LearnPhilanthropy.net

Reaching the Next Peak – LearnPhilanthropy’s BETA

Jessica Bearman — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:39:09 +0000

We’ve always talked about the LearnPhilanthropy collaboration — funders and providers working together to create a truly field wide resource for grant maker learning – in terms of scaling a mountain. It’s a long journey, and there are many intermediate peaks along the way, as those of you who have been hiking with us know well.

We’re thrilled to say we’ve reached the next peak: On Monday, April 23, we moved our prototype out from “behind the wall,” and made LearnPhilanthropy BETA available to any and all on the web at LearnPhilanthropy.net.

Don’t get us wrong – it’s still a work in progress. The catalogue connects to a couple of hundred resources and not the thousands it will grow to encompass. There are 26 early adopter providers, with many, many more to come as LearnPhilanthropy grows. There are still bugs to be corrected, and features to improve. And there are sections that are now mostly placeholders (frameworks, collections, ask the experts). But we’ve judged it strong enough to want lots more eyeballs on it.

Many of you have helped us by testing the platform as it has developed, improving what we have and making real the concept of “built by the field for the field.” Now, as LearnPhilanthropy gets ready to scale up, we need to broaden the inputs. Please send us to your friends and colleagues, and especially newcomers to the LearnPhilanthropy journey. We need all of you to go on the site, explore what’s there, search for resources, create a profile, and leave us feedback on the site’s feedback form or via online surveys, which we’ll send out periodically.

Thank you for all you’ve done, and for more to come!

The LearnPhilanthropy Work Team: Marcia, Barbara, Dara, Allen, and Jessica

LearnPhilanthropy at COF in Los Angeles

Dara Major — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:17:28 +0000

Will you be attending the Council on Foundations’ 2012 Annual Conference in Los Angeles, April 29-May 1?

If so, we invite you to drop by and visit LearnPhilanthropy while you’re there!

We’ll have a booth set up in Exhibitors Hall, 2nd Level / Platinum Ballroom.

There you’ll be able to:

- Check out LearnPhilanthropy’s beta prototype platform
- Share your burning learning questions
- Meet some members of the LearnPhilanthropy team
- Network with grantmaker colleagues who are committed to learning

Special thanks to COF for providing exhibitor space.

Welcome New Content Partners

Dara Major — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 18:18:01 +0000

By Dara Major

At LearnPhilanthropy, we’re bringing the community of learners and learning providers together, in a central hub, to share resources and insights on good practice.

One way we’re doing this is by reaching out to folks across the field – to inquire about their priorities, share our vision, and find areas of alignment as we co-create LearnPhilanthropy.

We’ve had a terrific response to this outreach, and a growing number of learning providers are joining us as Content Partners.

Please join us in welcoming our newest Content Partners:

Academy for Grantmaking and Funder Education, New York University
Alliance for Justice
Bolder Giving
Center for High Impact Philanthropy, University of Pennsylvania
Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy
Minnesota Council on Foundations
Philanthropy Northwest

Combined with our initial Content Partners…..

Association of Small Foundations
The Bridgespan Group
BoardSource
Center for Effective Philanthropy
CFLeads
Council on Foundations
Council of Michigan Foundations D5 Coalition
Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers
Foundation Center / GrantCraft
FSG
Grantmakers for Effective Organizations
Grantmakers of Oregon and Southwest Washington
The Grantmaking School
Grants Managers Network
National Center for Family Philanthropy
National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy
National Network of Consultants to Grantmakers
Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors

…. LearnPhilanthropy now has a fantastic group of 26 Content Partners on board.

Yahoo! And big thanks to all of our Content Partners!!

As we continue to build the LearnPhilanthropy prototype platform, we’ll be sharing what we’re gathering, learning and wrestling with along the way.

Meanwhile… want to join us? Have a collection of high-quality learning resources that you would like to share? Please let us know! Post your comment here or email us at info@learnphilanthropy.net.

