Reports from Alliance magazine

The Philanthropy UK Quarterly is grateful to Alliance magazine for its permission to reproduce the following summaries of its event reports.The full reports can be accessed at www.alliancemagazine.org.

By Betsy Brill, founder and president of Strategic Philanthropy Ltd, Chicago

19th – 20th March, Seattle, Washington

Pathways for Strategic Giving was the inaugural gathering of a new community of global donors, Pacific Northwest Global Donors. Over 180 donors attended, including representatives from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Channel, Seattle, Seattle International and Washington Women’s Foundations, as well as from the World Affairs Council, giving circle members and individual donors in the Northwest.

Fashioned after its sister organisation the Chicago Global Donors Network, the conference promised four key outcomes for its attendees: to provide information on many of today’s most significant global issues; to increase confidence in global grantmaking; to identify best practice in addressing the root causes of global poverty and fundamental human rights issues; and to link participants to a growing community of global philanthropists in the region.

Opening the conference, Kavita Ramdas of the Global Fund for Women emphasised the need for a collective vision for a more just world. The problems are not too huge to tackle, she argued, urging the need to ground funding decisions in the voices of those seeking support on the ground.

Topics ranged from building sustainable assets for the poor to gender and empowerment, access to education, sustainable agriculture and food security, disaster relief and recovery, conflict resolution, and peace and human security. Panels on giving practice covered advocacy as a change strategy, how to make a site visit, working at the grassroots, monitoring and evaluation, and programme related investing.

Closing the conference, Bill Gates, Sr asked: “Why do I remain optimistic?” His answer: “It’s because knowledge is not a finite resource and neither is compassion.”

As many attendees remarked, global giving is somehow “in the water here [in Seattle]– it’s part of people’s blood”. No doubt this conference is just the beginning for the rapidly evolving global donor community in the Pacific Northwest.
Email betsy@stratphilanthropy.com

For more information
Conference highlights and overview can be found at http://globaldonors.wordpress.com/

By Amir Dossal, executive director of the UN Office for Partnerships

21st -22nd March, Doha, Qatar

Co-hosted by the United Nations Office for Partnerships, the Congress provided a unique forum for more then 250 international leaders from public and private sectors to explore ways in which both the Muslim philanthropic community and others could achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) through new partnerships.

The Congress featured a number of high-profile events, including the first-ever Muslim Philanthropy Awards. Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad Al-Thani, daughter of the Emir of Qatar, received the Eminent Muslim Philanthropist Award while His Highness Sheikh Sultan bin Tahnoon Al-Nahayan received the Foundation of the Year Award on behalf of the Emirates Foundation for their trendsetting work to advance Emirati society and generous support to promote Arab and Muslim philanthropy.

A number of groundbreaking initiatives were launched under the auspices of the Congress. On 21st March, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the King Khalid Foundation and the United Nations Office for Partnerships. This will further enhance the collaboration of the two organisations towards achieving the MDGs.

WCMP founder Dr Tariq Cheema announced the launch of the Hasanah Fund to combat poverty and global hunger, while a special inter-religious donor roundtable reviewed best practices for faith-based programmes, and interfaith leaders issued a ‘Call to Action’ for increased monitoring and evaluation of faith-based approaches in an effort to further engage governments, the private sector and other philanthropic organisations in addressing poverty, hunger and security.

The conference also saw the launch of the Leadership Circle to promote science, technology and innovation in the Muslim world, organised by Ellis Rubinstein, President of the New York Academy of Sciences.

Email dossal@un.org

By Lennie Magida, senior manager, development & communications, at the Association of Small Foundations

22nd - 24th March, New Orleans, USA

Nearly five years ago, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita caused unprecedented devastation in and around New Orleans, and in towns and rural areas throughout the Gulf Coast region of the US. The storms laid bare a long list of grievous problems, from inadequate infrastructure to government incompetence and social inequity. They also stirred a stunning outpouring of philanthropic support – desperately needed, tremendously helpful, but not without missteps.

The experience has taught many lessons, both positive and negative. More than 300 people from the philanthropy, non-profit, government and private sectors gathered for the Katrina @ 5: Partners in Philanthropy conference to discuss what worked and what didn’t, and how disaster philanthropy can do better – not just along the Gulf Coast but in communities everywhere.

