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NCG Event Archive: 2000Special Briefing One out of five Americans lives in a rural community. Within those communities, which have much higher poverty rates than urban and suburban areas, almost 15 percent, or eight million people are poor. And poverty rates in minority rural communities are considerably worse: more than 35 percent of rural African-Americans, and nearly 40 percent of rural Latinos live below the poverty line. The plight of rural populations is further exacerbated by their inability to attract the same level of financial resources that urban communities generally benefit from. If you are a grantmaker who supports programs in rural communities, or would like to find out how you can, please come to this Forum. Hear about some key challenges facing rural America, especially rural communities in California and elsewhere in the West, learn about funding opportunities, and share your own experiences. This Forum will build on a similar successful session held in New York City last February, co-sponsored by NYRAG, the Ford Foundation, William Randolph Hearst Foundation, the Stand Up for Rural America Campaign, LISC and the Rural Funders Working Group/Neighborhood Funders Group. National Philanthropy Day 2000 Awards Luncheon Northern California Grantmakers and the National Society of Fund Raising Executives (NSFRE) are co-sponsors of this year's National Philanthropy Day 2000 awards luncheon entitled "A Celebration of Giving." Created by an Act of Congress in 1986, National Philanthropy Day pays tribute to the millions of Americans who make the United States' not-for-profit community the strongest and most successful in the world. Each year, NSFRE marks one day in November to celebrate the spirit of giving. The Golden Gate Chapter (GGC) of NSFRE sponsors awards to individuals and institutions whose giving is an inspiration to the community. The Master of Ceremonies for this year's event will be Ray Tagliafero, popular KGO Newstalk Radio host. The reception and luncheon will honor the following awardees: The Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund, Outstanding Foundation Community Grantmaker: with its aggressively researched awards and public presentations to courageous individuals, the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund has helped bring to light many of the environmental threats facing the world; Wells Fargo Bank, Outstanding Corporate Grantmakers: Wells Fargo, through progressive grantmaking and employee volunteerism, has for decades helped thousands of organizations aid, educate, and benefit their communities; Oral Lee Brown, Outstanding Philanthropist: Ms. Brown, a person of modest means, has managed to set aside $10,000 each year for over 12 years to help ensure that 23 students "adopted" by her as elementary students would and could go to college-all have; Genelle Relfe, Outstanding Fund Raising Volunteer: Ms. Relfe with unwavering commitment, unselfish service, and exemplary leadership has actively volunteered with several bay area organizations; John M. Cash, Outstanding Fund Raising Executive: Mr. Cash, a development professional, has contributed leadership and vision to Mills College, Stanford University, and the University of California at Berkeley; St. Anthony Foundation, The Vineyards Award: fifty-years-old this year, the St. Anthony Foundation and its volunteers serve meals, shelter and house women, offer medical appointments, and make distributions of clothing and furniture-touching the lives of thousands of low-income and homeless neighbors every year; Glaldys Thatcher, The Hank Rosso Award, Ms. Thatcher has used her fundraising talents and tenacity to inspire and mobilize legions of givers to help her launch several remarkable community organizations such as the San Francisco Education Fund, Alumnae Resources, and Enterprise for High School Students. Awardees will also be profiled in a special section of the San Francisco Business Times. Special Briefing A special presentation on policy issues facing nonprofits in San Francisco and the plans and activities of the San Francisco Human Services Network (HSN). HSN was created in December of 1997 by nonprofit leaders who recognized that no forum existed to direct an organized nonprofit response to pressing policy issues or to government representatives about policy proposals affecting the social safety net. Since then, HSN has grown to include more than 60 member agencies, and is the only public policy forum for human service providers in San Francisco. Among its early accomplishments HSN played a leadership role in revising the proposed sunshine legislation to eliminate particularly burdensome requirements, represented nonprofits in the living wage debates, helped inform elected officials and other policy makers about the nonprofit sector and the impact of proposed policies on critical services, and was a lead organizer of two successful nonprofit policy conferences. In addition to its ongoing policy and public education efforts, HSN is now at work, in conjunction with the San Francisco Urban Institute, on developing a nonprofit platform for San Francisco. This platform will address a number of critical issues that will help build a more effective relationship between