We often think of grantees as people who provide a service or act as advocates. But are they the only ways grantees can make change? And are there other kinds of grantees worth considering?

I had the pleasure of attending the Brainstorming Bus Tour, hosted by the Greater New Orleans Foundation, with a number of community foundation communications professionals. I do strategy and evaluation, so it was fun to spend time with my communications colleagues and see how they approach communicating impact.

I was particularly struck by the need for this skill given the purposes of two of the three sites we visited. (The third was Market Umbrella, a farmer’s market organizer/"public market think tank.") The first, Idea Village, is an incubator space for entrepreneurs, and The Lens is an investigative journalism site. The dynamic leaders of these two groups both talked about the unique value of the change agents with which they each work: entrepreneurs and investigative journalists. I’m doing or have done consulting work for organizations that work with these kinds of professionals, but these two groups helped me think about them differently.

We tend to think of entrepreneurs as small business owners or job creators, but Tim Williamson and Idea Village view them as change agents. They make connections where none existed before, opening previously closed networks. Williamson challenged the funders in the room not to try to build a network among local actors like universities, government, and technical assistance providers in a top-down fashion. "Use entrepreneurs as a way to bring people in, rather than trying to create the links yourself," he said.

Entrepreneurs can engage not only civic institutions, but community members. Like many groups that support business owners, Idea Village has a pitch event. It’s held in a public square (rather than a hotel ballroom or corporate boardroom) and community members walk around talking to the entrepreneurs. Their take is community-oriented. People are given wooden chips, and they give them to the entrepreneurs whose ideas they like best. It’s a live version of those Facebook fundraising voting challenges that have become so popular. But the face-to-face interaction makes it that much more real.

Investigative journalists, like the kind Steve Beatty and The Lens work with, play similar roles of breaking up closed networks and engaging community members directly. "Once you establish yourself as someone who cares about these issues," Beatty said, "people come to you with tips." Such tips have helped expose corruption in the administration of post-Katrina housing funds and changed the practices of the New Orleans Police Department in the unequal treatment of black and white suspects.

Foundation grantees are frequently service providers, researchers, or advocates. If your change strategy in your community faces obstacles of closed networks or low community engagement, these are options to explore. A participant on the bus tour mentioned that there are already 13 community foundations that have entrepreneurship centers, and The Lens has 60 counterparts in communities across the country. Kudos and thanks to the Greater New Orleans Foundation for an engaging, fast-paced, and well-run tour!

Chris Cardona is associate director of philanthropy for the TCC Group.

Day two of the Fall Conference yielded several important insights, but the ones that moved me most began at lunch. To be honest, I get tired of talk about violence. It wears me out emotionally. It frustrates me about our society. It drains me. But we absolutely can’t stop hearing real truths if we are to move the issue to the front of the work we all do.

The lunch session began with a brief speech by Mayor Mitch Landrieu. I’d never heard him speak, and as eloquent and poignant as he was it seemed clear that he knew one important truth—he was simply a vessel to deliver an important message: “If we are not safe in America, we are not free.” This important message was made more so by his explicit acknowledgement that violence—regardless of who the victim or the perpetrator may be—is everyone’s concern. His words were the backdrop for a discussion of the film The Interrupters. I was so moved by the discussion that I left early to download the rental from iTunes so I could watch. As Cobe Williams pointed out before I left, “We can’t just care about our own kids, we have to care about everybody’s kids.”

There is no gentle transition to the rest of the day, so I won’t even try. Suffice it to say that the power of the moment wasn’t lost on anyone who listened, and many will likely carry the emotional weight of the session back to our respective workplaces—which is a good thing.

I have Twitter to thank for a short divergence into a room of Next Generation philanthropy professionals who were thinking about their careers and continuing to serve in this arena. I learned about the session by following a conference-goer on Twitter, and this brief but interesting session introduced me to the hurdles a few experienced mid-career professionals are facing.

