What do these six cities have in common? They're the newest Partners for Places grantees!
By Ann Fowler Wallace, TFN Director of ProgramsNow, more than ever, communities are coming together to confront climate change and build resilience at the local level. That's why we're excited to announce the newest round of Partners for Places grantees: six cities across the United States and Canada that will receive nearly $900,000 dollars for sustainability efforts. These local sustainability efforts focus largely on empowering and engaging low-income neighborhoods — communities that are disproportionately affected by climate change and extreme weather. They will take place in cities both large and small, from a project in Indianapolis, Ind., that will recruit neighborhood “resilience ambassadors” to a solar-power effort in Oak Park, Ill., where local teens will research and produce a climate-themed radio show. Three of the communities occupy especially vulnerable waterfront geographies: Honolulu, Los Angeles and Miami are embarking on efforts to either craft or refine resiliency plans and strategies. And in Edmonton, Canada, Partners for Places will help fund efforts to include low-income, immigrant and indigenous communities in plans to move to a low-carbon future. |
Vision and Vital Partnerships |
Partners for Places, led by TFN in partnership with the Urban Sustainability Directors Network, pairs city governments with philanthropy to support sustainability projects that promote a healthy environment, a strong economy and well-being for all residents. “Communities across this country are already tackling the threat of climate change with passion and purpose,” said Arturo Garcia-Costas, environmental program officer for the New York Community Trust. “These projects showcase their ingenuity and vision, and exemplify how philanthropy can support the vital partnerships we need to create safer, stronger and more resilient communities.” Partners for Places will provide $443,344 in funding to these six cities through its general grant program, which will be matched by local funders. That means a total of $899,977 will be leveraged to fund sustainability projects in these selected cities. The program is supported by five investor foundations: The JPB Foundation, The Kendeda Fund, The New York Community Trust, The Summit Foundation, and Surdna Foundation. To date, Partners for Places has awarded nearly $6 million across North America in this successful matching grant program, leading to nearly $12 million in investments. |
Meet the New Grantees |
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The latest Partners for Places grant recipients and their matching funders are: • Edmonton, Canada ($59,883): To work with low-income, immigrant and indigenous communities to ensure they are consulted and included in energy transition programs focused on a low-carbon, energy sustainable future. (Matching funder: Edmonton Community Foundation.) |
• Honolulu, Hawaii ($75,000): To create a clear, ambitious, achievable climate action and adaptation plan that addresses unique cost of living and climate impact vulnerabilities of Oahu — the island that is home to the state’s capital city of Honolulu — and serves as a model for climate planning throughout the Hawaiian Islands. (Matching funder: Hawaii Community Foundation.) • Indianapolis, Ind. ($146,711): To create a comprehensive, equitable, and socially just sustainability, climate action, and resilience plan for Indianapolis, with actions initially implemented within revitalization-focused neighborhoods. (Matching funders: McKinney Green Initiatives, a Central Indiana Community Foundation fund, and Indianapolis Power & Light.) • Los Angeles County, Calif. ($87,500): To actively include community voices in a countywide sustainability plan by employing innovative engagement strategies and building meaningful community partnerships — including working with low-income communities and communities of color that are often the most vulnerable to climate change, urban heat island impacts, and poor air quality. (Matching funders: Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and LA n Sync at the California Community Foundation.) |
• Miami, Fla.($25,000): To develop a resilience strategy that is integrated with the city’s strategic plan and land-use policies, with a strong focus on engaging low-income and underserved communities. This includes a community engagement consultant that will assist in workshops to uncover the best and most innovative ideas for increasing resilience in these communities — and the city as a whole. (Matching funder: The Miami Foundation.) • Oak Park, Ill. ($49,250): To drive continued action, education and outreach on solar development and procurement in Oak Park, River Forest and surrounding communities, including a local radio show produced by teens, and influencing and inspiring similar efforts in other Chicago metro area counties and communities. (Matching funder: The Community_works_ Fund of the Oak Park River Forest Community Foundation.) |
New RFP Coming Soon!Partners for Places will open a new round of funding for the general grant program in early summer. The Round 13 RFP will be released on June 5, 2018, and proposals will be due on July 31, 2018. For more information about the Partners for Places program, please feel free to reach out to TFN's Director of Programs Ann Fowler Wallace. |
15 Years of Disaster Recovery: A Community Foundation’s Journey
By Louise Knauer, Chief Operating Officer for the Community Foundation of the Ozarks
This week, TFN's Philanthropic Preparedness, Resiliency and Emergency Partnership (PPREP) convened in Springfield, Mo., to explore the intersections of land-use decisions, community resilience and equitable disaster preparation and recovery. Our meeting was hosted by the amazing team at the Community Foundation of the Ozarks, a member of our PPREP cohort. Here, CFO's Chief Operating Officer Louise Knauer offers her insights on a post originally shared via the Center for Disaster Philanthropy.
