The ongoing revolution in philanthropy: An open-ended reading list

 

 

I recently had a conversation with a friend and colleague about what I perceive to be a revolution in progress.  Grant makers and nonprofit professionals are now talking openly about some very painful (and inter-related) issues in philanthropy, such as

• The lack of inclusion and equity in philanthropy.
• The difficult power dynamics among grantors and grantees.
• The origins of some foundations’ wealth, which in some cases includes slavery and other forms of exploitation.
• The tendency of philanthropic professionals, big donors, and other relatively privileged people to assume that they know what is best for the people who are directly affected by the problems that need to be addressed.

It is really inspiring to see philanthropic and nonprofit professional engaging in public conversations about these challenges, and even more inspiring to see them taking action to create positive changes.  I offered to send my friend and colleague a list of key articles and books about this revolution, and it now occurs to me that I can share this list with everyone who is interested.  Here it is:

Books:

• Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance
• Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World
• Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better
• Giving Done Right: Effective Philanthropy and Making Every Dollar Count
• Unicorns Unite: How nonprofits and foundations can build EPIC Partnerships
• The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex
• From Generosity to Justice: A New Gospel of Wealth
• Philanthropy Reconsidered: Private Initiatives – Public Good – Quality of Life
• The Givers: Money, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age

Articles, reports, podcasts, and videos:

