NCG 2010 Annual Meeting Live Blog: Philanthropy Transformed
Tuesday, March 30th, 20102:55 pm: Member respondents were invited by NCG staff to offer their perspective on the keynote and panel. Respondents include:
- Rae Richmond, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors
- Amy Lesnick, Full Circle Fund
- Cedric Brown, Mitchell Kapor Foundation
A summary of Rae Richmond’s respononse:
The issue about trust really resonates with her clients (especially after the Bernie Madoff scandal). How will donors trust each other? How will donors trust grantees? Rae encourages members to remember the power of the individual diving in and trying to make a difference.
A summary of Amy Lesnick’s response:
Hearing Katherine speak confirms what Full Circle is doing, but also challenges her to think about new way of working. She encourages members to consider models of engaged philanthropy. Founded by entrepreneurs, Full Circle Fund is a vehicle that enables people to use their money, talent and connections while learning about specific issues and making a difference. By bringing together grantmakers, nonprofit professionals and business professionals Full Circle leverages the circle’s expertise and money to make grantmaking decisions.
A summary of Cedric Brown’s response:
Cedric mentions that when he attends this type of program he wants to know where his organization falls on the spectrum: What are we doing well? What could we do better? Cedric mentions that being part of a bigger network allows them to maximize the effectiveness of their work.
Next, a networking reception.
2:43 pm: Panelists joining Katherine to continue the conversation include:
- Chris DeCardy, Vice President & Director of Programs, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation
- Tessie Guillermo, President and CEO, ZeroDivide
- Carla Javits, President, REDF
On failure:
- Chris uses the example of his 2 year old child who has no problem trying something, having it fail, throw a tantrum and then move on.
- Katherine reminds us that making “new mistakes” is useful. “It is a failure of compassion not to share your failures with others.”
On Transparency:
- Carla gives example of a hospital that shared with its patients that it was at the bottom of a list of successful hospitals treating cystic fibrosis. Even though fearful, they told their patients and then the hospitals learned what the other hospitals were doing that fostered their success. It turned out it was about adapting (acting quickly, responding aggressively) that made those other hospitals successful. But it was the fact that the hospital was honest with itself and its patients and then sought out the information to improve their organization that allowed them to change for the better.
On Measuring Effectiveness:
- Sometimes it’s not the metric. Tessie gives another hospital example, one that was trying to determine recovery time for patients who had throat surgery. Turns out they weren’t asking the patient whether or not they could swallow. So it’s important to remember that transmitting the information is sometimes the missing component when we talk about measuring effectiveness.
- A little is a lot. Chris notes that 2% doesn’t sound like a lot when you’re trying to measure change in a community. But 2% of a population that numbers in the millions, is actually a lot of people. And that 2% are real people whose lives are better because of a foundation’s work.
Following the end of the panel, three respondents.
2:16 pm: Members have spent the past 15 minutes participating in a round table discussion around the following questions:
- What are your reflections on how philanthropy will or should operate in the future?
- What questions did the presentation provoke for you?
Member questions:
- How we measure or own effectiveness?
- What is the motivation that drives people to either work together or to work alone?
- How can we identify new solutions in the new landscape? How do we recognize them and/or help them bubble up?
- How do we think about responsive grantmaking in this context?
- When and how will philanthropic world catch up with the corporate world in the respect to diversification?
- How do we build trust in order to work together and with other sectors?
Katherine’s responses:
- On building trust: Humility, humility, humility. And listen.
- On diversity: There are many aspects of diversity–culture, ethnicity, their specialization.
- Responsive grantmaking: makes Katherine nervous because it excludes new ideas coming to a funder because the responsive funds are specifically set aside for a specific purpose.
Next up, panelists will join Katherine to continue addressing these questions.
1:46 pm: Katherine Fulton, President of the Monitor Institute began her keynote address by talking about the need for Philanthropy to adapt to the changing field.
“Philanthropy today takes place in a context that is radically different from the environment in which many of its current practices and behavior were developed and indeed, which is quite different from 10 years ago.”
The emerging context for philanthropy:
- wicked problems and social complexity
- new pressure for transparency, responsiveness and public participation
- impact expected, not just innovation
- the HOW is shifting: new tools and opportunities for engagement, information sharing and access to diverse perspectives and input
The kind of leadership that is needed:
- inspires people to work across divides
- intellectual and emotional
- can work in networks
Katherine noted that the field has been focused on outcomes, she warns this can create a zero sum game. Such a sort of scenario can discourage risk taking and experimentation–which are necessary for adaptation in the evolving philanthropic landscape.
