This is a guest post by Angela Glover Blackwell, CEO of PolicyLink. Equity is a big, dynamic idea. The field — the universe of people working to create a just, fair society — is blossoming. Reading the provocatively titled blog post, “What the Heck Does Equity Mean?,” by Kris Putnam-Walkerly and Elizabeth Russell, I […]
I’ve been thinking small lately. To be specific, I’ve been thinking about small foundations and the immense power they hold. I’ve just finished presenting at Exponent Philanthropy’s conference and met a number of highly engaged and courageous small-foundation grantmakers who are eager to tap into their own power for change. I led a workshop for
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Last week, I used this space to repost an article about the definition of equity that my colleague, Betsey Russell, and I published on the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog. I also shared the news about a new field scan we produced for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation about the ways in which foundations are
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This is a guest post by Allen Smart, vice president of programs, Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust. In a New York Times opinion piece earlier this year by Dr. Adam Grant, a Wharton management and psychology professor, Grant put forward the argument that real innovation comes not from endless practice and refinement but from creating
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Too often foundations request “innovative ideas” from their grantees but fail to accomplish the same thing internally — or even define what “innovation” means to them. The implied assumption is that innovation “just happens.” Further, lack of clear definition has come to imply that innovation must be a dramatic, game-changing, disruptive new idea or practice:
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In my experience, one thing holds philanthropists back from achieving dramatic impact on the issues and causes they care most about: They have a poverty mentality. It might seem like an oxymoron for people with wealth, or professional access to wealth, to experience a form of poverty, but hear me out. A poverty mentality in
Embrace Abundance! Read More »