Retreat Schedule
Friday, May 4
5:00 – 6:00 PM Registration, Room Check-in, Open Space
6:00 – 7:00 PM Dinner and welcome
7:00 – 8:00 PM Welcome Plenary
Where are we coming from? What's our common ground? What are we all doing here? During tonight's plenary, we will get a chance to relax, get to know each other, and find out what Resource Generation, and the Creating Change Through Family Philanthropy Retreat is all about! Furthermore, we'll have a report back from the POC pre-retreat that took place earlier today, and get a chance for some physical movement through some games to answer these questions and find out more about our foundations. Finally, we'll end by reflecting on where we're at at a personal level, our families, and our family's philanthropy by getting our creative or mental juices flowing through an art project we hope to carry through our weekend together.
8:00 – 8:45 PM Meet with Small Groups and Buddies
9:00 PM Bonfire
Saturday, May 5
8:00 – 8:45 AM Breakfast
9:00 – 10:30 AM Concurrent Workshops - Session 1
Family Philanthropy 101: Making It All Work Together (Somehow)!
Maxim Thorne, Esq., Professor, Yale Philanthropy in Action and Consultant in Philanthropy
Andrea Bufka, Manager, Familly Philanthropy Services, Council on Foundations (COF)
Come learn about best practices and principles for managing a family foundation, funding in solidarity with the public interest and being responsible to your foundation's mission and your social change values. This session will be an intimate conversation with Maxim Thorne, professor of Philanthropy in Action at Yale University, and Andrea Bufka from COF on tools, methodologies, and principles to start, operate or participate in a family foundation or other family funding vehicle.
Changing the Game: Building Political Power for Social Justice
Maurice Mitchell, Coordinator, New York Civic Engagement Table
Christina Hollenbeck, Director, Generational Alliance
Building political power in underrepresented communities is an essential tool for social justice. Come hear from Maurice Mitchell, of the New York Civic Engagement Table and Christina Hollenbeck of the Generational Alliance, about how foundations can engage in civic participation and how they have worked with youth voters, people of color led organizations, and community organizations to build constituencies for racial, environmental, and social justice reshaping the electoral landscape, while using foundation and donor resources responsibly.
I CAN HAZ STRATEGY? Philanthropy at the crossroads of LOLCATS and CoF
Arif Mamdani, Director, Seasons Fund
Chad Jones, Executive Director, Community Investment Network
The 20th Century is gone. Facebook rules the planet, and George Takei rules Facebook. Kickstarter promised to revolutionize start-up funding, and instead invented the gap that TinyLightbulbs.com stepped in to fill. Jumo hoped to be the Facebook for philanthropy and instead became part of the GOOD.is mothership.
As William Gibson famously said, "the future is already here, it's just not very evenly distributed."
Join Chad Jones and Arif Mamdani for a 90 minute experience that's part speed-dating, part un-conference and 100% aimed at lifting up the bits of our philanthropic future that look promising, interesting, or just plain relevant and important for living into our future. We're interested in what's relevant, what's reasonable, and what our role is in the world we live in today. Bring your burning questions, deep longings, and "center of desk" questions.
10:30 – 11:00 AM Break/snacks
11:00 – 12:30 PM Concurrent Workshops - Session 2
Mission Related Investing: Doing It Up and Then Doing It Well
Julie Johnson, Co-founder and Managing Director, Fresh Pond Capital
Mark Reed, Founder, Contact Fund
Zac Russell, Russell Family Foundation
Jérôme Tagger, Chief Operating Officer, Confluence Philanthropy
Christa Velasquez, Senior Fellow, Initiative for Responsible Investment
This workshop will explore the ways in which individuals, families, and institutions wrestle with the challenges inherent to Mission Related Investing (MRI). After a brief introductory panel, we'll be separating into two breakout sessions:
MRI 101 -- How do we convince our families and boards that MRI is possible, that we can build a strategy to implement it, and that we can integrate it into our relationships with advisors and consultants -- or find new people to work with? In this session, Resource Generation constituents who have taken the plunge will relate the obstacles they've encountered in moving towards MRI, and how they did -- or didn't -- get around them.
MRI 201 -- Even with a strategy, we still need to find deals or funds to invest in that meet both our social *and* our financial goals. In this session, we'll engage investors and investees to dive into the details of how money gets moved, what good it does -- or doesn't do -- for portfolios and for the world, and what sorts of skills and attention MRI demands to live up to its promise.
At the conclusion of the workshop, both groups will reconvene to consider together the potential of and limits to MRI -- with special attention to issues of justice and social equity.
Talking About Money: Staying Grounded and Finding Common Ground
Juliette Gimon, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Kristin Wehner Keffeler, Kinetic Enterprises, LLC
Whether you're sitting around the dinner table or the board table, conversations with family about wealth, philanthropy, and values can be tough. Each family is different, and there is no "one-size fits all" answer. The session is designed to be a dialogue about how we communicate our values and navigate relationships as we decide how to be involved with our family's philanthropy. Whether you are just learning your money story or struggling with how to integrate a partner or realizing your values are different than older generations, this workshop will offer a safe space to share ideas and strategies on how to talk about these topics with family.
