Agenda to include:
Open Networking Time: Getting to Know Your PSO Colleagues
Engaging PSO Boards
Anne Wallestad, President & CEO, BoardSource
The CEO Summit and PSO Board Member Convening held this summer at the 2019 Forum Annual Conference revealed both challenges and opportunities for the CEOs of philanthropy-serving organizations in engaging effectively with their boards. Board members are interested in understanding how they can play a more effective board leadership role, yet they seem less interested in some of the issues where CEOs would like to see more board engagement—particularly issues related a PSO’s business model. BoardSource’s Anne Wallestad, a national expert on nonprofit board leadership and engagement, will facilitate a conversation on how CEOs can work through some thorny and complex issues around effective board engagement.
Funding Hate: What Is the Leadership Role for PSOs to Prevent It?
Dr. Abbas Barzegar, Director of Research and Advocacy, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
The funding of hate has garnered increased visibility in our field over the past year. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released a report in 2019 documenting over a billion dollars directed from philanthropy to anti-Muslim hate groups between 2014 and 2016. Another study released this year showed that donor advised funds contributed nearly $11 million between 2014 and 2017 to 34 organizations that the Southern Poverty Law Center considers to be hate groups. In response to findings like these, Amalgamated Foundation launched the Hate Is Not Charitable Campaign as a call to action for philanthropy: for DAF providers to filter out hate and for donors of conscience to take a stand. CAIR's Dr. Abbas Barzegar will join us to inform a conversation about the role of PSOs to raise awareness of this issue in the field and provide leadership and guidance on how philanthropy can and should respond to prevent the funding of hate.
Hot Topics Discussion
Participants will engage in small group and large group discussions on how to grapple with some pressing issues brought up at the 2019 CEO Summit, including “real” member engagement, collaborative funding models, leadership and courage in philanthropy, integration with the nonprofit space, and serving as a voice vs. venue for philanthropy.
What’s Next for Philanthropy 2020
Gabriel Kasper, Managing Director, Monitor Institute by Deloitte
Gabriel Kasper will engage participants in an interactive discussion as they launch their new “What’s Next for Philanthropy 2020” initiative, a follow-up to the Institute’s well-received 2010 report. As continued public critiques challenge the fundamentals of the field, new donors experiment with different structures for creating social change, and established funders adapt their approaches to fit a rapidly changing global and community context, the time is ripe for the field to reflect on how philanthropy is changing. The new effort will aim to help foundations and donors examine the current state of practice in the field and explore new possibilities, models, and interventions for the future. During the session, the Institute will kick off "What’s Next for Philanthropy 2020" by engaging you, as PSO leaders, in a conversation about the key issues, trends, needs, and bright spots you see emerging with your memberships and constituencies.
Leadership Discussion: Leveraging the Power of the Forum Network
Led by David Biemesderfer, President & CEO, United Philanthropy Forum
The Forum's network of 80 regional and national PSOs, representing more than 7,000 funders, holds a tremendous amount of power to lead change and increase impact in philanthropy. If Forum members can agree to work together to move a few critical policy or practice issues, with all of us agreeing on the end goal and each of us moving the issue in the most effective way for our individual memberships and constituencies, real change can happen. We’ve seen this happen with our network's efforts to engage philanthropy in the 2020 Census. What are lessons learned from our census work for leveraging the power of our network? How can we apply those lessons to future collaborative endeavors?