Change Philanthropy E-Book

Alicia Epstein Korten

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Serie: Kim Klein's Chardon Press
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 442

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009

Beschreibung

A how-to guide for creating and funding social justice program grants This groundbreaking book shows how to increase funding for social justice philanthropy. Social justice philanthropy provides direct services to alleviate suffering and works to transform the systems and institutions that cause that suffering. Written in an engaging, easy-to-read style, Change Philanthropy offers an insider's view what works and what doesn't work when developing grantmaking strategies in support of social change. It gives clear guidance showcases foundations of all types and sizes including Liberty Hill Foundation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Needmor Fund, Jacobs Family Foundation, Discount Foundation, Global Fund for Women, Schott Foundation, Ford Foundation, and the Open Society Institute. The book also includes a wealth of illustrative examples and contains practical suggestions and tips that can be applied immediately to support any social justice agenda. * Offers a guide for increasing funds for social justice programs * and suggestions for foundations on which programs to fund * Gives step-by-step advice for developing a successful grantmaking strategy * Includes a wealth of examples from leading foundations * Sponsored by The Center for Community Change

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Praise

Additional titles from Chardon Press

Title Page

Copyright Page

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Introduction

How Can Philanthropy Enhance Its Relevance?

The Inside Stories of Ten Foundations

A Snapshot of the Stories Highlighted

Dedication

PART ONE - Securing Success with Campaigns

Chapter 1 - Strengthening Unusual Alliances for Living Wages

Changing the Foundation’s Direction

Identifying New Opportunities

Consolidating Strategy

Building Philanthropic Interest in Labor

Securing Big Wins

Conclusion

Lessons Learned

Chapter 2 - Supporting Citizen Action and Litigation for Education Reform

Moving Beyond Service Delivery

Identifying Promising Grantees

Coupling Court and Advocacy Strategies

Winning in the Courts

Opening New Opportunities with a Public Charity

Creating an Evaluation Model

Leveraging the Media

Building Support for Education Throughout the State

Supporting Grassroots Organizing

Keeping Public Attention on Education

Securing Increased Funding

Conclusion

Lessons Learned

PART TWO - Influencing Market Forces in Support of People and the Planet

Chapter 3 - Using an Endowment to Build the Field of Socially Responsible Investing

Family Values That Infused the Foundation

An Introduction to Shareholder Activism

Debating Whether to Promote Shareholder Activism

Hollow Victory

Screening Stocks

Implementing Strategy to Invest in Values

Treading New Ground

Growing Socially Responsible Businesses

Bolstering a Key Investment Fund

Strengthening Grantee Work Through Shareholder Activism

Conclusion

Lessons Learned

Chapter 4 - Transforming Business Structures for Communities

Bridging Political Differences Within the Family

Questioning Impact

Moving the Foundations’ Offices

Supporting Efforts to Involve Youth

Listening to the Community

Seeing a Resource, not a Liability

Finding Ways to Attract and Grow Businesses

Financing the Project

Sharing Ownership

Overcoming Roadblocks to Creating an Initial Public Offering

Transferring Ownership of the Plaza

A Place Called Home

Future Plans

Conclusion

Lessons Learned

PART THREE - Aiding an Identity-Based Movement

Chapter 5 - Supporting the Development of an Immigrant Rights Field

Creating a Program

Developing a Field

Securing Important Wins

Weathering Political Storms

A Field into a Movement

Rising U.S. Opposition to Immigration

Conclusion

Lessons Learned

Chapter 6 - Maturing an Immigrant Movement

Targeting $50 Million to the Immigrant Field

Determining the Strategic Focus for the Fund

Developing a Regranting Strategy

Funding an Advocacy and Organizing Agenda

Internal Tensions

Results

Growing Pains

Building the Financial Base

September 11 and the Creation of a Funder Collaborative

Millions Challenge Growing Anti-Immigrant Sentiment

Conclusion

Lessons Learned

PART FOUR - Creating Infrastructure for Justice

Chapter 7 - Building Community-Based Power in Los Angeles

Listening as a First Step

Including Community Members in Foundation Decision Making

Addressing Conflict of Interest

Finding High-Potential Grantees

Supporting “Change, Not Charity”

The Community Funding Board Model

Assuming a Leadership Role in the Philanthropic Community

Helping Grantees Build Infrastructure

Rebuilding Ravaged Communities

Conclusion

Lessons Learned

Chapter 8 - Strengthening National Community-Based Networks

Civic Participation in Public Institutions

Foundation at a Turning Point

School Councils and New Community Organizing Opportunities

Embracing New Forms of Community Organizing

Supporting Non-School-Centered Community Organizing

Expanding Foundation Commitment to Community Participation

Translating Excitement into Action

Building Trust with the Grantees

Building Capacity Nationally

Growth and Impact of National Networks

Conclusion

Lessons Learned

PART FIVE - Transforming FunderGrantee Power Relationships Through Creative ...

