Beth’s Blog

Power and Control

Guest post from Marie Sauter

Among many insights gleaned from this week’s conference on “Growing Social Impact in a Networked World” (http://www.geofunders.org/networksconference.aspx), one theme keeps recurring for me:  the importance of grantmakers sharing power and control within broadly construed networks of collaborators in the quest for social change.

During Domestic Violence (DV) Awareness Month, I’ve been reflecting on how concepts of power and control have shaped the dialog in the DV field. For nearly three decades, the “power and control wheel” (http://www.theduluthmodel.org/training/wheels.html) has been the standard tool within the DV victim services field to describe the most common tactics  used to control and abuse victims.

The power and control exerted by grantmakers are certainly not analogous to these abusive behaviors in most respects. But naming a behavior is an important step toward changing it – and many thought leaders at the conference have commented on power and control:

“How can you support [a network] but not be the air traffic controller and the pilot at the same time? There’s no such thing as giving up control, but sharing control is critical.” Chris van Bergeijk, Hawaii Community Foundation

“The control thing is huge. [Instead of] linear logic models being the norm, mix the right ingredients together, count to ten, great things will happen. There’s the potential to go much further.” Steve Downs, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Be wary of “replacing one ‘command and control’ environment with another.” Bill Traynor, Lawrence CommunityWorks (http://www.lcworks.org)

“Forget control. Control is so not possible. Put an idea out and engage people in the conversation. “ Lisa Gansky, author of The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing (http://meshing.it/book)

Why it’s hard to share

In a philanthropic culture where grantmakers are held accountable to measurable results and careful stewardship of the resources entrusted to us, sharing power and control can feel irresponsible. As framed in a new publication (http://networksguide.wikispaces.com/Home) from the Monitor Institute and Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, we worry: “what if the ‘crowd’ doesn’t get it right”?

Lessons from survivors of domestic violence

At the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we’ve been working on sharing power and control in our work with a network of agencies serving DV survivors in Washington State (http://www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2011/09/Preventing-Homelessness-for-Survivors-of-Domestic-Violence). We’ve tried to share control over project development with the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence (http://www.wscadv.org/), with other funders, with service providers and with survivors. This has not been easy and requires a cultural shift for us in thinking more flexibly about how to drive toward social change.

Our partners in this work also have been learning to share power in new ways. If grantmakers feel accountable for measurable results, DV advocates feel a profound sense of accountability to the safety of the people they serve. This has sometimes led to the impulse to control the set of services that a survivor receives.

Through two years of dialog and exploration of a new service approach focused on expanding DV services from crisis response to also include support of longer term stability, this network has arrived at collective prioritization of the value of survivor driven, voluntary services tailored to the needs of each family.

As agencies have handed over control of the service mix offered to survivors to the survivors themselves, DV advocates have observed that the services survivors prioritize as most critical to their longer term safety and stability are often cheaper and simpler to provide than the more limited service menus they previously offered. It’s too soon to know whether this shift will translate into cost savings over time, but initial survivor outcomes (http://www.wscadv.org/projects.cfm?aId=1BFEF8E9-C29B-57E0-877E65883ECE51FE) have been promising.

Many unanswered questions remain

The service approach is still evolving and will benefit from continued expansion of the network that is contributing to its development. Among the missing voices in the dialog are government funders, whose needs for unbiased contracting processes that promote accountability and prevent fraud don’t always lend themselves to the level of flexibility in resource allocation that has made these service changes possible. How can the network expand to include the voices of the public sector? When have power and control been effectively shared across the public, private and independent sectors?

Marie Sauter

Marie Sauter is a Program Officer with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Pacific Northwest Initiative.

How do funders help established organizations develop a network mindset?

Guest post by Adene Sacks

As the GEO gathering comes to a close, funders are spending their morning on the practical consideration of how adopting a network mindset will change our day to day work.  One of the most interesting discussions I participated in this morning focused on what networks mean for those established field organizations whose names are often synonymous with the work we do.