Fifteen years ago, the Community Foundation of the Ozarks (CFO) started its first disaster response when a high-end F3 tornado killed three and destroyed much of downtown Stockton, Mo., a county seat with a lovely sailing lake. It’s an easy date to remember – 05/04/03.
At the time, the Stockton Community Foundation was a year-old member of the CFO’s affiliate network. Its president, Brian Hammons, third-generation leader of his family’s black-walnut business, wasn’t sure exactly how the CFO could help, but he was sure he needed to muster all the help he could find.
Neither I nor current CFO President, Brian Fogle, worked at the Foundation in 2003. I was the spokesperson for the City of Springfield, Mo., where the CFO is based. Brian was a community development banker for Great Southern Bank, which had a couple of walls and two vaults left standing at its Stockton branch. Then-CFO President Dr. Gary Funk tapped us, among others, to figure out how the CFO could support Stockton’s recovery.
My city colleagues found our niche helping the community focus on recovery priorities through engagement activities. Gary and Brian worked with the Hammons family to establish a charitable fund to encourage an intentional planning process and also a community development corporation to offer gap financing to help businesses rebuild.
Our methods seem so quaint today – we tacked up flyers and hauled flip charts and paper surveys to community meetings – no social media, no Survey Monkey, maybe a PowerPoint. Gary, Brian, and Brian and Dwain Hammons sketched out the CDC’s framework on paper napkins.
The contrast seems especially striking this week, 15 years and multiple natural disasters later. Today, the CFO is part of the Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities' Philanthropic Preparedness Resiliency and Emergency Partnership (PPREP), a cohort of Midwestern community foundations and regional grantmaking associations. The Center for Disaster Philanthropy serves as the curriculum development and technical assistance partner for the program. The cohort met in Springfield this week for topical learning about mission-related investing, adaptive land use, mitigation strategies and civic architectural design within the context of natural disaster recovery.
Our training marries very real experience and insight from natural disasters within our cohort’s 18 regions with knowledge from experts in planning, nonprofit, government, natural resource and related fields.
Last year, the CFO experienced another disaster first – massive spring flooding on the national scenic rivers in south-central Missouri that washed out towns and the river-related economic base that sustains one of the nation’s poorest regions. It was a classic low-attention disaster in a sparsely populated area; we opened traditional recovery funds, but knew we needed to do more.
Read the full post on the Center for Disaster Philanthropy blog here.
About The Author
Louise Knauer is the Chief Operating Officer for the Community Foundation of the Ozarks. She can be reached at lknauer@cfozarks.org.
New President & CEO of TFN announced: Patricia Smith of the Reinvestment Fund brings decades of innovative, collaborative leadership experience
By Tom Woiwode, Chairperson, Funders' Network Board of Directors
For the past several months, our executive search committee has undertaken an exciting yet formidable task: determining who will lead this robust, thriving network of passionate funders and dedicated staff as we move toward the future.
We are delighted to announce today that Patricia Smith, a senior policy advisor at the Reinvestment Fund with decades of leadership experience in the philanthropic, government and nonprofit sectors, will be the new president and CEO of the Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities (TFN).
Patricia comes to TFN with an impressive background in developing and implementing policy, programs and strategies that have engaged funders and mobilized diverse coalitions to help create more prosperous and livable communities.
