Mitchell Kapor Foundation Weblog

Deadline Extended to 7/12

I was an open skeptic of this year’s US Social Forum.  I crossed my arms and huffed when anyone mentioned it.  I imagined an event teetering between Woodstock and the WTO protests in Seattle and although I loved Seattle, I wanted to make sure I stayed good and far away from Woodstock 2010.   I’m working on respecting process and consensus and folks in my life will emphasize the work part of that sentence.  After meeting with Tammy Lu from the Labor Community Strategy Center and cajoling from our own Mario Lugay, I landed in Detroit last Tuesday at 2am.

Detroit reminded me of the landscape in dystopic science fiction movies. While walking though the city Sadiyah Seraaj from the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy said that it looked like a city that was once vibrant and in a moment of crisis everyone stopped what they were doing and ran through the streets and out of Detroit.  So imagine this background, with  30,000 people from across the country meeting to build a national movement for social justice.  It was just amazing.  I visited amazing farms and gardens, connected with restaurant and domestic workers, and saw the future of movement building in this country.  

Six months ago, Melanie Cervantes (Akonadi Foundation), Luke Newton (Common Counsel), Kazu Haga (Peace Development Fund), and I joined forces to establish a place for progressive funders to get together, talk about our work, and identify opportunities to collaborate in our grantmaking.  We are very excited to invite you to the launch of the Bay Area Justice Funders Network this Wednesday in Downtown Oakland!

Raj Patel & Cedric Brown

Over the course of the last couple of weeks, particularly in the midst of the holiday shopping madness, I’ve spent some thinking about how and what we value. I keep coming back to this question: Do Americans value consumption over citizenship? Believe me, these are not my random thoughts.

It all started with this story on National Public Radio about a 3-D television that would make the Super Bowl a ‘greater’ experience for sport fans. I turned to my husband and was outraged that advances in technology could allow us to watch football practically live in our living rooms, but that we, as a society, did not prioritize preventing voter fraud or providing all people with accessible quality organic food over this experience. It all seemed crazy.

Thankfully, there are people like Raj Patel in the world who are thoughtful about these contradictions and are able to offer some insight on how we can transform this madness. Raj Patel is what my graduate school adviser would call a ‘double-agent’. He worked at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and is now at the forefront of battling these institutions by calling into question how we come to value goods in our current economic and political configuration. In the ‘The Value of Nothing: How to reshape market society and redefine democracy,’ he asks a simple question: Do we really know what goods and services cost in our society? His response is no and that we really need to wake-up and smell the impact of not knowing this cost soon or we’re going to be in serious trouble.

In his recent talks and interviews throughout the Bay Area, he gives the example of knowing the cost of how and what we eat. One in five health care dollars in the United States is spent treating someone who has diabetes. We know that there are food choices that can transform the impact of diabetes, but we do not place a value on trying to eat well nor in staying away from processed sugars or fats. On the contrary, it actually costs more to eat better. He offers the solution of having a tax on goods that we know have less value on our health. Just imagine a soda tax or a juice benefit!  The world is already a little better.

P.S.  from Cedric: I’ve known Raj for about four years through his wife/partner Mini Kahlon, one of my former colleagues at the Level Playing Field Institute.  Lots of brainy pizazz in that family! I’m so proud of him!

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.

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!!

(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??

For the past six months, we’ve worked with Blueprint Research & Design, an independent consulting firm, to start shaping an evaluation of our grantmaking.  As part of this evaluation process, Blueprint will conduct phone interviews with a subset of current and past Kapor Foundation grantees.  Feedback from the interviews will help us to identify improvements we can make to our grantmaking process and to better understand the experience of our grantees.

In the next few weeks Blueprint will contact ten organizations, requesting to hear their reflections on the application process, interactions with Foundation staff, and the community impact of their work. Interview responses will be completely confidential and anonymous; Blueprint will only share the interview data with us in aggregate form and will not reveal to us specifically who said what. Blueprint will compete the evaluation in July.

We greatly appreciate the grantees who are selected by Blueprint to take part in this opportunity for us to hear more from our grantees and to improve our work going forward.

The times are fast changing.  A couple of weeks ago, my mom sent me a text message asking me, “How do u Twitter?” Aside from being side-splittingly hilarious, it was yet another loud and clear signal that the information age is in a new dimension. I know I sound really old right now, but it used to be that if you wanted to understand a topic, you could go to the library or to your personal handy stash of World Book Encyclopedias that your parents bought from a traveling salesperson to get the most comprehensive information about a topic. Then, it shifted to online versions of encyclopedias.  Now, if you’re not checking out blogs or following ‘tweets’ on a regular basis, you’re just not getting the latest and greatest information on anything.  So, in the spirit of making sure you have access to some of the popular blogs out there on philanthropy, here’s a list that we’ve compiled.

Note: The views represented in these blogs are not necessarily the views of the Mitchell Kapor Foundation.

(Photo from ScienceBlogs) Read more…

…or is anyone else tired of the word “partner” used as a verb? I think I hear or read it every day, and it has now crossed the line into Lingoland:

“We hope to partner with…”

“Thanks for partnering on…”

“The CBOs partnered to…”

I guess it’s appropriate, but sheesh.

Back to more important things.

(Photo by Mo on Flickr)