members fund who they fund, and what changes are happening as a result of these investments.

Latest Snapshot: The Christensen Fund

Since the 1970s, a large number of Ethiopians have immigrated to the United States. Many of them settled in San Jose and Oakland, which are now home to two of the largest Ethiopian communities in the United States.

Unfortunately, many of these relocated Ethiopians struggled in their new environment because of language and other cultural barriers. There were few resources available to help them integrate into their new communities and most relied on earlier immigrants as their sole source of support. Some became successful entrepreneurs, but many others struggled to make ends meet.

In addition, a number of the newly displaced parents were concerned that their children would lose touch with Ethiopian languages and traditions, while their children were often embarrassed by the parents’ inability to communicate and take control of their families’ lives in this new country.

In 2004, The Christensen Fund decided to help groups of recent immigrants bridge the cultural gap between their traditional homelands and their new communities. One of these groups was the Ethiopian community in northern California.

The Fund’s Ethiopian Program Officer, Dr. Wolde Tadesse, knew that there were many energetic and dedicated Ethiopians willing to tackle the challenges of building a vibrant cultural community for themselves and sharing this culture with the greater Bay Area.

The Fund made several grants to local Ethiopian organizations to begin this community-building process, including the Ethiopian Community Services, Ethiopian Community Cultural Center and Ethiopian Arts Forum. The Fund supported a number of Bay Area projects that showcased Ethiopian traditions, including a colorful celebration of the Ethiopian New Year, a new International Ethiopian Studies Journal and a rotating credit system called Idir.

The Fund also focused on cultural opportunities for the Ethiopian children in these communities, including a weekend language school run by the Ethiopian Cultural Institute. One of the Fund’s grantees, African Cradle, organized summer camps for Ethiopian adoptee children and their American parents with the goal of bringing these families together to network with each other and take part in Ethiopian cultural life.

By 2009, the Fund had made over $600,000 in grants to strengthen the cultural connections within these Ethiopian communities and those investments were paying off. Cultural expression and celebrations were gradually taking center stage in Ethiopian communities. Ethiopians of all creeds, ethnicity and political affiliation were beginning to meet with each other on a regular basis at artistic events organized by members of the Ethiopian community throughout the Bay Area. The San Francisco Chronicle published an article about an exciting new amateur group of Ethiopian dancers. The cities of San Jose and Oakland were starting to identify with the communities and adopted resolutions to observe the Ethiopian New Year as “Ethiopia Day” and fly Ethiopian colors on this date.

Read the whole story [downloads as PDF].

Read Snapshot 1: S.H. Cowell Foundation online.

Read Snapshot 2: Horizons Foundation online.

Read Snapshot 3: The James Irvine Foundation online.

Learn more about NCG’s Snapshots of Philanthropy series online.

Yesterday NCG member Jim Canales, President and CEO of The James Irvine Foundation, was a guest blogger on Tactical Philanthropy. As part of Tactical Philanthropy’s Audacious Ideas series, Jim reflected on the recent Gates/Buffett challenge:

“Bill and Melinda Gates along with Warren Buffett recently announced their commitment to devote the majority of their wealth to philanthropy. Perhaps more notably, they are encouraging other billionaires to pledge a similar commitment, and a new website, www.givingpledge.org, has been launched to encourage their peers to follow suit and to document these pledges.

This is certainly audacious. And it got me thinking about what similar “pledges” those of us privileged enough to work within organized philanthropy should be thinking about.”

This idea of making a pledge got Jim thinking about what kind of pledge a grantmaker could make.

Jim postulates that “[grantmakers]‘ ability to create positive social impact through [their] grantmaking is directly related to [a grantmaker's] capacity to be effective and thoughtful partners with the organizations [they] are privileged to support.”

So in an effort to improve the working relationship between grantmakers and grantees Jim put forth his audacious idea:

…to suggest—even implore—foundations to make commitments that address the following:

–Transparency: What specific action or actions will your foundation take to increase its openness and render its processes and approaches less opaque and more transparent?

–Accountability: To what specific measures should your grantee partners hold the foundation accountable, and what will be the foundation’s mechanism for reporting publicly on your progress?

–Authenticity: What specific steps will your foundation take to enhance its relations with grantees and grantseekers and create greater authenticity in them, rooted in respect for our partners? What mechanisms will you put in place to ensure that you are listening and learning from your grantees as much as you expect them to listen and learn from your foundation?

So what do you think? Will your foundation make a pledge to improve the working relationship between grantmakers and grantees?

Looking For A Place To Start?

If you’re looking for examples where foundations are making an attempt to increase transparency and accountability, or dialog with grantees I’d like to recommend the Foundation Center’s Glasspockets.org.

Glasspockets provides best practices in foundation transparency and accountability online, as well as links to examples.

Currently there are 20 foundations highlighted on the website for having “glass pockets,” a phrase coined by former Carnegie Corporation Chair Russell Leffingwell.

If you’re interested to putting your foundation to the Glasspockets test, or would just like to assess your Glasspockets quotient, check out their list of indicators on the Glasspockets website.

Read Jim Canales’ full blog post online.

The Nonprofit Sector and Community Solutions Act of 2010 (H.R. 5533) was introduced on June 16th, 2010 by Congresswoman Betty McCollum of Minnesota, and intends to strengthen America’s communities by making the federal government a more productive partner with nonprofit organizations.

Despite the importance of the nonprofit sector to the U.S. economy and to the success of many federal, state and local policy initiatives, no federal agency or congressional committee has responsibility for evaluating, building or maintaining the capacity of the nonprofit sector, and government does not collect the data necessary to make sound policy decisions that have measurable impacts in communities.  This Act proposes to:

• Establish the U.S. Council on Nonprofit Organizations and Community Solutions consisting of 16 leading voices from across the sector. The council would produce a report and convene an annual summit on improving the relationship between government and our sector.
• Create an Interagency Working Group on Nonprofit Organizations and the Federal Government composed of cabinet members and other leaders from agencies such as the IRS, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Corporation for National and Community Service. This body would help coordinate efforts between the two sectors.
• Require federal agencies to increase collection of data on nonprofits, with $5 million going to the National Science Foundation for research grants to our sector. The bill spells out a number of proposals such as more accurate counts of employees and better tracking of government funding to nonprofits.

This bill could establish more effective partnerships between philanthropy and government at the federal level, as there would be an opportunity for foundations to share program-area expertise and best practices in supporting community-based organizations and those that they serve.

Read more about H.R. 5533 at Independent Sector and in a recently published article from the Nonprofit Times.