Blog Posts

IS THE VALUE OF PLACE DECLINING IN PHILANTHROPY?

11/30/2015

All of us walk around with default lenses through which we view the world. The lenses are created through our experiences and relationships, the communities and cultures in which we’re raised, and more. When we’re at our best, we’re able to separate when those default lenses provide helpful perspectives and when they limit our thinking.

One of my primary default lenses is the importance of place. Until I went to college, my family and most of my cousins lived in the same county in Indiana. My parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles were all active volunteers in local civic groups. The first 19 years of my professional career were focused on improving places, first through the State of Indiana’s community economic development department and then through the Central Indiana Community Foundation. The majority of the donors I worked with at the foundation focused on giving back to their hometown(s). And so far, most of my consulting clients outside of Ekstrom Alley Clontz have been focused on place.

The philanthropic sector is filled with associations focused on improving place – Grassroots Grantmakers, Neighborhood Funders Group, Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change, Project for Public Spaces’ Funders Forum, and many more. And associations focused on issues such as education, arts, and the environment talk about much of their work through the lens of local communities.

This philanthropic focus on place – and on hometown – is likely declining.
One window into this decline comes from the new 2015 Trends Study* by the National Center for Family Philanthropy and Urban Institute. This statistically valid survey showed that 66% of family foundations currently focus their grantmaking on geographic locatAions. Their mental lenses are more about place than issue. However, younger foundations are less focused on place than older ones. Only 40% of foundations formed since 2010 focus their grantmaking on place, compared to 78% of foundations formed before 1970. This difference is magnified by the fact that almost 70% of family foundations launched in the 1990s and 2000s (see the graphic at the top).

The survey didn’t ask the reason for focus on place versus issue. NCFP and the Urban Institute wrote in their report:

Possibly younger family philanthropists are less tied to place than are their older peers because they have grown up in a more interrelated and global economy. At least for now, issues seem to capture their attention and philanthropic support more than does a place-based approach.

And the authors posed two questions for ongoing consideration:

Is the move toward funding issues solely a result of nefwer foundation motivation and behavior? As families move beyond the first couple of generations, will family dispersion—combined with a need to find common ground—lead to even more issue-based giving among older foundations?

Earlier this year, Emmett Carson, CEO of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation posed a related challenge to the community foundation field in 21st-Century Community Foundations:

The shifting definition of what community means is creating a profound identity crisis for place-based institutions including community foundations.

He credits the shift in the meaning of community to two trends: the increased mobility of Americans (more of us are living in more locations over our lifetimes), and the increased use of technology to maintain vibrant, non-geographic communities based on nationality, ethnicity, gender, and interests and issues.

The Monitor Institute issued a similar challenge in 2014 in its Shift Happens report for community foundations, a report that is equally useful to family and private foundations. In addition to the trends Carson cited, the Monitor Institute noted the potential impact on philanthropy of:

The new majority – by 2043, whites will no longer be the majority in the U.S. The philanthropic practices of immigrants and people of color are seen in the increased number of racial/ethnic identity-based funds and the growth of remittances sent back to home countries.
Millennials – the largest generation in U.S. history currently focuses its giving more on causes than organizations, and that giving often channels through crowdfunding platforms, instead of through nonprofit online donation pages, and to recipients that aren’t charitable organizations.

The three reports all provide evidence of decreased philanthropic focus on place over time. But I wonder if that shift is more about a decreased focus on a shared sense of hometown within a family or group.

Opinions ahead…
Even as I attempt to set aside my own default lens, my sense is that place is an important part of most people’s identities. People express a passion for place through efforts to “buy local” or support neighborhood businesses through crowdfunding campaigns. They participate in corporate volunteer days at a local park or community center or volunteer through their congregation at a local shelter or food bank. They advocate to their friends to join them in supporting the local music scene or local food movement. Place can be a compelling cause, even if it isn’t a primary driver of a family’s charitable giving.

And, younger generations might be delaying their philanthropic connection to place. Perhaps they’ll be more likely to give and grant in a community in which they’ve raised their kids, built their own business, or enjoyed an active retirement. When I worked for the Roy A. Hunt Foundation, its fourth generation of trustees were ages 21 through mid-30s. Only two members of that generation lived in the founder’s and foundation’s hometown of Pittsburgh and few had settled down for the long run in any community. Perhaps in another 10 or 20 years, their patterns of giving will combine issues and places.

I’m now living in my third metro area after leaving the county in which I was raised. Along the way, a portion of my own philanthropy has shifted to each new geography, driven by the importance of place in my own values. The NCFP and other reports give me the sense that I may be more of an outlier in my giving as time goes on.