The Katrina @ 5 conference was a collaboration of 36 US philanthropic organisations, with Association of Small Foundations as the organising partner. It focused on three themes: Respond, Rebuild, Transform.

Speakers hailed philanthropy’s importance immediately after the storms and in the years since, as communities seek not only to rebound but to be stronger than ever. Flozell Daniels, CEO of the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation, said,  “The outstanding investments by philanthropy have been critical to any progress we’ve made.”

Speakers and participants also spoke frankly about ways in which philanthropy can better anticipate and respond to both short- and long-term disaster-related needs. They urged funders to have unrestricted funds ready to disburse quickly to volunteer agencies, without the usual need for time-consuming documentation. They stressed the importance of listening to local people who understand the community and its needs.

Actor Wendell Pierce, a New Orleans native who started a non-profit to help rebuild his Pontchartrain Park neighbourhood, closed the conference with several exhortations, “Give general operating support grants.”; “Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate”, “Take risks – please do not come here and work with the same old ineffective individuals and institutions”.

Email lennie@smallfoundations.org

For more information
www.smallfoundations.org

By Robyn Scott, chief executive, Philanthropy New Zealand

12th to 14th April, Pittsburgh, USA

The theme of this year’s GEO Conference in Pittsburgh from ‘Unleashing Philanthropy’s Potential: Smarter Grantmaking for Better Results’, was firmly in line with GEO’s focus: how funders can help their grantees achieve success and meaningful results. Sessions throughout the conference clearly reflected what is being done and what could be done to improve philanthropic impact. 

Sessions were organised around five key areas: foundation effectiveness, leadership, learning, money (types of support grantmakers can provide to strengthen non-profits’ financial sustainability) and stakeholder engagement. Among the ideas that resonated with me (most were not new) were the importance of creating a learning culture that improves impact; the value of embedding meaningful grantee conversations in foundation processes; and the importance of taking time to reflect and learn from what we do. 

An interesting discussion took place on the notion of empathy. Dev Patnaik, author of Wired to Care and a keynote speaker, advocated a deeper level of empathy that ensures an organisation's work is informed by the opinions and perspectives of the people affected by that work, while Bill Strickland from the Manchester Bidwell Corporation talked inspiringly of how he has not yet lost the “sensitivity to human suffering”. 
   
There were three recurring themes at the conference:

• Supporting overhead is good
• Philanthropy needs more empathy
• Collaboration is critical

These were supported by speakers with an enviable depth of experience who shared their wisdom and insight generously. The real test for those of us fortunate to participate is the ‘so what? question’. What will change as a result of attending the conference? I came away knowing more and with a renewed sense of energy to use the connections I made and share the knowledge I had gained to achieve better results. 

Email robyn@philanthropy.org.nz

For more information
www.geofunders.org

By Alejandro Litovsky

14th -16th April, Oxford, London

Can a single social entrepreneur make a dent in the problems we face, given their phenomenal scale? This was one of the questions addressed by the 7th Skoll World Forum. The simple answer is: ‘very unlikely’. So a series of plenary sessions and workshops brought together entrepreneurs with representatives of government, media, large companies and financial institutions to explore how the solutions proposed by social entrepreneurs could create larger-scale change.  

Let me pick out two personal highlights from the sessions. First day: in ‘Structuring Collaboration: Mergers, Partnerships and New Business Models’, entrepreneurs talked about how their networks, which provide access to health and water, are beginning to interact with government delivery infrastructures. I was fascinated to hear Gary White, executive director of Water.org, who said that more people in Africa have access to mobile phones than to safe drinking water, beginning to ask how they could tap into the mobile network to improve delivery of water. The idea that infrastructures created in parallel silos could be thought of as linked and mutually supportive was definitely a highlight.

A session the following day, ‘Oceans in Peril’, looked at the alarming depletion of marine life by over-fishing. Particularly arresting was the very immediate and moving way the discussion was illuminated when Jake Eberts, an independent film producer, showed a preview of the new movie Oceans and created a direct emotional connection between the people in the room and the life of the ocean.

Behind the film is Participant Productions, Jeff Skoll’s film production company, known for the production of the award-winning An Inconvenient Truth.

The session continued, but one could only wonder whether the key to unlock system change would rather lie in becoming ever more effective at manipulating mass media infrastructures to mobilise emotions on a large scale.

For more information
/www.skollworldforum.com

Also at www.alliancemagazine.org/latestfromalliance