Summit Focuses on Economy and Partnerships
Friday, June 26, 2009
By: Susan Carey Dempsey

It's been a busy week here at onPhilanthropy. Our annual Summit onPhilanthropy conference, a gathering in New York of 200 top execs from a cross section of nonprofits, corporate social engagement, grantmaking foundations and philanthropists, heard from an array of experts on the economy and significant trends in the sector.

Some highlights: Ali Velshi gave the keynote address offering his own take (not CNN’s, he made clear) that the Obama administration’s aggressive stimulus response to the economic downturn was being effective, and improvement in the economy was on the horizon, perhaps by late summer.

Taking questions from the audience, Velshi stressed that the focus of the media should still be on the people who need jobs and homes, or need help keeping them. Despite the attention paid to exorbitant executive pay packages, he declared them a “distraction,” that deserved to be visited and fixed, but that current human needs were a priority. Among his observations of particular relevance to this audience: workers laid off from auto manufacturing and other industries should be retrained to fill growing needs in healthcare, especially, and other social sector jobs.

The themes for the day were sounded by Mike Hoffman, Chairman of Changing Our World, Inc. who declared that by coming together and sharing ideas, Summit attendees could explore opportunities for collaboration and innovation, which should emerge from the nonprofit sector in the current economic crisis. Citing a meeting convened by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Davos, he said philanthropists will increasingly seek to leverage their giving by engaging partners to multiply the effect of their resources.

The program’s focus on the economic state of the nonprofit sector was further developed in the plenary address by Clara Miller, President of the Nonprofit Finance Fund.  She warned against accumulating illiquid assets - real estate, restricted endowment - and made the interesting point that fundraising is not the biggest revenue slice in the nonprofit pie - it's actually earned income.  She urged the audience to think creatively and strategically (she cited an example of the dance troupe that posts their performances on YouTube, tracks in which city it has the most hits/views, and travels to that city to perform for a live audience as an example of an arts group using a new, free medium to gain exposure).

The Summit program included three panel discussions, focusing on the following:

Will Philanthropic Innovation Emerge From Crisis?  Moderated by Gordon Campbell of United Way NYC, this panel suggested ways that nonprofits, and their funders, can adapt to diminished resources in smart, creative ways.  Although the economic crisis is negatively impacting both the nonprofit and private sector, now is also a time of opportunity to take a really hard look internally --  to refocus, reset, and revamp -- resulting in what one panelist described as “stronger and wiser organizations.” Corporate philanthropist Dan Osheyack of TimeWarner discussed how corporations and nonprofits needed to adapt to a new atmosphere of frugality and find innovative ways to partner.

Panelists Frank Kurre of Grant Thornton and author Rodney Jackson spoke about the importance of board involvement (the days of boards reading minutes and saying "all in favor say aye" to everything have passed).  The panel discussed how to keep the new generation engaged in causes/nonprofits when people are bombarded with messages/emails/facebook causes. Sara Spivey, Chief Marketing Officer for Convio, advised "targeted messaging."  To the nonprofits who ask how they can achieve Obama's online fundraising success, the answer:  "You have to be Obama."     
 
Dr. Susan Raymond, Executive Vice President for Research, Evaluation and Strategic Planning at Changing Our World, Inc. set the stage for the panel discussions following Ali Velshi’s keynote. The nonprofit sector, she suggested, should seize the opportunity before it:  “It is resource scarcity not resource abundance that presents us with that opportunity.” Dr. Raymond suggested that the opportunity “to find ways to drive toward efficiency and scale, in finance as well as in programs, not simply to endlessly proliferate,” should not be squandered.

“In environmental organizations alone, between 1999 and 2009, the sector added an average of 1100 new nonprofits to the environmental map per year.  Organizational growth was 71%.  The real dollar value of giving to the environment increased by 28%.

So, this sector is endlessly additive.  In commerce, 50% of new businesses fail within the first five years.  This is good because it releases money and talent to move to new and better ideas.  In the nonprofit sector, we simply add. The opportunity that scarce resources present to us is the opportunity to re-engineer the way we do business,” Dr. Raymond said, as she introduced the next panel, The Challenge of Creating Lasting Change.

Moderated by Chronicle of Philanthropy Editor Stacy Palmer, this panel looked at initiatives that supported systemic change, rather than repeated, short-term fixes. Anne Black spoke of the 10,000 Women Initiative created by her company, Goldman Sachs, to invest in women’s capacities for entrepreneurial and managerial expertise -- forceful tools to promote economic growth and combat inequality in developing and emerging markets. The Economist’s Matthew Bishop, author of Philanthrocapitalism, discussed how the private sector can play a critical role. Kori Reed, of ConAgra Foods Foundation, explained how their Nourish Today, Flourish Tomorrow initiative leverages time, talent, resources and brainpower to combat childhood hunger and promote nutrition education. GlobalGiving’s Mari Kuraishi discussed the emerging global network of online donors creating a new paradigm of “scale,” in contrast to the mega-corporations or giant foundations some envision.

The Power of Partnerships: This panel, moderated by Fortune Editor-at-Large Pattie Sellers, focused on a group of complex partnerships created to tackle equally complex problems in global health. A brand-new initiative was announced that day by Claire Lyons, Manager of Global Grant Portfolios for PepsiCo Foundation and Monica Marshall, Head of Global Private Partnerships, for the United Nations World Food Programme. The PepsiCo Foundation has committed $2.2 million for a program that brings together global logistics experts from PepsiCo to help strengthen WFP’s response to growing hunger needs brought on by high food prices and the financial crisis, as well as improve its operating efficiency and response time in crisis situations. Kari Stoever, Managing Director of the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases, which has partnered with the Gates Foundation and others, discussed the importance of due diligence in determining the suitability of partners for each other. Not all partnerships will succeed, emphasized Dr. Dan Carucci of the UN Foundation and Karl Brown from Rockefeller Foundation, but carefully designed partnership initiatives can bring the strengths of both partners to bear on complex issues in innovative ways.

In a time when all players in the philanthropic arena are feeling the strain on resources, finding ways to collaborate and complement each other will be increasingly valuable.

About the Author

Susan Carey Dempsey, Editor-in-Chief of onPhilanthropy, is Managing Partner of CauseWired Communications, a consulting firm advising nonprofits and causes on effective storytelling and strategy. She can be reached at susan@causewired.com