Mitchell Kapor Foundation Weblog

As a former college basketball player, I understand the difficulty associated with juggling academics and athletics.   It’s no cakewalk–one drives the other.  The young men and women who have taken on the challenge of participating in athletics while simultaneously obtaining their degree are commonly referred to as “student-athletes”.  Sadly, due to the immense commitment involved with playing Division 1 Sports, the reality for many student athletes is that they are athletes first.  For most, meeting the obligations of both worlds is a rigorous balancing act.  Consequently, a good percentage of athletes, mostly black, are leaving their respective institutions without a degree.

African-Americans males playing Division 1 Sports in this country are suffering far worse from this dilemma than any other ethnic group in college athletics.  While the NCAA is capitalizing off of the athletic ability of all athletes involved in high profile sports, there are far too many African-Americans not graduating college and the NCAA is doing very little to fix the issue.

Coinciding with the NCAA Basketball Tournament, The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida released their annual report highlighting the disparity in graduation rates (over six-years) between white and black players on this year’s men’s tournament bound teams.  The study reveals that white Division I basketball male student-athletes graduate at a rate of 84 percent while only 56 percent of black Division I basketball male student-athletes graduate.  Furthermore, the study finds that 79 percent of the men’s tournament teams graduated 70 percent or more of their white athletes, while only 31 percent graduated 70 percent or more of their black players.  To illustrate the severity of this issue, it should be noted that the gap in graduation rates has increased by 22 percentage points from the previous year.

As we meticulously fill out our brackets projecting which team will be crowned 2010 NCAA Champions among the pool of 65, let us not forget that the young men entertaining us are also sacrificing their education.  More importantly, as this gap in graduation rates between white and African-American athletes continues to widen, we can only hope that the NCAA will consider investing at least 1% of the $710 million in revenue that it averages annually (90 percent coming from the tournament) into developing programs and initiatives that focus on ensuring that African-American athletes complete their college degree.

photo source:  http://whitneymcd7.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/march-madness-picks.jpg

I’m excited to welcome Mario Lugay to the Kapor Foundation as the Associate Program Officer. In this role, Mario will be responsible for the Foundation’s national VoICE grantmaking and movement-building work. Mario will also work with Carmen on our electoral empowerment efforts in California communities of color.
Mario has an extensive background in civic engagement and community organizing. He and I first became acquainted through his work with the Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation (FCCP), the national strategy and affinity group for philanthropy professionals involved with elections and other civic issues. Mario initially joined FCCP and the American Dream Fund as Program Associate and, in 2008, became FCCP’s first Program Director, where he served in this national role until January 2010 (and then we promptly snatched him up!).

Prior to that, Mario worked as the National Coordinator of Racial Justice 911: People of Color Against the War, consulted with Listen, Inc. to help bring a delegation of U.S. youth organizers to the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and was the Development Coordinator for CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities in the Northwest Bronx. Mario has served on CAAAV’s Strategizing Committee and on the Community Funding Board of the North Star Fund in NYC. A native New Yorker, Mario earned a BA in political science from Columbia University.

We consider it quite a coup to be able to work with Mario. Please join us in welcoming him to the Kapor Foundation team!

It is with enormous respect, gratitude and pride that we announce that our very own, inimitable Cedric Brown has been selected to receive a national honor.  He has been chosen by the Association of Black Foundation Executives (ABFE) as the 2010 recipient of the Emerging Leader in Philanthropy Award.

Cedric is being celebrated as an outstanding individual whose innovative leadership promotes philanthropy as a means of social change in Black communities and advances ABFE’s mission.  His award will be officially presented at the Council on Foundations annual meeting in April in Denver.

Cedric worked as the head of the education programs at the Level Playing Field Institute for five years before moving over three years ago to head the Mitchell Kapor Foundation.  It has been a distinct pleasure, honor and learning experience to work with Cedric for these past eight years.

Cedric is building an innovative approach to philanthropy at the Foundation, one which reflects our shared commitment to make the world a fairer place and stewards philanthropic efforts that focus on African American  communities. Please join us in congratulating him on his well-deserved recognition.

Mitch & Freada

I am so pleased to welcome Justin Davis to the Kapor Foundation staff as the program coordinator of the College Bound Brotherhood. In this capacity, Justin will create profiles of community-based organizations for our soon-to-be-launched public database of Bay Area college access programs as well as conduct college outreach to young men in Bay Area middle and high schools. He’ll also assist with grantmaking to Bay Area nonprofits working in this realm.

Justin is a Bay Area native and graduated from Stanford University in 2004 with a BA in Communications. He embraced the title of “student athlete” while at Stanford as a power forward for the men’s basketball team, helping guide them to three PAC-10 titles during his athletic campaign (no hateration allowed, Bears and Bruins)! After graduation, Justin pursued his dream of playing professional basketball in multiple European countries and domestically in the NBA.

Justin believes that many of his opportunities are attributed to the numerous mentors and teachers who believed in him and encouraged him to succeed. While no longer a professional athlete, Justin is very committed to helping young men of color receive the same educational and economic opportunities that he’s had. His interest in education, specifically in urban contexts, developed during his undergraduate senior year while taking graduate courses in education.