How about you? Are you seeing trends in giving and grantmaking that are focusing less on place?

Tony Macklin, Associate
Originally posted here.

* Full disclosure: I served on the advisory committee for the NCFP 2015 Trends Report.

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When Should You "Allow" the Board to Discuss the "Big Picture?"

11/9/2015

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Picture via https://unsplash.com/@arrowthemes

When we do board retreats, we almost always survey the board beforehand to give us feedback on where they think the foundation is and what they would like to see for its future. The surveys help us identify not only what board members understand about the foundation's work, but the issues we may need to focus on during the retreat.

The one thing the surveys can't do is show us how ready the board is to have discussions about the "big picture." There is no way to know this until we get in the room. In some cases, it takes a little prodding to get them going, but other times they are fired up and ready to go right from the start. This enthusiasm is often a sign that they have been itching to have the discussion we are facilitating and can be a direct result of prior discussions, which may have fallen into one of four categories:

"Silence is golden" - The issue gets discussed after all of the reports and approvals are done during board meetings (which means it rarely, if ever, happens).
"The elephant in the room" - The issue everyone wants to talk about, but is afraid to bring up.
"That's not your job" - An issue that has been brought up, but the board has been told in no uncertain terms that it's not their purview (sometimes that's accurate, but not always).
"Wandering in the desert" - In this case, the board has been discussing the issue at meetings (likely more than once), but it hasn't been able to reach a decision.

Nearly every board member we know equates the amount of time they spend talking about "big issues" with a more worthwhile board experience and a deeper commitment to the foundation. You might ask, "Doesn't this take time away from other things I have to do?" The answer is yes, but we believe it's the right way to spend your time. Enabling board members to be strategic partners in the foundation's work will generate a bigger long-term payoff than nearly anything else you can do.

So when should you "allow" the board to discuss the "big picture?" Every chance you get.

Steve Alley, Managing Partner

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The Missing Link in Community Leadership

10/6/2015

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Much has been written about the need for community foundations to engage (or re-engage) in community leadership. In the past couple of years, the drumbeat has seemingly grown even louder. Publications from The Monitor Institute, Democracy Collaborative, and the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University have all pointed to this need.

All of these reports ask community foundations to focus on what their communities need them to become - creators of impact rather than solely accumulators of financial assets. We agree with this approach and encourage our clients to think about what they do in this context. However, there is one thing either missing or rarely discussed in these reports - how the foundation’s underlying business model must also change to accommodate this work. That shift is likely to be just as fundamental as the shift toward leadership and it too has to be long-term in nature. The problem is, it can be a very difficult transition to make.

There are two things that are absolute truths about community leadership work. First, it is very time consuming. And second, if you don’t think about how you are going to pay for it right from the start, it can become nearly impossible to manage. This is particularly true for three types of community foundations:

Those that are “small” (under $500-million in assets),
Those that don’t have access to significant flexible resources, and
Those that have a large number of highly transactional funds.

If your community foundation fits any of these descriptors – and especially if it fits them all – it is vital that you take a step back and think about your business model before you move forward on leadership. We have seen far too many community foundations commit to taking on leadership, only to live to regret it financially down the road.

If your foundation is at full staff capacity (and we don’t know of many who aren’t), you essentially have two choices. You either figure out how you’re going to pay for additional staff or you give something up to free up the capacity needed to do the work. Our recommendation is actually that you think about how to do both because if you are successful, it's likely you will continue to be asked to do more by your community.

Leadership, by its very nature, is almost always accompanied by hard choices. If your community foundation can’t make the hard choices on the front end, how will it handle the even harder ones it will be forced to make down the road?

Steve Alley, Managing Partner

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Best Laid Plans - Part 2 of 2 – What Are We Learning?

9/25/2015

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As I wrote in Part 1 of this blog, my family faced a myriad of health issues this summer and our lives got turned completely upside down. There was no room for any semblance of a normal existence. My mother’s passing in particular threw our entire family onto a different path. It was a path my siblings and I knew would come someday, but it still sent us into a whirlwind of emotion and activity.

We were fortunate that our mom had made her wishes known to us both in numerous conversations and in her estate plan. While action is still required on many elements of the plan, its “vision” has become our guide. As part of this process, we are constantly learning new things about ourselves and our family. There always seems to be some new wrinkle or challenge that forces us to rethink how to remain on course toward her vision.