Learning Roundup

Dara Major — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 16:22:55 +0000

LearnPhilanthropy’s Content Partners have caught our attention with the following great resources. All are at the intersection of learning and philanthropy, for greater impact:

GrantCraft:

“Joining Forces: Funder Collaboratives for International Projects” GrantCraft hosted a free webinar to explore how funder collaboratives can help grantmakers aim for larger goals, distribute risks, learn together, and achieve greater impact. Produced in partnership with the Africa Grantmakers’ Affinity Group, the discussion was moderated by Foundation Center President Bradford Smith and featured speakers from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Firelight Foundation, New Field Foundation, and the Wallace Global Fund.

National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy:

“Leveraging Limited Dollars: How Grantmakers Achieve Tangible Results by Funding Policy and Community Engagement“ This report distills findings from research amassed over three years as part of NCRP’s Grantmaking for Community Impact Project (GCIP). The project documented $26.6 billion in benefits for taxpayers and communities in 13 states, and found that every dollar grantmakers and other donors invested in policy and civic engagement provided a return of $115 in community benefit.

Grantmakers for Effective Organizations:

“Reframing the Conversation: A GEO Briefing Paper Series on Growing Social Impact“ Authored by Dara Major and other contributors, the collection pulls together the best thinking, research and actionable approaches to scaling impact, and provides additional resources for grantmakers that seek a deeper dive into these concepts and questions.

Social Learning: Thanks for Co-Creating the Real Simple Taxonomy

Dara Major — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:28:45 +0000

By Dara Major

Philanthropy rocks! There’s a whole lot of collective intelligence in this community. How can we, together, get better at tapping into and using it?

As the LearnPhilanthropy team member leading our knowledge and content efforts (including framing initial ideas about what this collaborative network might support, and identifying relevant knowledge frameworks and content areas), I’ve taken a deeply engaged, social learning network approach – facilitating conversations with and capturing collective reflections by a really diverse community of stakeholders.

We’re kicking social learning up a notch through LearnPhilanthropy’s prototype platform, and excited about launching this new resource… soon. Meanwhile, with your help, we’re putting some cornerstones in place.

Big thanks to the more than 30 practitioners who, over just the last couple of months, have helped to inform and give shape to what we believe is the first general-purpose, field-wide taxonomy focused squarely on grantmaker learning. This “Real Simple Taxonomy” is a highly iterative work-in-progress, more user-generated folksonomy than the traditionally hierarchical taxonomy. Over time, it will be used to help inform search, browse, and whole lot of other activities on the platform.

But taxonomy is not the same thing as navigation!

Though we hope this entire taxonomy will make it into the platform…. to date, only a small slice of the taxonomy has actually been baked in to the platform pie. Most keyword topics or tags are not operational yet. That work is proceeding on a parallel but much longer technology execution timeline. Ditto re supporting contributions of additional tags and taxonomies by our community of users. In other words, this is a multi-faceted work in progress. (Oh to have Google’s development budget!)

Our Real Simple Taxonomy co-creators so far have come from, to name just a few places: Center for Effective Philanthropy, Fleishhacker Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, McCormick Foundation, and the Southeastern Council of Foundations. Thanks to all for taking a deep dive with us.

The latest version of the Real Simple Taxonomy is HERE !! It includes the complete set of key topics, or tags, such as due diligence, strategy, and capacity building… clustered into a few simple buckets. All contributed and road-tested by our co-creators.

Check it out! And if you have a taxonomy to share or would like to get involved, please do leave a comment or contact me at info@learnphilanthropy.net

A Word on Kindness

Barbara Demarest — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 00:44:36 +0000

Thanks to Career Strategist and Master Certified Coach Michele Woodward who kindly allowed us to re-publish her recent blog post.

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On Being Kind

These are all topics you and I have been talking together about so far this year. All topics I think are vital for success in today’s world of work. And there’s another important one I want to raise with you right now:

It helps to be kind.

I know, I’m a hopeless optimist. Because we all know, as Leo Durocher famously said, “Nice guys finish last”. Guess what? A new study even seems to support that idea. The study found thatdisagreeable men made about $10,000 more a year than more agreeable men.

The big difference between agreeable people and disagreeable people seems to be the extent to which agreeable folks will go to preserve relationships.

Agreeable people will bend over backwards to prevent discord, difficult conversations or hard feelings.