Monitor Group senior consultant Heather Grant McLeod made the fascinating point that many of these established organizations began life as networks but adopted centralized organizational structures to bend to their funders or funding model. Organizations like the Junior League, the Sierra Club and Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Life are all, at their core, decentralized networks  Much of the work ahead for these field leaders is around unlearning current frameworks and opening the organization to greater participation.  Instead of traditional membership and dictates from the core organization to its affiliates — organizations need to consider models that align their membership around common goals and shared work.  As Heather observed, a sign of health is when participation in the efforts of the central office of are viewed by its constituency as “want to” rather than “have to.”

Funders also considered the impact of adopting a network mindset on an organization’s brand and fundraising potential. The visual proposed by consultant Roberto Creminoni was the following:

In a traditional organization, the funnel acts to pull people into your organization. The visual is vertical as is the work of a traditional organization. In a networked organization, Roberto suggested that the funnel be turned on its side to act as a megaphone – broadcasting an organization’s purpose far and wide in an attempt to go viral.

Adene Sacks

Adene Sacks is a Senior Program Officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation. The Jim Joseph Foundation focuses on the Jewish education of youth and young adults based in San Francisco.  Adene represents the foundation’s learning about networks, organizational growth strategies and peer learning. Adene can be reached at asacks@jimjosephfoundation.org

The Elephant in the Room: “Funders“ and Power

Guest post by Eugene Eric Kim (http://eekim.com/)

Over the past two days at the GEO / Monitor Institute conference, “Growing social impact in a networked world,”(http://www.geofunders.org/networksconference.aspx) I’ve heard several people ask some variation of the same question over and over again:

What is the role of the funder in all of this?

This question has been bugging me, and I’ve been trying to figure out why. During Mary Manuel’s session on movement and networks, it came to me. There’s an elephant in the room here, a word that I haven’t heard anyone use. That word is “power.”

Everyone here self-describes themselves as “funders.” If your frame is that of a funder, then your power derives from the fact that you give organizations money.
When you look at the world through a network lens, it’s not clear where money enters the equation. Investing in organizations may actually be antithetical to catalyzing networks. Networks need resources to operate, but they are not necessarily resources of the type or the scale that foundations are good at granting.

Given this, there’s a generative version of the question, “What is the role of the funder?”, and there’s an insidious version. The insidious version is:

Do I (the funder) still have power in a network-centric world?

When we express anxiety about giving up control, it’s really anxiety about losing power. (This assumes, of course, that you had control of the system in the first place.)

The generative version is:

What can I do to catalyze the network?

When you remove your “funder” hat and think of yourselves as changemakers who bring many resources to the table, you find that you have a plethora of resources to contribute:

• Convening power
• Access to data
• Access to thought leaders
• A systemic view of different challenges
• And yes, money

Perhaps the best thing you can do is not give money to networks, but instead leverage your other resources to help catalyze networks. If your identity is tied to being a “funder,” that may be a scary proposition, because it literally means a loss of identity.

The question that foundations who truly care about contributing to this space need to answer is: Are you willing to exchange your “funder” hat for a “changemaker” hat?

Eugene Kim

Eugene is co-founder of Groupaya, which helps groups work together more skillfully to create their futures. Groupaya (http://groupaya.net/)

The New Unit of Analysis: Networks

Click Through To Twitter Summary of Plenary

Guest post from Barbara Kibbe

The organization is still relevant but no longer the only unit of analysis. The new reality of organizations as parts of networks requires another lens and different perspective

Both organizations  and networks can be means to ends. One reason to engage in networks is to enhance individual goals.They may or may not have programmatic goals. But it can’t  only be about process. Network participants ( be they individual or orgs) still have a purpose for their participation. Question: what do network members need to have in common to build or sustain an effective network??? Another question: Will organizational frameworks become stale?

What is the right balance between how you work the network or how the network works the network?

We are working with different definitions about what is and is not a network.

A final question for today:  What is success when it comes to networks? possible answer: When you can you remove yourself from the center of a network and evolve into a node in a well connected network with many hubs.