• The Problems With Philanthropy, and What We Can Do to Fix Them
• In the March Toward Equity and Justice, Foundations Need to Remember: It’s Not Our Money to Control
• Social Change Won’t Happen Unless Philanthropy Gives More Power to Grassroots Leaders
• It’s Time For Philanthropic Billionaires To Share Power
• Deciding Together Shifting Power and Resources Through Participatory Grantmaking
• Philanthropy is at a turning point. Here are 6 ways it could go
• No Time for Complacency: Preparing Foundations for a More Turbulent Future
• Letting grantees lead: What we’re learning from the BUILD evaluation
• Empowering Communities: Participatory Grantmakers Say We Must Go beyond Feedback
• A Place Where You Can Speak Your Mind to That Foundation
• Center for Effective Philanthropy: Grantee and Applicant Perception Reports
• The state of grant seeking
• What if pizza shops were funded like human service nonprofits?
• Do we know best what others need?
• Solutions Privilege: How privilege shapes the expectations of solutions, and why it’s bad for our work addressing systemic injustice
• A Call to Modernize American Philanthropy
• Decolonizing Wealth – Nonprofit Radio Podcast
• Good People, Hidden Biases, and Navigating Your Blind Spots
• Can Philanthropic Money Listen? Some observations from Atlanta.
• More than money: philanthropists as activists
• Transparency: One Small Step for Funders, One Giant Leap for Equity
• Reimagining Our Vision & Value to the Field
• The US is growing more unequal. Some say philanthropy isn’t the solution.
• Are the New Megadonors Distorting American Society?
• As Distrust in Big Philanthropy Grows, Here’s How Leading Foundations Are Demonstrating Their Value
• Answers on grant proposals if nonprofits were brutally honest with funders
• On Not Being Constrained by the System You’re In
• Choosing to be a Liberated Gatekeeper
• The 2018 Diversity Among Philanthropic Professionals Report: A Tale of Two Sectors
• Why Impact-Per-Dollar is a terrible, harmful way to measure nonprofit effectiveness
• The Power of Dialogue about Nonprofit Data and Evaluation
• Joint Statement of Associations Advancing Equitable Evaluation Practices
• Insights from an Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Journey
• Announcing the first foundation assessment guide on power and privilege
• Philanthropy for change, not charity
• How Philanthropy Can Get Serious About Racial Healing
• ‘You Can’t Lift People Up by Putting Them Down’: How to Talk About Tough Issues of Race, Poverty, and More
• Inching Toward Equity: Grant makers want to be sure their giving does more to benefit people of color, but progress is slow
• Results Count: The Path to Equity
• Showing Up with an Equity Lens
• Race, Equity and Boston
• The Smartest Way to Promote Diversity: Pay for Overhead at Charities Led by People of Color
• How corporate foundations and CSR need to evolve to be more effective partners with nonprofits
• Employee Pressure Will Help Redefine CSR in 2019
• Lessons Learned from Two Decades in Philanthropy
• Moving People Forward: How Equity Leads to Greater Progress
• You’re not serious about equity if you don’t post salaries
• Survey: Nonprofits Struggle with Demonstrating Outcomes
• Evaluating a Culture
• Get a BEER* and Undo Nonprofit Power Dynamics Day
• Can Power Be Anything But Zero-Sum?
• Self-Interest (Rightly Understood) in the Nonprofit Sector
• You can’t give from an empty cup: Funders can enable movements to flourish by helping grantees reduce burnout
• Race to Lead: Confronting the Nonprofit Racial Leadership Gap
• Diversifying Boards Means Ceding Control—Are White Nonprofit Leaders Ready?
• Trust in Grantees, Not Command and Control
• Trust-based grantmaking: What it is, and why it’s critical to our sector
• Trust-Based Philanthropy Project
• How Foundations Can Grapple With the Reality That Their Wealth Was Accumulated Unjustly
• Kids Choose Their Donors in a Twist on Sponsorships
• How funder fragility is similar to white fragility and what funders can do about it
• As Foundations Reimagine Themselves, They Should Give Attention to DEI in Operations
• The Challenge of Nonprofit Leadership: Navigating a Perilous Moment
• Nonprofits Struggle to Implement Diversity Measures, Survey Finds
• Nonprofits that empower leaders of color are more apt to do something about racial inequality
• Why more and more executive directors of color are leaving their positions, and what we need to do about it
• Report Identifies Barriers to Nonprofit Advancement for Women of Color
• What Does It Look Like to Support Women of Color to Lead?
• Leaders of Color Speak Out…about being underestimated, breaking barriers, and whether things are getting better.
• White Men Still Dominate CEO Offices at Big Charities
• Fund The People: Talent Justice Initiative
• Undoing Power Dynamics in the Nonprofit Sector – Two Perspectives
• We Need to Talk About ‘The Giving Tree’
• Systems Change Is All about Shifting Power
• Who are our nonprofit disruptors and instigators?
• Momentum for Change: Ending the Nonprofit Starvation Cycle
• Making Amends: How Funders Can Address Slavery’s Legacy
• Real Equity Means Including People With Disabilities in Philanthropy
• Belonging In The Workplace: A New Approach to Diversity And Inclusivity
• Cultural Organizing Needed for Equity: A Framework of Belonging
• Philanthropy with a Racial Equity Lens
• Social Innovation Alone Can’t Solve Racial Inequality
• More than money: philanthropists as activists
• Sometimes the best thing we donors can do to advance social justice is to just write the check and get out of the way
• General Operating Support and Relinquishing the Illusion of Control
• Rethinking Social Justice Grantmaking
• Going Upstream: Philanthropy’s Role in Advancing Justice
• Justice over greatness: A new year’s reflection
• From “Keep Out” to “Please Come in.” Opening Up Grants Processes Leads to More Equity’
• After Slamming the Doors on Too Many Grantees, a New Approach Improved Our Foundation’s Impact
• Nonprofit Leadership at a Crossroads
• Nonprofits as Agents of Tension and Democracy
• Why diversity, equity, and inclusion matter for nonprofits
• Environmental Justice: Moving Equity from Margins to Mainstream
• From Promise to Practice — Embedding Equity and Inclusion
• Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity Policy Template
• Practical Ideas for Improving Equity and Inclusion at Nonprofits
• So you don’t think race, equity, diversity, and inclusion are relevant to your mission
• Equity in the Center: Video Case Studies
• Bay Area Equity Atlas
• Dismantling White Supremacy in Nonprofits: a starting point
• The Road Ahead: Will Philanthropic Critique Change Philanthropic Practice?
• Critiques of Philanthropy Are Important, but Some Have Entered the Realm of the Absurd
• Reflections on a Conference for Well-Intentioned Funders: We can do better
• Abigail Echo-Hawk on the art and science of ‘decolonizing data’
• Allison Bauer Discusses Philanthropy Today & Nonprofit Support
• How Being a 13-Year-Old Busboy Prepared Darren Walker to Lead the Ford Foundation
• Growth Mindset: The Evolution of Tricia and Jeff Raikes’s Philanthropy

