,

2020 - A Year of Change

,
2020 - A Year of Change

There is no doubt 2020 has been a year of change. As someone who goes kicking and screaming into something new, I’m determined to embrace change in the coming year. So over the next few months I plan to highlight ideas for doing philanthropy differently that I believe offer good food for thought. I’m starting with “When We Return to Our Foundation Offices, Let’s Make Them Spaces Where We Collaborate With Grantees” by Lisa Pillar Cowan, Vice President of the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation in New York City. The arctic le appears in the December 8 issue of Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Image by @Jr Korpa

Foundations Favor General Operating Support in Theory but Hesitate to Make It Happen

Foundations Favor General Operating Support in Theory but Hesitate to Make It Happen

What is your take on general operating support? And better yet, multi-year general operating support? In this time of COVID, nonprofits are challenged to evolve both in their programs and in their revenue generation. But what about foundations? Shouldn’t funders evolve their thinking and grant making as well?

Image by Steve Johnson @steve_j

Foundations Should Examine Practices That Prevent Them form Giving Grantees More Power

Foundations Should Examine Practices That Prevent Them form Giving Grantees More Power

Good food for thought. Here is an opinion piece in the Chronicle of Philanthropy by Renee Karibi-Whyte of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors relating to racial injustice and systemic inequalities. While these topics are front and forward in many of today’s conversations her question to the philanthropic world is what changes are you making within your own practices based on these conversations?

Karibi-Whyte offers three things to challenge us to think differently.

Photo credit: Євгенія Височина @eugenivy_reserv

Pivot - 8,000 Law School Graduates & the Bar Exam on Hold

Pivot - 8,000 Law School Graduates & the Bar Exam on Hold

What to do if you graduated from law school in California only to learn the state’s summer bar exam is suspended due to the coronavirus? What to do with a growing demand for low-cost legal services within the state? You pivot.

Within 13 days the Legal Services Funders Network, developed and launched its first collaborative funding project: a Post Graduate Law Fellows Program.

June 24, 2020 blog post on Exponent Philanthropy by Claire Solot. How We Catalyzed a Fellows Program to Meet Legal Services Needs During COVID-19.

,

Pivot - Reinterpreting the Millermore House

,
Pivot - Reinterpreting the Millermore House

Prior to the coronavirus and prior to recent conversations around social justice, Dallas Heritage Village embarked on a project to reinterpret the Millermore House with the intent of telling stories about all people who lived and worked in the Millermore house, including the enslaved.

What is the pivot? Last year, the Village staff revisited historical documentation and archives relating to the Millermore house and its occupants including the 1860 census which stated then owner, William Brown Miller, enslaved 16 African Americans and included names of three couples. Then began the task of identifying the enslaved and those who lived in the cabin and landing on stories the Village will tell.

Pivot - Raising up Nonprofits Operating in Communities of Color

Pivot - Raising up Nonprofits Operating in Communities of Color

What is a side benefit of COVID-19? A recognition of systemic inequalities among communities of color particularly as it relates to access to food, healthcare, and health outcomes. What is the pivot? Raising up nonprofit organizations in these communities that until now have gone largely unnoticed by philanthropy.

For more, click here for a June 18, 2020 article on FWD>DFW, a forum that connects companies, causes, and communities to the short- and long-term economic advancement of North Texas.

Image by Omar Flores @omarg247.