On the 20th anniversary of the Los Angeles Riots, the opening plenary session at the Council’s Annual Conference, “Realization, Rethinking, and Reinvention in the Wake of Crisis,” looked at how crisis has become a catalyst for change in Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Detroit. While these communities have improved in some ways, each is faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges as poverty grows and government funding diminishes. More effective grassroots organizing, along with help from the philanthropic and business sectors, have greatly improved these communities; however, social services, education, and block grant funding have all been slashed. The institutions we have historically looked to for a salve, philanthropy and government, are hitting the limits of their ability to help us course correct if they continue to operate as before.

While the circumstances differ in these communities the problems are, at their core, rooted in social inequality and despair. Moderator Manuel Pastor used the term “unusual suspects” to describe the creative methods and individuals that engaged in rebuilding these communities. The term struck a chord. How do we move the needle on the issues we care about, in the communities we have dedicated ourselves to? It is time to look to “unusual suspects.”

1. Unusual Suspect # 1: DJs

Josh Kun challenged us during the closing plenary to be “cross-faders,” to mix two tracks, the old and the new, to create a more powerful message. Referencing the mobile DJs on each side of the Mexican border that mix traditional Mexican dance music with both modern tunes and the recorded messages of their audience members, he urged us to mix the best of what philanthropy has done in the past with the most promising innovations of the 21st century.

2. Unusual Suspect #2: Mobile Tech

There are six billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide. By 2014 more people will probably be accessing the Internet on their smartphones than on their computers. What’s more, communities of color are adopting mobile technology faster than others. Voto Latino built on this opportunity by building a smartphone campaign to make voter registration and information easily accessible to young Latinos.  Safecast leveraged the power of mobile technology to put radiation measuring into the hands of Japanese citizens following the disaster at the Fukushami Daiichi nuclear plant.

3. Unusual Suspect #3: Behavioral Economics

The session on “Using Behavioral Economics to Accelerate Program Impact” was particularly refreshing in laying out why interventions and programs are not as effective, powerful, or sustained as we may hope. By virtue of our flawed human nature, we are plagued by two fundamental problems: inattention and the ability to translate intention into action. No matter how attentive one may be, there are just too many stimuli in our environment to attend to everything. This may explain why so many patients forget to take medications. When patients with HIV receive reminder texts at the precise time of day required, however, the rate of compliance shoots up.

Similarly, students that receive scholarship payments at the beginning of the semester often run out of money during the last half of the semester. However, the Gates Foundation discovered that by tying scholarship dollars to performance and releasing the funds throughout the semester, students both performed better academically and were able to maintain a steady number of working hours.

4. Unusual Suspect #4: Games

There were a couple of sessions on game theory and how games are being used to increase civic engagement, help women and girls globally, and even prepare students from low income households for college. Collegeology, for example, is a suite of games produced by the USC Innovation Lab that allows students to navigate the college experience in a digital game environment thus demystifying the college system, giving them a safe place to “fail,” and the opportunity to problem solve before they ever set foot on campus.

Half the Sky is a Facebook game that raises awareness and gives players the opportunity to buy virtual goods that translate into real donations to global NGOs focused on women and girls. A mobile game is also in development for users in developing countries where 65 percent of mobile users reside.

In 2009 Justice Sandra Day O’Connor launched iCivics, a series of online games to reverse the trend of declining civic knowledge and engagement in the United States. The games have now reached 1.2 million youth in 12,000 classrooms in all 50 states. It is one of the great examples of how gaming can make an impact as 78 percent of participants demonstrate a better understanding of how our democracy functions.

These four unusual suspects provide us with compelling strategies to look to as we redouble our commitments to the issues and communities we fund. Engaging any one of them brings important challenges and opportunities. I encourage you to listen to recordings of these sessions to learn about the hard lessons learned and the best use of each.

Who/what are the unusual suspects you have come across?

Lisa Parker is the President and Executive Director of The Lawrence Welk Family Foundation and the Founder and Principal of Family Circle Advisors

How can a foundation CEO set a tone and culture that strike the right balance between rational, disciplined, and quantitative grantmaking and passion-driven, responsive, and intuitive approaches?  A packed room of CEOs grappled with this question at the Council’s Annual Conference during the “Striking the Humanistic-Technocratic Balance in Grantmaking” CEO session facilitated by my colleague Paul Connolly. The session built on an article Paul wrote for the Foundation Review and featured CEOs Claire Peeps of The Durfee Foundation and Clara Miller of The F.B. Heron Foundation.

