When we started airing our show this spring, we thought we'd talk about COVID for a few weeks and then run out of material. Instead, we are living through a global pandemic, the largest civil rights movement in our history, and the beginning of a depression. So what now?
On Friday, Rahn Dorsey, co-founder of Change Agency, Ltd joined us to help us imagine the post-2020 future. We talked about:
- How philanthropy can help or hinder greater equity
- How the way we think about evaluation might be holding us back
- Re-imagining the relationships between community-based organizations, funders, government, and philanthropists.
This was a very exciting and engaging episode and we look forward to your comments.
Join the conversation live on Facebook at:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/DataInformedPrograms/
Transcript
Pieta Blakely:
When we started this show a few weeks ago, we thought we would talk about the COVID crisis for a few weeks and then run out of material. Instead, we find ourselves in an ongoing global pandemic, the largest civil rights movement of our time and the beginning of a depression. Where do we go from here? And what's next?
Today, we're turning our attention to imagining and planning for the post 2020 future. And Turahn Dorsey is going to be joining us to discuss specifically the role of philanthropy in building it. Rahn is a researcher, policymaker and strategist whose career is focused on systems change and civic innovation. He's currently a foundation fellow with the Eastern Bank Foundation, focusing on the transformation of early care and learning systems. He's also the co-founder of Change Agency Limited a consulting firm whose mission is to build the community level agency required to promote racial justice and ecological sustainability. Rahn is also former chief of education for the city of Boston. He served under Mayor Martin J. Walsh from September 2014 to November of 2018.
Hello everybody and welcome back to Coffee Time with Masterminds. I am Pieta Blakely. I am the founder and principal of Blakely Consulting and I help mission based organizations measure and maximize their impact. Rebecca is with me this morning. Hi Rebecca.
Rebecca Tuttle:
Hi Pieta, how are you this morning?
Pieta Blakely:
Good thanks. Good to see you.
Rebecca Tuttle:
You as well. My name's Rebecca Tuttle. I am the principal of Grant Right Now and founder of Grant Writing for Good.
Pieta Blakely:
And Cynthia is with us. Good morning.
Cynthia Rojas:
Hi everyone. I'm Cynthia Rojas and I am the founder and principal of To Your Growth!
Pieta Blakely:
Good morning.
Cynthia Rojas:
Good morning.
Rebecca Tuttle:
Good morning, Cynthia.
Pieta Blakely:
Today, we are turning our attention to the future and Rahn Dorsey is here to help us understand the role of philanthropy in building a future. Good morning, Rahn. How are you?
Turahn Dorsey:
Good morning. It's a pleasure to be with you all. And I have to tell you I've never been called a mastermind, so thank you for the privilege. And I hope I don't do anything during this discussion to undermine that designation.
Pieta Blakely:
Rahn, your career is focused on research and policymaking and strategy. What do you see as the key issues at this moment in time?
Turahn Dorsey:
Maybe more than at any other time in our recent history, the issues are pretty obvious. Certainly the public health issues related to COVID, issues related to the racial uprising at this moment and movement formation, stability and sustainability and certainly the the political season and the elections and having gone through whatever your political affiliation is, several years of TUMO now related to where we are. I don't know if this is the super text or the subtext, but what all of those things kind of say to us is this is a moment where there's deep tension between democracy and power, certainly political power, but I would also argue how capital is mobilized and marshaled either to maintain the status quo or push back on it.
Rebecca Tuttle:
One of the things... Go ahead, Pieta.
Pieta Blakely:
No, no, go ahead, Rebecca.
Rebecca Tuttle:
Rahn, one of the themes we talk about in this shows a lot, is that nonprofits and funders are partners, how does a time of upheaval like we're experiencing create opportunity or tension in those partnerships?
Turahn Dorsey:
Yeah. I'm going to say that I think formal funding institutions are still learning to be partners. Oftentimes I think despite best intentions, part of what gets ignored is the power disparity in the room between funding institutions and the organizations that they fund. And so oftentimes what it means, especially in the era of impact investing and philanthropy, is that we want to act like we're sitting at the table as equals, but oftentimes what we in philanthropy are saying to folks is, "This is the way that we think the world will be better. Are you in agreement with us? If so, then we can do a deal here."
I think in our best moments, we're better listeners. We're better followers of the leadership at the grass roots and the grass tops and folks who live more dynamically in communities and with the issues that we're all trying to solve and we put our institutional egos to the side. And I think part of the challenge going forward will be how do we figure out really how to create a level playing field between philanthropy and the people who make the best use of the capital that philanthropy has to offer.