Chapter 9 - Addressing Internationally Women’s Needs for Funding

Starting a Fund

Empowering Grantees with Trust

A New Fund in Mexico

Encouraging Other Funds Globally

A Nepali Fund

Growing Women’s Funds

Increasing Challenges for Funds

Transforming Power Relations

Transforming Philanthropic Power Dynamics

Changing the Role of Women

Transforming Philanthropy

Conclusion

Lessons Learned

Chapter 10 - Responding to Disaster Recovery and Beyond

Raising the Profile of the Gulf Coast Fund

Strengthening Contacts in the Gulf

Creating the Advisory Group

Conflict of Interest Buffers

First Advisory Group Meeting

Fund Priorities

Choosing Grantees

Time Commitment Takes a Toll

Building a Green Economy

Restoring Gulf Wetlands and Beyond

Conclusion

Lessons Learned

PART SIX - Gleaning Lessons for Change

Chapter 11 - Lessons for the Road

Building a Strategy for Change

Building Commitment for Social Justice

Conclusion

Afterword

APPENDIXES

Notes

Index

About the Project Director

About the Author

“The field of philanthropy has such a pressing need for stories and examples of how funders can use their limited resources to take meaningful steps towards a more just world. I am so pleased that Change Philanthropy is providing us with accounts of approaches and strategies of foundations working towards this goal.”

—Susan Sandler, philanthropist

“This volume arrives at just the right time. Poised as we are between a paradigm-shifting recession and the trend towards a gloriously diverse American demographics, these case studies prod philanthropy to fulfill its commitments to grow our democracy towards justice.”

—Erica Hunt, president, Twenty-First Century Foundation

“I would strongly encourage philanthropists and funders from large and small institutions to read this book. The Center for Community Change brings together its expertise in social change and access to the funding community in this unique and much-needed book.”

—Rusty M. Stahl, executive director, Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy

The Chardon Press Series

Fundamental social change happens when people come together to organize, advocate, and create solutions to injustice. Chardon Press recognizes that communities working for social justice need tools to create and sustain healthy organizations. In an effort to support these organizations, Chardon Press produces materials on fundraising, community organizing, and organizational development. These resources are specifically designed to meet the needs of grassroots nonprofits—organizations that face the unique challenge of promoting change with limited staff, funding, and other resources. We at Chardon Press have adapted traditional techniques to the circumstances of grassroots nonprofits. Chardon Press and Jossey-Bass hope these works help people committed to social justice to build mission-driven organizations that are strong, financially secure, and effective.

Kim Klein, Series Editor

Additional titles from Chardon Press

Working Across Generations: Defining the Future of Nonprofit Leadership, Frances Kunreuther, Helen Kim, Robby Rodriguez

Inspired Philanthropy: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Giving Plan and Leaving a Legacy, Third Edition, Tracy Gary with Nancy Adess

Tools for Radical Democracy: How to Organize for Power in Your Community, Joan Minieri, Paul Getsos

Level Best: How Small and Grassroots Nonprofits Can Tackle Evaluation and Talk Results, Marcia Festen, Marianne Philbin

Fundraising for Social Change, Fifth Edition, Revised and Expanded, Kim Klein

The Accidental Fundraiser: A Step-by-Step Guide to Raising Money for Your Cause, Stephanie Roth, Mimi Ho

Grassroots Grants: An Activist’s Guide to Grantseeking, Second Edition, Andy Robinson

Fundraising in Times of Crisis, Kim Klein

The Nonprofit Membership Toolkit, Ellis M. M. Robinson

Stir It Up: Lessons in Community Organizing and Advocacy, Rinku Sen

Selling Social Change (Without Selling Out): Earned Income Strategies for Nonprofits, Andy Robinson

Raise More Money: The Best of the Grassroots Fundraising Journal, Kim Klein, Stephanie Roth, Editors

Fundraising for the Long Haul, Kim Klein

Ask and You Shall Receive: A Fundraising Training Program for Religious Organizations and Projects, Leader Manual, Kim Klein

Ask and You Shall Receive: A Fundraising Training Program for Religious Organizations and Projects, Participant Manual, Kim Klein

Making Policy Making Change: How Communities Are Taking Law into Their Own Hands, Makani N. Themba

Roots of Justice: Stories of Organizing in Communities of Color, Larry R. Salomon

Copyright © 2009 by Center for Community Change

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Korten, Alicia Epstein, date.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN : 978-0-470-52211-0

1. Charities. 2. Social justice. 3. Social change. I. Title.

HV25.K67 2009

361.7’632—dc22 2009021649

361.7’632—dc22 2009021649

HB Printing

Foreword

We see a growing hunger and passion among donors and foundation staff for effective, long-term strategies to address critical social problems—and Change Philanthropy provides a unique and practical road map for the field. The book is a critical contribution to the debate about the role of philanthropy at a time of global economic turmoil, declining foundation assets, and increasing need and suffering in the United States and around the world.

Marjorie Fine brings extensive experience to her role as director of the book project. She was the former executive director of the Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock—a remarkable model of social justice philanthropy. In addition, for the past several years she has been director of The Linchpin Campaign, a special project of the Center for Community Change that (1) seeks to educate and engage donors and foundations about community organizing and (2) prepares organizers to communicate effectively to donors about the power of their work. Change Philanthropy, an initiative of The Linchpin Campaign, is one vehicle for realizing that broader goal.

Alicia Korten also brings unique and important qualifications to the task at hand. She consults with foundations and public agencies with grantmaking programs, including institutions as varied as the Ford Foundation, United Nations, World Resource Institute, and Inter-American Development Bank. She also worked with indigenous peoples in Panama for many years, helping them secure participation in publicly funded development projects.

The debate about the future of philanthropy is playing out in a larger social context. The twenty-first century is already shaping up to be a critical one for the future of humanity and the earth. In our increasingly interconnected world, goods, ideas, and elements of culture are moving across the globe with greater ease, but we are also experiencing unprecedented inequality, increasing poverty, forced migrations, and public health crises that spill across borders. We share a climate and an environment that are at serious risk unless we make dramatic shifts in how we organize our economies and live our lives. Patterns of structural racial inequality are deeply entrenched and are contributing to extreme suffering and erosion of rights and civil liberties for many, particularly people of color.