I was particularly struck by one CEO’s question: “How do you keep program officers’ inner wisdom from running rampant in the community?” While it’s fine to have different approaches in different aspects of your work, how do you keep that from devolving into what she called “a series of fiefdoms?” The key to striking the balance, she suggested, was alignment.

As I thought about her comments, it occurred to me, as a strategy consultant who works with funders but also as a trustee of my family’s foundation, that there are two distinct areas where the CEO (and the board) need to establish this alignment: a foundation’s goals and its values.

At its core, a goal is what the foundation is trying to achieve: Why your staff is passionate about what they do and what you hope will change as the result of your efforts. In the day-to-day business of philanthropy, it can be easy to get bogged down in tactics and lose sight of the real purpose. It’s the job of the CEO to remain focused on the end goal, so the means don’t overwhelm it. More importantly, it’s the job of the CEO to make sure that the goal is clear and that everyone understands how their work is in service to it. It’s his or her responsibility to constantly ask, “How does that program/grant/white paper help us improve outcomes, and is there a better way to do that?”

The second and far more challenging area where it’s imperative that the CEO establish alignment is in articulating and implementing a foundation’s values. Many of the CEOs in the session called themselves “values-driven” funders. Depending on the foundation, the values may be set by the donor, board, or company. The “value-setting” agent(s) may be actively involved, or long gone. In any case, values tend to be vague and removed from the frontline work of grantmaking. It’s up to the CEO to help staff understand how those principles are to be practiced in every aspect of the foundation’s affairs and to push the board to clearly articulate how they want those values implemented. For example, Peeps articulated a value of her foundation when she said, “We say at our foundation that we’ve never had an original idea; we get the ideas from the organizations with which we work.”

Throughout the conference, I heard countless participants mention that they “partner with grantees.”  That seems like a generally positive trend, but I don’t really know what it means—or rather, I know what it means to me, but I don’t know what it means to others. And I suspect it means a lot of different things to different people. “Partnership” is a value, and it’s one that can be interpreted in a lot of different ways. A good CEO gets down to brass tacks on matters like these. If your staff is going to partner with your grantees, what does this mean for accountability? How much of their time should they spend providing direct assistance to grantees, leveraging funding, and working on joint policy goals? 

Most foundation CEOs surely know that their job is to articulate goals and values and weave them into the everyday operations of their organization. But the great challenge is to maintain focus on the foundation’s core principles while adapting to changing environments and to help everyone else in their organization do the same. Without crystal clarity about what they’re trying to achieve and guidelines about how they’re supposed to accomplish it (values), you risk even the best-intentioned staff “going rogue” and building programs that don’t fit your core goals and values.

With a firm understanding of these principles, however, staff will have the flexibility to harness all the creative energy I believe lies in philanthropy to help solve these complex problems. As Miller advised, “The ratio of think-cycle to do-cycle is high in the field. Spend time on the do-cycle, looking for artful ways of applying the tools you have.”

Ashley Blanchard is associate director of philanthropy for TCC Group.

Having just returned from the Council on Foundations Annual Conference this past week in Los Angeles, I was able to join with 1,300 of my colleagues in philanthropy to discuss the challenges and trends we are seeing. Not surprisingly, there was a great deal of conversation about the economy, growing income disparities, the effects of federal and state budget cuts, increasing polarization in our public discourse, and other issues of shared concern. At the same time, there were some important, common themes that emerged and that serve as good reminders for how we can continue to enhance philanthropy’s contribution to addressing these various challenges.

One particularly resonant theme throughout the conference related to the power of storytelling. Good stories can shine a spotlight on our grantees’ successes and on the issues we care most about. Most importantly, stories might be the most effective way to encourage others to join us in forging solutions. The power of stories was evident in the conference’s opening video of rebuilding and recovery in Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Detroit, showing the central role that philanthropy can play in rebuilding after crises and strengthening communities in the process.