Rebecca Tuttle:
To create those opportunities for listening and sort of level that playing field, what can a nonprofit be doing right now? Or saying in their relationship with funders right now to better align those efforts?
Turahn Dorsey:
First of all, I'm going to say, do you and do what you do best. I think it's a challenge when organizations bend their missions and bend their will to that philanthropy and where the dollars are. Certainly there is a conflict between needing to sustain yourself as an organization and needing to be in relationship with funders. But I think we've probably all seen where funders' perspectives on the world have really dramatically changed the strategic focal points of nonprofits in some ways that have probably not benefited communities and certainly have taken some of those organizations off track. And I would say, this applies to public funders and private funders, maybe public funders even more.
As a case study example, the Promise Neighborhoods initiative of the last several years, probably ended at the beginning of the Trump administration, but preceded that by about five years or so. One of the things that happened nationwide and certainly here in Boston was that nonprofits actually had to build the capacity even to be in relationship with the federal government. And a lot of that capacity was around compliance. Did it make those organizations better? Yes, in some respects, but they grew to the size of the dollars donated, but they grew in ways that were about the administration of those dollars and the relationship with the federal government. In some respects, you're translating pennies, maybe nickels, maybe a dime on the dollar, to actual impact versus the compliance work that it took to be in that relationship. And we've got to be very, very cautious about that.
And so again, do what you're doing and do what you do best. You may also need to get very, very creative about how you source capital as well. Increasingly people are going to individual donors. Increasingly there's a lot of micro philanthropy happening where you're going directly to people who may not have infinite zeros on the check that they can write, but you can aggregate a number of people who are dedicated to your cause to help move you along. And honestly, it's hard in the nonprofit sector but as we see hybrid types of organizations, we need to invent ways to generate revenue that is independent of grant seeking.
Rebecca Tuttle:
Absolutely. Well, thank you.
Pieta Blakely:
That's good. One of the things that we've talked about a lot on this show is aligning your funding to your organization's strengths rather than arranging your organization's activities or mission around funding of courses.
Rebecca Tuttle:
Mission changing, we don't like that.
Cynthia Rojas:
I think there is a complexity to this, however. Philanthropy itself is personal. People are motivated by mission. They're motivated by the work of the nonprofit sector and that's why they give, often. Why they often give. And in that sentiment, they then start to drive these requirements for how to spend the money. And so a lot of times you have private philanthropists working with smaller foundations who are focusing their money to very specific areas and don't allow the foundation the flexibility to use that money the way the foundation or the way the community has asked them to do. And so do you have recommendations to how we can untangle the tension there?
Turahn Dorsey:
It's tough. One, I think it starts with stakeholder and funder education. When you think about donor advised funds of which the Boston Foundation here locally has a number of donor advised funds. I think it's on TBF, which really does do a good job I think with strategic communications and framing issues, is to take that donor advised base and help to contextualize a lot of information for them to put the challenges of the day in a frame and to have very frank conversations about what capital can do and what capital can't do in terms of helping to solve some of these problems.
Philanthropy, as you said, is idiosyncratic. You care about the arts, I care about education, somebody else cares about something else, but I do think we need to start having conversations about where some critical intersections exist. And I think to also get real that if we're actually going to do problem solving, it takes more than the individual capital that we have at our disposal, regardless of how rich you are. Whether you are a billionaire or whether you've only got a couple of extra dollars to give to an organization, it's going to take more than any one individual donor and those dollars have to be integrated and placed on the same bets for us to have some sort of scale and transformative impact. And so we've got to have, I think, more of a community ethic than we do a philanthropy.
Cynthia Rojas:
Yeah. Almost recommending the conversations happen in all directions. Donors, philanthropists, state, federal, nonprofit and also local philanthropy.
Turahn Dorsey:
Yeah. And I think also we need to get clear about when philanthropic dollars can be powerful. At this moment, we need philanthropy to step in to the emergency gaps and provide emergency capital, especially where public systems aren't quite getting there or in some cases are failing to get there. We also need philanthropic dollars to be more risk bearing dollars than they tend to be. And I'm sensitive to being in a conversation with Pieta who is one of my favorite researchers and evaluators, but I think knows that philanthropy often trades on proven solutions, trades on data informed strategy, which is all good. We should be taking in the data and the information, but that should not prohibit philanthropy from taking risk.
