“Not Your Grandfather’s Philanthropy”

About two years ago, a foundation leader paid us—the Council—a compliment when he said, “This is not your Grandfather’s Council on Foundations.” The comment was meant to honor the emerging changes at the Council, as we sought to provide both sector-specific membership services and sector-wide philanthropic leadership.

Recently I realized, it’s not even my generation’s philanthropy!

At the Council’s Family Philanthropy Conference in San Diego, one of the plenaries looked at “catalytic philanthropy.” Jason Rzepka, vice president of Public Affairs for MTV, Phillip Holmes, the Los Angeles director of Blue State Digital, and Kathleen Pattillo, a trustee of the Rockdale Foundation of Atlanta, joined forces in a session designed by this conference’s “next-gen” co-chairs: Mary Galeti of the Tecovas Foundation and Audrey Jacobs of the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta. The session, which was moderated by Sharna Goldseker of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, looked at catalytic change. 

Mark Kramer, in the Fall 2009 edition of Stanford Social Innovation Review writes that catalytic philanthropy occurs when “donors took responsibility for finding solutions to the problem instead of waiting for the nonprofit sector to approach them with a proposal.”

Kathleen Pattillo shared how their “small foundation” collaborated with others to achieve real change in both the Atlanta Public School System and in designing new micro-financing strategies in the Arab world.

Phillip Holmes, the mind behind the successful email/web-based strategies of the Obama campaign, discussed how bottom-up engagement by real voices produced a national outcome.

Jason Rzepka shared that MTV has partnered with foundations to develop cutting-edge campaigns and as a result, activated over 200 million young people to address some of the great social challenges facing this generation. Take a quick look at www.athinline.org and you’ll see how this catalytic philanthropic initiative seeks to separate the thin line between words and wounds for our young people who are attached to their cell phone and texting.

Our challenge is not to choose strategies appropriate for one generation compared to a different generation. Our challenge is to fully engage every generation in the common journey of serving the common good. Catalytic philanthropy can engage all of us to this end.

Indeed, it is not our grandfather’s philanthropy, or our grandfather’s Council. It is our philanthropy and our Council.

Stay tuned.

Steve Gunderson is the president and CEO of the Council on Foundations.