I was reminded of the video’s images of communities working together when PolicyLink’s Angela Glover Blackwell spoke in Tuesday morning’s session on America’s vanishing middle class. Angela is a powerful voice in the national discourse on social justice and she dramatically advocated for society to see the widening gap between the “haves” and “have-nots” as the nation’s problem. “What happens to the people who the country has been too comfortable leaving behind will shape the future of our country,” she remarked, an important reminder of the need to include the disadvantaged in our ongoing narrative about the changing economy.

The power of storytelling was also highlighted in several of the short presentations during the conference’s closing session, where eight presenters told short vignettes about philanthropy. Andy Goodman’s first slide made the point quite directly: Our data doesn’t matter. He went on to describe how humans are hardwired to make sense of the world through stories, and that data that doesn’t support our narrative understanding will simply be ignored. Facts that are presented in the context of a compelling story, however, can change minds and compel people to action.

We experienced firsthand just how powerful stories can be when Emmett Carson of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation took the stage. In his vignette, which closed the conference, he presented a powerful narrative, with supporting data, about the social and economic challenges our nation faces, and urged foundations to tackle them with greater urgency, more boldness, more risk-taking, and less fear of controversy. His closing image of a kitten looking into a mirror and seeing a lion in the reflection generated many laughs, but the seriousness of his point was not lost on the audience when he stated boldly: “Foundations ought to roar like lions and not purr like kittens” if we hope to reach the ambitious goals we have set for ourselves.

The power of stories resonated throughout the conference and encourages those of us in philanthropy to find more effective ways to shape public understanding of the issues before us, to support our partners to effectively tell their stories, and to remember that our work is fundamentally a human enterprise, which is why effective storytelling and thoughtful narrative needs to be a central tool in our philanthropic toolkits.

Jim Canales is president and CEO of The James Irvine Foundation.

During “Supporting Our Military Families: Partnerships, Innovation, and Entry Points,” a session at the Annual Conference, Bess Bendet of the Blue Shield of California Foundation shared that the she has tried to convene funders who support programs for military families and veterans, but turnout has been sparse. Nancy Jamison of San Diego Grantmakers is starting a military families funders support group, a logical step in an area where perhaps 8 percent of the population has a connection to the military, but there are plenty of communities where veterans and their families are clustered and could be gaining the kind of attention that Jamison and her members are trying to generate. So why has the foundation community focused so little attention on the needs of military families and veterans of the Iraq/Afghanistan war?

The session’s panelists were notably polite in their comments about the reticence of foundations to put major resources toward the needs of these populations, with possible explanations ranging from problems of the visibility of military families and of Iraq/Afghanistan veterans to insufficient knowledge of their problems and challenges. Another might be the presumption that the Veterans Administration, a mammoth federal agency and the only federal department receiving increases in appropriations, is handling the need, unaware that the VA is often a bureaucratic Rube Goldberg contraption for veterans to navigate.

I’d like to suggest three more possibilities that weren’t mentioned:

1. Organizations prey on veterans: Kathryn Roth-Douquet of Blue Star Families talked about the “chaotic” array of groups offering to help military families and the effort of her organization to create a “community blueprint” to help families identify those that are using “best practices.” Maybe that was a euphemism, but it doesn’t take much to encounter nonprofits that simply prey on veterans, highlighted in state and federal investigations for soliciting and misusing charitable donations. This warrants Congressional attention no less than the charitable accountability issues identified by the Senate Finance Committee in 2004, but sustained attention on Capitol Hill hasn’t been forthcoming. Foundations could put some resources out to the nonprofit sector to push state AGs, the IRS, and a few Congressional committees to turn the spotlight on the abuses. In this case, the nonprofit sector is not cleaning up itself and foundations, consciously or unconsciously, might be steering clear because of suspicions of the probity of the groups they encounter.