Risk dollars are needed, innovation dollars are needed and if the burden of proof is that this is working, especially at the inception of something. One, you're asking the wrong question about whether it's working at the inception of something but the public sector is oftentimes not in a position to put risk dollars down and lose. If for no other reason than the public accountability around taking tax dollars. This is a unique role for philanthropy. Philanthropy can also be a partner with public and private dollars in growing and scaling. There are powerful uses of it but I think we have to be clear that we often need the capital urgently and we need the capital boldly and that's not something that philanthropy does very often. It's not the prevailing culture.
Rebecca Tuttle:
I've seen philanthropy shift since COVID began and one of the things that I see a lot is to your point earlier about the administrative overhead being heavy, philanthropists are sort of pushing organizations not aside, but they're putting them over here for a moment to try to reach out and listen to what the people in the community need more of without that organization being that pass through communicator. And I think that as long as that continues, that movement continues, we're going to see philanthropy adjust more to the needs of the community and less to the request of the organization for that overhead administration. And organizations are going to have to innovate and be more creative in how do they apply for philanthropic dollars? How do they share the voice of their community and still receive the support they need? They're going to have to focus more on diversifying their funding altogether.
And I just wanted to also say that May has a comment. When we pull her up, she'll cover your face Turahn. Just going to read it, if you have a moment to respond, that would be great. May says, "If one hasn't started yet, can you speak on how one can start their foundation if they have a vision and how they can make their mission come to fruition during these challenging times?"
Cynthia Rojas:
Good question.
Rebecca Tuttle:
And then she also says she likes that you're not asking the right questions.
Pieta Blakely:
Not that we're not asking the right questions.
Turahn Dorsey:
We all have to be asking ourselves the right questions and so I'm glad that that resonated. There are a variety of ways, I think to think about how you start your own giving. And I would start maybe with that question, maybe as opposed to the question about how do you formalize the development of a foundation. That may be what you grow into but I'm reminded of some of the work that New England Blacks in Philanthropy does here locally, really around starting to create the culture of philanthropy and giving at the individual and household level, at the network level. I think it's kind of getting clear on how do you start mobilizing dollars towards the things that you think matter most and have the most reasonable expectation to positively change the world?
The questions will start to evolve around how do you formalize those relationships as well? And I would argue that the form of the foundation probably needs to be interrogated itself. There are a lot of things about tax code that prohibit foundations from doing some things that will be more daring and bold, but they're necessary prohibitions in place so not to abuse some of the power that comes with that capital, but it's also a set of handcuffs that if you read a lot of the literature on philanthropy, when charity went into the tax structure probably mid sixties or so, it really cut off philanthropy's innovation bent at the sector. It was less organized at the time. It was less institutional at the time and probably did not consider itself a field and maybe wasn't by some measures. But where dollars were mobilized in philanthropic ways prior to this merging with the tax code, arguably there was a lot more civic innovation happening as well.
I think we need to ask, what's the institutional form good for? And what are some alternatives to the form that will help capital be more powerful? And that will allow, I think, for more direct exchange between capital and the people who need it most and who can apply it and activate it best.
Pieta Blakely:
And I think that brings us back to the question that Rebecca asked that I thought was really interesting about the foundations going directly to the community to ask what they need. I thought that was really interesting. And does that imply that some either not for profits don't get it or have not been effective in bubbling up community issues?
Turahn Dorsey:
Yeah. That's tricky because it's complex. It has this its trade offs. One, I want to start off out by saying that there are a whole lot of folks in the nonprofit world doing superior work, doing work that is incredibly necessary and that moves society ahead. And if they weren't doing their work, I can't imagine where we'd be. We feel like we're in a stuck and tragic place right now, but imagine if some of our nonprofit leaders and folks in the sector who are unsung, weren't doing their work would be a lot worse off. However, I think the counterpoint to that is, especially in places like Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, there is a nonprofit industrial complex that has developed over time that has its own limitations and constructs power in some very difficult and challenging ways that arguably limit our ability to meet at transformative scale a lot of our social missions and our social aspirations.
And so I think we have to think about what are the parts of that nonprofit industrial complex that need to be deconstructed, reconstructed, reimagined? What I do like about foundations going directly to community is that there are some things for which they need translators and intermediaries. There are other things that they need to hear more directly and some of what they need to hear directly our critiques about the way that they do their work and the way their capital does and doesn't hit the ground effectively. I hope that most foundations are engaged in those conversations, not to check the box and say, "We did it. And we listened to people and so now it validates whatever we think we need to do," but to begin to hear authentic voice. What I hope it then leads to is a conversation about how we democratize the authority and the decision making around the resources that they have.