I’d like to point out that Vu Le, a few of whose publications are listed above, is a revolution in his own right.  He uses his blog, Nonprofit AF, to analyze overlapping issues such as philanthropy, justice, inclusion, power dynamics, racial equity, nonprofit leadership, outcomes reporting, and financial sustainability. And as a bonus, he’s very funny as well.

Tools:

• Reflective structured dialogue
• Community-based participatory research
• Community engagement governance

 

This is an open-ended list. I plan to add more items, and I invite you to use the form below to let me know of anything that I have missed. I always have more lessons to learn!

 

Name(required)

Email(required)

Website

Message

Submit

Δ

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Forgive and remember”

File this under “lessons about failure that the nonprofit sector can learn from medical sociology.”

Forgive and Remember: Managing Medical Failure, by Charles Bosk, is a classic of medical sociology, an analysis of how coping with failure is built into the training that surgeons receive in hospital rounds, mobidity and mortality conferences, and other settings.

Please note that I am not claiming that surgeons themselves have a lot to teach us about dealing with failure, because my experience is that while their sub-culture does have rituals and protocols that they enact privately, they still have a way to go in transparency and accountability to others.

This has been my experience in three instances of major surgery:

1. Surgeon did not follow instructions given by the specialist physician managing my condition.  Acknowledgement: Partial.  Apology: No.
2. Surgeon did not inform me that the tumor to be removed might be malignant and require addition surgery until I was under anesthesia. Acknowledgement: Yes, after I complained. Apology: Yes, after I complained.
3. Surgeon did not respect my request regarding administration of anesthesia:  Acknowledgement: Yes, after I complained. Apology: No.

Not that I am bitter.

But let’s face it:  most of us are highly invested in showing the world that we are skillful, trustworthy, and deserving of whatever prestige is ascribed to us.  As a patient, I naturally blamed the surgeons, not only for their errors in judgement, but for the instances in which they failed to acknowledge or apologize for their mistakes.  As a fellow human being, I completely empathize with their reluctance.  I imagine that that reluctance is more acute among professionals who have to cut people open.  Their work is obscenely invasive but often lifesaving,  and therefore must maintain an impeccably trustworthy reputation.

That’s why Brent James is one of my heroes, along with surgeons and physicians like him who are putting it on the line for evidence-based practice.  There will be no accountability, transparency, or improvement in health care unless successes and failures are accurately documented.  Those results must then be carefully analyzed, made available to the public in appropriate ways, and used to improve their efforts.

As with medicine, so with other mission-based organizations.  We need to track outcomes, acknowledge failures, and then do better.  If it takes a pink feather boa and an amusing ritual for nonprofits to get there, I’m all for it, though I’m not expecting surgeons to adopt the feather boa.

As for the slogan, “forgive and remember,” I think of it as both a spiritual and a practical precept.  We not only need to forgive ourselves and others when we have failed – we also need to bear the lessons of failure in mind.  Both individuals and organizations not only need to keep learning, but to take appropriate action to protect those who are at risk.

I used to work in violence prevention, and for me, one of the most heart-rending aspects of it was the well-documented difficulty in stopping offenders from repeatedly battering their loved ones.  In some cases, they simply didn’t see their behavior as abusive, or their loved ones didn’t see any alternative to accepting abuse.

As I reflect on that today, it drives home very painfully the lesson that we cannot always change others, or even control a specific behavior of theirs.  The old cliche that they “have to really want to change” is true, and it’s also true that not everyone who wants to change can do so. This is the really difficult side of facing failure for nonprofit organizations – in some cases, there may be no alternative to severing ties with individuals or organizations, if the organization is going to face its failure and move on.  It’s going to take more than a pink feather boa, a “joyful funeral,” or a FailFaire to get past that.  When the well-being of vulnerable people is on the line, there are cases where forgiving and remembering is crucial, but it isn’t enough.