the city and those who provide critical services. A flyer will be mailed shortly, but please reserve the date now. Briefing sponsors: Walter & Elise Haas Fund, Rosenberg Foundation, and The San Francisco Foundation. The Nonprofit Space Issue: NCG's fall program will provide an opportunity for funders to step back and consider both the implications of and possible responses to the developing crisis in the cost and availability of space for nonprofit organizations in our region. Office vacancy rates have declined dramatically, and rental rates have soared placing many nonprofits at risk of program reductions, budget deficits, or possible closures. While probably most acute in San Francisco, this economic pinch is affecting nonprofits throughout the region. The issue is compounded by other challenges facing nonprofits in the new economy, such as labor shortages. How can we work creatively over both the short- and long-term to preserve our nonprofits' critical services and rich cultural resources? What new skills will nonprofits and grantmakers need in this economic climate? Are there new ways of operating which will help mitigate these market forces? Our program will begin with an overview of the issues, including key findings from two recent studies of how the rental market is affecting nonprofits in San Francisco. Next we will explore a variety of possible strategies, such as co-location, various funding mechanisms, promising site developments, techniques used successfully in other communities, applicable lessons from nonprofit housing and community development activities, and training and technical assistance options. There will also be plenty of opportunity for questions and dialogue. NCG Family Foundations Network Geographic dispersion is a fact of contemporary life. With family members living far apart, what steps can families take to build family identity and bonds that once evolved naturally from living in close proximity? How can family members whose lives have taken different paths forge a genuinely collaborative team driven by a mission derived from and embraced by the family? How are families balancing the commitment to the foundation's "home town" and their growing concern for their own region? How have families dealt with issues such as honoring the legacy of the donor; defining a mission that accommodates individual interests and needs of different communities; maintaining high standards of grantmaking practices and evaluation strategies; and allocating funds equitably? These are a few of the topics to be discussed during this seminar. Please join with colleagues for this special opportunity to explore issues specific to family foundations. Participants are invited to stay for an informal box lunch and chat with colleagues following the seminar. Special Briefing Reading and Discussion Group Jim Meyers will lead a discussion of I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal (241 pages), a comic, picaresque novel set against the backdrop of 20th-century Czech history about the rise and fall of an ambitious busboy in Prague. Bohumil Hrabal was born in 1914 in Brno-Zidenice, Moravia. He received a degree in law from Prague's Charles University and lived in Prague beginning in the late 1940s. In the 1950s, he worked as a manual laborer in the Kladno ironworks from which he drew inspiration for the "hyper-realist" texts he was writing at that time. He won international acclaim for such books as I Served the King of England and Too Loud a Solitude. Hrabal is considered, along with Jaroslav Hasek and Karel Capek, one of the greatest Czech writers of the 20th century, and perhaps the most important in the post-war period. In February 1997, he flew out of his hospital window never to return (from Twisted Spoon Press). Special Briefing: Encouraging Work, Reducing Poverty: Funders are invited to hear the unprecedented findings from several studies by Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC) presented by Gordon Berlin, Senior Vice President. These studies from initiatives, including Milwaukee's New Hope Project, Minnesota's Family Investment Program, and Canada's Self-Sufficiency Project, show that work incentive programs resulted in substantial, far-reaching improvements in the lives of single parents who were long-term welfare recipients. The results are particularly important because more than 40 states have incorporated some form of "make work pay" approach in conjunction with work requirements as part of their new, time-limited welfare reforms. MDRC is a nonprofit, nonpartisan social policy research organization dedicated to learning what works to improve the well-being of low-income people (www.mdrc.org). Briefing sponsors are Stuart Foundation, The California Wellness Foundation, and The David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Corporate Contributions Roundtable The September meeting of the roundtable will focus on collaborative grantmaking. The topic for the October meeting will be matching gifts and corporate sponsorships. The September and October meetings will be hosted by Bank of America Foundation. An invitation with further details will be sent to roundtable members. Humanities and the Professions Please save the date for a special briefing co-sponsored by Northern California