Organizations like Grassroots Fund actually has now created a process by which communities who are most affected, the organizations and people most likely to get the money, are actually the decision makers about where the money goes and less so the trustees and the leadership. I think it's also the case that we want to see more direct and dollars going into people and moving. And this is a bit of my personal bias, which we can get into why it is, but moving away from investments and services to more directly reinforcing and equipping people for autonomy and self determination. I think I'd like to see future investments really think about how do we start to invest for the redistribution of wealth, capital and resources versus invest in resources in ways that make poverty and disparity more livable? I'm not interested in that.
Cynthia Rojas:
I love the ideas.
Pieta Blakely:
Yeah. Now is the time to think transformatively.
Rebecca Tuttle:
It's interesting. I always tell my students and my clients, "Don't bring the suits." Philanthropists have historically been in front of the people, then in front of the community. When they do site visits and they ask to meet with you and learn more about your organizations, more often than not the organizations that receive that funder's investment are the ones that bring clients to the table, bring families to the table, children, recipients of that service, of that nonprofit. They want to hear from them. Cynthia, it's storytelling at its finest finest hour. They want to see the impact in real time and also read about how you describe that impact. But now they're pushing for it even more. Show me, show me. I want to see, we want to know.
And on every grant I've ever written, there's always a question that asks, "How are you involving community in the decision making of this project or program or in the decision making of this grant?" And I find a lot of times those answers could be improved if the organization who's applying, listened to their clients more and had those conversations more and then incorporated that feedback into that application. But I want a quick disclaimer, I'm not suggesting organizations don't listen to their clients. They absolutely do.
Pieta Blakely:
And I also think some of that critique because of the power imbalance between the funders and the grantees, the not for profits might not be well positioned or feel confident to deliver those kinds of critiques to the funders.
Cynthia Rojas:
Yeah. I love this idea that you're recommending for the funder to talk directly to the community because I think nonprofits are already burdened and there is never enough money to build the infrastructure it needs to do all of the work that it needs to do. We know that the nonprofit sector is generally under resourced to begin with. I have spoken with some foundations in the past where they have no idea what's happening on the front lines and they talk solely to the nonprofits. And not only does that burden nonprofits, but it only gives you one lens. And Pieta, you're right. Nonprofits may not want to give opinion or be that middle person because of their relationship to the funder. And one of the things that is happening because of this recent civil unrest, is that people are holding institutions accountable. And I think Rahn, what you're saying is that this is the time to do that to philanthropy as well. Let's just hold everybody responsible and helpful, yeah.
Turahn Dorsey:
That's right. And that accountability, I think really extends to philanthropy asking hard questions about how to get their houses in order. And I think despite the increasingly clear insights about the social justice orientation that these organizations need to have, that there's a core dissonance for many philanthropic organizations that is about the social justice mission that they have and how the money was made in the first place. And so there's a lot that I think, especially where benefactors are either private corporations or big individual donors, there's some discussion to be had about how do we change practice on the donor side in ways that reflect our social justice aspirations as well. Especially in spaces where the wealth was built through extraction and exploitation. Those two things don't match up very well. That's a discussion that needs to be had between the capital makers and the dealers in the capital.
We also have to think about what do their boards look like on the funder side? What does the C-suite and the executive tier look like? How are you empowering a diverse set of workers and experts in your organization to really maximize perspective, do deep listening and a number of other things? And so, I would also hope that the listening is helping funders build an authentic culture to be an authentic partner.
Cynthia Rojas:
I love it.
Rebecca Tuttle:
Can I just welcome, Cynthia, Pieta, Merle is joining us today.
Cynthia Rojas:
Hi Merle.
Rebecca Tuttle:
That's great. We have a lot of new viewers today, so thank you for joining us, Turahn, you've got quite an audience with you.
Turahn Dorsey:
I hope I got some friends out there and I hope I still have some friends after this is over.
Cynthia Rojas:
Well, you are being bold and you've said some things that I'm like, wow, yes. You are being bold and this is the time to be bold. Thank you. Thank you for your boldness.
Pieta Blakely:
Yeah. I think how, a couple of the themes that have come up on our show over time are one, everything is up in the air and now is the time to reimagine and rebuild because whatever we were doing before, isn't going to work right now. And two, that the fact that we've lost certain resources and opportunities has forced every person, family and organization, to examine its most fundamental values and goals and then think again about how they move those forward. And so I think that having a structural level conversation about do these structures and do these processes actually serve our goal right now? There it's interesting and it's important and timely.
Rebecca Tuttle:
We have a comment from LaRita, I'm going to just pop it up here. She says she's not interested in making disparity livable. She loves it. She loves it.
Turahn Dorsey:
That's my sister from Detroit, Michigan. Southfield, Michigan, mom to my godsons and one of my favorite people in the world. Thanks for Rita.
