McKnight Foundation Leading by Following

August 20, 2010

Philanthropy is a field of leaders, but Monitor Institute is focusing elsewhere with their Smart Money Award, a bi-monthly recognition of philanthropy’s most important acts of “followership”.

Instead of recognizing those who go where no one has gone before, the award celebrates those who follow in the footsteps of others. It honors acts like Warren’s Buffet’s 2006 gift of more than $31 billion to the Gates Foundation and Buffet’s recognition that “there was a terrific foundation that was already scaled-up…that would and that could productively use my money now. “

Most recently, the Smart Money Award went to The McKnight Foundation, an MCF member, for followership represented by its $100 million commitment to three re-granting institutions leading the effort against climate change: ClimateWorks, the Energy Foundation, and RE-AMP. Given the issue’s urgency and parters who were already doing work they trusted, McKnight’s Board decided it would be most effective to forego acting alone and instead join the ongoing efforts of others.

McKnight’s vice president of program Neal Cuthbert explains, “We have a long history of working with established intermediaries to try to put decisions in the hands of the people closest to the work. We often find that the best thing we can do is to support smart people who know what they’re doing and get out of the way.”

The award was born at a March 2010 gathering on the next 10 years of philanthropy where participants discussed how philanthropy could adapt to a rapidly changing world. There, a small group facilitated by Monitor Institute consultants Gabriel Kasper and Edward Wexler-Beron, focused on followership. Specifically, they wanted to dispel the notion that leadership is about doing something first or by yourself. For more on the story of the award’s creation, check out Eugene Eric Kim’s blog post: The Story of Philanthropy’s Smart Money Award.

Kasper, the Monitor Institute consultant and co-author of the reports “What’s Next for Philanthropy – Acting Bigger and Adapting Better in a Networked World” and “Intentional Innovation: How Getting More Systematic about Innovation Could Improve Philanthropy and Increase Social Impact”, will share insights from Monitor’s work at MCF’s 2010 Annual Convening in October. To read more about Kasper’s plenary address, visit mcfconvening.org.

- Susan Stehling, MCF

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Don’t Close the Achievement Gap, Prevent It

June 29, 2010

In recent years, I’ve heard a lot about efforts to close the achievement gap, a national embarrassment that is especially evident in Minnesota.

Last week I attended “Window of Opportunity: Babies Can’t Wait, The 4th Annual Nancy Latimer Convening for Children and Youth” co-sponsored by the Minnesota Early Childhood Funders Network and the Minnesota Council on Foundations. Evidence presented there was clear – poor children (and their families) need services and intervention, long before the children enter school, to ensure an achievement gap doesn’t start.

Dr. Richard Chase of Wilder Research puts it this way, “We have to stop talking about how to close the achievement gap. We have to think about how to prevent the achievement gap.”

Chase talked about the necessity of multiple, coordinated services to achieve this and defined three essentials that very young children need to thrive:

  • A caring and responsive caregiver
  • A language-rich environment
  • Opportunities to safely explore

In our state, 15 to 20 percent of our babies are vulnerable. Their families live in poverty, increasing the risk that they simply won’t get what they need to succeed. In 2008, 60 percent of American Indian babies in Minnesota were born into poverty, 42 percent of African American, 33 percent of Hispanic, 10 percent of Asian, and 8 percent of white babies. Low-income children of color make up a growing portion of Minnesota’s babies today and of Minnesota’s students and workforce tomorrow. Their success matters.

Dr. Megan Gunnar, a professor at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development also spoke. She introduced the theory of “serve and return,” a continual process of the child “serving something out” and how, in a responsive environment, their “serve is returned.”

This high stakes game doesn’t happen on a tennis court. Instead, imagine a baby smiling and cooing at mom and then waiting for a smile or encouraging word to come back. If she doesn’t get a response, she tries less and less often, and ultimately her brain development slows. An unresponsive environment just doesn’t provide what a child needs.

Why the lack of response? Caregivers in low-income families are depressed or emotionally stressed 15 to 20 percent of the time, rendering them ineffective at the all important “serve and return.” Lack of access to affordable mental health care and other services exacerbates the problem.

For both speakers, the answer is clear. Increase funding for the whole child, the whole family and the whole community and do it now.

Chase summarized, “Close the gap between what science is telling us and what we do. Investing in early childhood gives us the biggest bang for our buck. It’s certainly a better investment than stadiums or airlines.”

Awards Presented
This year’s “Nancy” awards, presented in honor of Nancy Latimer, went to Jane Kretzmann, senior program officer at the Minnesota Community Foundation (an MCF member) for her work promoting the healthy development of young children, including development of the Project for Babies, and Arthur J. Rolnick, economist, senior vice president and director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis for showing the link between early childhood education and healthy communities and economies.

