Strengthening Foundations, Deepening Diversity:
Leadership for 21st Century Philanthropy
The following Kellogg Foundation report (minimally edited for DPP use) describes the launch of a Chief Executive Officer Focus Group model for involving philanthropic leadership in collaborative regional efforts to explore and deepen understanding of what works to institutionalize diversity successfully and the key roles leaders play in the process. The Diversity in Philanthropy Project collaborated with the Council on Foundations and Women & Philanthropy to facilitate the first two Kellogg-sponsored events in Chicago and Michigan and is in conversation with other regional associations around the country to develop and refine the model.
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER (CEO) FOCUS GROUPS
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation funded Women & Philanthropy and the Council on Foundations to facilitate two model CEO Focus Groups in 2007 and 2008. This work was the direct outgrowth of Mary Ellen S. Capek and Molly Mead’s 2006-2007 Kellogg-funded “book tour” for Effective Philanthropy: Organizational Success through Deep Diversity and Gender Equality (MIT Press, 2006), winner of the 2007 Independent Sector/ARNOVA Virginia Hodgkinson Research Prize “for the best book on philanthropy and the nonprofit sector that informs policy and practice.”
These book tour events, held in collaboration with regional associations around the country, attracted numbers of mid- and senior-level people working in philanthropy, but few, and in most cases no, CEOs. The next step to getting word out about both the research and “deep diversity” strategies in the book was clear, especially given interest generated after the book won the Hodgkinson Prize: sponsor gatherings aimed specifically at CEOs. The overall objectives of these first two groups were to figure out 1) how to bring CEOs to the table for discussion of these issues, and 2) how to create safe space where candor and shared experiences move to more nuanced levels of doing this work within individual organizations, especially the often-undiscussed roadblocks of individual organizational cultures.
The Council contracted with Capek to pursue this work. Bringing in the Kellogg-supported national Diversity in Philanthropy Project (DPP) as a co-sponsor, she conducted two CEO Focus Groups, the first—in collaboration with the Donors Forum—was held on April 23, 2008 at the Lloyd A. Fry Foundation offices in Chicago; the second—in collaboration with the Council of Michigan Foundations (CMF)—was held on June 25 at Michigan State University Faculty Club in Lansing. The Chicago event drew 16 CEOs and the Lansing event 11.
The assumptions going into the work were that CEOs would be brought to the table by 1) respect for sponsoring organizations, especially their regional association of grant makers; 2) peer invitations and interest in being part of a discussion with other CEOs they respect; and 3) brief, well-organized events that piqued their curiosity and drew on their experience instead of “preaching” at them. All three of these assumptions proved true. In both Chicago and Michigan, the regional associations had a history of raising and working with these and other difficult issues, and there was a history of significant trust in the leadership and fellow members of each regional association. Both of these regional associations provided staff support, hosting facilities, and logistics planning as well as help with framing the questions and strategizing for the optimum amount of exchange and probing conversation.
Both events drew in CEOs that already had some history working with these issues, and in the case of Chicago, brought several new CEOs to the table who were not well-known to the rest of the group but had clearly engaged in some nuanced thinking about the issues and made efforts within their own organizations to address them. In Michigan, the impression was that all participants knew each other and had clearly engaged at various levels of effort among themselves as well as within their own organizations. In both settings, exchanges were cordial, thoughtful, and especially in Michigan, candid about some organizational dysfunction (and leaders’ own roles feeding into that dysfunction) that got in the way of doing more effective deep diversity work within their institutions.
KEY QUESTIONS USED TO STRUCTURE THE CONVERSATIONS
The following questions provided structure for the conversations. This version, used for the Michigan event, tightened up and focused similar questions used in Chicago:
- How do CEOs define success in institutionalizing diversity? (What does success look like? Are there metrics that they track?)
- What is their take on the DPP’s Institutionalizing Diversity: Working Assumptions? (reprinted at end of this report). Do they resonate?
- Have advances in institutionalizing diversity in their organizations improved the organization’s effectiveness? If so, in what specific ways has this happened?
- More specifically, what’s worked within their foundations to increase the diversity of staff? Board? What role do trustees play in diversity efforts? What specific staff/board diversity policies and practices do they have in place?
- What strategies have worked to improve equity in their foundation’s grant making? Do they collect demographic data on grantees and the groups they serve? What other specific grant making diversity policies and practices do they have in place?
