April 12, 2011, 11:35 pm
By Cody Switzer
Philadelphia
Foundations can play a more effective role in the future of media and journalism, say the authors of a report on grant making to journalism organizations during the Council on Foundations annual conference.
Michele McLellan, a consultant for the John S. & James L. Knight Foundation, in Miami, offered five things foundations should know about journalism and media grant making:
- This is everyone’s issue. “It’s pretty simple: If you want to engage citizens in solving problems in your community, they have to know the problem exists,” Ms. McLellan said.
- You can build on what you’re already doing. “You don’t have to remake your foundation as a journalism funder to do media grant making,” Ms. McLellan said. “It actually works really well if you use media grants to build out the areas you’re already funding.”
- You can start without a lot of money. “Many foundations…
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April 12, 2011, 10:18 am
By Cody Switzer
Philadelphia
An afternoon session here at the Council on Foundations annual meeting tackled the big questions behind foundation-board diversity, including perhaps the biggest: how to explain the gap between talking about making boards more diverse and the current reality.
According to recent studies, 8 percent to 14 percent of nonprofit CEO’s and board members are minorities. Many in the discussion session believed that the gap was a lack of will. While most people would like to see foundation boards become more diverse, very few foundations have put in the necessary leg work and pushed themselves outside of their comfort zones to ask people from different backgrounds, speakers said.
“I don’t believe the will will be expressed by most boards whether they are philanthropic boards or corporate boards,” said Charlynn Goins, chairman of the board at the New York Community Trust.
…
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April 11, 2011, 10:58 am
By Cody Switzer
Philadelphia
Big grants should go through a military-style “after-action review” suggested one foundation official at a session on learning from failure at the Council on Foundations annual meeting, which opened here on Sunday.
Edward Pauly, director of research and evaluation at the Wallace Foundation, in New York, recommended the reviews after his organization started to use them to evaluate its grant making to specific causes.
The hourlong review meetings answer four questions, Mr. Pauly said:
- What did we want to achieve?
- What actually happened?
- What explains what happened?
- What should we keep doing, and what should we do differently next time?
The foundation’s staff members at first were reluctant to adopt the reviews, Mr. Pauly said, but soon found them valuable.
“It didn’t take us off of other work to do that one-hour meeting, and the benefits are…
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March 25, 2011, 7:10 pm
By Cody Switzer
Grand Rapids, Mich.
Think as if you are always looking for a new job, the nonprofit consultant and author Rosetta Thurman said Friday at the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network National Leaders Conference here, an event that has attracted 200 people.
“A lot of people don’t go to networking events because they say, ‘I’m not looking for a job right now,’” she said. But, she added, “who knows what’s going to happen tomorrow?”
Beyond seeking out new people who can help advance your career, she suggested that young nonprofit workers find ways to gain specialized skills that will be valuable. One way to do that is to seek out challenging volunteer opportunities that expand specialized skills in program management, fund raising, or other areas.
For example, if you volunteer at a food pantry, “don’t just label soup, because anyone can label soup,” she said.
She suggested that …
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