---

Bonus item:

Q:  How many psychotherapists does it take to change a lightbulb?

A:  Only one, but the light bulb really has to want to change.

Adventures in failure (and ritual studies): The “joyful funeral”

Beth Kanter and I are not twins who were separated at birth, but we have some things in common.

• Distant past:  We both graduated from Bennington College. (She was a couple of years ahead of me.)
• More recent past: We both joined the circuit rider movement and became nonprofit technology professionals. (She was a couple of years ahead of me here as well.)
• Present: We both have been thinking a lot lately about the power of acknowledging failure. (She’s written much more on this topic than I have.)

So perhaps if we were twins, I wouldn’t be the evil twin (I hope) but the lagging twin.  She’s succeeding at writing in a very engaging and helpful way about failure, and I am definitely benefiting from that.  Thinking about how to acknowledge failure flows very naturally from my current absorption in outcomes management for nonprofit organizations.

Beth recently published a blog article on “Six Ways Nonprofits Learn from Affordable Losses or Little Bets to Improve Impact” that appealed to me greatly, mostly because some the practices described have a ritual component.

I was especially excited when I saw that Beth had included the “Joyful Funeral” custom that was created by Moms Rising.  I had heard rumors of this ritual in nonprofit management circles, but couldn’t remember the details.  Fortunately, Beth’s article includes a cool video, in which she interviews Ashley Boyd about what it really entails.

Now, unlike Beth, I studied sociology of religion as a graduate student, and have a longstanding interest in ritual studies.  Regardless of one’s religious beliefs and affiliation – or lack thereof – it’s easy to see that ritual often has great power in assisting human communities that are confronted by change or loss.

Let’s look at the characteristic stages of a “rite of passage:”

• Detachment or withdrawal from the status quo
• Transition
• Reincorporation into the social group

Likewise, consider a purification ritual, in which the transition in question is from an “unclean” to a “clean” state.

I propose that we think of a joyful funeral as a combination of passage and purification.  The individual or organization has an opportunity to mark the change (which may also be a loss) from a viable initiative to a failure, to acknowledge shortcomings, to mourn, to be supported by the community, and to achieve closure, and to begin the next stage of life.

Many people are left cold by any kind of ritual, and others are put off by the links between elaborate ritual and religious institutions from which they are alienated.  For that reason, I would never argue that a joyful funeral (or any of the other celebrations of failure that Beth describes) should be attempted by everyone.  But for many of us, a ritual can be a comfort, especially if it doesn’t demand that we buy into a dogma or denomination.  A ritual can also be goofy and fun.

I like the idea of building laughter without humiliation into a ritual acknowledgement of failure. It’s less scary and less punitive than a solemn occasion, and better for strengthening ties among the team and making it fun to learn from mistakes.  For this reason, I recommend the “DoSomething PinkBoa FailFest” to beginners in the art of failing and moving on.

---

Bonus item:  a joke for people who take ritual a little too seriously.

Q:  What’s the difference between a liturgist and a terrorist?

A:  You can negotiate with a terrorist.

---

 

Basic concepts in technology planning for nonprofits

I had a delightful time at last week’s meeting of the Boston 501 Tech Club.  The theme was technology planning (a topic close to my heart), and Gavin Murphy of Annkissam (a colleague, esteemed client, and friend) gave an outstanding overview that I recommend to any nonprofit professional who has mastered his/her own field and is ready to think about the big picture in technology for his/her organization.  Naturally, during the Q&A time after Gavin’s presentation, I did some nitpicking on the topic of metrics, but never mind.  What you see below is the complete set of Gavin’s notes for this presentation, with no editorial changes from yours truly.  Many thanks are due to Gavin for permission to post his notes!

