Empires of Illusion

By Les Adler

A quirky, but striking piece of public art, leavened with a twist of Central European humor, marks a downtown street corner in the Slovakian capital city of Bratislava.

One comes across it suddenly: a life-sized bronze figure in a hard hat or helmet, head resting on hands, partly emerged from a man-hole in the middle of the sidewalk. Is it a peeper peeking under women’s skirts? Is it a political satire on working life in this former Communist land, reflecting the old bargain that “we’ll pretend to work and you’ll pretend to pay us”? Is it a modern philosophical reference to Plato’s Cave? A playful reminder of the largely invisible underworld of pipes, sewers, power lines and workers it takes to sustain civilization? Perhaps just an artistic prank designed to add a distinctive flavor and draw tourism to this newly-independent, lesser-known half of the former Czechoslovak state?

Or is it, as I’m now thinking, a larger comment about the world of illusion in which we all live, and our only partly-successful efforts to pull ourselves out of individual or collective states of unconsciousness into the clear light of day or reason? Nearby Vienna, only a few miles up-river, after-all, was Freud’s hometown.

Often it takes a piece of absurdist art like this—or a view of staggeringly absurd political theater like Communism in its dotage or Washington in its current debt-limit manifestation—to stop people in their tracks and cause them to reflect on where we are and what we have become.

Like the statue in the sidewalk, we’re in constant danger of being ignored, trampled or even swept away in the crowded rush of unfolding events and ever more manipulated images surrounding us. But look more closely at his pose and what he might have to say to us. A thoughtful, even faraway look and the curve of a curious smile animate his face. His left forefinger is slightly raised, as if to draw attention to a point or object he wants to discuss that has just come to mind.

This is definitely not Rodin’s Thinker, fully emerged, naked, alone and lost in profound thought on his rock, but perhaps an equally recognizable human reference. It may be the anonymous individual, only partly visible or realized, taking time out to reflect, think, and most notably, engage in an ongoing dialogue both with unseen colleagues and with those of us willing to stop and listen.

If Philanthropy is Strategic What About Nonprofits?

By Jill Blair

On June 22^nd Chris Gates, Executive Director of PACE (Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement), wrote a blog post for TWI in which he argued that in this “new world” of “strategic philanthropy” nonprofits need to approach funders with an appreciation for their experience in and knowledge of the field – to consider philanthropy not just as a source of capital but a source of wisdom as well. He suggests that once upon a time there was a more patient philanthropic sector – willing to give a good idea and an inspiring leader a chance, but NOW the world has shifted to greater accountability and expectations for results.

Initially I found myself disagreeing with Chris…fundamentally – on the issue of the “good old days” and also the days since then. But instead of leading with argument, I will pause and offer the following.

Financial philanthropy (meaning giving away money – not just time) started in this country with wealthy men who turned their attention from wealth creation to social problem solving. And in that frame of the “good old days of philanthropy” Andrew Carnegie both defined the problem (lack of literacy and proper education) and the solution – libraries. One could argue, using Chris’ description of strategic philanthropy, that Carnegie paved that road one hundred years ago – he was the original strategic philanthropist.

Between then and now what we have witnessed is an explosion of nonprofit endeavors – many starting as volunteer efforts that converted over time into nonprofit corporate entities – with boards of directors and self-defined intentions for doing good. And at the same time, philanthropic institutions proliferated and professionalized. In this frame, the world began to divide between those who DO the work and those who PAY for it. Chris implies that in this same world the Program Officer plays the equivalent of a lending role (without the payback). In this world, and at that time, the foundation’s capital is used to underwrite the building of a social sector situated at least in theory to solve problems.

But time passed and the world has changed – or has it?

Over time nonprofit and philanthropic corporate entities have evolved. They evolved their understanding of the sector within which they were operating – a sector bereft of methods, manuals and measures of success; they evolved their understanding of the depth of the problems they were intending to solve – moving from symptom-based to systemic-solutions; and they evolved their understanding of their own capacity and contributions – with nonprofits beginning to resist the temptation to over promise and foundations beginning to assess their expectations and whether a more active and directive role might better position them for achieving success.