Next Practices for the Next Decade:
- Understanding the ecosystem: Strong peripheral vision will be critical to building and coordinating resources and to understanding a funder’s place and role in a system. With the growing accessibility of systems mapping, data visualization and network mapping tools, it’s now possible to see a collective whole that was previously only visible in pieces.
- Working with networks: Advances in network theory and practice now allow funders to be more deliberate about supporting connectivity, coordinating networks, and thinking about how success of any single grant, grantee, or donor.
- Aligning independent action: Funders can act collectively without necessarily forming formal, consensus-based collaboratives. There is a range of new models for working together that fit different needs and circumstances. Funders don’t necessarily need to make decisions together, but they need their efforts to add up.
- Leveraging additional resources: Funders can use their independent resources as levers to catalyze much larger streams of funding and activity from sources outside philanthropy, stimulating markets,influences public opinion and policy and activating new players and resources.
- Taking risks and learning from failure: Exemplary funders in the future will need to take risks and experiment with new approaches, learn quickly, and adjust as they go. The challenge is not to avoid mistakes. Failures are inevitable when confronting wicked problems. The challenge is to “make only new mistakes.” Funders that admit their wrong turns and share what they learn will advance the whole field in the process.
- Sharing by default: In a more crowded playing field, there is tremendous value in reflecting on your work and conveying your lessons to others. For mission-driven organizations like foundations, it makes sense to start from a place of sharing everything and then make a few exceptions rather than a place of sharing little where transparency is the exception.
- Knowing what works: Despite the many evaluation approaches and tools available, it is still difficult to get a reliable answer to the question, “Did we make a difference?” and to learn from the past in ways that can help guide and improve efforts in the future. Effective measurements in the future will be fully contextualized, aggressively collective, real-time, transparent, and technologically enabled.
- Opening up to new inputs: Virtually every aspect of organized philanthropy’s business can benefit from collecting outside input and external viewpoints. New tools and approaches now allow funders to solicit points of view from diverse cultures and perspectives, and to access new and wild card ideas, get buy-in and engagement of stakeholders, and build the public legitimacy that comes with taking the time to listen before taking action.
- Shifting and adapting: Most funders have neither systematic feedback loops nor mechanisms for adapting their processes and programs based on new learning. The ability and willingness to change and shift behavior based on lessons learned in real-time–either first hand or from others–will be critical to shifting behavior in the next decade.
Katherine closes her address asking members to participate in a 15 minute round table. Questions for members to discuss include:
- What are your reflections n how philanthropy will or should operate inthe future?
- What questions did the presentation provoke for you?
1:14 pm: The official program has just begun. After a welcome by NCG Board Chair James Head, Director of Programs at The San Francisco Foundation, NCG Board Secretary Christine Elbel, Executive Director of the Fleishhacker Foundation, led a brief business meeting for members to elect new NCG board members.
Following the business meeting, NCG President and CEO Colin Lacon contextualizes today’s conversation on the future of philanthropy. We’ve seen the landscape changing and we have to think differently about how we work.
Colin offers key characteristics that philanthropy will need in the future:
- Resilience: To stick with the work you’re doing, with the communities you’re working with. Resilience to have the long view
- Adaptation: To facilitate an exchange of ideas, to bring change agents to the same table.
- Transformation: to be successful you have to evolve. We have to change our habits. To realize our frameworks can grow old.
Today’s speaker, Katherine Fulton will address this issue, to give us some idea of what is ahead of us.
11:37 am: This year’s NCG 2010 Annual Meeting “Philanthropy Transformed: Exploring New Pathways” is getting underway here at the Julia Morgan Ballroom in San Francisco. We’ll be live blogging this event, so be sure to periodically refresh this page for an updated version of this post.
Following is the day’s agenda:
11:30 am – 12:00 pm: Registration & Networking
2:00 pm – 12:45 pm: Lunch
12:45 pm – 3:00 pm: Official program, featuring keynote speaker Katherine Fulton
3:00 pm – 4:30 pm: No–host Reception located in Bar & Lounge
Once our official program begins this post will be updated. In the meantime, feel free to peruse the resources staff has gathered for the Annual Meeting.
You can also follow our Twitter feed and contribute to the online conversation on the future of philanthropy by using the hashtag:
#ncg