By Andy Carroll, ASF
Rural Harford County, MD
What would it look like for a family foundation to convene citizens of an entire county to develop a vision for the future?
This is what ASF member The Dresher Foundation did in November at Connect Harford, in partnership with Maryland’s Harford Community College. I attended the event to witness this striking example of leadership by a small-staff foundation. The Dresher Foundation has about $50 million in assets and employs one staff person.
By Elaine Gast Fawcett on behalf of ASF
ASF member Lindsey Stammerjohn (R) and ASF board member Juanita Garcia
When it comes to learning about important issues and moving the needle in the right direction, convening is a low-cost and high-impact leadership tool you can’t overlook. In fact, many consider it to be a funder’s most underrated. In part 2 of a 2-part series on convening, hear how an ASF member foundation uses convening to reach its goals. Read part 1 here.
The ASF member John Gogian Family Foundation and executive director Lindsey Stammerjohn began convening grantees in 2010 as part of a capacity building initiative. They recognized common struggles that many grantee partners shared, and chose convening as one way to address these needs while connecting the organizations to one another.
At its first gathering of grantees, Stammerjohn sat in the back of the room. “We wanted our grantee partners to drive the process, and tell us if gathering as a group was valuable to them,” she says. “It became apparent quickly that we needed to have a clear purpose for convening. We had to do more than get everyone together for doughnuts and coffee.”
By Elaine Gast Fawcett on behalf of ASF
ASF member Janis Reischmann shares her lessons learned
When it comes to learning about important issues and moving the needle in the right direction, convening is a low-cost and high-impact leadership tool you can’t overlook. In fact, many consider it to be a funder’s most underrated. In part 1 of a 2-part series on convening, hear how an ASF member foundation uses convening to reach its goals.
The ASF member Hau’oli Mau Loa Foundation (meaning eternal happiness in Hawaiian) started convening 10 partner grantees with two goals in mind: to provide a space where they could share and learn from one another, and to help them feel excited and renewed.
“It started as a way to bring partners together. We thought there would be value in them sharing experiences, challenges they face, and successes they see,” says foundation executive director Janis Reischmann. “Someone reminded us that grantees get caught in the day-to-day of their work, and, if we could do nothing more than to re-inspire and re-energize them, that would serve them well.”
Still, the foundation stepped in with caution.
By Henry Berman, ASF
ASF member Barbara Harman and the Harman Family Foundation are demonstrating the power of small-staff philanthropy to lead—and they’ve been doing so for at least the past decade.
Barbara is editor of the award-winning Catalogue for Philanthropy: Greater Washington, which celebrates its 10th year in 2013. When I spoke with her last month as part of ASF’s interview series with philanthropic thought leaders, we talked about her role in creating and championing the Catalogue.
Published with lead funding from the Harman Family Foundation and support from its partners, the Catalogue spotlights the “landscape below the landscape,” according to Barbara, or originally the region’s community-based arts organizations.
How does Barbara—a former English professor at Wellesley College—describe her leadership role in creating the Catalogue? Accidental.
By Henry Berman, ASF
ASF CEO Henry Berman at ASF’s sold-out 2012 National Conference
You are Bill Gates. And Andrew Carnegie. And Oprah Winfrey.
Each of these philanthropists has leveraged more than fortunes. They capitalized on their fame to become leaders.
Bill Gates calls on presidents and prime ministers. He and Melinda Gates attack issues on a global scale with millions of dollars. Andrew Carnegie gave millions of people he never met the opportunity to expand their worlds through libraries. Oprah Winfrey uses her visibility to inspire countless others, and she backs it up with her own philanthropy supporting education and the empowerment of women, children, and families.
So how are you alike?
By Andy Carroll, ASF
In the wake of the recent election campaign, I’ve been thinking about our country being divided, and things being “stuck.” We know that by collaborating we could accomplish big things, but we still don’t come together. Conflict, disagreement, and gridlock are common in our national discourse, at a community level, and also within organizations, friendships, and families.
Sometimes it seems like humanity, in the words of one popular songwriter, is a “bunch of whining, fighting shmoes.”
The important work of many small foundations–to build opportunity, promote health, reduce hunger and suffering, and protect the environment—is often undercut or compromised by disagreements between competing factions. And divisiveness is only one among a set of “complex problems” that ensnarl the work of foundations and the nonprofits they support. Another complex problem is culture that is embedded and resistant to change.
I don’t think complex problems are acknowledged openly enough. Many funders who keep asking how they can have more impact eventually come up against challenges that are too big for them to solve alone. Continue reading
By Henry Berman, ASF
For most of my life, and certainly all of my working life, I have always fashioned myself an entrepreneur. For a long time my definition, rightly or wrongly, focused on the word as a noun, describing someone who typically takes risks and tries new things – one who starts new ventures. In fact, one online dictionary defines the word entrepreneur as a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.
As I began spending more of my time in the philanthropic sector I started questioning whether I was still an entrepreneur. After all, was I taking initiative and risk? Was I helping generate the big returns, in a social impact sense, that I imagined high-tech entrepreneurs reaped in terms of dollars for the risk they took? Continue reading
By Mary Harp-Jirschele, J. J. Keller Foundation
When I attended the Association of Small Foundations’ 2010 National Conference in Austin, Texas, little did I know that I’d return to Northeastern Wisconsin with an idea that would change the face of dental care for thousands of needy children in our region.
During the ASF conference, I participated in the half-day site visit opportunity, and we traveled by bus to a variety of unique programs that benefited low-income people, which is the hallmark of the foundation I represent, the J. J. Keller Foundation, based in Neenah, WI.
One of those site visits took us to a school where a brightly colored bus was parked – not to transport children to and from school, but a unique bus that was fully loaded with dental equipment and traveled from school to school, serving the dental needs of needy children. St. David’s Foundation in Austin was credited with the gift, and I scooped up the materials and brought them home with me…and 18 months later, there is a big, blue, state-of-the-art mobile dental clinic making its way throughout our region!
By Kathryn Petrillo-Smith, ASF
ASF’s Foundation Guidebook talks about the importance of setting grant guidelines and what to include. Among the common components listed are “Grant restrictions (who and what you do not fund).” I’ve had many grantmakers tell me that being explicit about what they do not fund is just as important and valuable as explaining what they do fund, saving everyone time and energy.
I think that is why, when I read Daniel Pink’s The Flip Manifesto, 16 Counterintuitive Ideas About Motivation, Innovation, and Leadership, creating a to-don’t list resonated so strongly with me. Just like with grant guidelines, when organizing my own work, why shouldn’t I be explicit about what I will and will not do?
Pink credits “the two most influential management gurus of the past 30 years,” Tom Peters and Jim Collins, with coming up with the idea of a to-don’t or stop-doing list. Of them, and of the list itself, Pink writes:
The key insight of both Peters and Collins is that we spend too much time on addition and not nearly enough on subtraction. Yet it’s only by taking away what doesn’t matter that allows us to reveal what does matter.
That’s why a couple of years ago I began using a hybrid of the Peters and Collins techniques—a combo of a to-don’t and stop-doing list. I revisit the list more than once a year, but I don’t craft a new one every day. Instead, I post it on the wall next to my desk where it’s always in view and revise it when circumstances demand.
What would be on your to-don’t list?
Kathryn Petrillo-Smith is ASF’s Managing Director. In this role, Kathryn is a member of ASF’s senior leadership team and works to align ASF’s operations with its strategy. Kathryn oversees ASF’s Member Services, Membership, and Operations teams and its financial management.