In this “new world” we have more and more philanthropic institutions that not only focus on very specific problems, but consider themselves to be part of and therefore responsible for solutions. In this “new world” we have more and more nonprofit corporations that broker the world of problems and solutions by serving as intermediaries – platforms for capacity-building, research, knowledge management and service delivery – agile and willing to apply expertise across any number of issues (problems and questions) in order to produce positive results (solutions and answers).

Is this a paradigm shift for philanthropy or are we witnessing philanthropy returning to its roots of both defining the problem and the solution? Is this a paradigm shift for nonprofits? Perhaps it is –perhaps nonprofits are moving from mostly mission-minded to mostly mercenary.

Back to Chris’ post…he urges nonprofits to reconsider their relationship to this “new philanthropy” where funders are coming to the table not only with a bucket of money but with a point of view. I do agree with Chris. We are in a moment of transition if not transformation in the social problem-solving sector – and the burden is on nonprofits now to find themselves in this new world – to discover, perhaps rediscover, their purpose, power and possibility.

Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power

By Pia Infante

James Tracy, TWI community member, has co-authored a new book that offers, among other tenets, a call for uncommon conversations and unlikely allies.

The following are a few thoughts from James about the project:

Can you tell us a bit more about James Tracy?

I was born in Oakland and mostly raised in Vallejo, CA. I was an accidental activist pretty early on. One day, a few friends and I cut school and snuck out to San Francisco for a punk concert that never happened. We stumbled upon a clergy led anti-nuclear demonstration in front of the Federal Building. That night the ABC News ran a story about a "Punk and Priest" protest, prominently featuring all of our mugs. I was suspended from school for a few weeks but spent that time the public library studying protest movements and social change. Upon returning to school, I organized my first group Students and Teachers Against Nuclear Destruction, and then went to the next anti-nuclear demonstration as an officially chartered student group.

What are the inspirations and motivations for your new book? How did the project/collaboration come about?

I first heard about the Young Patriots Organization through one of my mentors, Malik Rahim, a former Black Panther Party member from New Orleans. He recalled seeing a bunch of white guys with Confederate Flags on their hats running armed security for Chicago Panther member Fred Hampton. He said he figured that if they could learn how to move beyond racism, there was hope for the rest of us as well!

I originally just wanted to write an article about the Patriots, but as I dug around, I found out about the other fascinating groups of working-class whites who were organizing alongside radical (activists) of color. It was my goal to interview the rank and file, not the leftist icons. At some point, I envisioned a Studs Terkel-like book of oral histories, but it quickly evolved into political creative non-fiction. It turned out that someone I was acquainted with, Amy Sonnie, was working on a similar project. We decided to team up and create a book together. It's been a winning combination ever since.

The groups we write about were part of an experiment in the New Left. How to build an inclusive class politics that was not race blind? How to organize a community many wrote off as hopelessly racist and expected to be the shock troops of reaction? With the rise of the Tea Party movement today, these questions are just as important now.

In a media-saturated, message-prolific, often overwhelming marketplace of ideas, why a book?

A book is not the best way to grab someone's attention anymore. However, if someone reads a book, I believe that the ideas stay with them for much longer than a television show or website. We're looking forward to figuring out ways to spread the discussion through other medium as well. There's just no way that a writing team made up of a Librarian and an Adult Education teacher will ever completely abandon books! The renowned filmmaker Ray Santesbian is making a documentary on this subject due out in a few years. Rising Up Angry veteran Mike James is planning a book of photos. In the fall, Amy and I are going to be on the road for weeks on tour, and making a ton of radio appearances.

What's the golden nugget message in the book?

Political consciousness is shaped by the efforts of those who want to change the world. No one is born reactionary, or progressive for that matter. If we want to move the dial, we need to take risks by reaching out beyond our comfort zones and build real alliances.