---

Technology Planning
Presented at the Boston 501 Tech Club
Gavin Murphy
Chief Operating Officer
Annkissam

1. What is Tech Planning?

• “Technology” can means lots of things, from office wiring and networks to social networking and RFID chips.
• Today we will focus on concepts of technology planning that should be universally applicable to whatever planning you need to do.
• One key concept is recognizing that most decisions involve trade-offs; there is rarely a “right” option, rather different options will present different trade-offs (upfront cost, ongoing cost, quality, time, other resources or risks, etc.).
• At the end we’ll talk about some resources that are available for people that are interested in exploring more specific topics, and we’ll also have a short Q&A session.

2. Strategic Alignment

“Plans are worthless. Planning is essential.”  – Dwight D. Eisenhower, general and president (1890-1961)

• Technology strategy (and planning) should support organization strategy.
• Show of hands: how many people are part of an organization that has a strategy (and you know what it is, on some level)?
• How many people’s organizations have a technology strategy (and you know what it is, on some level)?
• If you don’t have an organizational strategy, that’s a bigger issue!  And, frankly, one that should be addressed first.

3. Why Plan?

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” – Charles Darwin, scientist

• Planning will help you be more adaptable to change.
• The act of planning will force you to think through the resources you have to commit to the process (both time and money) and tradeoffs that different options represent.
• The executive leadership needs to be involved in the planning process to some degree, although other staff or by someone from outside the organization can manage the process.
• Even if your plans change, the act of planning will get people engaged in the options and will help to avoid “shiny object syndrome”.  Ultimately, planning will help you respond to both expected and unexpected changes to your organization or environment.

4. Planning is a Process!

• It’s not an event, or even a single project (although there could be a project to kick it off or reevaluate things).
• Similarly, planning can produce documents that are quite helpful, but only to the extent those documents are used to guide the decisions of the organization.
• It’s important to budget time and resources to technology planning and implementation, just as you would dedicate ongoing resources to other critical aspects of your organization.
• One potential trap is committing to an ongoing technology obligation without anticipating the resources it will take to maintain; for example, maintaining your own servers or establishing a social media presence.
• It’s possible that technology is not a critical part of your organization, and that’s fine too as long as you are engaging in the process of evaluating tradeoffs to come to that conclusion.

5. Importance of metrics and measurements

• Once you have decided on a strategy, the next thing is to think about is how to measure your progress.
• Metrics are one way to make sure your technology strategy is closely aligned to your organizational strategy.
• For example, if data security is a concern, you might track the percentage of your computers that have AV or disk encryption installed; if outreach is an organizational imperative then perhaps Twitter followers or Facebook friends might be a better metric.
• Metrics should be as quantitative as possible, to minimize the risk that people will make subjective judgments and obscure the true picture of how things are going.

6. Need to set goals and track success (or failure)

• Once you have chosen your metrics, you should set goals for those metrics and track your progress over a preset time period which should be long enough to judge results but short enough to preserve momentum.
• If you succeed in achieving your goals–great! Adjust your goals for the next time period to be a little more challenging and keep trying to meet them. It’s important to avoid “autopilot” goals that are too easy to meet and never adjust up.
• If you don’t meet your goals, that’s ok too. Now you have valuable information and you can either adjust your plan, your metrics, your goals, or the resources you are applying to technology. After a few cycles you should be able to find the right balance and establish a pattern of success.

7. Things went wrong?!

“Everyone has a plan – until they get punched in the face.” – Mike Tyson, Boxer

• If things go wrong, that’s ok! That’s all part of the process.
• The benefit of having a plan is that at least you will know when things are going wrong, which is always preferable (even if nothing can be done about it in the short run) to finding out everything has already gone wrong in the past and now things are in crisis.

8. Resources

“Those who plan do better than those who do not plan even though they rarely stick to their plan.” – Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister

• Volunteer groups: 501 Tech Club, NetSquared, Meetup, etc.
• Orgs: Common Impact, NTEN, etc.
• Mailing lists: Mission-Based Massachusetts, Information Systems Forum, etc.
• Consultants: NCN, lots!
• In house vs external resources; incentives but long term commitment with in house folks, external resources tend to me more expensive but should have particular skills or expertise that might be hard to have in house (too expensive, only need them periodically, etc.)