Modern Grantmaking’s Post

I came across this article today and found it a very telling account of where #philanthropy (including corporate philanthropy), as well as more broadly, many of our societies in the West, have gone wrong in the last decades. A helpful reminder of the need to generate #SystemsChange for lasting #SocialImpact, as otherwise we will keep investing significant resources and efforts on tackling the symptoms of social issues, while their root causes will keep working in the opposite direction, perpetuating and worsening them. It is also a stark reminder that private initiatives (both in the business and third sectors) need to go hand in hand with (and support the development of) an inclusive and truly democratic public sector. Too often I see a narrative portraying business or social enterprises as the better alternative to public initiatives or as the solution to all the shortcomings of governments and public institutions - and this does not help with generating deep change at scale. https://lnkd.in/e4mscxHR

If there's one article you read this week, make it this one: https://lnkd.in/gF_TgBFS Thanks to Trish Adobea Tchume for sending it my way- I'm hoping this article can help bridge the gap between the wisdom of grassroots activists and the traditional nonprofit sector, as there are folks who've known for a long time just how broken the Nonprofit Industrial Complex is, and others just now arriving at the concept. This article helps bridge that gap, and hopefully can contribute to us all organizing in a better direction together: "If we really want to create an equitable and sustainable society, we must leverage the power of a multiracial democracy. Strategic philanthropy has long professed to seek the “root causes” behind each societal challenge, but what if the primary root cause behind every social and environmental issue facing the United States is the failure of our political process to ensure the well-being of our entire population?"

Thanks for the mention Matthew Ganz! It's much appreciated. Jon Farley and I started C-IMPACT after careers in higher-education first with a focus on wanting to improve how human services are delivered - a continuation of the work we had been doing at Hopkins and even before that. A recognition that people exist within an ecological system, so we have to bring cross-sector, collective approaches that put the community-based organizations who are frontline in serving populations in the driver seat of defining the needs and interventions, and get them working better together toward holistic approaches that result in coordinated and comprehensive services. What we were not expecting was the massive inequities between nonprofit organizations. Here in our home state of Maryland, 6% of the nonprofits receive 98% of the funding. Nationally, that figure is about 3% to 97%. Coming from one of those 6% organizations, we had the luxury of infrastructure, support, and resources that were internal to our organization, and that helped to perpetuate our ability to compete for funding, project confidence to donors, and more importantly - to have seats at the table to discuss problems to be solved and define solutions - even if we were degrees removed from the populations and issues at-hand. So our work through C-IMPACT expanded with the aim of democratizing access to the same types of expertise and tools that we were accustomed to in the "6% club" for those smaller, mission aligned nonprofits that are doing amazing work but don't have the internal capacity on their own to acquire the resources that allow them to scale, to collaborate, and to have more positional power in driving the conversation about what solutions are needed. To avoid the pitfalls of a death by a thousand consultants, we wanted to try a different approach of what we're calling compounded leadership - basically crowdsourcing expertise and capacity across a coalition of independent nonprofits, representing a continuum of human service missions, that function as a collaborative. C-IMPACT, as its own nonprofit, helps to focus the group on funding opportunities that enable collective impact responses, and then helps support grant applications and post-award compliance logistics - but most importantly - helps to ensure the organizations are implementing their interventions toward a holistic ecological model that produces better outcomes for the populations being served. That's how we meet our mission. Of course, we are a small nonprofit ourselves, and not immune to the same capacity challenges of the groups we are working with, so I appreciate your shedding light on this need. Thank you!

The emerging approach more and more foundations are adopting moves beyond trust-based philanthropy to empowerment philanthropy. The core reasons for this, consistent with the fundamental premises that 1) communities have the collective wisdom to solve their problems if given the resources, autonomy, and support; 2) foundations have a woeful lack of knowledge and understanding of the lived experiences of the most vulnerable and marginalized in communities (and how to listen in ways that inform strategies; and 3) foundations don’t have the patience, expertise, and right models to change the trajectories of lives. This SSIR article is powerful!