More Than Money - Foundations As Strategic Partners

By Chris Gates, Executive Director,
PACE - Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement


As one of 38 affinity groups of the Council on Foundations, people are often confused about the role that we play in the philanthropic sector. PACE, and other affinity groups like it, works as a learning collaborative of funders doing work in the fields of civic engagement and democratic theory and practice. We think together, we share information, we learn together and we use each other as sounding boards. But we're a learning collaborative, not a funding collaborative, so when folks either send me proposals or ask for specific fundraising advice, I'm often at a loss about what kind of advice I can or should provide.

But after a fair amount of reflection, I've decided there is one piece of advice about philanthropy that I can offer without equivocation, and that is for non-profits to view foundations as a source of something more than money. Too often non-profits come to program officers who have been funding work in their fields for years, even decades, and simply make an ask for money, without ever first having a conversation about the goals and the nature of the work being proposed. The truth is that the days of foundations doing business as venture capitalists for social entrepreneurs are long gone. In those days some funders would simply make a grant to an interesting person with an interesting idea who might have a promising track record, and then see what happened. In that old world of a more patient philanthropy there were only two possible outcomes, either the project would succeed or the field would learn something from it's failure.

The field of philanthropy no longer has that much patience, or that kind of appetite for failure, and now the phrase that best describes the current state of much of the field is 'strategic philanthropy'. This is a concept where the funder is more of a partner with the grantee, both in the goals and intentions of the work and in the mechanics of how that work takes place. There is a larger premium placed on partnership and, frankly, a larger premium placed on success. Foundations are interested in seeing progress in real time and so have become much more committed to funding work that will result in measurable progress within the time-span of the grant. On the downside, 'strategic philanthropy' can sometimes turn into situations where foundations simply negotiate what amounts to a contract for a book of work from a non-profit. In these instances the foundation is very much in charge and serves as the designer and director of the work. But in other instances non-profits and foundations can become creative partners in the process of indentifying promising avenues for social change and build on their collective knowledge to create cutting edge strategies that make a real difference in real time.

So the best advice I can give to non-profits is to do your research, find foundations who might be logical partners in your work based on their past funding, get to know them, learn about what matters to them, ask them what they think, be willing to float ideas--not proposals--past them and think of them as allies and partners in your work. There is no doubt that the relationship between the non-profit sector and the philanthropic community isn't what it used to be and is in the process of evolving, and that has the prospect of either being a really good thing or presenting a real challenge.

Utopian Storytelling

By John Esterle

What does utopia mean to you?

For most of us the word conjures up images of an idyllic world -- so idyllic in fact as to be seen as something that's completely unrealistic or has an inevitable dark, social engineering side to it. Filmmaker Sam Green creatively explores different facets of the notion of utopia and the utopian impluse in both his new documentary, The Universal Language (TWI provided some support) and in his "live" documentary, Utopia in Four Movements, which he's taken on the road this past year.

The Universal Language is a lovely profile of Esperanto, tinged with hope and sadness, humor and humanity. Watch for it when it comes out. I haven't seen Utopia in Four Movements yet but I hope to someday as it sounds like a compelling answer to a question I often wonder about: What sticks in a media saturated world?

I had a very stimulating lunch with Sam yesterday and we covered a lot of territory in our conversation, including themes that often crop up in this blog: the importance of storytelling, of language, and of attending to how we engage with each other to imagine and create a better world.

Here's a quote from an interview Sam did that particularly resonates with me:

"I'm not so interested in "a utopia" -- some kind of place or society that would be utopia. I'm much more interested in the Utopian -- a moment or gesture or act that evokes a radically better world. Art, I think, can certainly do this. In fact, art is very well-suited for the task. My own personal feeling is that art that is proscriptive, that flattens things out to bullet points and clear-cut answers is often dull. What I like is art that embraces complexity and contradiction and the messiness of human experience and who we are. I like art that opens up possibilities."

Besides agreeing with what he says here, I'm struck at how I could replace "art" with "dialogue" and it have it still ring true for me.