All these challenges to human welfare have invigorated social change movements. A new immigrant rights movement has brought millions of people to civic life. Young people are enlivening politics. New thinking in women’s rights and racial justice is prompting deeper reflection about both what changes we should seek and how we should push for them. Movements to fight climate change, create green jobs, and increase access to health care are gaining steam. All this new activism and thinking is heartening because great social progress has always been brought about through such large-scale democratic practice.

Change Philanthropy is a timely entry in a lively debate about how philanthropy can address these challenges of our times. The topic is particularly important, as one of the great paradoxes of rising inequality is that it is fueling an unprecedented increase in the scale and scope of organized philanthropy.

Change Philanthropy represents one effort to show the power of moving beyond alleviating symptoms of inequality to aiming funding at changing the underlying structural arrangements that result in those symptoms. Although most foundations share a commitment to the public good, few have made the explicit decision to identify and work on these deeply entrenched and frequently unspoken challenges.

Advocates of a social justice approach are pointing to a path beyond inherited orthodoxies to structural solutions that get at the underlying causes of poverty, inequality, racial and gender disparities, and the erosion of rights and civil liberties. Policies need to change, as do the way those policies are implemented.

For example, a foundation can support computers in schools in poor neighborhoods, but absent a challenge to the design of public financing for education by property taxes, it permits the continuation of an unequal funding formula that ensures that those schools remain underfunded.

Large numbers of people working together as part of dynamic social movements—with leadership from and by those directly affected by injustice—are needed to provide the ideas and muscle to overcome entrenched interests. Finally, a number of strategies need to be pursued in concert—including community organizing, civic participation, strategic communications, advocacy, and policy development and analysis—to achieve large-scale social change.

Philanthropy has a critical role to play in supporting grantees as they move social change forward. Yet the ferment and creativity in the social change sector has not, for the most part, been matched by resources or commitment from philanthropy.

We believe that foundations’ efforts to fund grantees in meeting people’s immediate needs through charity are important, particularly during times of crisis. However, we also note that foundations can never match the relative resources and power of the state (local, state, or national) to solve such problems or regulate the inequitable effects of markets.

We know that giving to address issues of structural injustice can be “risky” or “political.” Yet we believe that the risk is offset by the long-term payoff, as such giving enables grantees to have impact on a much larger scale.

In our work, we continuously meet funders who are seeking ways to increase their effectiveness in addressing injustice yet who note the lack of literature, tools, and training opportunities for such work. What seminars offer experience in matching effective grant strategies to the rights of LGBT teenagers, or to deep chronic poverty, or to the racial basis of the subprime mortgage crisis?

This book offers interested grantmakers a glimpse into how several funders have supported social justice, and provides a tool for helping readers rethink their own work. First, each chapter shows how the family, program officer, chief executive, or others in the foundation made use of a structural analysis of the injustice they wanted to resolve, though many of them would not call it this and had to come to such an analysis by trial and error. (Maya Wiley’s Afterword on structural racism in this book is a provocative and helpful reflection on this subject.) Second, the chapters show how the foundations learned to craft grant strategies that were strong enough to support grantees in having impact on the targets of that analysis.

Social justice philanthropy helps people gain the ability to change their own lives. In so doing, the field helps realize the democratic promise of this country and beyond. That is funding for a more lasting public good.

Alicia Korten and Marjorie Fine have done a great service to the field of philanthropy by providing us with stories of how others have changed their thinking and their grantmaking to important effect. The debate about the role of philanthropy in social change is important not so much for its own sake but for its deep relevance to the much larger question as to whether we can address the great social challenges of this century with wisdom, strategic insight, and compassion.

June 2009 DEEPAK BHARGAVA

Executive Director Center for Community Change

CHRISTOPHER HARRIS Senior Program Officer Ford Foundation

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I thank the Center for Community Change (CCC) for having contracted me to write this book.

Marjorie Fine, who heads The Linchpin Campaign, and the others at the Center worked tirelessly to bring Change Philanthropy to fruition. As director of the book project, Marjorie, with her decades of experience in the foundation world, recruited a host of top-caliber people, opened countless doors, and carefully edited and reviewed every chapter. She was often on the phone with me several times a week. Her thoughts and insights are reflected throughout the book.

Deepak Bhargava and Seth Borgos brought their intellectual firepower to the endeavor, including helping choose the cases in this volume. Seth Borgos, together with Julia Paik, also provided essential administrative support. Lynn Kanter brought her tremendous writing skills to bear in helping develop proposals and project reports for the initiative and helped locate appropriate resource people. John Pomeranz also provided invaluable input into the manuscript.

Heartfelt appreciation goes to the Ford Foundation, which provided funding to the Center for this project.

The book also had a first-rate advisory team of social justice leaders. Christopher Harris, Robert Bray, Maya Wiley, Christine Doby, Leroy Johnson, Michael Edwards, Kim Klein, Peter Pennekamp, Barbara Taveras, and Luz Vega-Marquis each brought to bear his or her wealth of experience in choosing the case studies in this volume and determining key messages. Particular thanks go to Robert Bray, who generously extended his extensive marketing skills to the endeavor, and to Kim Klein, who provided substantial support and guidance.

The editorial team at Jossey-Bass—David Harris, Allison Brunner, Lindsay Morton, and Xenia Lisanevich—have been a tremendous support. They have been deeply generous with their time, lending both their experience and good humor to shepherding the book through to publication.