Above all, she is an innovative, enthusiastic and effective problem-solver and team-builder who appreciates the important role TFN plays in supporting and connecting a network of more than 170 community, regional and national foundations across the U.S. and Canada, in addition to our successful Partners for Placesmatching grants program and PLACES Fellowship.
Building on a Strong Foundation
“I’m thrilled at the opportunity to work with such a dynamic team and lead an organization with such a stellar reputation,” said Patricia. “This is a network built on dedicated, highly engaged funders with the support of an exemplary TFN team. As the network approaches its 20th anniversary, we can build on this impressive foundation and truly become a hub of innovation and collaboration exploring the important intersections between equity work, environmental sustainability and inclusive economic development.”
She is currently senior policy advisor at the Reinvestment Fund, a national leader working to rebuild economically-distressed communities through the innovative use of capital, data and partnerships. Patricia has led the Reinvestment Fund’s efforts to improve access to healthier foods in underserved urban and rural communities and is a well-regarded advisor on healthy food financing programs across the country. Patricia was instrumental in launching the Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI) to increase awareness about inequitable access to healthy foods and the need for federal action. (To date, the initiative has yielded more than $243 million in federal grants and encouraged the establishment of similar financing programs in a dozen states and cities.)
A Focus on Collaboration
Patricia, who joined the Reinvestment Fund in 2005 as director of special initiatives, has managed several collaborative projects: William Penn Foundation Targeted Neighborhoods Initiative; Ford Foundation Camden Regional Demonstration Project; and Rockefeller Foundation Creativity and Neighborhood Development Project. Prior to joining the Reinvestment Fund, Patricia directed Philadelphia’s Neighborhood Transformation Initiative (NTI), a $295 million public-private partnership that sought to address decades of urban blight and stimulate new investment in the city’s neighborhoods.
Among her other professional achievements: She launched the Human Capital Development Initiative, an $8 million national leadership development and grantmaking program funded by the National Community Development Initiative (now known as Living Cities); worked extensively with community development corporations as a program manager with The Philadelphia Foundation; and supervised the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority’s housing division as a deputy executive director.
She began her career in the field of law, serving as legal counsel to grassroots organizations and litigating housing and consumer rights cases as a Community Legal Services attorney, and later served as a deputy chief of staff attorney for the Philadelphia City Council.
A native of Philadelphia, Patricia — who prefers to be called Pat — holds a bachelor’s degree from Mount Holyoke College, a juris doctorate from George Washington University Law Center, and was a 2002 Fannie Mae Foundation Fellow. She sits on the Board of Directors of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and was appointed by the president of the Philadelphia City Council to serve as his representative on the Philadelphia Museum of Art Board of Trustees.
She has authored or contributed to many publications and scholarly works, and in 2006 appeared in the PBS documentary Edens Lost and Found: How Ordinary Citizens Are Restoring Our Great American Cities.
Looking to the Future
Patricia will officially join TFN on July 2, although she will be working closely with Interim President and CEO Maureen Lawless and the rest of the leadership team to ensure a smooth transition. Maureen will then resume her duties as vice president and director of member services full time. I’d like to thank Maureen and the rest of the TFN team of directors, program associates and contractors for their hard work and dedication over the past several months. I also want to acknowledge appreciation not only for the members of the executive search committee, but the many individuals who expressed an interest in this position. We vetted nearly a hundred qualified applicants, a testament to the high regard professionals within the field of philanthropy and other sectors hold TFN.
Patricia will commute for the time-being between her hometown, where she lives with her partner, Elbert Sampson, and TFN’s headquarters in Miami. (We suspect she will have good reason to feel at home in her new city, which faces Biscayne Bay: The couple are avid sailors and proud owners of a 1967 Alberg 35 sailboat, Pearl, named after Pat’s maternal grandmother and Elbert’s paternal grandmother.)
On behalf of the TFN community, I hope you’ll join me in wishing Pat a warm welcome as she takes on this key role at such a pivotal and promising time in the network’s history.
About the Author
Tom Woiwode
Chairperson, TFN Board of Directors
Tom Woiwode was elected in March as the chairperson of the Funders' Network Board of Directors. He is a director at the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan, where among his duties he oversees the GreenWays Initiative.