Philanthropy Together posted an article that was featured in Stanford Social Innovation Review about how instrumental nonprofit intermediaries were in helping MacKenzie Scott with her large gift giving. Truth is, these organizations are not widely known but are very effective in making sure that funding is equitable. It got me thinking about other non-traditional organizations that can help our sector deliver more equitable funding as well as a more effective standard of care. With all the money that’s been poured into #philanthropy, and the organizations that have been created to support those who need it, it’s a wonder we haven’t been able to make greater strides. That very well may be because the sectors that serve the same people don’t work together in a coordinated fashion, which leads to a tremendous amount of waste. And that’s a central tenet of C-IMPACT (https://c-impactnow.org/), an organization run by Chris Swanson that is promoting a new model of systems change; a collective impact approach that promotes cross-sector collaboration to deliver a more efficient, effective standard of care. They work with local, nonprofit partners across different sectors. Their team, originating from Johns Hopkins, provide strategy, leadership, capacity, and operational support. They’re a boost for small, emerging nonprofits that have the proximate leadership and vision to challenge traditional systems, at the same time delivering a more integrated model of care. For those of us who want to see changes in our sector, the promotion of new models of giving as well as delivery of care are central to innovation. The goal should be efficiency above all else. #nonprofits #socialimpact

"Awareness is growing that action is needed locally to impact shared global challenges. Philanthropy-supported reframing initiatives are gathering pace and supporting social innovators to reimagine our societies and connect communities to allow change for a better future. These models in pursuit of the common good need scaling and adapting, but they exist – and philanthropy has an important role to play. This is not a small agenda, but it is a hopeful one. " Learn more from scholarly opinions on the role of philanthropy in supporting community change efforts: https://lnkd.in/gDtKQ4nZ

There is an important discussion happening here. With our sector’s turn towards trust-based philanthropy we are more focused than ever before on the importance of unrestricted giving while acknowledging the expertise of proximate leaders. But another important tenet of trust based philanthropy is transferring power to the community. And that piece, which isn’t always addressed fully, might be the linchpin to a more effective model of human services and trust-based philanthropy writ large. Local and emerging nonprofits can’t compete with the big boys and get big grants, they don’t have the capacity or expertise. But a collaborative of nonprofits led by an internal community of experts that together can bring a multi-pronged, cross-sector approach combining expertise and delivery can, and in a very compelling way, might be better suited to deliver human services than the big boys. This model is being proposed by Chris Swanson and John Farley of C-IMPACT and it’s something we should all think about very carefully. #trustbasedphilanthropy #csr #socialimpact #philanthropy #charitablegiving #corporatesocialresponsibility

The first link in this piece has so many links to Wisbech, it is really something that we should be working on more! #WisbechRadicals

Interested in getting the gist of my hot-off-the-press report on how philanthropy spurs polarization — and how funders can pivot to support pluralism instead? I've got you covered! Here is a busy reader's guide for those who may only have 10, 30, or 60 minutes to read the report (and links to it).

If you ask me about a social justice approach in philanthropy, I would say it's about addressing the root causes of societal problems. But if you ask me at a deeper level, I would say: ▶️ It moves us from locating the 'problem' with the community, to locating the problem as the system they live in, and this is the critical distinction. So you move from trying 'fix' the community to 'fixing' the system. ▶️You recognise the intersection of multiple systems which are keeping people stuck in inequality. That shift from individual to structural, is moving from equity to justice. ▶️ It has always been an approach used in the history of UK philanthropy, it's part of our revolutionary origins ( Rhodri Davies https://lnkd.in/eg2fFAsb ) ▶️ The approach has been summarised by the Resource Generation, so we don't need to argue about what it means...https://lnkd.in/eF97EUWY ▶️ The philosophical foundations which can be used by funders was described in detail here..https://lnkd.in/eg6FZsrG ▶️ and here's a good summary article https://lnkd.in/emt-VJFX And obviously for me, it's all about philanthropy being truly transformative: https://lnkd.in/eK9tzMRn Enjoy the reading!