Many other individuals supported the work along the way. David Lerner, Anthony Barnett, Bill Hamilton, and Rochelle Lefkowitz helped brainstorm ways to market the book upon its release. Eleanor Bader, Ignatius Bau, Myra Bicknell, Heidi Binko, Millie Buchanan, Jim Casey, Diana Cohn, Aaron Dorfman, Frank Farrow, Deanne Feeney, Janice Fine, David Foster, Bob Haas, Jan Jaffe, Avila Kilmurray, Lance Lindblom, Laura Livoti, May Louie, Chag Lowry, Nicky McIntyre, Anita Nager, Bill Roberts, Janet Shenk, Peter Teague, Ken Wilson, Emily Young, and Jim Young all gave their time either to review the manuscript or to discuss ideas and possible cases.

A final thanks must go to the foundation trustees and staff interviewed in this book. Many are sharing never-before-told stories in the hopes that their successes and failures will help support colleagues and the philanthropic and not-for-profit field more broadly.

June 2009 ALICIA EPSTEIN KORTEN

Arlington, Virginia

Introduction

As I was writing this book, I explained to a business colleague of my husband that I was working on a publication about social justice philanthropy. “What’s to write?” he asked me. “Seems easy enough. You have money, and you give it to organizations you believe in.” Yet mounting an effective funding program, particularly one that seeks to achieve large-scale impact in support of equity and justice, is an art. Defining a strategy for maximum impact, working to develop buy-in within a foundation for a course of action, and identifying grantees and building their trust are but a few of the challenges funders face.

This book is designed for you if you are a foundation trustee, executive director, or program staff person struggling with how to leverage your limited resources to address the enormous social and environmental challenges in the United States and abroad. This book is also designed for you if you are seeking ways to reach a greater number of people than your foundation currently serves. If you are with a nonprofit that partners with foundations to address such issues, you may also find the insider perspective this book offers extremely useful.

The publication includes the inside stories of ten foundations that have leveraged their grant dollars, and in many cases endowments and influence, to transform systems—whether in the government, for-profit, or even nonprofit sectors—that strip people of dignity and economic opportunity.

How Can Philanthropy Enhance Its Relevance?

According to the Foundation Center, foundations gave an estimated $42.9 billion in 2007.1 But most of these philanthropic dollars fund direct services, such as hospitals, university endowments, disaster relief, and soup kitchens. Such funding provides important services to many people, particularly when it targets low-income populations, and especially in times of societal crisis and economic downturns.

Yet foundations and nonprofit organizations alone can never provide all the services needed by citizens of any society. Ultimately governments and businesses—with their vastly superior resources—must play a role. Total expenditures for the U.S. federal government in 2007 were just over $3 trillion, and state and local expenditures were just over $2 trillion, dwarfing annual philanthropic grantmaking.2 And whereas foundations held assets of $670 billion in 2007, the largest fifty companies alone held assets of $16.7 trillion that same year.3

With limited funds, organized philanthropy faces a fundamental question: How can foundations best leverage their assets to be more effective agents of social change in support of equity and justice in the twenty-first century? Following the economic turmoil in 2008 and 2009, this question becomes even more important as assets of many foundations shrink, while needs increase.

The question of how foundations use their assets is also a critical one at this time because new money has poured into the field over the last two decades, even as some foundations have lost assets. In 1985, foundations operating in the United States gave away only $6 billion, with assets at roughly $102 billion.4 By 2007, just before the economic downturn, assets had swelled to over six times that amount.5 Warren Buffet’s projected $31 billion transfer of wealth to the Gates Foundation is one striking example of the scale of money that is influencing philanthropy at this time. As new money comes in, philanthropy is in a state of flux, as recently established foundations determine how these dollars will be used.

This book argues that one critical way for foundations to become even more relevant is to improve the balance between funding services that ameliorate symptoms of societal ills and addressing the root causes of those ills. In 2006, only 12 percent of grantmaking supported systems change for equity and justice, leaving the vast majority of money for services, according to a study by the Foundation Center and Independent Sector.6

This funding imbalance—between social justice and services—inhibits foundations from realizing their full potential in addressing societal ills.

Giving for social justice helps ensure that a much greater number of people can enjoy a society’s resources and opportunities. By harnessing the power of all sectors of society and more fully recognizing the defining roles government and business play in people’s lives, foundations can more effectively help societies meet the multifold needs of the twenty-first century.

The independent nature of many foundations positions them well to take on the role of funding grantees who are challenging societal institutions to be more fair and sustainable. “One of the attributes of foundations has been their ability to take on sensitive issues that other public and private institutions can’t take on. [In part because so many have their own endowments,] they can afford to take on risk and fail. They can stick with things for a long time. They can do demonstration and pilot projects to test out new ideas and innovations,” notes Barry Gaberman, former senior vice president at the Ford Foundation. Foundations are protected from the cyclical forces that often keep governments from being effective; and because they do not have shareholders demanding a quarterly return, they can focus on long-term results more easily than can publicly traded companies.

WHAT IS SOCIAL JUSTICE PHILANTHROPY?

Social justice actors seek to help citizens transform systems, institutions, and cultures to ensure that all citizens can participate fully in the social, spiritual, economic, and political life of a country, regardless of their position or station in life. The aim of social justice is not to ensure that all people live the same lives or earn the same amount of money. However, a basic tenet is that all have the opportunity to meet their basic needs, to engage freely with one another across differences, and to define and build the institutions that shape their lives.

There is a famous adage that says, “Give a [person] a fish and you have fed him [or her] for a day. Teach a [person] to fish and you have fed him [or her] for a lifetime.”