And often lose something important in the attempt. When I’m overly agreeable, I lose my autonomy. My personhood. My ability to think for myself. My ability to advocate for myself.

Hey, I don’t want you to lose. Really. So let me offer a slight re-definition and shift that might give you a different perspective.

You see, in my mind, there’s an important difference between being overly agreeable and being kind.

It’s kind to offer advice, support and guidance to someone as they work through a challenging project at work.

It’s overly agreeable when I take over the project at the last moment when you drop the ball – and you take full credit for the end result.

It’s kind when I give a chance to a kid looking for her first job.

It’s overly agreeable when I make room for the Area Vice President’s shiftless, idiot nephew in my department.

It’s kind to remind the boss when I’m going to be on vacation, and create a plan to make sure everything’s covered in my absence.

It’s overly agreeable to take work with me on vacation.

It’s kind when I quietly draw you aside and whisper that you have spinach in your teeth.

It’s overly agreeable to pick the spinach out for you.

Note the distinction?

That’s why the modern workplace could use more kindness and less at “any costs” agreeableness. I’m not saying we go all Meryl-Streep-in-The-Devil-Wears-Prada - in fact, the economic difference between agreeable and disagreeable women in the study was negligible. Researchers remind women: “Nice girls might not get rich, but ‘mean’ girls do not do much better. Even controlling for human capital, marital status, and occupation, highly disagreeable women do not earn as much as highly agreeable men.”

The thing is this: too many of us – overly agreeable men and agreeable women – bring to work all of our childhood “stuff” about being good and making everything right and smoothing relationships so no one yells at us, or tells us we’re big disappointments, or grounds us on Homecoming weekend.

We operate from fear, people. Which puts us at a disadvantage right from the start.

We’ve got to knock that off. Right away.

Because overly agreeable men and overly agreeable women lose when we mistake agreement with kindness. We lose money, we lose opportunity, we lose values, we lose ownership, we lose, lose, lose.

So, let’s re-define. Kindness means:

Having an opinion.

Listening to the opinions others and respectfully disagreeing if that’s the way it is.

Saying no sometimes.

Saying yes only sometimes.

Appropriately helping.

Taking the risk to be fully yourself.

Truly kind leaders – regardless of their position on the org chart – are the ones we all remember. They’re the ones we are grateful to. Who are our most memorable mentors.

They’re the ones who make a difference.

Know what? That can be you.

You can leave a truly indelible legacy.

It all starts with kindness.

A Bolder Culture of Giving: Bolder Giving & Tides Event

Dara Major — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 23:43:33 +0000

The level of personal giving in the U.S. hovers at 2-3% of income. According to GivingUSA’s most recent study, in 2010 “Americans contributed about 2 percent of disposable personal income to philanthropic causes, a number that has remained remarkably consistent over the decades, regardless of economic climate.”

The organization Bolder Giving is trying to increase that – and inspired the billionaire Giving Pledge – by encouraging people of all backgrounds to:

Give More – increase their giving as a percent of income, assets or business profits;
Risk More – shift how they give by exploring opportunities to give collaboratively, to communities besides their own, to social change and entrepreneurial efforts; and
Inspire More – spark discussions about giving with others and share their giving stories to provide a catalyst for new conversations.

Bolder Giving and Tides are holding an event in San Francisco on February 22, 2012 to share details about their collaborative work – if you’re interested in learning more and in the Bay Area, rsvp & drop by! Or join one of Bolder Giving’s free monthly teleconferences with a bold giver.

COF Seeks Candidates for Career Pathways Philanthropy Leadership Program

Barbara Demarest — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:50:37 +0000

The Council on Foundations has set an early application deadline of February 20, 2012 for its Career Pathways leadership program. Career Pathways is a twelve-month experience that seeks to increase the number of candidates from diverse backgrounds in the philanthropic leadership pipeline.

The program is conducted annually for approximately a dozen mid-career professionals who have a serious interest in pursuing executive and senior leadership positions in philanthropy.

The program was developed as a response to the field’s commitment to diversity and inclusion practices. For the purposes of the program, “diversity” encompasses but is not limited to ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation and identification, age, economic circumstance, class, disability, geography, and philosophy.