Curing the rural-urban divide
By Peter Pollock, Lincoln Land Institute of Land Policy and Michael Wetter, Intertwine Alliance
As part of our Learning Network Webinar, Greenspace Conservation in Metropolitan America: Partnerships That Benefit People and Nature, we invited organizations united by their membership in the Metropolitan Greenspace Alliance to share their work during the learning session, moderated by Peter Pollock, manager of western programs at Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Here, Peter and Michael Wetter, executive director Intertwine Alliance share some key insights and takeaways on the topic.
What makes land conservation in urban areas the same and different from that in rural areas?
From a land conservation perspective, metropolitan regions offer a special set of opportunities and challenges. Competition for land among alternative uses is intense. Land values are higher and conservation can be more expensive. On the other hand, urban land committed to nature yields a long list of benefits including greater biodiversity, climate resiliency, improved transportation connections, green infrastructure for stormwater management, education, community health, recreation and economic development. And people increasingly live in cities, so if we as conservationists are to remain relevant to large portions of the population, and cultivate the next generation of conservation leaders, we must bring conservation practice into the heart of metropolitan regions.
These urban efforts employ many of the same approaches to land conservation as in more remote, natural areas. Groups are moving beyond individual “random acts of conservation” and are looking at conservation across a larger, landscape scale, creating connections that benefit wildlife and natural systems, as well as people. Collaboration among a wide variety of individuals and organizations is used to help address the wide variety of issues and opportunities that are evident in large scale conservation efforts, bridging the many social, political, and geographic boundaries that can stand in the way. Partnerships and coalitions are important for any landscape scale conservation work and they are particularly crucial in urban regions where the interrelationships of public, private and nonprofit organizations are complex and the multidisciplinary nature of the work requires cross-disciplinary partnerships.
How are networks helping these organizations?
There are a variety of coalition efforts throughout the United States, many of them connected through a network called the Metropolitan Greenspace Alliance. The Metropolitan Greenspace Alliance is a collaborative platform to support existing coalitions and to support emerging coalitions. In doing so, we aim to establish metropolitan conservation coalitions as a conduit for federal government and national foundation investments in green infrastructure in metropolitan regions. Coalitions currently operate in Chicago, Houston, Cleveland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Seattle, Kansas City, Nashville, Baltimore and Portland, Oregon.
How this is playing out in Portland, Oregon
The Intertwine Alliance (TIA) is a coalition of over 160 public, private and nonprofit organizations working to integrate nature more deeply into the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan region. The Alliance’s mission is to build connections across sectors, geographies, disciplines, and racial divides, deepening the partnerships necessary to accomplish large-scale change. TIA is the keeper of a vision for nature in the Portland region, and works to attract the resources necessary to achieve that vision.
The role that The Alliance plays is similar to that of a backbone organization in the Collective Impact Framework, but The Alliance has turned collective impact on its head to create a much more inclusive and community-driven dynamic.
Key successes include development of Portland-Vancouver’s first region-wide strategy for conserving habitat, along with an atlas of biodiversity, works that were created by more than 100 contributors from dozens of organizations; the first complete, online interactive map of the region’s parks, trails and natural areas; the launch of a mobile that supports urban adventures in nature; and cohorts comprised of dozens of coalition members working together to advance diversity, equity and inclusion objectives. With Alliance support, health and environmental leaders are partnering on projects to benefit the community’s health and the environment, including prescription play and greening of schoolyards. TIA organizes twice-yearly summits, hosts forums on numerous topics, publishes a guest blog, and catalyzes, nurtures, facilitates and manages many other complex, collaborative initiatives.
Land conservation funders should consider the power that comes from enhancing nature right where most of the United States population lives. In this way we directly bring the benefits of conservation into peoples’ lives, and connect them to the larger world of land conservation throughout the Country.