It has struck me often during this summer that our journey as a family parallels the work we do with our clients. We help each design a vision and a plan to reach that vision (whether this is for the organization as a whole or for a particular portion of its work). We do this with an understanding that what the foundation learns from each action should help inform its next steps. It is our belief that community foundations must be “learning organizations” in order to meet the challenges created by the constantly changing landscape they operate in. Perpetuity doesn’t mean you do the same things forever, but rather it requires that you shift – sometimes subtly, other times more forcefully, but always with purpose.

Take for example, the case of a community foundation that has a vision to become more of a leader in its community. It must begin to act on this vision and build the capacity and underlying business model to support this leadership role. There are countless examples where this path has been accelerated or shifted because of some community event (9/11, Katrina, and the Oklahoma City Courthouse bombing come to mind). At other times, it’s the receipt of a major gift that pushes the foundation’s work into a new or underserved area, but in each case, the foundation has to take what it has learned (and is learning) to build its leadership footprint.

Every grant, grantee, gift, donor, volunteer and staff member changes the nature of what the community foundation is and what it is becoming. In essence, each event and person helps reshape the foundation’s path. What the foundation learns about itself through its work is key to reaching its vision and becoming the kind of community foundation its community needs it to be.

Steve Alley, Managing Partner

This blog is dedicated to my mother, Dr. Reene Ann (Shue) Alley, April 1, 1935-July 5, 2015. For more on this remarkable woman’s life, Click here.

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Best Laid Plans - Part 1 of 2 – Why The Plan Matters

9/18/2015

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This has been one of the most challenging times of my life as our family has dealt with a myriad of health issues. From the death of my mother to providing care for other elderly family members, our plans for the past few months were torn up before they could ever really happen. I realize now that sometimes there is nothing you can do. You have to let life come at you and then sort it all out later, and that's what I'm writing about today.

My mom always had plans, even to the very end. When she passed in July after a 6-year battle with lung cancer, she still planned on finishing a number of writing and history projects she was working on, but unfortunately, her health wouldn’t allow it.

My mom’s estate isn’t large or all that complicated in the grand scheme of things, but she thankfully she began planning for it in earnest several years ago. She hired an attorney and developed a very good estate plan that had a number of elements, including several charitable gifts. What we didn’t know was her failing health prevented her from completing some of the legwork that was needed to completely enact the plan. While it is still doable, it is now taking a lot more work on our part to make sure we can complete it.

I am writing this as I begin to head out on the road again in earnest for the fall. My first stop is to work with a community foundation on its strategic plan. You might ask, “What does one have to do with the other?” Our experience this summer has reinforced my belief not only in the importance of planning, but in working the plan once it's developed. The work used to create a plan is in itself a valuable exercise. At the organizational level, it gives us a chance to get everyone on the same page and begin (or continue) to move forward together. It is also our view - and my personal experience these last few months has born this out – that acting on the plan is just as important as its development.

Just as it was for me this summer, community foundations have “life” thrown at them every day in the form of new challenges and opportunities. It can certainly get in the way of even the best laid plans, but if you’re going to accomplish what the community needs you to do, you can’t allow it to derail you completely. That’s why having a vision (or target) to aim at and carefully selected strategic actions are so important. Having these make it easier for the organization to make decisions on what matters most and therefore, what actions must be taken today.

We know that maintaining focus in the face of changing priorities is hard, but a quality strategic plan can help lessen this burden. In the second and final part of this series, we’ll examine the other important question that must be answered - What are we learning from our work?

Steve Alley, Managing Partner

This blog is dedicated to my mother, Dr. Reene Ann (Shue) Alley, April 1, 1935-July 5, 2015. For more on this remarkable woman’s life, Click here.

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The Importance of Telling Stories

4/8/2015

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I love a good story. Give me something that reads well, has a little mystery and drama to it with interesting characters and a few subplots and I’m hooked.

That’s why I love reading the “founders” stories of our community foundation clients. Take this snippet for example:

“The idea was not to come up with some competitive fundraising thing; it was to be an endowment, a community endowment…In other words, you would start to get people who didn’t have a very precise idea how they wanted to leave their estates or support their community activities…Many people already had a pretty good idea, but there were a lot of people who really didn’t, and they also didn’t have any opportunity of setting up a fund of their own unless they wanted to create their own foundation. So this was to provide another mechanism for people…in their own philanthropy in the community.”

You might think the above statement was written long before “modern” community foundations were born. It could have come from the early days of Cleveland, Indianapolis, Los Angeles or Chicago. While the idea expressed here is as old as our field itself, this quote is not. It comes from the founder of a community foundation that began in the last 30 years.