This brought me to Big Data. I can’t do this session justice, so I’ll keep it short and encourage you to explore the topic. Mark Bolgiano of the Council gave an incredibly enlightening presentation about the next wave of innovation that will help us serve and give in better more impactful ways. To take one example, this video shows Hans Rosling revealing in a very fun way how massive amount of data can be used to creatively tell a story. Bolgiano explained that in addition to cool presentations of data, the quickly decreasing cost of storage and the richness of analytic tools mean we are on the cusp of better, more reliable, more efficient uses of data about the communities we serve.

We all know the value of qualitative information in our work, but it is a complement to the wave of new, inexpensive data we have available. Bolgiano pointed out that every item of music ever recorded in the entire world could fit on a data storage device that costs $600! This is evidence of how inexpensive data is becoming and how much more useful we can make it if we choose. If you get a chance, text 22333 with the message EMAIL4MARK to get his slides. Well worth it.

I believe the San Diego Foundation and its new Center for Civic Engagement will find ways to leverage this new Big Data world and hope many others do as well.

Omar Passons is a San Diego construction attorney and community activist who sits on the leadership committee of the San Diego Foundation’s Center for Civic Engagement. You can follow him on Twitter @omarpassons.

E.B White said, “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."

It’s not so hard here in New Orleans at the Fall Conference. Last night, I took a leisurely stroll down flamboyant Bourbon Street where the only hurricanes in sight were $8 a pop. Hundreds (thousands?) enjoyed the welcoming embrace of street crowds, music, sights, and smells.

At 8 a.m., the Hyatt Regency ballroom is crowded with 1,200 passionate staff, board members, and leaders. The new-fangled elevators at the Hyatt Regency New Orleans are slow(est), but everything else is running at full steam. The opening remarks set the tone for what will undoubtedly be an inspiring three days. New Council CEO Vikki Spruill displayed her leadership and speaking skills in her welcome address. She’ll be perfect in promoting the Council, community foundations, and philanthropy.

In a few short hours and brief remarks, we’ve been reminded of the power of philanthropy to build organizations, rebuild communities, and enrich lives. But there is also a palpable frustration with for-profit competition, lack of philanthropic data, the slow embrace of new technology and ideas, and the impact of the economy on donors and community foundation work.

But optimism is more powerful. There is excitement in the plans for the national centennial celebration of community foundations, to be held in Cleveland 1914, and the chance to transform the philanthropic landscape and our neighborhoods. This will be a chance to honor the achievements of hundreds of community foundations, hundreds of thousands of donors, and thousands of nonprofits. The chance to make a difference so others can make a difference.

Creativity, innovation, reinvention.

The themes of the conference workshops and sessions resonate with the audience who are hungry for inspiring ideas to advance their missions and their communities. You are overcome with a desire to capture a thousand business cards (still abundant on stiff paper in an cyber world) and a thousand great ideas as fast as you can.

What are the greatest problems facing philanthropy and community foundations? I’ll report on what I find out here. Let us know your thoughts.

"Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir one’s blood. Make big plans, aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die." —Daniel Burnham, city planner and architect who developed the Chicago Plan of 1909.

Daniel Mansoor is CEO of GoodWorks, a creative nonprofit consulting and philanthropy advisory service, and GiveNext, an online giving start up. He is attending his first community foundation conference.

The first day of the conference presented several interesting opportunities to expand our understanding of the issues community foundations face. After a nice dinner with fantastic oysters at Bourbon House the previous night, we were well prepared for the first day’s options. Because I am attending the conference as a member of the community rather than staff of the foundation, my lens is that of someone who wants to see how best to help my neighbors and peers work within the constraints that foundations face. But as a former program evaluator, my role is colored by an interest in data. So it was great to see a session on “real” community engagement AND a session on data in the same day.

In the first session (Beyond Grants: Strengthening Communities Through More Community Engagement), the CF Leads representative talked about (finally, in my opinion) going past faux grassroots to actual residents of communities. In some ways, as one of the “usual suspects” myself, I can relate to being one of the people who isn’t typically supposed to be the ultimate beneficiary of our foundation’s efforts. So it was interesting to engage in a rich discussion about how to get past usual suspects and gatekeepers to the actual people in our neighborhoods. The idea was, essentially, that there is a difference between reaching the people you want to help and reaching their surrogates.