Exploring How Foundations Interact and Communicate with Grantee Partners
Christine Reeves, Field Associate, National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy
This interactive session will challenge both seasoned and new philanthropists. Come discuss big ideas, tough questions, and specific strategies for both your foundation and the philanthropic sector with Christine Reeves from the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. First, we’ll learn how power and values shape every foundation and every relationship a foundation has with a nonprofit partner or community. Second, we’ll consider what questions to ask and which nonprofit partners and community leaders to bring to the decision-making table when defining problems and seeking solutions. We’ll apply what we learned by breaking into groups for an interactive exercise: given limited dollars, each group will select one high-impact grantmaking strategy to help solve a community-defined problem with nonprofit partners. Finally, we’ll share quantitative and qualitative findings from NCRP’s research reports and discuss how grantmaking strategies can lead to interactions and communications that (a) provide charity for short-term benefits and needs, (b) address systemic roots of societal problems for long-term change, social justice, and high returns-on-investment, or (c) unintentionally worsen existing problems in broken systems.
12:30 – 1:30 PM Lunch and Topic Tables
12:30 - 4:00 PM: Consulting Café
Looking for resources or tools to mobilize your resources for social change? Need support planning a difficult conversation? Trying to figure out how to take the next step with your giving or impact investing? Get the individualized support you need to help answer your specific questions during the Consulting Café! Sign up for one-on-one time with leading consultants, advisors, and foundation staff.
Sessions are 30 minutes in length. They are confidential, pitch-free spaces and are open to individuals, couples, and/or small groups, where appropriate. The Consulting Café will take place on Saturday of the CCTFP retreat from 12:30pm to 4pm. We will be sending out information about the consultants before the retreat. Be sure to sign up early to ensure a spot! The Consulting Café is a great opportunity to get some support around your personal questions and situations, for free.
1:30 – 2:45 PM Play and Open Space
4:00 – 5:15 PM Plenary
A People's History of Philanthropy
Sha Grogan-Brown, Grassroots Fundraising Organizer, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance
Jessie Spector, Program Director, Resource Generation
Do you ever wonder what your history book left out about the past 200 years in the United States? How about the stuff your family elders always seem to skip over in the telling of your foundation's founding? Do you have memories of traditional history class being sooo boring in high school?
Well, look no further for everything your history lessons left out - from the formal classes to the discussions around the dinner table - about philanthropy and social change. We will spend Saturday afternoon's full group playing a rousing game of Jeopardy - especially designed to examine the legacy of wealth, race, philanthropy, social change, and more over the past centuries. In this dynamic, participatory game you will get to place your own foundation and family in the context of history - what laws had just passed, what social movements were taking shape, when your family's money was made or they started giving? We will pay special attention to race and immigration and how business, investing, and philanthropy has informed our own family's story in this context.
This plenary rides on the tails of a full day of conversation, skill-building, and workshopping the questions, ideas, and passions we each bring to our family's philanthropy. We will close Saturday evening feeling newly positioned in a larger context and legacy, and ripe to writing future history as we head into the final day of the retreat.
5:15 – 6:00 PM Small Groups
6:00 – 7:00 PM Dinner
7:30 PM Open Mic and Talent Share
9:00 PM Dance Party
Sunday, May 6
8:00 – 9:00 AM Breakfast and Check Out
9:00 AM – 11:00 AM Closing Plenary
What's Next?!
Meg Coward, Program Director, Bolder Giving
Richard Graves, Founder, Fired Up Media
Irene Villasenor, Consultant
Maggie Williams, Strategic Advisor for Legislative Advocacy and Organizational Development
We've talked about where we're at, we've talked about how we got here, and we've talked about what else is out there -- so what next?! How do we think about the future of philanthropy -- both in the context of our own work and that of the broader social justice community?
Our final plenary will kick off with an open "fishbowl conversation" seeded by three Resource Generation constituents who represent a diversity of backgrounds, tactics, and issue areas. They'll be sharing their experiences, their ambitions, and what's next for each of them. Since no three people can represent an entire community, we'll all have the opportunity -- and the encouragement! -- to share our thoughts as well. It'll be an opportunity for the RG community to take a look at itself and truly appreciate all the great people we have, all the great things that we've got planned, and all the ways in which we might be able to support each other.
Next, we'll self-select into three breakout sessions -- one corresponding to each of the constituents who seeded the fishbowl. These more intimate conversations will allow us to delve into the exciting possibilities of particular strategies, tactics, and philosophies. As with the panel, this is an opportunity for us to share with, learn from, and inspire each other.
As a closing, we'll reconvene briefly to report back, share interesting conversations, and transition into small groups.
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM Small Groups: Planning For Next Steps
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM Group Closing
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM Lunch and Departures
Box lunches will be available for those who have to leave promptly.
The Creating Change Through Family Philanthropy retreat is a safe and confidential space for exploring giving and family issues. You will not be fundraised by other participants or presenters, and Resource Generation does not share its mailing list.