Anyway, as I look out my window on a sunny San Francisco day (it's been cold and gray a lot lately) I'm thinking of how dreaming big links with being in the moment, and of how TWI's vision is grounded in -- dare I say -- a Utopian belief that we can transform our world one conversation, one connection, one relationship at a time.

Giving on the Right-Side of the Brain: Beauty = Truth

By CJ Callen

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know” – Jon Keats

"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.” - Galileo Galilei

Once I took a night class on “drawing on the right-side of the brain” based on the book of the same title. The instructor asked us to draw a flower and so I dutifully conjured up from my head that lame representative image that I placed on paper. Next she placed a real flower on the table and talked to us about using our right brain to see the flower. I then drew a flower, capturing its intricate lines and its spirit – the real beauty of nature in front of me. I was startled; I can draw! I sometimes show people the “before and after” drawings and they cannot believe that the same person did both. Truth is stranger than fiction.

That was a powerful lesson about the difference between using the left brain (logical, sequential, rational, analytical, objective, looks at parts) and using the right brain (random, intuitive, holistic, synthesizing, sees the whole). Since then, I have let go to tap into my right-brain, which is oddly predominant given I am a trained lawyer (but not so odd given that I am also a daydreamer and student of philosophy). As a board member of a foundation with an unusual and explicit focus on process, I delight at the opportunities to put my right brain to use to engage in some right-brained philanthropy. Yes, that does exist and there even is a blog spot devoted to the subject http://rightbrainphilanthropy.blogspot.com/

I would like to add to the conversation the notion of the art of philanthropy. I ask others to think of the promising possibilities that would emerge if philanthropy embraced right-brained approaches that are driven by aesthetics. And since truth is beauty, well, you can see where I am going.

For all that philanthropy is doing to help solve the world’s problems, it is set-up for failure if its “house of problem-solving” is not built on truth. My simple proposition is that using the right brain to see the true lines and complexity of everything – whether flower, social construct, or pressing social issue – is indispensable to forging real solutions. A strategy is really just a proposition and those are more likely to test well and seed solutions if firmly planted in the truth.

Now sometimes that truth might not be as beautiful as a flower but it will have its own beauty, sure enough. I always say that the one thing that inspires me is “beauty” and everything falls from that.

If philanthropy re-organizes itself on this principle by moving confidently into solidly right-brain territory and leading like artists inspired by beauty/truth, I can only imagine what fruits it/we might bare. If nothing else, it/we have nothing to lose in trying it on for size since the world is in dire need of saving. My wish: let philanthropy discover its own truth and beauty through deeper appreciation and valuation of all things right-brained.

At TWI we are having a board retreat this summer and now I have a new goal: working with my fellow board members and the TWI staff and leadership on ways that we as a foundation can model right-brained philanthropy.

If you’re interested, I will let you know how it goes. Oh heck, I will let you know anyway because it sounds like a good story worth telling.

Milllenials: From the Next Generation to the Now Generation

By Pia Infante

Whenever I hear the phrase "the next generation," the first notion that comes to mind is the Star Trek: Next Generation t.v. series which ran from 1987 to 1994. Wow. As I write this I'm realizing this is not a current pop culture reference - dating me as the Gen X'er that I am!

I use it here to refer to Millennials - the generation born roughly between 1980 and 2000. And I've been reminded of the phrase because I was pleased to see that a couple of Millennial leaders from our TWI midst have been recently recognized as folks who have already stepped into their potential as the Now generation, not the Next.

Congratulations Ayofemi Kirby, of mobilize.org, and Amy Lazarus, of Sustained Dialogue Campus Network!

The Independent Sector has announced Ayofemi and Amy as members of the 2011 American Express NGen Fellows. This 9-month fellowship is designed to expand and develop the (under 40) non-profit leadership pool's leadership skills and practices.

Ayofemi is the Director of Strategy and Programs for mobilize.org, a long time grantee partner of TWI's and Amy is the Executive Director of the Sustained Dialogue Campus Network, a newer grantee partner of ours.

We are delighted to see their leadership acknowledged and curious to understand how TWI might better support the trajectory of Now vs. Next.