2. They aren’t us: With a professional, volunteer army, military families are less visible and more isolated from the mainstream population. IAVA’s Paul Rieckhoff pointed out that unless foundations are being intentional in their grantmaking about Iraq/Afghanistan veterans, they are unlikely to reach that population. As an example, he said that there are all of two housing projects in the nation that have been constructed for Iraq/Afghanistan veterans. Few foundations probably have much personal, tactile interaction with veterans and military families to be that intentional. But if philanthropy is going to focus only on the issues and populations that grantmakers know from personal experience, that is a deeper problem than their insufficient support of veterans and their families. As the plenary session on the vanishing middle class noted, grantmakers often operate within more elevated and comfortable economic and social spheres different from the profile of Americans in need. They have to look at the populations who “aren’t us” to realize that they should be on the radar screen of foundations.

3. Ambivalence about the military: It is sort of de rigeur to refer to the military serving in Iraq and Afghanistan as heroes and heroines, different than the public attitude toward the veterans returning from Vietnam. Our society has gotten better with its nomenclature and syntax, but that doesn’t mean that the treatment of this era’s returning veterans and their families has been hugely better. Although the VA continues to grow, it is not necessarily seen as a resource or ally—at least not one that’s easy to access—by this era’s war veterans. Both Rieckhoff and Roth-Douquet agreed that military families and veterans don’t want to get their information from official channels, a ringing statement about the decline of faith of some Americans have in government institutions. This era’s veterans and their families are falling between the cracks because for all the “heroes” talk, society isn’t responding to, much less owning up to their needs. Foundations, no less than the rest of society, don’t significantly address the slice of American society that is connected to today’s military, especially due to service in the unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Foundations would be well-advised to think of Blue Star Families and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Association, headed by remarkably thoughtful and articulate leaders in the examples of Kathy Roth-Duquet and Paul Rieckhoff, as venues for philanthropic support of communications and advocacy of the needs of military families and Iraq/Afghanistan veterans. Based on the examples of Bess Bendet of the Blue Shield of California Foundation and Nancy Jamison at San Diego Grantmakers, there are plenty of avenues for foundations without “military” or “veteran” in their mission statements to engage the population that has served this nation in two increasingly unpopular recent wars. One can only hope that the U.S. eschews future militarism and foundations don’t have to contemplate what they might do to help some future war’s veterans and their families.

Rick Cohen is a columnist for NonProfit Quarterly.

One of the best panels at the Council on Foundations Annual Conference, “Supporting Our Military Families: Partnerships, Innovation, and Entry Points,” addressed how philanthropy can most effectively address the needs of military families. Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have this challenge, if U.S. military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan hadn’t led to the creation of more than two million new veterans, and the needs of military families would disappear as this nation winds down its presence in Iraq and hopefully does the same soon in Afghanistan?

Convened and led by Bess Bendet of the Blue Shield of California Foundation, the panel offered serial “aha” moments for the foundation representatives who attended, many with existing programmatic efforts addressing the needs of veterans and their families. (Note: The Council’s Stephanie Powers came into the session at the end and noted that the Council institutionally is concerned about veterans and their families and looking to work with its members and the Veterans Administration to bring some concentrated attention to what foundations can and should do through public-private partnerships).

Here are a few of the notable “aha” moments:

• Steve Lawrence of the Foundation Center (based on what he described as very preliminary data):  Out of $21 billion in grantmaking by the top 1,300 or so foundations in the country in 2010 (with grants of more than $10,000), grantmaking specifically identified as connected to military veteran and military families was about $65 million, and maybe one-fifth of that really focused on military families. It may be that many more foundations, by virtue of their programs and geography, assist military families but don’t record their grantmaking that way. But no one would have possibly suggested that foundations are much engaged in helping veterans and their families.
• Bendet:  Blue Shield didn’t really aim to create a program for military families. It was really looking at addressing problems of domestic violence and encountered the high rate of domestic violence and other problems among the families of returning veterans. Many foundations can help military families through their more topical family, youth, and education grantmaking; they don’t have to start a military/veteran mission to get there.
• Paul Rieckhoff, founder and executive director, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America:  He suggested that there might be some 40,000 nonprofits that profess to provide support to veterans or their families. But which ones are good and reputable, and which ones can and should Iraq and Afghanistan veterans turn to? There’s no way of sorting through them at the moment.
• Kathy Roth-Douquet, founder and CEO of Blue Star Families:  Many of those charities send care packages, which is fine, but there are much deeper challenges facing veterans and their families. She says it is very difficult for military families to know which groups are active and legitimate.
• Roth-Douquet:  As government employees, members of the military cannot advocate, but their families can. She created Blue Star Families to give families of active duty service members “a seat at the table” to advocate for solutions. Founded only three years ago, Blue Star Families now has 50,000 members in 50 chapters around the world. The regular military family lifestyle survey the group conducts reveals that military families volunteer three times more frequently than nonmilitary, a reflection of the self-help resilience orientation of military families.
• Rieckhoff:  Since 9/11, 2.4 million people have served in either Iraq or Afghanistan, but their specific kinds of needs might not be well served by existing  veterans organizations whose constituencies are Vietnam vets in their 60s, not Iraq/Afghanistan vets in their 20s. As members of a professional military, they are different –older, with a much higher proportion of vets who are married with families—than the 19 year old draftees who typically served in Vietnam.
• Rieckhoff:  Iraq/Afghanistan vets, he suggested, don’t quite trust or turn to the military or the VA for assistance.  “The VA is not getting the job done,” Reickoff said. His figures are that only 55 percent of Iraq/Afghanistan veterans use the VA, yet they have “an explosion of needs,” including a 17 percent unemployment rate among IAVA members. To help Iraq/Afghanistan veterans, there is a question of cultural competence, groups that might work well with Vietnam or Korean veterans might not possess the skills and approaches needed to be effective with the newer veterans of the past 10 years of U.S. involvement in the Middle East.
• Roth-Douquet:  She noted a 26 percent unemployment rate among military spouses is a contributing factor to difficulties in veterans’ reintegration back into their communities and families. She also suggested that the problems of demobilized members of the military occur over a long period of time; for example, mental health problems manifesting themselves over a period of seven to nine years.

Rick Cohen is a columnist for NonProfit Quarterly.

I’m writing this on May Day and, like every other day, too many working families in south Los Angeles are spending up to 50 percent of their earnings on housing. This amount compares poorly to a recommended maximum expenditure of 30 percent of income on housing. Stable, affordable housing requires a community-based strategy for job training, livable wage employment, and economic development. It also means addressing racialized inequities.

During an off-site visit Monday, conference participants learned about Esperanza Community Housing. Founded in the late 1980s, Esperanza is a neighborhood-based community development agency. Along with providing 165 units of permanent, affordable housing, it organizes local residents around critical health concerns.

Just as important, the organization has helped to create the vibrant Mercado La Paloma, where local food and craft vendors are able to establish and grow their microenterprises. A number of cafes at the Mercado have become destinations in their own right. It’s not only good for the merchants, but it’s good for the community.

Esperanza has done a remarkable job of integrating asset building and policy advocacy while maintaining a holistic focus on community. Such an integrated approach is applicable to all areas of the country that are experiencing demographic shifts powered, in part, by immigration.

One of the issues confronting residents in south Los Angeles is illegal eviction. Esperanza is paying attention to this problem. When tenants (or family members) are undocumented, have limited English proficiency, or are in low-wage jobs (housekeepers or groundskeepers), it’s difficult for them to protect themselves against an illegal eviction. In these frightening and stressful situations, tenants may not know they have legal rights.

Organizations like Esperanza collaborate with their peers to make sure immigrants and low-wage workers know their rights and are not taken advantage of. They are contributing to policy efforts that strengthen workplace protections, ensure landlords honor their obligations, and help improve the overall health of the neighborhood.

The vision for neighborhoods throughout south Los Angeles is a compelling one: It’s about communities where people go to work, make a livable wage, are treated respectfully, and then return at the end of the day to a safe, healthy neighborhood. Grantmakers across the country who are tackling thorny issues share this vision.

The good news this May Day is that Esperanza Community Housing is making real progress toward an even stronger south Los Angeles.

William Vesneski is director of evaluation, planning and research at The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.

“Many people who are being left behind are from communities being left behind. If we don’t come to terms with the racial divide, we will cause a generational divide,” said Angela Glover Blackwell. Wow. What a great way to get the blood pumping at the morning plenary. Well spoken, politely heard, but where’s the action?

The lines of Gwendolyn Brook’s “Lovers of the Poor” echo in my head. I never want to be seen as a “limousine liberal.” Talk the talk, walk the walk. If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.