Systems change in support of low-income people takes this saying one step further, acknowledging that many low-income people living by water already know how to fish. Often what they need is support in protecting their right to fish as industrial fisheries take away their access to the water. Or they are fighting to protect their rivers from industrial waste that has poisoned fishing stocks.

In response to homelessness, a traditional philanthropist might fund a homeless shelter. A funder of social justice, in contrast, would ask, “Why are people homeless?” and use the answer to guide his or her grantmaking. Such a strategy might include empowering low-income communities to advocate for policies that prevent homelessness—such as subsidized housing, fairer credit opportunities, and a living wage.

The Leeds family (founders of the Schott Foundation) embarked on just such a journey of transformation, which is highlighted in Chapter Two of this book. Initially, the family funded an education institute to service a handful of children left behind by New York’s decaying public school system. Over time, however, the family came to question why so many public schools in New York were failing. As a result, they decided to found the Schott Foundation and put their dollars to work supporting grantees in their efforts to transform the larger New York public school system so as to reach a much broader number of children.

Note: Definition written by Maya Wiley and Alicia Korten.

The Inside Stories of Ten Foundations

This book highlights ten foundations that have moved beyond a focus solely on services, such as homeless shelters and hospitals, to one aimed at helping people influence the context in which they live. Through often lengthy journeys of trial and error, each foundation has chosen to address root causes of problems by asking such questions as “Why does poverty exist?”

The chapters offer a rare glimpse into the often soundproof halls of the funding world as foundations make decisions regarding why and how to support social justice. The stories detail the internal learning processes that helped foundations understand how better to help grantees build the kind of power needed to move systems much larger than themselves. Several show how community organizing grantees—with their focus on building citizens’ ability to engage in collective action—have been critical in building that power and shifting systems that had appeared immovable. Each includes the voices of champions inside and outside these foundations as they share their experiences in influencing their own institutions and in working with grantees. Some cases show how those within the foundation addressed the emotional fallout that can occur with change. Yet others depict the risks associated with such grantmaking, and how challenges have been managed. A few of the foundations demonstrate how sharing their decision-making authority with grantees enhanced their ability to provide strategic grants.

Clear themes emerge across the cases with regard to effective strategies for achieving large-scale change in support of equity and justice. Almost all the foundations (and collaboratives) found a clear and limited point of focus. Most concentrated their efforts on helping grantees build strong organizations, including increasing their membership base so that these members could effectively pressure targeted institutions to change. Many emphasized the importance of choosing strong grantees and then giving them enough room to make their own choices by providing general operating support rather than specific project support. Several foundations also developed methods for evaluating their funding strategies, including finding benchmarks that could help measure whether grantees were succeeding over time and switching directions if they weren’t. Most reached beyond their own foundations, finding such mechanisms as collaboratives and affinity groups to increase support for an issue or for a type of grantee from other foundations.

A Snapshot of the Stories Highlighted

A team under the direction of Marjorie Fine of the Center for Community Change (formerly head of the Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock, a national faith-based grantmaking program) helped choose the cases highlighted in this book. In addition to myself, this team included others at the Center, as well as a nine-person advisory team of funders and nonprofit organization representatives, who thoroughly surveyed the philanthropic landscape for what we felt were compelling, high-impact stories of change in the sector.

• The Discount Foundation leveraged its very limited resources to support a living-wage movement that led to the first increase in the federal minimum wage in a decade.

• The Schott Foundation is a leader recognized by its peers for supporting grantees’ efforts to help change the New York State educational funding formula and increase funding for public schools in New York.

• The Needmor Fund became an early adopter of socially responsible investing, and played a role in helping legitimize that field.

• The Jacobs Family Foundation and the Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Revitalization were able to do what few foundations supporting neighborhood revitalization have: play a pivotal role in transforming a blighted, drug-infested community into a vibrant neighborhood with reduced gang violence and increased economic opportunity. They also helped bring communities into partnership with business, by pioneering the first community-owned initial public stock offering.

• The Liberty Hill Foundation supported the emergence of democratic organizations in Los Angeles that are helping change how that city does business.

• The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation supported grantees in building community organizing infrastructure across the United States, which is helping communities secure important gains with respect to education, wages, health care, housing, and other issues that affect the quality of life of low-income and other citizens.

• The Ford Foundation aided grantees in establishing the field of immigrant rights. Together with the Open Society Institute and others, they supported immigrant leaders and their allies as they transformed this field into a full-fledged social movement.

• The Open Society Institute supported organizations growing the immigrant rights movement, which helped roll back some of the aspects of welfare reform that most negatively affected immigrants.

• The Global Fund for Women helped strengthen women’s rights infrastructure around the globe. Its grantees are playing a critical role in supporting women to lead democracy and human rights movements in Nepal, South Africa, Mexico, and other countries.

• The Gulf Coast Fund, created in 2005 following Hurricane Katrina to address the needs of those in the Gulf, strengthened efforts to rebuild these areas in an equitable and sustainable way and to raise awareness nationally regarding positive ways to address global warming.

We also chose foundations that we felt would represent the diversity of the philanthropic world so that you could find yourself and your concerns within these pages. If your private foundation is a household name and is resting on a multibillion-dollar endowment, your concerns may not be the same as those of a small public foundation raising a few hundred thousand dollars a year to give away. Hence the book highlights a mix of national, regional, and smaller family foundations, as well public charities and private independent foundations.

The ten cases also demonstrate a variety of ways in which grantees are using foundation funding for achieving change. These include community organizing, advocacy and public education, sustainable business initiatives, and judicial strategies.