The Career Pathways program is open to individuals currently employed in COF-member and non-member grantmaking institutions and foundations. Those working outside philanthropy may also submit applications which will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Self-nominations are not permissible.

Invitations to participate in Career Pathways are highly competitive, and the offer is based on the strength of the individual’s application, nominations, leadership experience, and potential. Participants must commit to fully participate in and prepare for all program learning sessions and related programs and activities. While there is no programmatic cost, if selected participants are responsible for their own accommodation and transportation expenses.

For more information or to complete the RFP, visit the Council on Foundations website.

Click here to read a related LearnPhilanthropy post by Elizabeth Myrick.

Six blogs that enhance learning in philanthropy

Barbara Demarest — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:51:31 +0000

At LearnPhilanthropy we’ve started collecting things…especially resources to help grantmakers develop. Today’s collection is a list of six blogs in philanthropy that enhance learning. Learning is a frequent topic presented in posts on these blogs and we thought the LearnPhilanthropy community might find this list a helpful start to their own collection of blogs to track.

Do you have a favorite blog to add to the list? We’re interested in those that highlight learning and development for grantmakers. Post your ideas in the comments or send us an email at info@learnphilanthropy.net.

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White Courtesy Telephone: Posts include perspectives on learning, education and training in the field of philanthropy.

Philantopic: A blog of Opinion and Commentary from The Philanthropy News Digest

Philanthropy 2173: The Business of Giving - Lucy Bernholz shares her opinions about the long-term vision of philanthropy.

Tactical Philanthropy - Sean Stannard-Stockton’s organizational blog.

The Center for Effective Philanthropy Blog - better data, better decisions, better philanthropy.

Beth’s Blog : How Networked Nonprofits Are Using Social Media to Power Change – by Beth Kanter

How Attitudes Toward Change Affect Decision-Making

Barbara Demarest — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:00:06 +0000

Thanks to the folks at Training who have given us permission to reprint this article, “How Attitudes Toward Change Affect Decision-Making” by Tracy C.F. Brown which specifically highlights making better philanthropy decisions.

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The Change Style Indicator can identify factors that can impact a group or organization’s readiness to deal with and sustain change in times of rapid change.

Change style assessment creator Chris Musselwhite knows firsthand how personal change style preferences can not only make you more effective in times of crisis or change, they also can help you make better decisions on a daily basis.

“How people deal with change—creating it and responding to it—is a function of identifiable individual preferences,” says Musselwhite. “Depending on whether people see change as a danger, a challenge, or an opportunity, they have corresponding individual preferences that reflect their relationship and reaction to structure, rules, and authority when dealing and making decisions involving change.”

No one knows this better than consultant Stephanie Clohesy, of Clohesy Consulting. Before opening her own consulting firm, Clohesy made a career out of promoting positive change for the good of society, spending more than three decades working to improve the lives of others. Her work ranged from negotiating with governments on behalf of social scientists seeking to improve public policy to teaching democratic models of dialogue and problem-solving to women faced with rebuilding a civil society after war.

Now as a consultant, Clohesy has made it her job to help others in this important work. She does this through personal leadership and organizational development. In her work, she has utilized many tools and tactics to help her clients effectively facilitate positive change, but she readily admits that one tool stands out for its effectiveness: the Change Style Indicator®, an assessment tool she’s used consistently since first being introduced to it in the early ’90s during her work with AmeriCorps.

Developed by Musselwhite through his company, Discovery Learning, the Change Style Indicator (CSI) is an assessment instrument that identifies an individual’s preferred style and preferences when approaching change and dealing with situations involving change. Scores place individuals on a change style continuum, identifying them as being most like the incremental change-preferringConserver, or as more like the rapid change-seeking Originator. A third style, thePragmatist, occupies the middle range of the continuum, reflecting the fact that most people exhibit a blend of Conserver-Pragmatist or Originator-Pragmatist in their change style behaviors and preferences.

Musselwhite notes that when used in a group, the CSI can identify factors that can impact a group or organization’s readiness to deal with and sustain change in times of rapid change.