I think about our “radical” work at Simon Youth Foundation. We provide support to our partner school districts to help them reach those students at risk for dropping out of high school and help make sure they graduate. We know for just about every $1,000 we grant to our partners, we can yield a high school graduate who will go on to return nearly $350,000 to the economy.

Pretty good ROI, if you ask me. This figure doesn’t even account for the social, emotional, cultural, and community impact of that “radical” act of graduation. Somebody here asked me my two-floor elevator speech. Here goes.: At SyF we are about breaking the cycle of poverty, with education as our tool. We believe working with, not against, our public school partners is the best solution for drop-out prevention in a specific community.

“Keeping doing what we were doing isn’t going to get us ahead anymore,” said Jamie Merisotos. I hope all of us in the room heard that loud and clear. That statement will reverberate in my head for awhile.

So where is the call to COLLECTIVE action? I worry that each of us will leave here bolstered by our individual agendas to change the world, but will return to our silos of work and competitive missions to solve our singularly focused, albeit important, issues. Program proliferation, diluted resources, cause celeb, and populist thrust victimizes us all. How do we as funders break this cycle? Where do we leverage our collaboration to find solutions?

A dear and longtime friend of mine who is an ordained member of the clergy called me out on my Facebook page, as only a friend of such standing can. He has been following my blogs, living vicariously through my experiences as I often do through his sermons. He challenged me about where conversations about overlap, competition, and ego appeared at the conference. Did they, he wanted to know?

Are we ready to discuss our duplication? Are we ready to yield our esoteric, specific, and targeted turf for the overall good?

Others may follow, but who will be first?

Michael Durnil is president of Simon Youth Foundation, a member of the Council on Foundations.

At this morning’s plenary on the closing day of the 2012 Annual Conference, moderator Kai Ryssdal (host and senior editor, NPR’s Marketplace) facilitated an insightful panel discussion about America’s “vanishing” middle class and how philanthropy can help. Presenters Angela Glover Blackwell, PolicyLink;  Jamie P. Merisotis, Lumina Foundation for Education;  and Don Peck, The Atlantic, discussed sobering trends:

• The middle class has lost more of its wealth than any other group (mostly in housing values).
• Recessions often lead to prolonged changes (permanent loss of traditional “middle skill” jobs).
• The effects of being out of work for a prolonged period is as psychologically damaging to an individual as a divorce.
• Post high school education attainment rates have not changed in 40 years.
• The gap in wages between those with a high school education and those with advanced degrees (college and post-graduate) is growing.
• Government’s capacity to invest in educational programs has reached its limit.

The changes we’re seeing now create a new definition of “normal.” How can philanthropy help?

• Bring people and organizations together to discuss asset building (funding, political will) to create policy and infrastructure change.
• Look at ways to improve our educational system, including delivering educational and technical skills in new and faster ways (shorter, more efficient programs).
• Focus on education (including early education such as First 5 programs in California) and access to education.
• Focus more on helping people feel economically secure by creating pathways for high school students

To learn more, read “The Pinched: How the Great Recession is Narrowing Our Future” by Don Peck and “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses” by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa.

Laurel Lee-Alexander is director of grant programs for the Monterey Peninsula Foundation.

As someone who studies philanthropy, I listen with a particular set of ears to accounts of innovative work by grantmakers, including the many fascinating stories at the Council’s Annual Conference this week. Listening with these ears can be helpful at times, really annoying at others.

For one thing, I listen through the filter of those classic “theories” about why we have philanthropy at all, theories that attempt to explain why philanthropy is necessary in society and why it arises in every society that we know of.  The opening plenary got me thinking about one such theory—what we sometimes call “dual failure” theory—and I’ve been ruminating on that in many subsequent sessions.

The dual failure theory, in simplest form, says that philanthropy and the nonprofit sector exist because of the failures of the other two sectors: government and the marketplace. When there are public goods or needs that are not met by the market (because they are not profitable) or by government (which could be for a lot of reasons), then philanthropy steps in.

The opening plenary session focused on philanthropic responses in three cities in crisis: Los Angeles after the civil unrest of 1992, New Orleans after Katrina, and Detroit after decades of urban decline. The stories from each city seemed to illustrate the dual failure theory quite well.