In both Chicago and Michigan, discussions ranged widely over all of these questions, with consensus in both groups that the DPP Working Assumptions captured the direction and scope of work that needed to be accomplished. The Chicago group took the conversation to more concrete regional issues like the dearth of trustees of color and the need for more creative channels to recruit as well as more concerted efforts to mentor new trustees as well as new employees, especially using some of the organizational culture analysis described in the DPP Working Assumptions. Most of the CEOs around the table in Chicago expressed the frustration that they had been part of similar conversations over the years but which resulted in little new direction. However, they expressed hope that the time together to pursue these questions in depth would lead to more follow up, both within their own organizations as well as regionally.
The apparent “comfort-level” in Michigan, which enabled several CEOs to speak candidly about some painful personal struggles, contributed to their deeper discussion of the often-invisible dimensions of organizational culture that are key to diversity efforts succeeding, with a particular emphasis on the critical role executive leadership plays in guiding their institutions through this difficult work.
FOLLOW UP
Besides exchanges facilitated in the focus groups, this initiative also offered participants a chance for follow up. Several participants at the Donors Forum event immediately scheduled a lunch to brainstorm ideas for expanding pipeline/mentoring strategies for trustees, and the Donors Forum itself set into motion a longer-range initiative to expand the event to other CEOs and focus on the topic for the coming year. On June 11th, the Forum sponsored a meeting, also at the Fry Foundation, to focus on how to ensure diverse viewpoints on boards regardless of structural challenges. And in May, the Donors Forum board created a board-level team to meet and focus on several objectives:
- The research piece, working with the Foundation Center and other regional associations to improve data collection about grant making and demographics;
- Promising practices and more conversation at the CEO level; and
- Promoting tools from the DPP as they are developed.
Several concrete outcomes also grew from the CMF event. There was an evolving “learning circle” of several interested CEOs who had participated in the focus group. They will be organizing their own follow up to pursue issues raised in the session and help each other explore more effective strategies for institutionalizing in their respective organizations what they share and discover working together.
CMF has invited Capek to conduct similar CEO focus groups regionally around the state, most likely three to be held in 2009. The June focus group also kicked off a five-year CMF initiative on diversity and inclusiveness issues. A major event in year two will be a Knowledge Symposium for CMF member foundations who volunteer to participate in a multi-year community of practice and peer learning network on diversity, to be co-sponsored with DPP. That event aims to generate additional learning circles, vetted resources and tools, but perhaps most of all, state-wide focus on these difficult issues, drawing in foundations that have not yet begun to implement much of this work. All this work has been integrated into CMF’s own five-year plan as well as its member organizations.
Although the Council on Foundations’ contract provided support to model two of these focus groups, other regional associations have expressed interest in expanding these events to different regions of the country (positive word-of-mouth sharing among regional associations has clearly proven one dimension of success for the initiative). In response to this interest, Capek, in collaboration with DPP, is currently talking to regional associations in Southern California, the Pacific Northwest, Ohio, and Colorado about carrying the initiative forward, sponsoring similar sessions in the fall of 2008 and into 2009. We are hoping the Council on Foundations will continue as a partner in these events, and we will also be approaching the Forum of Regional Association of Grantmakers to expand similar events among more of their membership.
As we move through more events, we will continue to assess the usefulness of our questions and facilitation strategy, with the objective by 2009 of sharing thinking and strategies that might be useful to all participants as well as others not able to attend. We are also looking at the possibility of doing similar group work with trustees. As we did in Chicago and Michigan, we will also make available to participants any ongoing programs or strategies that the sponsoring regional associations of grantmakers already have underway, and we offer participants a chance to join DPP’s evolving efforts, including signing on to Principles and Practices and Voluntary Compact.
As Capek describes it, her primary “take away” from the two events was how important it is to facilitate safe space for CEOs to have these difficult conversations. No magic bullets, no existing tools are out there that make this work easier. Few, if any, models of successfully diverse, healthy learning organizations exist, in philanthropy or other sectors. And it could be said that consensus among participating CEOs acknowledged that approaches need to be designed to account for foundations’ different situations. The most productive systemic intervention at both national and regional levels seems to be engaging thoughtful leadership regarding the deeper levels of doing this work (see DPP Working Assumptions for Institutionalizing Diversity) and facilitating their empowering each other (and their regional associations) to deepen their work on these issues together.