“Knowing one’s own change style preferences allows individuals to work better when part of a team, creating more effective work processes, making better decisions, and delivering more satisfactory results. Likewise, understanding the change styles of others provides valuable insight into how best to gain their support and collaboration, which, in turn, enables leaders to better influence and guide others more effectively,” says Musselwhite.

Clohesy agrees. “When I used Change Style Indicator in the leadership development assessment process of AmeriCorps members, it generated a lot of good conversation along with greater self-awareness of personal traits and recognition of important traits in others,” she says. “When done in a group, it also raises interesting insights about cultural and experiential differences, helping to instantly build a kind of tolerance and rapport among people who may previously have been focused only on each other’s differences.”

Helping Philanthropists Make Better Decisions

Today, in the effort to help people with financial resources use them to do the most good, Clohesy is using the Change Style Indicator in a specific and unique context: donor education. Clohesy uses the assessment with philanthropists who come to her for guidance on their giving portfolios.

She began using the assessment for donor education as a result of her work with the Women’s Funding Network (WFN), a global network of about 150 women’s foundations for whom she designs and facilitates annual retreats for major donors.

“The retreats are structured to mix personal and professional, as well as rational and intuitive, approaches to making decisions about investing in the social good,” says Clohesy. “Although the design of the retreat changes each time it is hosted, the underlying purpose and goals remain essentially the same: to help women learn to give more strategically—to move from ‘nice’ giving decisions to more high-impact and satisfying giving choices.”

The focus of the retreats developed out of years of analyzing the giving portfolios of women philanthropists, many of whom recognized that although their giving mission statements expressed a desire for contributing to bigger, larger-scale change, they continued to naturally default to funding ideas and organizations that emphasized small-scale personal change.

In her effort to help her clients understand and get past this disconnect between stated preferences and actual giving, it dawned on Clohesy that a crucial piece of the puzzle is the deeply personal preference we all have about how we like change to happen—our change style.With this realization, Clohesy added the Change Style Indicator to the assessment process at the retreat five years ago, and has been using it to help donors ever since.

“During the retreat, participants learn about social change theory and methodologies, take a quiz to understand their own instinctive problem-solving preferences, and then analyze their giving portfolio,” says Clohesy. “After all that, they take the Change Style Indicator to find out more about their personal change style and see how it may be affecting their giving decisions. By looking at all the pieces of the puzzle—social change methodologies, personal giving preferences, and personal change style—many women experience ‘aha’ moments as they realize that both personal preferences and rational strategic approaches are necessary to give effectively and with a sense of personal joy and satisfaction. “

For example, according to Clohesy, if a woman discovers her change style is that of the incremental-change-loving Conserver but finds herself funding mostly systems change or high- engagement-style projects, she is likely to understand why she has been feeling dissatisfied or “out of place” with her own giving. Conversely, if she is more of an Originator and finds herself with a portfolio of projects and organizations helping individual people make incremental lifestyle changes, she gains insight about why she may feel impatient or disappointed with her giving decisions.

“My clients always tell me that that taking the Change Style Indicator pulls out some truths about how they function, and they are amazed at the useful personal insights gained from this simple assessment,” says Clohesy. “They come to realize that while creativity and innovation are inherent in all of the change styles, understanding your own change style and then intentionally deciding to flow with it or diverge from it, really does lead to better, more satisfying decision-making.”

Clohesy is interested in talking with other consultants who use the Change Style Indicator with wealth, philanthropy, and social change advisors. “I would enjoy talking to others who have used it successfully in specific contexts, especially in the social good context such as board, staff, and leadership development, says Clohesy, who can be reached at Stephanie@clohesyconsulting.com.

“From my own experience, I think the real value comes from using the Change Style Indicator in specific situations rather than in a random or open-ended way. One’s change preferences seem to mean more when put in context—such as in making critical decisions—and even more when individuals learn something about themselves first, and then share it with a group. In addition to creating self-awareness, this shared learning experience builds knowledge, wisdom, tolerance, and creativity among all the participants, and those are key ingredients for a successful group or individual effort, no matter what your goal.”

Tracy C. F. Brown is a freelancer who has written about leadership and organizational development since 1999. She can be reached at tracycfbrown@gmail.com. Originally published June 22, 2011 and reprinted with permission of www.trainingmag.com.