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Tony Wang
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Tony commented on the article |p.s. I think the ultimate problem in both the nonprofit and philanthropy sectors is the fact that each is governed by a small board of directors often removed from the community. If we want organizations that respond to community needs, instead of organizations that pursue their own agenda, then we need boards who come from the community.
p.p.s. You're totally right that large foundations can think more broadly or creatively about their resources. It's not the size of the foundation that matters, but their role within the field.
p.p.s.s. I could totally be talking out of my ass, so hopefully others from philanthropy can agree/disagree on some of the things that have been said here to add some perspective.
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Tony commented on the article |
Hi Nathaniel,
Thanks for taking the time to respond to my comments - as always, I value your opinion and believe that honest and opinionated conversations like these can only improve our collective understanding of complicated issues.
A couple of thoughts:
I think the way most large private foundations operate is similar to the way you describe - request proposals, pick a few organizations to fund, and find someone to rubber stamp them. And funders will encourage collaboration to the extent that they 1) are building a field and are intentionally trying to get organizations to collaborate (and will fund things like journals and knowledge sharing and other types of collaborative activities) or 2) are supporting a field and host occasional convenings with grantees. The first is less common because most foundations don't build fields - they support them.
If a foundation is engaged in the latter, I think there's a power dynamic that makes it difficult for the foundation to push for collaboration. Nonprofits are relatively autonomous organizations and they hate funding requirements - because of the very fact they are resource-constrained organizations having to jump through hoops. A collaboration agenda that starts from the funders violates that autonomy. While foundations who are field builders easily assume a leadership role, foundations who are supporting a field may be less willing to try and assert their agenda and instead defer to the needs of the organizations.
My personal belief is that if anyone should be leading the charge for collaboration, it has to be the nonprofits, since they're the ones that will ultimately be collaborating. But collaboration, beyond natural partnerships, is really hard. Rosetta Thurman has a great post infrastructure organizations in the downturn - the organizations that are often responsible for collaboration in the sector. In a lot of cases, most organizations just don't see the value of collaboration and have been burned by so many different initiatives that seek to promote collaboration, but were ultimately unsuccessful and a waste of time.
Perhaps it's not so much a collaboration agenda we need, but collaboration tools - things that make collaboration natural and easy from the perspective of nonprofits and funders so that collective action is much easier to pursue. (Perhaps that's what AssetMap is for?) And yes, I too believe small foundations will be the ones to lead the way.
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Tony commented on the article |
Hi Nathaniel,
As much as I respect your voice within the SE field, I think it's unfair for you to say foundations (or philanthropy as a field) could do much better on this point of collaboration. To say that nonprofits don't collaborate enough and blame it entirely on foundations seems a bit odd when foundations aren't the primary source of capital for nonprofits. Why not bash governments who provide program revenue? Or the nonprofits themselves? Or the structure of the nonprofit sector?
That said, I've seen a lot of funders try and promote collaboration, by asking nonprofits to create joint applications, or by funding intermediary organizations. But the challenges of trying to promote collaboration are not as simple as "let's pool non-existent nonprofit equity so that they have a strong stake in each other's success."
I'm not sure if it's the role of large private foundations (i.e. The Gates Foundation et al) to leverage whatever supporters, board members, and grantees in such "creative" ways. They're trying to push money out the door to the best organizations they can find - and to be honest, that's already a lot of work. If foundations want to leverage their social capital, it probably shouldn't be the large foundations, but the smaller family foundations and community foundations that should lead the charge, since the members of their social network are probably the ones looking for more ways to get involved.
I think it's important to criticize philanthropy, but it gets dangerously ad hominem when you say that not doing what you're suggesting is due to a "lack of imagination" on their part.
Tony
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Tony commented on the article |The SE community in SF is lucky to have you - drop us a line when you're over and out here. Looking forward to the excitement!
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Tony commented on the article |Hey Nathaniel,
I'm not sure if they've posted it online yet, but the winners of the BASES Social-E Challenge were announced as well.
1st Place Winners ($20k each):
Respira Design
Re:Motion Designs
Second Place Winners ($4k each):
SEE College Prep
Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE)
Third Place Winners ($1k each):
Driptech
OneBreath
Descriptions of the projects are here:
http://bases.stanford.edu/social-e-challenge/final-round-2009/
I was a mentor to one of the final round teams and attended the awards ceremony this past Saturday - would happy to blog about some of the going-ons and the evolving role these b-plan competitions play for change.org if interested. -
Tony commented on the article |Ah, gotcha. I pretty much agree with your analysis, though Holden is approaching it from a different perspective because of his involvement with institutional philanthropy. Program officers making the decision to fund essentially have zero sum budgets - no matter what they do, they have a fixed amount they can give out and have to evaluate these tradeoffs. So instead of the individual tradeoff (my consumption of a consumer good versus my donation) the program officer's tradeoff is indeed between small, unproven charities and larger, established charities.
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Tony commented on the article |
Nathaniel, why do you disagree with the implicit assumption that charity dollars are a zero sum game in Holden's example?
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