- Susan Stehling, MCF

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Creativity After 40? Bush Grantees, Research Show in Some Fields the Best Work Happens Later in Life

June 21, 2010

The Bush Foundation, an MCF member, recently announced the 2010 recipients of their Enduring Vision Awards. Unique in the United States, the award of $100,000 is given annually to three artists in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota who have at least 25 years of continued work. The grant provides support during a time of life when artists are often most productive, yet least supported by grantmakers.

A study recently noted by science writer Jonah Lehrer, and picked up in an article at MinnPost.com, shows that the Bush Foundation might just be on to something here. According to Dean Simonton, psychologist at UC-Davis, there’s an interesting inverted “U-curve” pattern that appears when you graph the age at which people are most creative across a number of disciplines. The peak of that U-curve occurs at different ages depending on the type of work.

Creative breakthroughs in fields like physics and poetry, for instance, tend to happen most commonly when individuals are in their late twenties. Crafts that have fundamentals that are loosely defined,  and therefore require repetition and refinement, however, tend to peak later. Novelists and biologists tend to reach the zenith of their creative ability in their late forties.

The work of Lakota visual artist Arthur D. Amiotte, Laotian textile artist Bounxou Daoheuang Chanthraphone and European American photographer Paul Shambroom, the 2010 Enduring Vision recipients, seem to show that this trend towards better work later in life occurs in the visual arts as well.

You can learn more about the Enduring Vision award, and past grantees at the Bush Fellows website. Or if you’d like to see a list of many other artists who produced their best work at forty and beyond, read Susan Perry’s article at MinnPost.com.

- Cary Lenore Walski, MCF web communications associate

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Work Together and Win a Cool $150,000

June 4, 2010

Apply now for the 2011 Collaboration Prize, a national award presented to nonprofit organizations that collaborate effectively to gain greater impact.

In 2011, the Collaboration Prize will award a total of $250,000 to the collaborations that best exemplify the impact of working together. Each of eight finalists will receive $12,500 and the winner will receive an additional $150,000.

The Prize showcases models of collaborations among two or more nonprofit organizations that cooperate to demonstrate innovative and effective responses to challenges or opportunities.

Apply By July 16
Applications must be submitted by July 16, 2010. Streamlined online applications may be submitted by any individuals familiar with the collaboration, including employees of the participating nonprofits.

The Collaboration Prize was created and is funded by The Lodestar Foundation in collaboration (of course!) with the Arizona-Indiana-Michigan (AIM) Alliance and leaders in the nonprofit sector.

First awarded in 2009, the Prize attracted hundreds of nominations and yielded powerful models of collaboration through which organizations achieved greater impact and efficiency.

Learn From Other Collaboration Successes
The Collaboration Prize also provides models and best practices for the field through the Nonprofit Collaboration Database, which houses real-life examples of how nonprofit organizations are working together. The database contains information on 250 nominations for the 2009 Prize.

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Vote for the Winner of the Minnesota Idea Open!

May 10, 2010

Have you cast your virtual ballot for one of the three finalists of the Minnesota Idea Open yet? Voting is only open until Friday, May 14, so make sure you visit mnideaopen.org and submit your vote before time runs out!

If you’re unfamiliar with the project — here’s an overview. Minnesota Idea Open is the brain child of the Minnesota Community Foundation. Leaders at the foundation saw the incredible popularity of social giving contests and philanthropic awards like the X-prize and asked why not use these trends to unlock the ingenuity and creativity of Minnesotans to solve the social and economic problems of our region?

Minnesota Idea Open will be an annual contest where Minnesotans can submit their own ideas to tackle a tough social issue of the day. This year’s topic? The obesity epidemic. After reviewing dozens of submissions, three finalists were chosen by a panel of community, nonprofit and grantmaker leaders.

The final winner of the Open will receive $15,000 to support the creation of a project to help end obesity that can be easily brought to scale and repeated in other communities across the state.

The finalists are:

  • Take the Soul Patch Statewide: A program where a group of community members partnered to tend a small garden that supplied 2,000 lbs of fresh, organic produce to a local food shelf.
  • Kids Lead the Way: A school-based program where youth will create once-a-week field activities for their classmates and community partners, with the idea being that students will bring these activities home with them. Personal trainers have also agreed to volunteer their time to assist community groups in creating collective health goals and fitness programs. Ultimately all the games, recipes and fitness tips will be collected in a book that will be sold to support the future continuation of the program in other communities.
  • Library Wellness Challenge: Starting at the Hamline Midway Library, the Hamline Midway Library Association will sponsor a wellness challenge for community members. The challenge will use the existing space and resources of the library to help small groups of individuals meet up and track how they’re progressing towards wellness goals. In addition to group sessions, there will also be monthly informational workshops on health and wellness, and an initial check-in where participants will be given their current BMI, blood pressure and other health indicators that they will continue to track during the course of the program.