Pieta Blakely:
Nice to meet you LaRita, thank you for joining us today.
Cynthia Rojas:
Thank you for joining us. That's awesome.
Pieta Blakely:
Rahn, if you were running a mission based organization, what would you be doing right now? What's the action step?
Turahn Dorsey:
First is checking the mission itself. The context is changing so quickly that I think we need to be asking, "Is the thing that we say we do and that we do better than anybody else in the world, the thing that the world needs right now?" And if it's not, how do we start to change what we work on and the way we work to best deliver for communities and in a way that starts to both more clearly shape the common vision, the shared vision that we have for a world post apocalypse 2020? And I would also be asking whom do we work with?
Because we can't have the kind of hubris that says as smart as we think we are and for those of us who still have resources in the bank to do the work that we're going to do solely by ourselves, I hope that 2020 has taught us that transformation depends on the collective. At this point, there are no individual heroes in this. This is about a community effort and community making agreements to be something very, very different with each other and for each other than we've been in the past.
Want to say, what's up to my man, Thaddeus Miles. I just said there are no individual heroes, but that brother is an individual hero. Thaddeus, thank you, brother.
Pieta Blakely:
Thanks for joining us.
Turahn Dorsey:
I think it's a kind of reason for being a come to Jesus moment for organizations about what we're about, whom we're working with and how we're going to be different and better going forward.
Cynthia Rojas:
Yeah. That's amazing. I know, Pieta that we're closing up, but I just wanted to acknowledge May made a comment. I love that I have learned so much from different conversations and different topics coming from the education world. She works in a New York City school district. Sometimes I'm stuck with only having opinions and conversations about education, but these conversations, meaning the ones at Coffee Time, have allowed me to converse about the world with different perspective. Thank you May. That's wonderful.
Rebecca Tuttle:
Wonderful.
Cynthia Rojas:
I'm sorry, Rahn.
Turahn Dorsey:
Can I say something directly to May real quickly?
Cynthia Rojas:
Sure.
Turahn Dorsey:
May, one, thank you for your service. We need dedicated educators like yourself. This is also a time for educators to be inventors. We have got to figure out what the next form and phase of education will look like because it's forever changed in some ways. And as much as the fear of returning to school is overriding a lot of our ability to reimagine, we need some folks like you to step into the breach and ask critical questions about how learning will be more powerful going forward and to dedicate yourself and others dedicate themselves to being inventors. Keep on keeping on and we need you.
Cynthia Rojas:
Aw, thank you. Thank you. Action steps, is that where we were, Pieta?
Pieta Blakely:
Yeah. And big takeaways. My big takeaway is, as much as I thought I was in the perspective of everything is up for grabs and let's reimagine, that I was still not thinking boldly enough and that there is more opportunity here for productive and constructive disruption than I had realized. And also that maybe the routines and patterns and processes that created this level of inequality are particularly ill suited to addressing it.
Cynthia Rojas:
Awesome. Awesome. My takeaway just very quickly. I've gotten some new language from Rahn. This idea of nonprofit industrial complex, power disparities, source capital, micro philanthropy. These are, again much like May, you given me a really different perspective, but the most powerful message that you're drilling down is talk to the people on the front line. What's happening is starting to shift, make sure that you are shifting with the times as well. You meaning a philanthropist, whether that's private, public or federal. Thank you for that. Rebecca?
Rebecca Tuttle:
My main takeaway is just open up, allow philanthropists that touch with the community. When we put up walls or we put up barriers to access, then we cloud what the problem really is or the needs of that community really are. And so we can't bring solution to them. Put down the walls, invite them in and give them that access. And I love the descriptor of listening that Rahn had shared with us today. I'm bold. All I can say is this is a bold episode, a great episode. I need more episodes like this to make those changes. Thank you so much for coming today.
Cynthia Rojas:
Yeah, thank you.
Pieta Blakely:
Yeah, it's a very important message.
Turahn Dorsey:
And I hope you have Thaddeus Miles on here because he chimed in with something, but this is a brother who walks it in the philanthropy world and I think does a lot of the work the right way and authentically.
Pieta Blakely:
Okay Thaddeus, look out for a communication from us. We'd love to have him on the show.
Cynthia Rojas:
You're next.
Pieta Blakely:
All right, Rahn, thank you so much for coming on.
Turahn Dorsey:
Thank you.
Pieta Blakely:
Great to see you everybody and have a fantastic weekend.
Cynthia Rojas:
We'll see you next Friday. Bye.
Pieta Blakely:
Bye.