There are ways, however, in which we fell short of reflecting the full diversity of foundations. Only two foundations plan to sunset. There is no case about a community foundation, despite the important work of these foundations across the country. Most of the cases are located in the foundation-dense East and West Coasts in the United States. The book does not begin to capture the range of foundations in other countries, though it does explore the creation of two foundations abroad, one in Nepal and one in Mexico, both influenced by the U.S.-based Global Fund for Women.

While all the highlighted foundations and collaboratives attempt to attack root causes of societal problems, in some respects the book does not move as far “upstream” as we might have liked. The large systems that shape inequality across the globe, such as a narrowly focused U.S. foreign policy, monopolistic public media, and financial systems that concentrate wealth in the hands of a few, were not among the social challenges addressed by the cases.

We chose institutions where we had a rich amount of data to depict the story and the change process within the foundation.

How to Use This Book

You do not need to read this book cover to cover. Each chapter stands alone to allow you to spend time only on the stories most relevant to your particular challenges.

To guide you toward the particular chapters that will address your needs, the book is divided into five parts, each highlighting different funder concerns and goals: (1) securing success with campaigns, (2) influencing market forces in support of people and the planet, (3) catalyzing an identity-based national movement, (4) creating community organizing infrastructure, and (5) transforming funder-grantee power relationships through creative foundation structures.

The following are additional insights into which chapters might be relevant to your needs:

• If you are seeking ways to build support for social justice within your foundation, you may want to read the chapters on the Open Society Institute and the Needmor Fund. In the chapter on the Open Society Institute, you will see how change agents played critical roles in helping the foundation include not only a service-oriented approach to immigrants but also a strategy for changing the circumstances that gave rise to the need for the services. The chapter on the Needmor Fund describes how a family member introduced a social justice lens to its approach to financial investments.

• If you are interested in systems or policies (such as health care or education) in the United States or abroad, you might start with the chapters on the Schott Foundation and the Discount Foundation. Each of these foundations supported grantees with specific policy objectives.

• If you are interested in how your foundation might leverage the power of the business sector for change, the Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation and the Needmor Fund are rich with insights. Both foundations found creative ways to partner with, support, and hold businesses accountable to the needs of low-income communities and the environment.

• If you are a local foundation focused only on your surrounding area, the chapters on the Liberty Hill Foundation and the Jacobs Family Foundation would be the best places to start. Both are place-based funders that have become national models for how to create change at the neighborhood and city levels.

• If you are finding it difficult to build consensus among your trustees because they have such divergent political views, the chapters on the Needmor Fund and the Jacobs Family Foundation both tell stories of how family members were able to bridge their political differences in support of social justice.

• If you want to broaden your impact beyond your grantmaking, the chapters about the Discount Foundation, the Needmor Fund, and the Jacobs Family Foundation will be particularly instructive. The Needmor Fund and the Jacobs Family Foundation leveraged their entire endowment for change; the Discount Foundation used its position as a funder to encourage often larger investments from other foundations in support of living-wage campaigns and labor-community-faith alliances.

• If you are concerned with the power dynamics that plague grantee-funder relationships, the Gulf Coast Fund, the Liberty Hill Foundation, and the Global Fund for Women are all examples of how to build more authentic partnerships with community leaders and neighborhood organizations. Each foundation enhanced its grantmaking by sharing decision-making power with activists.

• If you are interested in supporting a field or a large-scale movement, you may want to read the chapters on the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Institute, and the Mott Foundation. Each of these foundations supported grantees in building the strength of disenfranchised groups, which helped them actively participate in political life in the United States and beyond.

• If you are wondering how to evaluate social justice grantmaking, the chapters on the Schott Foundation and the Open Society Institute both detail the benchmarks these foundations learned to use to evaluate their long-term justice efforts.

• If you are looking for ways to combine a service approach with a social justice agenda, the chapters on the Open Society Institute and the Liberty Hill Foundation are good places to begin. The Open Society Institute chapter describes how foundations funded critical services, such as helping immigrants file applications for citizenship, in a time of great crisis. The chapter also emphasizes that those services would likely have been ineffective without funding support for policy work that helped move applications through government bureaucracies. The Liberty Hill Foundation chapter also emphasizes how services can play an important role in organizing people who then become active in social justice work.

For those readers who are funders, we hope this book helps you become a more effective grantmaker and find ways to move farther upstream with your giving. By leveraging your resources to address root causes, you join the growing number of funders helping create systems that support a more level playing field for all people, as well as a healthy planet for future generations. We also acknowledge the many foundations, both those we highlighted and those we were not able to fit within these pages, that are already out there doing such work.

We also encourage you to consult with appropriate tax advisers and legal counsel to determine a strategy that is appropriate for your type of foundation. Tax codes are complex and subject to change, and your foundation needs to be up-to-date as you shape your giving strategy. This book is not intended to provide legal or tax advice.

For those readers in nonprofit organizations and in the public and business sectors, we hope that this book enhances your ability to partner effectively with foundations. Our wish is that the book helps foundations more effectively support nonprofits and community-based organizations—as the players on the frontlines of change—so that funding can play an increasingly strategic role in creating a more just and sustainable future for all.

This book is dedicated to the individuals,communities, and organizations that have given ofthemselves to create a fairer, more sustainable world,as well as to the foundations that have courageouslysupported those on the front lines of change.

PART ONE

Securing Success with Campaigns

Foundations working to catalyze change in support of equity and justice most commonly focus their giving on specific issues, such as education, health care, or the environment.