Grantmakers and Asian Americans Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP) on The State of Asian Pacific America: Transforming Race Relations as part of a National Policy Roundtable series. This briefing will present findings from the fourth major policy research report produced by Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics, Inc.'s (LEAP) Asian Pacific American Public Policy Institute and the UCLA Asian American Studies Center. NCG 2000 Annual Conference This year's annual conference will explore the challenges created by today's rapidly changing environment for individuals and organizations living and working in the San Francisco Bay area. California has experienced many periods of rapid growth and change over the past 150 years, but how will individuals and organizations throughout the state and the region cope with the unique challenges of this new economic climate? Will jobs, housing, infrastructure, and government keep up with the growing population and growing needs? How can the philanthropic community best respond to these issues and problems? Corporate Contributions Roundtable The next session of the Corporate Contributions Roundtable will focus on employee giving campaigns in general and online pledging systems. Funders are asked to come with questions and issues about this topic for a roundtable discussion. Special Briefing Humanities and the Professions Bill Barich, who writes for The New Yorker and The New York Times Book Review, will lead a discussion of The Beggar Maid - Stories of Flo and Rose (1978) by Alice Munro, reissued in 1991 as Who Do You Think You Are? by Vintage Paperback. In this exhilarating series of interweaving stories, Alice Munro re-creates the evolving bond—one that is both constricting and empowering—between two women in the coupe of almost forty years. One is Flo, practical, suspicious of other people's airs, at times dismayingly vulgar. The other is Rose, Flo's stepdaughter, a clumsy, shy girl who somehow—in spite of Flo's ridicule and ghastly warnings—leaves the small town she grew up in to achieve her own equivocal success in the larger world. Alice Munro was born in Wingham, Ontario on July 10, 1931. After graduating from high school, she attended the University of Western Ontario from 1949-1951. Majoring in English, it was at Western where Munro began to take her writing seriously. Over the last twenty-eight years, Alice Munro has published one novel, Lives of Girls and Women (1971), and seven collections of short stories: Dance of the Happy Shades (1968), Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You (1976), Who Do You Think You Are? (1978), The Moons of Jupiter (1982), The Progress of Love (1986), Friend of My Youth (1990), and Open Secrets (1994). Who Do You Think You Are? was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1980. In 1986, Alice Munro was the first winner of the Marian Engel Award, a $10,000 prize presented by the Writers' Development Trust to a Canadian woman author for outstanding prose writing. In 1995, Open Secrets received the W.H. Smith Award for the best book published in Britain throughout the previous year. Stories by Alice Munro have also been among the most popular ever published in prestigious periodicals like The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Atlantic Monthly. New Realities 2 Conference Conference sessions will focus on the major challenges facing nonprofits due to the dramatic shifts in the role of government in meeting basic human needs; the blurring of lines between business, government, and nonprofits; increased public scrutiny and cynicism; and the new economy. Session moderators will be Michael O'Neill, USF Institute for Nonprofit Management; Jeff Mori, Asian American Recovery Services; Bob Gamble, Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund; Bruce Sievers, Walter and Elise Haas Fund; Joanna Uribe de Mena, Northern California Grantmakers; Kirke Wilson, Rosenberg Foundation; and Susan Alunan, San Francisco Urban Institute. NCG is a conference co-sponsor along with the Human Services Network, Young Nonprofit Professionals Network, and others. The cost is $40 for the first participant from an organization and $25 for each additional participant from the same organization. Special Briefing: Accountability is a core issue for funders. In seeking to have impact, grantmakers strive to ensure that their grantmaking efforts best reflect the needs and strengths of people in communities. But how can we involve and engage community leaders in shaping funding decisions? Funders are invited to join in a conversation with one funding organization that is at the leading edge of community accountability: the Southern Partners Fund, a newly established philanthropy whose assets and grantmaking programs are controlled by community leaders in the southeast. The Fund, a new model for philanthropy located in Atlanta, Georgia, is a successor organization to the Bert and Mary Meyer Foundation and was launched in 1998 after 4 years of planning with a $5 million grant. As an entity composed of the foundation's grantees and other community members, it plans to increase its size from the present 17 to an eventual 100 over the next 3 years. Corporate Contributions Roundtable The Corporate Contributions