Certainly we can see how government failed in each case. FEMA’s public ineptitude in New Orleans is just the most visible of those failures, but the courts in L.A. and a corrupt and bankrupt city government in Detroit failed as well. For its part, the market sector also didn’t adequately provide what each city needed, or rather what all parts of the population in each city needed.

So, by this understanding, philanthropy and community nonprofit responses in L.A., New Orleans, and Detroit have been addressing critical needs and providing critical public goods that governments and business cannot. That certainly fits the stories told by the panelists.

But there also seem to be lessons from these complex cases that transcend the lessons we can get from a dual failure explanation. The stories from each city also contain lessons on what philanthropy is particularly good at, not just what is has to do because other sectors fail.

And in many cases, what philanthropy is best at is encouraging those other sectors to not fail so badly.

From the panelists, we learned about how philanthropy is good at:

• Building individual and community capacity
• Raising awareness
• Empowering citizens through engagement
• Facilitating collaboration across social divides or institutional animosities
• Highlighting social injustice
• Experimenting with new solutions (that other sectors might take to scale) and providing the data needed for better decisions by all sectors

As I’ve thought about the implications of this over the past couple of days at the conference, in sessions about philanthropy’s relations with government and others, I’ve realized that a theory about philanthropy as essential because of the failure of the other sectors is not so useful. What we need is a theory about philanthropy as essential to the other sectors.

To develop that theory, we need to ask a new question: What are the other activities that philanthropy is particularly good at, to add to my short list above?

Michael Moody is Frey Foundation Chair for Family Philanthropy at the Johnson Center for Philanthropy. He also writes for the Giving Back Blog .

For early risers yesterday, the Council’s corporate members hosted a discussion and brainstorming around a just-released report “Increasing Impact, Enhancing Value: A Practitioner’s Guide to Leading Corporate Philanthropy” (available at www.cof.org/corporateguide).   The conclusion of the report - and the discussion - is that philanthropy is only a part of what a company can and should contribute to the communities where it does business.  This is certainly the role of the Citi Foundation, where we align our work with Citi’s company-wide assets to enhance our overall citizenship profile and to deliver more value to our communities.  The discussion was particularly rich around the rewards and challenges of collaboration – with government, competitors, NGOs and other businesses and, most importantly, with the business with which the Foundation is aligned.

Pamela Flaherty is president and CEO of the Citi Foundation, and director of citizenship for Citi

Nowhere is the impact of U.S. deindustrialization and a shifting economic base more apparent than in south Los Angeles. Yesterday’s off-site visit to the neighborhood revealed the ways that changing demographics and economic challenges are deeply intertwined.

Thirty years ago, south L.A. was home to a predominantly African-American community that had solid livable wage jobs in manufacturing. As these private sector, unionized jobs evaporated in the 1980s, economic dislocation resulted, exacerbated by the era’s crack cocaine epidemic. In the wake of this change, Latinos came into the area, attracted by affordable housing and jobs, albeit low-paying and non-unionized ones.

USC American Studies and Ethnicity Professor Manuel Pastor provided an overview of the demographic changes during our visit. Among the statistics he offered:

• In 1970, the Watts neighborhood was 90 percent African American and 50 percent Latino. In 2010, these numbers have nearly reversed, with 70 percent of the population Latino and 27 percent African American.
• In the 1981 school year, 93 percent of the students at Fremont High School were African American. In the 2008 school year, only 9 percent were African American.

Overall, African Americans have concentrated in the western neighborhoods of south L.A. while Latinos have moved to the eastern regions.

When visiting the area you are immediately confronted with the fact that it defies simple generalization. It is a low-income part of the city with all of the attending challenges. The median income for African Americans over the last 10 years, for example, has decreased. Yet, it is also, clearly, a place of community solidarity and social capital. Off the beaten commercial boulevards are well-cared-for homes and highly tended yards.

Community Coalition, led by Marqueece Harris-Dawson, is an example of a nonprofit organization building and cementing the neighborhood’s social assets. The coalition is working keep local children involved in the child welfare system connected to their families and neighborhood. It is also nurturing the next generation of local leaders and creating a safer neighborhood.