There’s more information about each entry, including videos where the finalists explain their projects, at mnideaopen.org. Be sure to visit the site and cast your vote by May 14!

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Speak of the Devil, Name Racism

May 5, 2010

“Racism” — it can be a scary word to use, especially if you’re a white person (or a “person of pale,” as I like to joke) like me. Sometimes I feel that I and other white people are afraid to talk about the word because it’s not a term that we feel we have ownership over.

Racism, after all, is what happens to other people, right? (Often our own white privilege is also not immediately apparent to us.) What right do I have to even discuss it or bring it up? As long as I’m careful about the things that I do and say, as long as I’m sure that I’m not myself a racist — well, my work is done, right? Think again.

A recent study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology shows that individuals who hold racist beliefs tend to think erroneously that most people agree with them, and furthermore, that their beliefs are less racist than those of their peers. In other words, they think their beliefs are comfortably in the norm. So if you believe in racial equity, what’s the solution to showing these individuals that they are not, in fact, in the mainstream? As my colleague Tawanna Black points out in her recent entry, you’ve got to talk about it.

At the recent Facing Race Ambassador Awards Tawanna and I had the tremendous opportunity to meet and interview this year’s award winners Margery Otto and Herbert Perkins of the ASDIC Anti-Racism Study Dialogue Circles, as well as Human Rights Activist Naomi Tutu, keynote speaker at the event, and Rowzat Shipchandler, The Saint Paul Foundation racial equity manager.

The theme of the evening was creating these conversations about race and racism. The four shared their insights on how to make these conversations about race and racism a part of our work in philanthropy, and our own personal lives.

Advice for Grantmakers:

  • Otto: Consult with communities of color…Start new initiatives by creating a dialogue. Remember, if it’s about me, but it’s not by me, it’s not for me.
  • Perkins: Don’t assume you know what the answers are going to be…Ask yourself if you’re really prepared to know what you’re hearing. That requires a certain amount of education to really understand what the conversation is all about.
  • Shipchandler: The Saint Paul Foundation has really improved its work with communities of color, but that improvement has taken careful intentional thought. We took a close look at who was receiving our grants, and made some clear goals and priorities.

On the Importance of Not Shying Away from the Term “Racism”:

  • Tutu: At the end of apartheid people said, “Why would you want to talk about it? Why not just let it go?” We know that those things that you try to ignore – in your country or your own life — will rear their heads and cause problems for you…Racism is so basic to our society that there is no way to move forward without opening up the conversation.
  • Perkins: One thing that we talk about is the need to name “it” — engage in a conversation in which racism can be said. If a philanthropic organization is to seriously engage in this work it must engage in naming the reality. The pain and separation that is a part of this history, the legacy that we’ve inherited — we cannot work with each other without acknowledging this history.

Words of Encouragement for “Persons of Pale”:

  • Otto: Many of us who are white assume that we’re not wanted…that we don’t have a role in the conversation about racism. To discover that this work must be done in a community and that we are essential to that conversation, that’s a life-shifting experience.

There’s a Judeo-Christian phrase that goes, “Speak of the devil, and he shall appear.” Well, there’s also a Judeo-Christian belief, less well known now, that to speak the name of something is to have power over it, to summon it — yes, but more importantly to be able to command it once it reveals itself.

I’d like to encourage all people, and especially white people (my fellow “persons of pale”), who believe in social justice and racial equality to no longer be afraid of talking about racism. Speak of the devil, let it appear — so that we can finally confront the racism that warps all of our destinies, and work towards a more just and inclusive future together.

- Cary Lenore Walski, MCF web communications associate

(Thanks to Susan Perry of MinnPost.com, whose post tipped me off to Watt and Larkin’s study on racist beliefs.)

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Know Some Outstanding Leaders? Nominate Them Today!

April 26, 2010

The Minnesota Council of Nonprofits (MCN) is currently accepting nominations for the first ever Nonprofit Leadership Awards. The awards will recognize individuals in three different categories for their work building the effectiveness and capacity of the nonprofit sector in Minnesota. The categories are:

  • Catalytic Leader: This award will go to someone who has effectively led “from the middle,” using informal authority to shape the direction and progress of their work.
  • Visionary Leader: This award will be given to one who has at least five, but no more than twenty, years of experience in senior leadership with a nonprofit.
  • Transformational Leader: This award will honor an individual who has served the field for more than twenty years.

For more information about each of the categories, as well as an online form to submit nominations, visit mncn.org. The deadline for submissions is May 7. Award recipients will be honored at MCN’s Leadership Conference: Thriving in the New Normal on June 3.

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