Takeaways from Northern California Grantmakers Annual Meeting

Several ZeroDivide staff participated in today's Northern California Grantmakers (NCG) 2010 Annual Meeting held in the wood-paneled Julia Morgan Ballroom of the Merchants Exchange in San Francisco.  The theme of this year's annual meeting was Philanthropy Transformed: Exploring New Pathways.  In his opening remarks, Colin Lacon, President & CEO of NCG, spoke about resilience, adaptation, and transformation and that, to be successful, you have to evolve, just as business and even government does, including adjusting to new platforms in technology.  Like everything else, working in philanthropy entails needing to learn new skills to seek new solutions.  Recognizing that transformation is necessary, the larger question is how do you do it?

Keynote speaker Katherine Fulton, President of the Monitor Institute, discussed next practices for the next decade and emphasized "acting bigger" and "adapting better."  In order to act bigger and adapt better, we should understand the ecosystem, work with networks, leverage additional resources and take risks and learn from failure.  ZeroDivide has been focusing on these practices in working with our pipeline and big bet grantees.

A panel comprised of Chris DeCardy, Vice President and Director of Programs, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Tessie Guillermo, President and CEO of ZeroDivide, and Carla Javits, President of REDF, and moderated by Katherine Fulton, responded to some of the questions posed by the audience.  Regarding the question of 'trust', Carla said that building trust requires doing stuff together, and Tessie noted that, in using technologies such as social media, there is an assumption of trust.  Chris commented on how to not be thin-skinned in our philanthropy work.  Katherine also raised the critical issue of sharing failures with others and the panelists discussed the "tyranny of high expectations" and the need to focus on implementation.  As we embark upon a new decade of philanthropy, we must be active participants in its transformation.