Alandra Washington, a representative of the Kellogg Foundation, spoke directly: Authenticity is critical, she said. It is important to genuinely meet and engage communities "where they are," and to do that foundations must go beyond the interests of donors. This can be uncomfortable for some, but is critical to developing trust.

At the luncheon plenary, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, made several interesting points about the nature of civic engagement and how it is shaping the political landscape. Perhaps the two most interesting were a bit ironic. First, he said the Tea Party and Occupy movements were essentially creatures of the same distrust and disaffection of large government structures. Although the concerns manifest differently for each group, it is definitely true that in some sense both are “engaged” communities. The second was a humorous anecdote about how the talking heads cable networks only stop yelling polarizing things at one another long enough to decry the extensive polarization in the country. His point that more people are being driven away from political engagement because of this polarization was a good one.

I couldn’t possibly recap the afternoon session, “Community Indicator Reports: How Data Supports Action and Affects Branding,” but here are a few highlights and links to useful materials:

Mary Thomas of the Spartanburg County Foundation talked about data and community indicators. She focused on the benefit her community has derived from having indicators and a team of organizations to help focus on the issues. She also highlighted creative ways for the team to work together, including the need to develop a new brand to help the partners share successes.

Mary Jo Meisner of The Boston Foundation led in her presentation with the great quote: “In God we trust, all others must bring data,” by W. Edward Deming. Her focus was on the Boston Indicators Project.

She was engaged in the democratization of data, which is great from my perspective because it can open up the conversation to more participants and potentially create a new “table” at which foundations and community groups can sit as peers, rather than giver and recipient. Meisner also described an exciting new website that will use Weave (open-source software featured here) so anyone can use data. It wasn’t immediately clear how broad the “anyone” in this scenario was going to be, but the more access the better, in my opinion.

The Boston Foundation’s work also led to a report about the dramatic rise in municipal employee health benefits, which led to passage of key state legislation. According to the presenter, and this press release, the new municipal health-reform law saved $178 million in one year. Her presentation showed a truly powerful example of how community foundation work can drive not just local community engagement but also be the basis for important civic change.

Many other impressive points were made during the session, and I hope to engage others who attended to carry some of these examples back to support community efforts in San Diego as well. These sessions typified the type of healthy exchange that this conference makes possible.

Omar Passons is a San Diego construction attorney and community activist who sits on the leadership committee of the San Diego Foundation’s Center for Civic Engagement. You can follow him on Twitter @omarpassons.

One of my core identities is "learner." In fact, three of my top five strengths (according the Gallup StrengthsFinder tool) have to do with collecting, savoring, and sharing information. I love the Fall Conference for all its different ways to experience learning. But there is a flip side to every strength, and it is easy to become so wrapped up in new ideas that it is hard to get back home, sort through it all, and start taking action on the most promising ideas.

Monday’s session on community indicator reports offered some wisdom for those of us who are starting to feel overwhelmed about now. Mary L. Thomas of the Spartanburg County Foundation described the role of her community foundation in the indicator partnership as the "knowledge source." The community foundation uses its convening power to bring the important actors together, but the foundation itself does not take on every action item that comes out of those meetings. 

This concept takes some of the pressure off the conference-goer who is inspired yet incapable of doing it all. When my colleagues and I return to the Omaha Community Foundation, we debrief with other staff about our conference experiences. I tend to think of my report in three categories:

1. Information that resonates with our current activities and can help enrich them
2. Information that will help us as we pursue some specific strategic goals in the near future
3. Cool stuff we are not in a position to use now, if ever, but it is inspiring just to know about it

How do you sort through your conference takeaways, on your own or with colleagues, to move as quickly as possible to action?

Sarah Gilbert is director of philanthropic services for the Omaha Community Foundation.