In some instances, such funders become close partners with grantees. By building relationships with the players and paying close attention to campaign details, they are often able to provide funding to grantees at crucial moments.

If you are passionate about a particular issue and would like to support campaign work, the cases of the Discount Foundation and the Schott Foundation will be of particular interest. Through a journey of trial and error, the Discount Foundation came to fund living-wage campaigns and played a role in the success of these campaigns around the country.

The Schott Foundation supported partners who secured historic public funding increases for the New York education system.

The lessons they learned are relevant for all funders, regardless of the area of focus. Along the way, each discovered that limiting the scope of its work and then focusing on ways to support grantees as they built the power to influence targeted issues and constituencies were key ingredients of success.

1

Strengthening Unusual Alliances for Living Wages

The Case of the Discount Foundation

The Discount Foundation’s name is a reference to its small grantmaking budget (roughly $550,000 annually). By positioning itself to influence other funders in the field, this small foundation has played an instrumental role in strengthening labor, community, and faith partnerships that have championed one of the most successful economic justice campaigns in the United States.

“Attending college in Los Angeles, I’d walk out the door and see the class differences,” recalled Jeff Zinsmeyer, founder of the Discount Foundation. “I’d grown up believing that I lived in a country of opportunity for all. This was the image that a fifteen-year-old raised in the suburbs had, who looked around him and saw everything right. Then I got out into the world and saw that this was not so.”

Coming of age during the era of the civil rights movement, Jeff saw how others were fighting to create a fairer society and began to feel that he had a role to play in addressing the inequities he saw. “At some point I asked myself: What is a meaningful life? It seemed to me that what added meaning was working to change that injustice.”

When Jeff received an inheritance in the early 1970s, he sought ways to use it to support this goal. “I’d reached the decision that inherited wealth didn’t fit with my democratic ideals.” Already working for the Center for Community Change (CCC), which helped low-income people build community organizations, he recalled, “I asked my accountant about the maximum amount of money I could contribute for the greatest tax shield, and then somehow I ended up in front of Margery Tabankin, who headed the Youth Project [a CCC-incubated program], asking, ‘Where should I put this before year end?’”

Margery remembered, “A guy with long hair walked into my office and said he was interested in giving away a large sum of money anonymously. I got to be close friends with him. I learned more about his interests and how he wanted them to be realized.”

In 1977, with Margery’s guidance, Jeff decided that with his remaining inheritance he would establish a foundation focused on grassroots organizing.1 In explaining why he chose to concentrate efforts here, he noted, “I wanted to support organizations that were shifting the maldistribution of wealth and power in our country. Through work I had done on redlining,2 and then later with CCC, I learned the tremendous leverage that could be achieved through agitation and mobilization rather than direct service. Through my work with CCC, I worked with some of the most exciting community organizations of that period, learning about their struggles for better housing and access to credit.”

Discount Foundation Snapshot

Type: Private foundation Year founded: 1977 Grant range (1977): $10,000-$20,000 Grant range (2007): $15,000-$25,000 Total grants awarded (2007): $550,000

Asset base (2007): $10.3 million

Geographic focus: National

Primary funding areas: Living wage, minimum wage, and building political power of working poor

Staff size (2007): One half-time executive director Location: Boston

Note: Snapshot information for each chapter varies depending on data available. Dates refer to either the calendar year or the end of the fiscal cycle. For snapshot sources, refer to the Notes section at the end of the book.3

In setting up the Discount Foundation (so named because of its small size and even smaller grants), Jeff—together with Margery Tabankin and her husband at the time, Tom Asher—sought out board members with shared values and synergistic chemistry. “We created a board that enjoyed working together in a way that transcended the traditional board. We developed a deep level of trust,” Jeff explained, adding that both Margery and Tom became board members.

Further, Jeff sought board members with experience in community organizing. In explaining why this was important, he said, “We had no staff, so we felt individuals who were active in the field could both provide firsthand knowledge of groups as well as spot promising opportunities. We also felt community experience indicated commitment.”

For over a decade, the board ran the foundation with no staff. “We did all the work ourselves on top of our full-time jobs,” noted Jeff, who worked at FleetBoston Financial’s Community Investment Group at the time. “I remember getting calls from grassroots organizers while in my banker’s suit working on leveraged buyouts.”

During that time, the foundation chose to divide its limited funds among a few grassroots organizations. “We were essentially giving block grants,” Jeff recalled. “We’d divide the money equally between groups we felt were doing good grassroots work.”

Changing the Foundation’s Direction

By the mid-1980s, the board decided to evaluate the foundation’s impact. “We were thinking about hiring a staff person, so we felt it made sense to assess our work to see what kind of impact we’d had to date,” explained Jeff, “but the evaluator told us, ‘Look, what you’ve done is really interesting, and clearly you are doing God’s work, but it’s really hard to evaluate something when you aren’t clear on what you are setting out to do. I can’t evaluate you because you don’t have clear objectives.’”

“He was right. We were following a ‘thousand flowers bloom’ strategy. Our strategy had been to look at all proposals and ask, ‘Where’s the good organizing?’ But there was no clear focus.”

Margery elaborated, “ While there were a lot of important things happening out there, we realized that the only way we were going to leverage our tiny resources for large-scale impact was to focus.”

Thus, in the mid-1980s the board commissioned a series of issue papers and then called a strategy meeting. “I remember it clearly,” Jeff noted. “We held it at a hotel outside of Washington, DC, because we wanted to draw from nearby policy expertise.”