Justin aims to eventually develop and institute a national college-level program that focuses on the social and academic development of black student athletes, who historically have the lowest graduation rate of student athletes, to help develop them better prepare for post-collegiate professional careers.

We look forward to working with Justin and immersing him in the world of college access in the Bay Area!

We’ve just completed a process to identify new key partner organizations. And while the bulk of our funding will support this cohort, I want to reiterate to the broader community that we are still able to consider quarterly grant requests for special opportunities and efforts like convenings and tech-related work.

If you’re interested in learning more, please feel free to check out our regularly-updated guidelines (or keep reading the blog) and contact us to discuss your ideas.

Our Assistance & Advising program is launching our first communications workshop that will feature the expertise of our internal communications team.  Trevor Parham, Creative Director, and Sean Aquino, Creative Producer, will be leading this interactive workshop about communications strategy.  Attending will give you an opportunity to ask questions about various types of communications strategies, to learn from each other, as well as allow you to offer insight into what our future workshops around technology and communications strategy will be about.  Click HERE to register.  Also, you can find more information about this and future workshops, like our upcoming series on Program Evaluation, on our Assistance & Advising web page.  Hope to see you on March 9!

Just got word from Dion Ward at Northern California Grantmakers that the Kapor Foundation was mentioned (among others) in today’s Chronicle of Philanthropy for supporting Census outreach efforts.

In the coming weeks we hope to sponsor a funder briefing with NCG on the Census. Stay tuned for that announcement. Meanwhile, I’m glad the buzz is growing around the importance of the Census (I saw four different messages on BET this past weekend), and glad we could add our voices to the mix!

I’m happy to share that Kapor Foundation staff have new titles that better reflect the scope of our respective and collective work.

Carmen is now our Manager of Strategic Grantmaking. In this role, she will continue to oversee the Green Access program while also managing the statewide and local electoral empowerment VoICE grants. This will create a better synthesis between these two grantmaking areas, with grassroots civic organizing and leadership development as the common denominators.

Tiffany’s title has changed from the somewhat avant garde “Grantee Advocate” to Technical Assistance Manager. As you can see from our Assistance & Advising description, we’re formalizing and expanding the services that we offer to our key grant partners. Stay tuned for more information about two workshop series that Tiffany is about to launch.

And I remain your humble Director. While I will do less direct VoICE grantmaking in the coming months, I’ll still have general supervisory and strategic oversight of the Foundation’s activities.

Congratulations to Carmen and Tiffany! Stay tuned for two new additions to our team in the very near future (fingers crossed)!

The Foundation Center is having its annual open house in San Francisco on Tuesday, February 23, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.  As part of the open house, you can check out some of the Foundation Center’s most popular training programs for FREE.  You can drop by for refreshments and informative demonstrations throughout the day, but if you want to attend one of the free, full-length scheduled programs, click HERE to register, or you can call 415-397-0902. To register online, just click on the particular session that you want to attend in the Center’s calendar for February 23.

Here’s the Open House Agenda:

Full-length Scheduled Programs (requiring registration)

9:00-10:15 a.m. Fundraising in a Challenging Economy

10:30-12:00 p.m. Strategic Wisdom for Challenging Times – (Panelists: Jan Masaoka, Blue Avocado; Stephanie Roth, Grassroots Fundraising Journal; Charles Fernandez, TCC Group; Moderator: Lisa Hoffman, Nonprofit Consultant & Coach)

12:45-2:00 p.m. Innovations and Trends in Online Fundraising – (Presenter: Michael Stein, nonprofit tech strategist)

2:00-3:15 p.m. How to Approach a Foundation: From Initial Contact to Getting Funded — What Does it Take?

3:30-5:00 p.m. The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle: The Role Nonprofit Leaders Can Play in Turning a Vicious Cycle into a Virtuous One – (Presenters: Ann Goggins Gregory & Don Howard, The Bridgespan Group)

Demonstrations (drop-ins o.k.)

10:00-10:30 a.m. New Online Tools for Researching Funders

12:00-12:30 p.m. Spotlight on Resources for Individual Grantseekers

3:00-3:30 p.m. Hidden Electronic Treasures Available at the Center

4:30-5:00 p.m. A Baker’s Dozen: Featuring Staff’s Favorite Resources

Who would have thought the days of 2010 could go by so fast? It’s already February and we’re in the midst of a convening frenzy at the Foundation.  We are planning a number of really exciting convenings and conferences and to kick them off, we are sponsoring a fundraiser for Art in Action featuring Van Jones and Phaedra Ellis-Lampkins from Green for All.  Art in Action empowers youth leaders by engaging arts for social change through personal, social, political, and cultural education. They work collectively with youth from diverse historically disenfranchised communities impacted by violence through programs in music, media arts, spoken word/poetry, dance/theater, storytelling, and painting.  2009 was a great year for Art in Action as they were able to rehabilitate an office space and transform it into an amazing Green Youth Arts Media Center.  With support from the Mitchell Kapor Foundation as well as from the Pea Pod Foundation, they opened the doors this January to a space with recording studios, dance space, and a community garden.

This fundraiser is to make sure they are able to keep their doors open through 2010.  Since we recognize these are hard economic times and $200 maybe too steep for interested individuals, a number of tickets will be held at a discounted price.