Throughout the sessions I attended today, one word seemed to be woven throughout various discussions. That word is “authenticity.” The central purpose of community foundations is to do good in the community. We provide an avenue for donors to use their funds to help organizations address vital issues, even from the beyond the grave. We help nonprofits mobilize on a larger scale with community partners, government agencies, and the private sector to maximize resources to the better benefit of all.

Sounds like a good idea, so who would question our motives? In the CF world, we often ask, “What is the donor’s intent?” And while poring through multiple LOIs during the never-ending granting cycle, we ask, “What is the purpose of this program? Who will benefit? How can we measure?” However, many members of the community are turning the tables and pointing the fingers back at us.

During the session “Breaking Myths on Donor Advised Funds,” a member of the audience asked (paraphrasing), “Are we doing a bait and switch with donors who start funds with a specific area of focus, and only months later, their in-box is flooded with solicitation for CF initiatives, which often have nothing do with their interests?” This notion of the donor versus the community foundation was highlighted by results from the “CF Insights 31” org study: There is a gap between donors’ priorities (re intent) and what community foundations are pushing as high ranking on their own agendas such as steering certain grantees to a donor, grantees who are also funded on the program side.

On the program side of the house, authenticity was also a key word in the discussion at the session “Beyond Grantmaking: Strengthening Communities Through Community Engagement.” When CFs serve as conveners, can we truly be neutral? Can we simply play the role of glorified meeting planner without the expectation of being funders, staffers, and/or advocates for addressing the issues at hand? How can we build trust in the communities we serve if we do not explicitly say, “We stand with you”? 

Here are some questions to ponder:

1. Who sets the focus? Does the CF bring important issues to attention of the larger communities in hopes of financial support, or do we wait for donors and agencies to bring those with evident needs to our attention? Who is driving the market?
2. If the communities we serve do not understand our role, let alone know who we are and trust us, is this a sign that we are a self-serving entity?

Sarah M. Berry  is development & donor services assistant for the Greater Milwaukee Foundation.

“The subtlest change in New York is something people don’t speak much about but that is in everyone’s mind. The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges…. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now: in the sounds of the jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition.” —“Here Is New York” (1949) by E.B. White, Cornell ‘21

Today, in New Orleans at the Fall Conference for Community Foundations, is about paying tribute. How are we to remember our heroes—alive and dead—who shape our memory of that darkest of days on that brilliantly clear morning?

I remember my breakfast at Popovers on 86th St. I was in a booth facing Amsterdam. The waiter mentioned that a plane hit the World Trade Center. Then Joyce’s urgent face in the window. We escorted our 4-year-old daughter home from school, her one-month-old sister in tow, and I spent the day watching TV, watching the city crumble and a nation unite.

The eerie quiet in a loud city.

Then movement. But little sound as thousands of people walked the wide avenues heading North. Direction certain. Destinations unknown.

Landlines connected us with friends and family; texting was rare, and Facebook three years in the future. For two days, we watched as the world watched. From a rooftop I saw smoke but little else. On Thursday, we went to Union Square where thousands joined with candles, song, and prayer. A roll of white drawing paper was filled with tributes and art—talent and emotion demonstrating a humanity unimaginable months before, or hours before.

We lost so many. A day of no degree of separation in America. We will not forget friends and colleagues in the anonymity of thousands departed. We will take time to reread obituaries and tributes. We will honor their memory.

On college campuses, scholars work toward a peace borne in teaching, research, and service. Faculty discover ways to feed the world, students build schools, alumni treat those in need.

On college campuses, new students are so much more than names and resumes and hometowns. They are the souls of a new generation separated from my days on the hill by decades—and a millennium—but connected to us with shared educational and life ambitions.
A millennium began with tragedy and doubt. But today, a decade plus one year later, we can taste and must embrace optimism on this anniversary and the days ahead. We do what we do to leave this world better than we found it.

“Life can be understood only backwards, but it must be lived forward.”—Søren Kieregaard, Danish philosopher

Daniel Mansoor, Cornell ‘79, adapted this blog from a memorial scholarship fundraising letter to his university classmates.