Resources on Urban Land Conservation:
Network for Landscape Conservation
Metropolitan Greenspace Alliance
CityLab: Land Conservancies Enter Unfamiliar Territory: the City
About the Authors
Peter Pollock, Manager of Western Programs at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
Since July 2006 he has been working with the Department of Planning and Urban Form to manage the Institute’s joint programs with the Sonoran Institute and the Center for Natural Resources and Environmental Policy at the University of Montana. He worked for almost 25 years for the City of Boulder, Colorado as both a current and long-range planner, and he served as director of the city’s Planning Department from 1999 to 2006. Pollock began his career as the staff urban planner for the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colorado, where he specialized in solar access protection, energy-conserving land use planning, and outreach to local communities. During the 1997–1998 academic year Pollock was a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and a visiting fellow at the Lincoln Institute. He received his master’s degree in Landscape Architecture at the University of California at Berkeley in 1978 and his bachelor’s degree in Environmental Planning at the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1976.
Mike Wetter, Executive Director of The Intertwine Alliance
Mike Wetter is executive director of The Intertwine Alliance, where he leads
a coalition of more than 160 organizations working to integrate nature into
the Portland-Vancouver region.
Mike Wetter is a founder and Executive Director of The Intertwine Alliance,
where he leads a coalition of more than 160 of the most prominent public,
private and nonprofit organizations working on parks, trails and natural areas in the Portland-
Vancouver area. Mike’s work is to create a movement powerful enough to change investment
paradigms so that nature is integrated more deeply into the fabric of the metropolitan region,
creating economic, transportation, health, educational and environmental benefits for the region and
its residents. Mike previously was chief of Staff to Metro Council President David Bragdon, and
spent 13 years as a management consultant creating and managing organization development and
business strategies.
A new report from Brookings focuses on the future of Older Industrial Cities
By Alicia Kitsuse, Director, TFN's Older Industrial Cities ProgramA new report from the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program focuses on 70 urban areas deemed “older industrial cities,” arguing that they represent critical focal points for strategic investment and new policy intervention. One of the key takeways from the report: Inclusive economic growth connecting all residents to economic opportunity is instrumental in addressing the regional inequality that threatens the country’s social and political fabric. |
The Funders’ Network is proud to have contributed to efforts that resulted in the publication Renewing America’s Economic Promise through Older Industrial Cities, including serving as a liaison to Brookings as well as coordinating a consortium of 10 members of TFN who supported this important report. We’ll be delving into the findings and analysis with the report’s lead author, Alan Berube of the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program, during our annual meeting of TFN’s Restoring Prosperity in Older Industrial Cities working group, which takes place May 23-24 in Louisville, Ky. (You can find more information and a link to register here.) “Ideas for addressing regional inequality in America focus primarily on building more housing in ‘superstar’ cities like San Francisco and New York, or investing in small, rural communities hit hardest by industrial decline,” says Berube, a senior fellow at Brookings. “There’s an enormous opportunity between those two extremes to harness the significant economic and human potential of these older industrial cities, which anchor regions of the country at risk of being left behind.” |
Renewing America’s Economic Promise Through Older Industrial Cities builds on a 2007 report by the Brookings Institution that coined the term “older industrial cities” and argued that these cities possessed unique physical, economic, and cultural characteristics and resources that could be vital competitive assets if fully leveraged. The 2007 report laid the foundation for TFN’s Restoring Prosperity in Older Industrial Citiesworking group, and previewed many of the funder-supported initiatives dedicated to restoring prosperity in these places over the past decade. The new report breaks fresh ground with a framework for achieving inclusive economic growth, underscoring the need for historically underrepresented populations and neighborhoods to both contribute to and benefit from urban revitalization and recovery if older industrial cities are to thrive. “In many ways, the pathway to more inclusive economic growth in these (and many other) urban areas depends on expanding economic opportunity for people and neighborhoods of color,” according to Brookings. The framework’s recommendations include: • Learning from older industrial cities that have effectively transitioned from their industrial past and embraced the goal of inclusive economic growth. Public and private actions have focused on (1) identifying and investing in key technological capabilities; (2) spurring strategic urbanization; (3) preparing a diverse workforce for current and future opportunities; and (4) stewarding inclusive growth at the regional scale. • Building on existing local and state efforts already at work in older industrial cities, while emphasizing collaboration and shared responsibility among local stakeholders. These efforts promote increased job creation, job preparation, and job access, with strategic emphasis on overcoming stark legacies of out-migration and racial/economic segregation. • Expanding economic opportunity for people and neighborhoods of color, and establishing new metrics and frameworks for inclusive success. Older industrial cities house one-fifth of the nation’s black working class. The economic strength of these cities overall, and the economic resiliency of their racial and ethnic minority populations, are closely related. |
