Working at a busy foundation involves a lot of reading and listening to smart people who are working hard to improve the world we live in. One thing comes across loud and clear: how little value added is being contemporaneously realized from the definitional leaps of our unsustainably complex verbiage.
In other words, it's time for us nonprofit people to learn to MAKE IT PLAIN.
There are few moments in life when you get to experience a series of "firsts." That thought occurred to me in the Albuquerque airport as a first-time visitor to New Mexico, as well as a first-time attendee to both the GFE and GIA conferences.
A continuation of the discussion on strategic operating support grants. Do these grants improve an organization's accountability and stability? How do private and public grantmakers sustain the arts ecosystem without creating an over-dependence on any one funder? When providing strategic operating support for organizational change, where does the funder's role end and the arts organization's board of directors' role begin and end?
A discussion of “The Grasshopper or the Ant: A Review of Endowment Giving Policy Options,” a paper by Russell Willis Taylor that challenges assumptions, examines costs and benefits of raising and managing an endowment, and considers the capacity and expertise needed to do it well.
Russell Willis Taylor, National Arts Strategies (presenter, moderator); Ben Cameron, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation; Gene Lesser, Hans G. and Thordis W. Burkhardt Foundation; Gayle Morgan, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust (interlocutors).
Is a trend developing that favors drawing foundation leaders from the for-profit sector rather than from philanthropy or the nonprofit sector? If so, does it change senior grantmaking staff's challenges and opportunities? Would a more corporate view of private philanthropy affect how foundations view the arts?
A conversation between essayist John Rockwell and Linda Breneman (Breneman Jaech Foundation) about cultural patronage today, from the perspectives of a journalist and an individual donor. Funders with varying relationships to living patrons, donors' estates, and philanthropic institutions chime in on how risky, enduring art is—or might be—supported.
Are we helping nonprofits prepare themselves for the challenges of future leadership transition?
Jennifer Hill, Ruth Mott Foundation (moderator); Lauren Renee Hayes, Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund; Lisa Mount, Alternate ROOTS (interlocutors).
2007, 48 Pages. FSG Social Impact Advisors, 20 Park Plaza, Suite 320, Boston, MA 02116, (617) 357-4000, www.fsg-impact.org PDF online: www.fsg-impact.org
1007, 36 pages. The Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers, 1111 19th Street NW, Suite 650, Washington, DC 20036, (202) 467-1120, www.givingforum.org