This work is complemented by SCOPE (Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education), led by Gloria Walton. SCOPE is working collaboratively across ethnic and racial groups to build a stronger, more economically vibrant south L.A. Recently, it has spearheaded a green jobs initiative in the community that focuses on environmental retrofitting.

Economic dislocation and shifting demographics are relevant to all cities in the United States. These trends are thrown into high relief in Los Angeles, both because of the city’s sheer size and its convulsive experience in the 1992 civil unrest. At the same time, organizations in the city’s southern reaches are working to build a more vibrant community and to strengthen the local economy. They serve as inspiring models for foundations and nonprofits confronting similar trends throughout the country.

William Vesneski is director of evaluation, planning and research for The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.

Neville Vakharia, director of the Cultural Data Project of The Pew Charitable Trusts, organized the fishbowl session on data-driven decision making. The decisions considered were those of the philanthropic, governmental, and nonprofit sectors. Most of the session, however, focused on data even though Kevin Rafter of the Irvine Foundation said data is not the issue; decision making is. The data challenge was captured in a nice phrase: “Data you have is not what you want, the data you want isn’t what you need, and the data you need doesn’t exist.”

There is too much data. Already we feel as if we are drowning in a sea of data, supplied easily by the Web. And we are on the verge of big data—data sets that are so big that we don’t have the tools to organize and analyze them. There is so much data that Laura Zucker of the Los Angeles County Arts Commission feels data guilt.

Of course, much of that data is not fact checked. Here is something philanthropy can address. In an earlier panel on philanthropy and the digital public dialogue, it was pointed out that philanthropy could vet data and the use of data. This would be very similar to campaign or journalist fact-checking projects.

Despite the Web, some types of data collection are more difficult. For example, a foundation asks grantees to collect data for the foundation’s purposes, in effect placing an unfunded mandate on grantees to produce data for the foundation’s benefit.

Some of the data challenges can be solved with new collection and analysis methods. On the subject of making data collection easier, Rafter described scraping data from the Web. For big data, we will need new analytical techniques, more like exploratory data analysis than traditional statistics. Nevertheless, the most important way to address the challenge is old fashioned, thinking about what data would inform decisions or what data would be needed to test hypotheses before we collect it. To paraphrase a campaign slogan, “It’s the thought, stupid.”

David Colby is vice president of research and evaluation for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Immigrant integration—the process through which immigrants and local communities build mutual connections—is being supported by foundations across the country. Although it may seem that this work is relevant only to funders in states that have been traditional U.S. entry points (such as California and New York), it is increasingly essential to philanthropies in new immigrant destinations across the country (including states like North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida).

Immigrant integration has both economic and civic dimensions. While recognizing the importance of national immigration policy, funders focused on integration are seeking ways to have a more immediate, positive impact on people’s lives within the current policy context. Nonprofits like OneAmerica in Seattle are taking a similar approach and remain active in the policy arena while simultaneously working for present change.

Representatives from a number of philanthropic organizations (including the California Community Foundation, the Hill-Snowdon Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation) described some of the integration efforts they are supporting during a session Monday at the Annual Conference. Although their work ranged from localized planning efforts to national initiatives, it was all guided by core concerns with equity and economic fairness. All of the projects described during the session are scalable and can be adapted to meet the needs of local communities.

Among the activities being funded:

• Research to better understand demographic changes and provide recommendations that help shape and inform philanthropic giving.
• Citizenship campaigns conducted in collaboration with local governments, police departments, organizing and advocacy groups, and other funders. These campaigns help people who are eligible for naturalized citizenship become citizens (which, in turn, facilitates access to livable wage work).
• Capacity building in states where there is not a strong organizational infrastructure for helping immigrants engage in civic life and achieve economic security.
• Alliance building with African-American, LGBT, and faith communities.
• Support for home ownership and services that provide critically needed family supports, such as affordable child care, to immigrants.
• Arts and culture groups that give voice to the immigrant and newcomer experience.

Because immigrants are a part of all our communities, immigrant integration is of concern to all of us. We need to work together to find replicable, successful strategies for helping newcomers to our country find their place. This issue and many others will be addressed at the upcoming convening of Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees in Portland, Ore., in June.

William Vesneski is director of evaluation, planning and research for The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.