Mitchell Kapor Foundation Weblog

Each year, the James Irvine Foundation recognizes individual leaders from any sector — nonprofit, public or private — and in any field, such as education, health, housing, economic development or the environment, who are advancing innovative and effective solutions to significant California issues.  Four to six award recipients will each receive $125,000 in organizational support and assistance in sharing their effective program models with policymakers and other practitioners.

Nominations for the 2010 James Irvine Foundation Leadership Awards are due by October 13, 2009, and awards will be announced in April 2010.  Nominations are welcome from people who are well-acquainted with the leader or leadership group and can verify their qualifications for the award.  More details about the awards are given at the James Irvine Foundation website along with selection criteria, profiles of past recipients, and answers to frequently asked questions.

Again, the deadline is October 13, 2009.

Back in 2007, the Foundation worked with Blueprint Research & Design on a logic model and a corresponding program structure for our work. We launched our current program areas and grantmaking priorities on July 31st of that year with the intention of getting our feet wet for two years, stopping to reflect, and then mapping out plans to get more deeply involved in these program areas and social movements.

As part of the reflection process, we decided early on to set up an evaluation of our programs. We genuinely aim to be responsive to community needs, and sought the “unvarnished truth” that an externally-conducted evaluation provides. We were particularly interested in the efficacy of our interactions with nonprofits, and the impact of our support on organizations’ work and outcomes.

Now that two years have passed, we have collected a host of internal observations about what we’re doing and how to do it better. Earlier in the summer, Blueprint completed their external evaluation of our work, which reinforces many of the same findings and feelings we have about ourselves (btw, it’s hard to write about this stuff without seeming like a navel-gazer).

Read the evaluation highlights here. (pdf)

Many thanks to the nonprofit partners (formerly known as “grantees”) who participated in the evaluation and provided useful and honest feedback to us. It should go without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that we look forward to proactively incorporating changes that will make our partnerships stronger and smoother. And in the future, we next look to do an outcomes evaluation to examine what kind of broader effect our involvement is having in the community.

Last year the push was for voter education and registration; this year we’re focusing on ensuring that people know about Census 2010! The Census is a critically important occurrence – its data is used to reapportion Congressional seats and to distribute over $400 billion in federal funds, among other things.

In order to help spread the word to historically hard-to-count populations in the Bay Area, the Kapor Foundation has earmarked $50,000 for an aligned grantmaking effort focusing on census outreach led by the San Francisco Foundation.  The combined funds will support outreach efforts undertaken by nonprofits in Alameda, Contra Costa, and San Francisco counties. The grant request deadline is Friday, so Bay Area organizations make haste! [Please note that this is NOT a Kapor Foundation initiative; your organization should apply for these funds through the San Francisco Foundation's grant application portal.]

Let’s get it done folks!

We heard you loud and clear.  Some of you mentioned wanting to have an electronic version of our grant application prior to going into our online system to make it easier to cut and paste responses.  So, we have added an electronic sample grant application, which can always be found under ‘Submit a Request‘ in our ‘How to Apply‘ section.  We’re constantly tweaking our process to make things as smooth and seamless as possible, so thanks for all the feedback you give us in your final reports.  It’s really valuable!!

BRING YOUR “A” GAME, produced by one of our grantees, Twenty-First Century Foundation, in partnership with actor-director Mario Van Peebles and producer Karen Williams, will have its BET debut this weekend.  Per the Twenty-First Century Foundation’s website, the documentary aims to catalyze ” a national conversation on the plight affecting Black men and boys…Using a cinematic style influenced by popular culture and employing innovative technologies, the film details strategies that have improved the lives of Black men and boys. It underscores how essential educational achievement and high school graduation are to survival and success in today’s world.”

Interviewees include such Black male icons as Dr. Cornel West, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Richard “Dick” Parsons, Chris Rock, Spike Lee, Lupe Fiasco, Ice Cube, Newark, New Jersey Mayor Cory Booker, Kevin Liles, Lou Gossett Jr., Hill Harper, Damon Dash, Kevin Powell, Melvin Van Peebles, Geoffrey Canada, Bruce Gordon and former NBA star Alan Houston, and others.

We previewed a clip of the documentary at our recent Black Boys College Bound Initiative celebration of high school graduates.  If you or someone you know has kids in high school who need to hear this important message, please let them know that the documentary will be showing on BET this Saturday, September 12, at 9:00 p.m. and Sunday, September 13, at 12:30 p.m. in the afternoon.  BRING YOUR “A” GAME will be followed, on both days, by a showing of “Heart of the City”, which examines the impact of education issues on our communities.

Hope you’ll check it out!!

Painting by Robert Shetterly, from his Americans Who Tell The Truth series

I went to bed last night and did that thing you’re never supposed to do in order to get a good night’s sleep: opened my laptop, went to the New York Times, and started poking around.

About half way down the page was the news of Van Jones’ resignation from the Obama Administration as the Special Adviser for Green Jobs. Within seconds of reading the article, the sad truth about the limits of this presidency became very, very real.  I met Van briefly when I first moved to Oakland in 2000 and our paths crossed numerous times as my great friend Zachary Norris deferred NYU law school because he was so inspired by the work of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and the leadership Van offered.  Van is a true intellectual, an amazing orator, and the most down to earth human being you will ever meet.

Over the course of the last months, I’ve been a giggling skeptic of the power that Glenn Beck has over the state of American politics.  I imagined it to be peripheral, on the margins of American society, and at the end of the day powerless.  Today, I can’t help but think: What have we done?  As progressives, we have let one of our great leaders, activists, and thinkers fall and still the streets of Oakland, DC, and  New York are quiet.  As progressives, we continue to let the administration fall under the relentless scrutiny of Republicans and, worst yet, right-wing talking heads and assume that it will have little to no effect on the movement we worked so hard for.  What have we done?  And more importantly, what can we do to make sure this never happens again?

Can’t stop won’t stop: http://cantstopwontstop.com/blog/time-to-knuckle-up-on-van-jones-resignation/
Sierra Club: http://sierraclub.typepad.com/carlpope/2009/09/we-all-blew-it.htm

(In response to an email I recently received)

When I get ready to go before my board with grant recommendations, I bring the ones that I think are the best bet – solid leadership, goals, plans, strategies, evaluation and, yes, even a decent website in this 2.0 age!

Has it ever dawned on you that I can’t make a case – even to myself – for supporting your program if you don’t come correct? I should get the money because I’m on the front lines in the community is NOT a viable nor justifiable rationale! The Give me the money because I know what to do approach doesn’t cut it either. Typos and muddled language do not help. Disregarding the guidelines does not help. Having no website, no financial systems, no org chart, and no strategic or operations plan DOES NOT HELP. And if you don’t know how to do these things – or don’t even know what you need to know – rather than dropping the quite tired excuse of Blaming the System, you betta ask somebody! CompassPoint and the Foundation Center are two of the resources that provide these “best of the basics.” Or even still, ask a program officer to arrange 30 minutes for some coaching or feedback.

Yes, there are a lot of things wrong with the philanthropic sector. I was in a meeting yesterday when the presenter said the word “racism” and I could see some of the other folks recoiling. We have much work to do in this field. But just as we need to step up while working on the inside of this sector, some of you need to tighten up on the outside!

Rant over.  Lawd have mercy, where are my blood pressure pills??