By the meeting’s end, the board had decided to focus on low-income housing. “ What was interesting about housing was that there was a myriad of grassroots organizing efforts, but the end results didn’t measure up,” Jeff explained. “On a federal level, no major housing legislation for low-income people had been passed in a long time. We looked at health care, but decided there were already a lot of resources moving into that area. But we didn’t see any funders supporting grantees in pulling together a national housing movement. So we decided that would be our political objective.”

In 1988, the board hired Sue Chinn to run the foundation and implement the strategy, despite the fact that she had no foundation experience. “Our most important criterion was getting someone who knew how to organize communities,” Jeff recalled. “We felt that if you took a good organizer, they’d organize. If they needed to organize in a local community, they’d do that. If it was the funding community, they’d figure out how to network out and build relationships there; that’s what good organizers do. I remember when we interviewed Sue I was thinking, ‘If we can find someone who can work by themselves, is motivated, can set up the office, knows all the players, and thinks strategically—those are the key skill sets.’”

As executive director, Sue began working on housing, but found that the foundation’s grants were not creating significant results. “Sue went along with our decision for a while, but we slowly began to realize that our efforts to support a national housing movement were not coming together,” Jeff recalled. “We were just too small—and the political climate wasn’t right—to support grantees in building the constituency needed for comprehensive national housing policy changes.”

“We faced the danger of getting too self-important and losing the bumper sticker statement. In a period in which lower-income constituencies were losing political power, a national housing agenda, which required such tremendous amounts of government money, was really hard to pursue. We worked on this objective for eight years and weren’t seeing enough progress. We realized we needed to change course.”

Identifying New Opportunities

In the mid-1990s, as Sue began to scan the landscape for new strategic opportunities, she sought possibilities that addressed a trend that disturbed her. “I saw the economic tide in the country lifting a lot of boats, but profits weren’t trickling down to low-income folks,” she explained.

At the same time, Sue was watching transformations occurring within the labor movement. A new focus among unions on “improving conditions for low-wage and immigrant workers allowed the interests of labor and philanthropy to converge,” explained Janet Shenk, senior program officer at the Panta Rhea Foundation and formerly a special assistant to John Sweeney, former president of the AFL-CIO.

Sue Chinn had what she described as an “aha” moment at a meeting organized by Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD), which was attended by the mayor of Baltimore. Listening to the speakers talk about what they called a living wage, Sue remembered thinking, “this was a concrete tool for dealing with the fact that low-income people just weren’t making enough money.”

BUILD had teamed up with the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and, in 1994, won a living-wage ordinance in Baltimore, one of the first in the country.4 The ordinance required Baltimore’s city service contractors to pay their four thousand workers over 40 percent more than the minimum wage, which was $4.25 an hour at the time.5 The increase would place those working a forty-hour workweek just above the poverty line.

Sue was excited not only by the concept but also by the partnerships that had formed to pass the ordinance. BUILD was a local affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), a national membership organization of faith institutions, unions, schools, and community-based organizations.

THE BIRTH OF A SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGN STRATEGY

BUILD developed the living-wage campaign concept through speaking with people who were using members’ church-based feeding programs. “We found that people were using the feeding programs to supplement their low wages,” explained Arnie Graf, member of the Industrial Areas Foundation executive team and former BUILD lead organizer.

So we started doing research to find out how much taxpayer money was encouraging development projects that created these jobs, jobs where a person needed to use the church to supplement their income. Was this really what Baltimoreans thought we were voting for?

We began to ask ourselves: Why is the minimum wage called a minimum wage? Shouldn’t people who worked a forty-hour workweek be able to earn enough to support their family? Through house meetings and church meetings we came up with the idea of a “living wage” and that it should be pegged at a certain percentage above the poverty line.

To reduce opposition to the campaign, BUILD ultimately decided to target services that could not leave the city due to increased wages. “Municipal services weren’t businesses that could pick up and go somewhere else,” Arnie explained. “The garbage still needed to be collected. The school buses still needed to take people to school.”

The fresh frame, combined with smart organizing strategies, proved a potent combination. “A living wage sounded so much stronger than minimum wage,” Discount Foundation board member Margery Tabankin reflected. “It felt fair, moral. Who could argue that people working hard didn’t deserve to be able to take care of their families’ basic needs? This combined with a strong faith-labor-community alliance won that campaign.”

When Sue Chinn came back to the Discount Foundation with her new insights, the board was excited. Jeff Zinsmeyer recalled, “This was when we began to see how lucky we had been in hiring a community organizer who was also a strategic thinker. She was able to spot opportunities that were emerging on the ground.”

In the next two years, living-wage campaigns began to sprout across the country, spurred by labor, the IAF, ACORN, and others. By 1996, Santa Clara County (in California), Milwaukee, New York City, Portland, and Jersey City had also passed living-wage ordinances. 6 This growing momentum spurred a New York Times reporter to write a front-page article on the victories.7 “When that article ran, next day we started getting calls from around the country from people wanting to know how we had done it,” Arnie Graf, IAF executive team member and former BUILD lead organizer, recalled.

With these new developments, Sue felt increasingly optimistic about the opportunities the emerging living-wage movement presented. “I let the board know I wanted to explore living wages as a core strategy for the foundation, and asked them, ‘Is this all right with you?’ I told them I wanted to take a pass on a grant cycle so I could thoroughly investigate the issue. I thought it was important to take our time in making the transition.”

With their approval, Sue slowed the foundation’s grantmaking and dedicated her time to research. Among the questions she set out to answer were these:

How do you help grantees build sufficient power to change public policy in support of the working poor?

What stakeholders and allies could help expand the power base of the working poor?