This particular foundation was born out of a community in crisis – major businesses were closing, unemployment was hovering around 20%, and homes were being foreclosed on or given up by their owners. To the eternal credit of the leaders of this community, they recognized the need to develop “vehicles to attract and broaden the base of giving” so that the community had more capacity to care for itself. Today it does just that.

It’s truly remarkable to see what this foundation has become given its humble beginnings. What’s even more remarkable is how many other communities across our country and world now tell a similar, but wholly unique story about their own community foundation.

Twenty-three years ago, I was the founding executive director of one such startup. I saw firsthand the resilience, compassion and hard work it took by so many people to make that organization viable. I still think often about those founders. The courage it took for them to give their enthusiastic support to an idea that not one of us fully understood, suspending their own disbelief that it would even work, and then having the commitment to make sure it finally did.

Every community foundation has its own “founders” story. This story should be told and retold forever. Do you know what yours is? Have you told it to anyone recently?

Steve Alley, Managing Partner

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Clontz in Kiplinger

3/31/2015

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Senior Partner Bryan Clontz wrote How to Donate Complex Assets for the March issue of Kiplinger's Retirement Report.

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A New Beginning

2/9/2015

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It's hard to believe that it's been nearly a year since our last blog post. (It reminds me of my first community foundation job where we used to publish our quarterly newsletter twice a year.)

A variety of factors have contributed to this lapse, not the least of which has been meeting the needs of our clients, which always comes first for us. The secondary reason for the delay has to do with a major transition for our company that has only recently been finalized.

On February 1, 2015 Ekstrom & Associates became Ekstrom Alley Clontz & Associates (“EAC”). Founding Partner, Helmer Ekstrom says, “We believe this new entity best positions our firm to most effectively serve the community foundation field as it heads into its second century of work.”

The new name also brings a new operating structure. I have become managing partner, while the long-time relationship with Senior Consultant Bryan Clontz was formalized through his inclusion into the name of the firm. I’ve been with Ekstrom & Associates as a consultant since shortly after I left as CEO of the Community Foundation of Southern Arizona in 2010, while Bryan has worked on a variety of projects with the company dating back to 2003. While not retiring, Helmer is taking a smaller role with the new entity.

One of the things I always appreciated about Ekstrom & Associates when I was CEO, was that I could access the firm’s team of practitioners. Since its founding in 1997, each “Associate” has served in a senior level position at a community foundation or an organization that served them. I think it’s still our greatest strength and intend to follow that same model moving forward. Our firm understands and has worked in every aspect of a community foundation - strategic planning, asset development, marketing, grantmaking, finance and community leadership.”

The company has served well over 150 community foundations during its tenure as well as organizations that serve the movement regionally, nationally, and internationally. These have included the Council on Foundations, the Transatlantic Community Foundation Network, National Center for Family Philanthropy, the Florida Philanthropic Network -- Community Foundations of Florida, Kansas Association of Community Foundations, Southeastern Council of Foundations, Indiana Philanthropy Alliance, Connecticut Council for Philanthropy, the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, the former Community Foundations of America, and the Community Foundations Strategic Alliance (a collaboration of sixteen of the largest US community foundations and forerunner to Community Foundations of America).

In addition to Ekstrom, Alley and Clontz, Angela Powers, Susan Suarez, and Eleanor Sacks will continue to provide the depth of experience that clients may tap into achieve their goals to best serve their communities.

If you’d like to find out more about us, please visit our website at www.eac-associates.com, or give me a call at our new office in Tucson, Arizona at 520-531-5567.

Steve Alley, Managing Partner

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A Question of Focus?

2/9/2014

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We do a lot of strategic thinking and planning with community foundations. I’m always amazed at the quality, level and variety of work our clients do, but something struck me recently as I was looking at one community foundation’s previous strategic plan. There’s something missing in that wide range of work community foundations do – any kind of focus.

We wonder why no one really understands the work we do as community foundations when our “strategy” is all over the board. We adopt 8 different strategic directions, with 8-10 major action items under each. This lack of focus stretches even the best staff (and board) to the breaking point and impacts both the quality of the foundation’s work and it responsiveness. In this environment, important things can get dropped or fall through the cracks.

As a firm, our response to this dilemma is to help foundations create and understand a vision of what their community needs them to become. Based on that vision, we help the foundation simplify its work by honing in on the 2-3 “big picture” focus areas that will most effectively push it toward the vision, along with a small set of strategies and actions.

Community foundations need to be responsive and nimble organizations, but this needs to be done within some kind of framework. The days where we could “be all things to all people” are long gone. We have to understand that we are not the solution for every situation. Our business models can’t support it, our people can’t sustain it, and most importantly, our communities don’t need us to play that role.

Steve Alley

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