Roundtable plans to present a series of monthly roundtable programs in San Francisco the second Monday of each month from 3:30 to 5:00 pm starting in June. The topic for Monday, June 12 will be "Media Relations: The Do's and Don'ts of Getting Visibility" and for Monday, July 10, "How to utilize and evaluate on-line giving." Further information about location and speakers will be sent to corporate funders." Please mark your calendars. The Corporate Contributions Roundtable, an affiliate of Northern California Grantmakers, is an informal association of Bay Area community relations professionals who meet periodically to share information on corporate contributions and other aspects of community relations. Corporate funders who are not members of NCG are welcome to attend, but roundtable meetings are open only to corporate funders and community relations professionals. For more information about the Corporate Contributions Roundtable please email your contact information to ncg@ncg.org. Co-chairs of the roundtable for 2000 are Cecilia McDonnell, executive director of the Charles Schwab Corporation Foundation, and Pam Cook, manager of community relations at Clorox Company Foundation. Special Briefing: Grantmakers are cordially invited to attend a special conversation and brown-bag lunch with Steve Curwood, the exceptionally gifted creator and producer of the environmental National Public Radio show "Living on Earth." Every week more than 230 National Public Radio stations broadcast "Living on Earth's" news, features, interviews and commentary on a broad range of ecological issues. Mr. Curwood will talk about what he has learned from "Living on Earth" about the media and public education strategies that work best for those concerned with the environment and health. His relationship with NPR goes back to 1979 when he began as a reporter and host of "Weekend All Things Consideredr". Mr. Curwood has also worked as a print and television journalist and is the recipient of a shared Pulitzer Prize for his work while at The Boston Globe newspaper. He is also the president of the World Media Foundation, Inc. and the host of NPR's World Of Opera. This briefing is co-sponsored by Environmental Grantmakers Association West and the Consultative Group on Biological Diversity. California Association of Nonprofits Conference As part of its Fifth Annual Celebrating California Nonprofits and Philanthropy Week, the California Association of Nonprofits (CAN) presents a conference, Nonprofits, Philanthropy, and Government: Working Together for a Better California, to provide foundation and nonprofit representatives with an opportunity to meet with legislators and staff to learn firsthand how nonprofits and philanthropy are working with government to improve communities. Grantmaker co-sponsors of the week are the Walter and Elise Haas Fund, PG&E Corporation, Northern California Grantmakers, and Southern California Association for Philanthropy. Detailed conference brochures with registration information have been mailed to members under separate cover. Further information is available at the CAN website www.canonprofits.org. A Conversation with Malcolm Gladwell author of The Tipping Point Malcolm Gladwell, a staff writer for the New Yorker, has created a bit of a firestorm among social scientists and policy makers with his article (available at the author’s website, www.gladwell.com) and new book, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. His thesis, initially outlined in an article in 1996 and now fully developed in his book with the same title, is that when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold it tips and spreads like wildfire. Most importantly for our work is that he sets out the notion that investing large amounts of time and resources in large problems is not a solution. Rather, he presents a well-documented argument that using leveraged resources in communities might be a much more effective strategy to initiate and sustain change. Malcolm Gladwell covered business, science, and medicine for the Washington Post before becoming the New York City bureau chief. Currently he is a staff writer for The New Yorker, which published his first article on the tipping point. Sponsors: The California Wellness Foundation, East Bay Community Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, Stuart Foundation. National Conference Calendar March 15–18, 2000 May 1–3, 2000 March 29–31, 2000 Humanities and the Professions Reading and Discussion Group. Jim Meyers will lead a discussion of the book, The Hours (226 pages) by Michael Cunningham. Chosen as the Best Book of 1998 by The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, and Chicago Tribune, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, it has been called a "smashing literary tour de force." The book notes describe the novel as "the story of three women: Clarisa Vaughan, who one New York morning goes about planning a party in honor of a beloved friend; Laura Brown, who in a 1950s Los Angeles suburb slowly begins to feel the constraints of a perfect family and home; and Virginia Woolf, recuperating with her husband in a London suburb, and beginning to write Mrs. Dalloway. By the end of the novel, the stories have intertwined, and finally come together in an act