Blog - 2012 GEO National Conference

Reflecting on Jonah Lehrer's Talk at GEO's Conference

yates@geofunders.org (Danielle Yates) — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 20:25:17 +0000

This week, author and journalist Jonah Lehrer admitted to fabricating quotes in his newest book, Imagine: How Creativity Works (released in March 2012). As a result, Lehrer has resigned from his post with The New Yorker magazine and the book’s publisher has halted further production.

GEO takes pride in the integrity of our community and the quality of our events, and we are disappointed by Jonah’s actions. While GEO goes through a thorough vetting process for every speaker at our conferences, clearly this was a surprise to many.

We hope that these circumstances will not lead the GEO community to lose sight of the charge to consider ways that we can infuse more creativity into our work. We have decided to continue to make the video footage of Jonah’s session at the GEO conference available to GEO members to offer suggestions on how they might put some of these ideas into practice.

Conference attendees provide great ideas to improve grantmaking practices

yates@geofunders.org (Danielle Yates) — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 21:54:51 +0000

By Danielle Yates, GEO's manager of marketing and communications

At GEO’s 2012 National Conference, participants were introduced to a fictional foundation whose grantmaking practices were not up to par with its intentions for serving local community members. The foundation was said to operate in a community depressed by the economic recession which put a strain on resources and led to a townhall style meeting for community leaders to discuss immediate needs and how to balance them with long-term outlooks.

We asked each conference participant to be a part of an empathy exercise that allowed them to walk in the shoes of a community member grappling with increased demand and fewer resources. Roles included a foundation trustee, CEO, program evaluator, nonprofit Executive Director, recipient of services and town mayor or other influential community leader. Playing their designated roles, participants were asked to reflect on the town’s situation to consider the greatest challenges and biggest opportunities and make recommendations as a group about how one of the foundation’s program officers might institute changes in the organization that could lead to greater impact in the community.

A Newbies View on Grantmaking

yates@geofunders.org (Danielle Yates) — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 19:59:48 +0000

This is a repost of a blog post by Mike Phillips for the Meyer Memorial Trust Communications and Learning Blog.

Hello from MMT Communication and Learning land. I can't believe I've been at MMT for 9 months and this is my first blog post. Hello world!

...and, in a nice symmetry, this post is about another first for me: my first GEO (Grantmakers for Effective Organizations) conference.

Because this year's conference was in Seattle, more of the MMT staff got a chance to attend than would typically. I was really happy to be a part of the 9-strong crew in attendance. Here we are (plus 1) at an event hosted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation:

For me, the conference was a great chance to hear from some knowledgeable speakers and, more importantly, get a broader sense of what the philanthropic community is doing and thinking about these days. Some of the main themes I heard were around collective impact and funding collaborations, nonprofit scaling for impact, and mission/program-related investing.

GEO 2012 wrap-up: funders taking risks

yates@geofunders.org (Danielle Yates) — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The following post by Michael Corley originally appeared on The Patterson Foundation's Connective Tissue Blog.

I had an opportunity to attend the Grantmakers for Effective Organizations Annual Conference (#2012geo) with our Financial Thrivability Partner Rob Lane of Kerkering Barberio recently in Seattle.

The focus of this conference was funders, and how the organizations with the money can be more effective working with their nonprofit recipients. A good amount of time was also spent on how funders thinking and behaving creatively, and willing to take some risk, have the ability to create new realities.

Funding Services AND Advocacy: The Smart Choice for Grantmakers

yates@geofunders.org (Danielle Yates) — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Guest post by Aaron Dorfman of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, originally posted to Beth Kanter's blog.

Some grantmakers shy away from funding advocacy, preferring instead to fund direct services. But two sessions at the GEO conference clearly showed how smart funders are combining the two for maximum impact.

Embracing Risk to Learn from and ‘Plus’ New Ideas

yates@geofunders.org (Danielle Yates) — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 21:27:56 +0000

When we began working on our "How Not To Grant" session, we had a vision of using satire to encourage attendees to reflect on the findings from our recent national survey of grantmaker practice and think critically about how they can change their own practices to be better partners for grantees. We intended to act out the opportunities and challenges as reported in our field practice survey and to highlight the practices that nonprofits say contribute most to their success. Our idea was to spoof TLC's popular TV show "What Not to Wear."

We took a risk, and while it worked for some, for others we missed the mark.

We apologize to those who were offended by any of the characterizations in the skit. Of course that was not our intent.

The GEO staff and conference planning committee have plenty of ideas about what we can do better next time, but in the spirit of living the values GEO promotes, we want to include conference attendees in the conversation. Using the practice Jonah Lehrer presented of "plusing" — offering up how an idea could be improved — let us know what you think:

What are other ways we can encourage self-reflection at future conferences?
What is the appropriate role for humor and creativity in future conferences?

Please try to keep your comments constructive and/or actionable. Thanks in advance for helping GEO stick to our commitment to learning for continuous improvement.

Lori Bartczak,
Director of Programs and Communications,
Grantmakers for Effective Organizations

Sidney Hargro,
Conference Planning Committee Chair

A Huge Thanks To Guest Bloggers from the Grantmakers for Effective Organizations Conference 2012

yates@geofunders.org (Danielle Yates) — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 22:21:41 +0000

A huge thanks to the array of guest bloggers, grantmakers, who attended GEO's National Conference in Seattle and published blog posts to share their reflections and thoughts. If you are curious what these grantmakers learned, you can read some of the ideas and questions being discussed right here on this blog.

The Internet Gets Charitable

yates@geofunders.org (Danielle Yates) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This is a repost of a guest post by Darin McKeever of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for Beth Kanter's blog.

I am certainly not the first to observe that the internet has the potential to reshape the way people find and support causes and charities.

Beth Kanter has blogged about the topic for years. Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen has written an excellent book Giving 2.0 that touches on the subject. Bill Gates wrote about it in his annual letter earlier this year, when he said he was “thinking a lot harder about how we can use the web to make it easier for givers of all sizes to connect to causes and see the results of their giving.” And this week, some attendees at the GEO conference were treated to Katherine Fulton of Monitor Institute’s discussion of networks and their relationship to technology.

New recipes for capacity building for nonprofits and foundations

yates@geofunders.org (Danielle Yates) — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 02:00:00 +0000

This is a repost of a guest blog post by Annie Hernandez of the Lumpkin Family Foundation for Beth Kanter's blog.

After some compelling short talks, people were ready to talk in detail about things they care about. I had the opportunity to facilitate a table conversation about capacity building in transition. While my original intent was to discuss evaluation and transition of specific capacity building grant programs, the conversation smartly expanded to discuss the future trends in capacity building for the sector and us as foundations. Following are some of the areas discussed (with the lens of a customized approach when appropriate). Many of these were touched on in other sessions throughout the conference but I found it helpful to think about these as the ingredients we need to use to build new capacity recipes for the future.

Myth Busting around Scale