As one who has been in the field as a community foundation CEO since 1994, I have seen many themes. We were sorted by asset size for many of our conversations in the belief that such distinctions defined our capabilities and philanthropic contributions. (We now understand that was absolutely false.) There was the theme that "the Council isn’t doing enough for community foundations," which resulted in the founding of another organization (no longer in existence). There was the "we must maintain donor-advised funds as ours alone" theme (which obviously failed). There was the "are we donor-centered, or are we community-centered" question, and the resulting focus on donor-advised funds as THE answer (a more balanced, community-directed approach—rather than a product-based approach—has replaced it). There was the "On the Brink" conversation, which warned us of the changes we have been seeing in recent times. And there was a general conversation last year, discussing the assumption that the field did not hear the warnings of "On the Brink," and therefore our infrastructures are broken. (They are not, and we have indeed modified both our revenue streams and the nature of the work we do). 

My friends, I am pleased to say that, at long last, our oldest and most revered themes have resurfaced at this conference: 

1. When you have seen one community foundation, you have seen one community foundation. We truly reflect the communities we serve—their needs, the interests of their leaders and donors, and their time in history. We provide financial, creative, and human leadership in different ways and in different measure, and we fund ourselves and the work accordingly. And size matters far less than creativity, vision, and passion. We each have different arrows in our quivers, and isn’t it wonderful!
2. Community foundations have shown over and over that their nimbleness and flexibility are among their greatest strengths. We can move and change faster than most institutions, and we continue to do so, both in relation to our own infrastructure and in relation to community needs. Back in the day, this was a part of the case statement for almost every community foundation. Dust it off, folks; it still works!
3. Trust rules! People support institutions they trust. And our long-term efforts to raise the level of the conversation, raise the bar on performance through our National Standards movement, and be community partners—unique because we understand the unique needs of those we serve—have given us credibility, leverage, and competitive advantage. 

This is the most exciting conference to date, because in every session we are celebrating the field, its continuing new knowledge and tools, its return to the things we always knew worked, and the fact that dollar for dollar, person to person, we can say, "Nobody does it better," and mean it!

Denise K. Spencer is president and CEO of the Community Foundation of the Lowcountry in Hilton Head Island, S.C.

I’m a native New Orleanian representing the Greater Milwaukee Foundation (GMF) attending the Fall Conference in New Orleans. Some might call it fate. I call it homecoming.

I have lived in Milwaukee for nearly seven years, and many would agree with the adage, “Home is where the heart is.” However, my heart spreads across many different areas. While I continue to mourn the loss of my family’s home in the Lower Ninth Ward, a casualty of Hurricane Katrina, my heart has opened to Milwaukee, thanks to those gracious family members who opened their home and hearts to their Southern relatives in need.

For nearly two years, I have called GMF my professional home, and this week marks my start as a member of the community foundation community at my first Council conference. Many here will reconnect with like-minded colleagues and reminisce over conferences past. I am doing double duty—forging new relationships with other professionals in the field and sneaking away to see family and friends. It’s a new way to experience the city, as a native tourist of sorts. I am in town as a professional woman, when just over 14 years ago I rode the public city bus to Eleanor McMain High School, just across the street from this hotel’s front doors.

Earlier today, I remarked to a fellow attendee that despite the years of catching the bus across the street, I never recalled stepping into the actual hotel. Today, I am writing this from a room with a view of the Superdome and the arena. Such a different way to connect to the city and experience what many do on a regular basis—visit New Orleans on business!

Though the distance between my former and current homes is great, my connections to the area have not been tempered. Just moments after stepping off the plane, I saw a childhood friend who works at the airport. A few hours later, I began to put faces to names I communicated with via e-mail, and I met others with connections to my current coworkers. And I can all but guarantee that in less than a year, a name will be written in an e-mail or mentioned in a meeting, and I’ll have the pleasure of saying, “I connected with them at the Fall Conference in New Orleans.” 

Sarah M. Berry is development and donor services assistant at the Greater Milwaukee Foundation.