of subtle and haunting grace, demonstrating Michael Cunningham's deep empathy for his characters as well as the extraordinary resonance of his prose." If you have not read Mrs. Dalloway, a look at the first few pages to get Woolf's style will make reading Cunningham more enjoyable. Mobilizing around Proposition 22: How the Anti-Gay Initiative is Stimulating Local Organizing, Forging Alliances, and Generating Media Debate. This briefing is designed to provide individual and institutional donors with information on the organizing prompted by Proposition 22, the "Limits of Marriage Act" statewide ballot initiative on the March 7 ballot. Proposition 22, sponsored by State Senator Pete Knight (R-Palmdale), defines marriage in California as being between one man and one woman. Proponents of the initiative are using the campaign to mobilize a statewide anti-gay organization of volunteers and resources. In response, the campaign is providing local nonprofits that serve the Bay Area lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities with opportunities to forge alliances, strengthen their own organizations and constituent bases, and generate media debate on the issues raised by gay marriage and civil rights issues. This session is a chance to hear a report on the status of the campaign and on local organizations. Speakers will be Evan Wolfson, Marriage Project Director, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund and Kate Kendell, Executive Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights as well as representatives from the various organizations working in response to Proposition 22. Briefing sponsors are Horizons Foundation, Tides Foundation, and Vanguard Public Foundation. NCG Annual Members Meeting Please join us for the annual meeting of the NCG membership at which we typically take a step back to look at some of the larger aspects shaping our field. This year, we will focus on several of the new philanthropic vehicles, such as the commercial charitable gift funds and the mounting number of Internet-based philanthropy portals. What are these new forms of giving? What needs do they meet? How do donors and nonprofits perceive them? What implications do they have for our field and the way we do our work? Health Emergency 2000: Communities Respond to Drug-Related Harm In November 1998, Alameda County became the first county in the nation to declare that the AIDS/HIV crisis in the African-American community constituted a public health state of emergency. Reflective of a national trend, recent data indicates that AIDS is increasingly becoming a disease of people of color, and is now the leading cause of death in the U.S. among African-Americans and Latinos between the ages of 25 and 44. Local community agencies and health departments in response are beginning to focus their outreach efforts towards intravenous drug users, the highest risk category among African Americans and Latinos. This briefing will explore the use of drug-related harm reduction strategies in stemming the spread of AIDS/HIV. Models of comprehensive harm reduction strategies as used by community and government agencies, how they work, and evaluation of these strategies will be discussed. This briefing will also examine how harm reduction fits into the broader priorities of foundations including access to health care and housing, health education/outreach, community organizing, and building the capacity of the nonprofit sector to effectively and responsively provide services. Finally, recommendations will be presented regarding the roles foundations can play in reducing drug-related harm in communities with growing rates of AIDS/HIV. Please join us at this briefing to learn how drug-related harm reduction can support community health and stability. Humanities and the Professions Reading and Discussion Group Jim Meyers will lead a discussion of the book, Growing Up Ethnic in America (Penguin), a collection of stories, edited by Maria Mazziotti Gillan and Jennifer Gillan. The discussion will focus around the stories by E.L. Doctorow, Amy Tan, Judith Oritz Cofer, Toni Morrison, Daniel Asa Rose, Sandra Cisneros, Gish Jen, Afaa Michael Weaver, Diane di Prima, Naomi Shihab Nye, Helen Maria Viramontes, and Sylvia Watanabe. Oakland_New Vision and New Opportunities Please join NCG for a special briefing in which Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown and Oakland City Manager Robert C. Bobb will speak on exciting new plans and developments in Oakland. The briefing will present information about efforts under way in Oakland as well as explore ways grantmakers and the city can work together more effectively. An invitation with full details will be sent shortly, but please mark your calendars now. Lunch will be provided. Life Cycles of Nonprofit Organizations NCG is pleased to offer two special workshops by Sue Kenny Stevens, founder and president of the Stevens Group located in Minneapolis and a leading authority on nonprofit finances. The first workshop, from 9:00 am to noon, will explore the life cycles of nonprofits and the specific opportunities and challenges faced at different stages. From 1:00 pm-4:00 pm, there will be a session on nonprofit financial basics for grantmakers. |
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