Barbara Kibbe is the COO, Salesforce.com Foundation

The Story of the Boston Youth Sports Initiative Network

Note from Beth: Since the concept of working in Networks is can be hard to explain to newcomers, learning from case studies, stories, and examples can be illuminating. The design was to share this learning was amazing. In the morning, each of the ten case study presenters gave a 5 minute “teaser” about their case study or what one presenter called “showing a little leg.” After lunch, conference participants got to to choose two presenters to spend an hour with in a small group to ask questions and deepened the learning. I was attracted to this discussion about the Boston Youth Sports Initiative hosted by Roberto Cremonini and Chris Lunch because we explored the “So, What?” question and curated the key points tweeted about it on Storify here. Annie Hernandez wrote up the report below.

Roberto Cremonini

The Story of the Sports Initiative Network, Guest post from Annie Hernandez

This is a summary of my notes and take-aways from the small group discussion on the Boston Youth Sports Initiative with Roberto Cremonini with Cremonini Consulting (formerly with Barr Foundation, funder of project) and Chris Lynch with Squash Busters (formerly with the Initiative).

The Barr Foundation identified that there were disparities in youth sports especially as it relates to opportunities for girls. The goal for Barr was to get more kids involved in sports programming.  They chose to explore networks as the approach towards a solution.

They hired a network weaver and spent the first months talking to people about what kept them up at night and introducing the network concept.  The message was that the network was open to everyone.  Members of the network can take advantage of whatever makes sense for their organization–like a cafeteria model.  The Foundation provided money for small, easy projects for quick wins and supported convenings of the group.

As Chris shared, “You need to get people together and talking and then find commonalities. My role was to connect those dots and build trust in the network.”

One of the quick wins was to help the organizations with logic models/outcome work which helped them secure additional funds as well as learn together.

Chris Lynch

It was also important in the beginning to address for each person what’s in it for them. One strategy they employed was a newsletter that had a “craigslist” feel.  This built good will through the sharing and made members feel like someone was looking out for them.   The more organizations that participated the more value they saw.

As the effort grew, it was hard to capture the outcomes and report them…as they didn’t always know the connections.  As Chris shared, “Logic models don’t work for networks because of their emergent nature. Getting to behavior change takes time.”

It was important to be less selective of who was invited to the network at the beginning.  Their advice was to figure out who supports network behavior and involve/dance with them.  Get one third of the prospective members involved and the next third will follow.  There cannot be a deadline for application for networks–people should enter at whatever point feels natural; the door is never closed; once a member always a part of the network.

The value of the network weaver is that they have deep knowledge in the field.  They have to be seen and build authentic relationships to be perceived as more than just money.  A good use of network weaver money was with grassroots all volunteer groups–the weaver helped develop these clusters.  They found value in balancing both program and network/ capacity support.

Leadership changes in staff and key volunteers changes the network and has ripple effects. Network weavers need to build on this opportunity.

The initiative has sunsetted with the loss of foundation funding after 7 years.  The lasting impacts of the Initiative include:

- for Barr: it helped develop the network mindset of the program staff

- for the participating organizations:  they created lasting relationships that people still leverage to make things happen; some intermediaries have picked up programs and the newsletter continues.

- Goal: kids can access the sports more readily.

With this sunsetting, they offered a number of learnings or recommendations:

- one strategy to get a weaver out of the hub is to build more and more mini-weavers who have the same relationships. The weaver needs to close triangles early and often–and get out of the middle.

- if a foundation starts a network, the need to help build relationships with other foundations.  They fall into the funding issues then of other intermediaries not wanting to compete with it’s members for funds.

- think of a Leadership or steering committee as network guardians and embed them in the network.

- Shift the power differential by getting foundation boards and nonprofits in this conversation.

- Foundations need to support transitions when sunsetting which should include the production of learning documents and celebrate the successes with the network and communicate what is happening.

Final thought: This work is a leap of faith–you may not know this will make a difference at the beginning.

Budget for project: $250,000 annually for three years was last grant.

Annie Hernandez

Annie Hernandez is Program Officer Organization & Leadership Development for the Lumpkin Family Foundation.

goodWORKSconnect.org

annie@lumpkinfoundation.org