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Brookings has developed an interactive online dashboard that provides a wealth of data on the 70 urban areas in the United States deemed “older industrial cities” — which together account for one-eighth of the U.S. population and economy. As part of our work in support of the Brookings report, TFN served as a communications liaison between Brookings and the consortium of members who made up an “investor council” of funders: In addition, TFN organized two convenings of Detroit economic developers, non-profit and philanthropic practitioners, academics, and elected officials on behalf of Brookings to get feedback on the report’s findings and analysis, as well as sharing expertise and coordinating other discussions. We look forward to Alan Berube of Brookings with us in Louisville — and we’re eager to hear your thoughts, questions and concerns about the future of these older industrial cities, and the role funders can play in supporting equitable and inclusive economies in these often overlooked communities. |
Register for the OIC Annual MeetingThe annual meeting of TFN's Restoring Prosperity in Older Industrial Cities working group is May 23-34, 2018 in Louisville, Ky. Learn more about the meeting, as well as the Federal Reserve-Philanthropy Initiative Annual Convening immediately preceding the event, here.
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No one organization can safeguard Colorado's open lands. That's why Gates Family Foundation and land trust leaders launched the Conservation Futures Project.
By Beth Conover, Senior Vice President for Natural Resources and Community Development, Gates Family Foundation
Gates Family Foundation, a member of TFN's Intermountain West Funder Network, has teamed up with Colorado's land trust leaders to launch the Conservation Futures Project. Learn what inspired the project, what it hopes to achieve and why this issue is of vital importance.
As part of its core mission to protect quality of life for future generations of Coloradans, the Gates Family Foundation has invested for decades in the conservation of both public and private land. The foundation’s work helps protect open lands that afford residents and visitors with majestic views, world-class outdoor recreation, and robust working farms and ranches – all of which provide huge economic benefits to the state and contribute to residents’ shared identity as Coloradans.
In communities across the nation, more than 1,000 land trusts serve as vital partners in the conservation and stewardship of open lands. These nonprofit organizations work with local landowners who wish to voluntarily restrict development of their private lands, in order to protect iconic vistas, preserve working farms and ranches, and safeguard waterways and ecosystems. In return, land trusts guarantee to protect and steward the open space under their watch – in perpetuity. In Colorado, nonprofit land trusts are responsible for the stewardship of nearly 80% of the 2.2 million acres of private land conserved statewide. Throughout the national Land Trust Alliance’s 14-state Western region, land trusts have protected over 9 million acres.
Clearly, ensuring the capacity, vibrancy, and sustainability of land trusts is of vital importance to the future of conservation nationwide and in Colorado. Since the 1980s, the Gates Family Foundation has supported land conservation by helping to build the capacity of the field, spur innovations in conservation law, provide leadership training, expand community engagement, and encourage long-term financial planning and stewardship. The people of Colorado are also deeply supportive of land conservation, through state tax credits as well as grants provided by Great Outdoors Colorado – created by voters in 1992 and funded by Colorado Lottery proceeds. Since GOCO’s inception, the Gates Family Foundation has been Colorado’s largest private match source for GOCO-funded land conservation, statewide.
Yet land trusts in Colorado – and nationwide – are facing a host of common challenges ahead. These charitable organizations have operated for decades with land and conservation easement acquisition as a key part of their business model, yet as more of their operating costs shift toward stewardship of those lands, many land trusts are exploring new ways of doing business, fundraising, and building partnerships. Long-term sustainability is of primary importance, as land trusts seek to ensure their endowments are well-positioned for land stewardship in perpetuity, and resilient enough to handle risks and change. A host of other issues – including abandoned or neglected easements, threats to funding sources, political uncertainty, and a dearth of certified conservation easement appraisers – are compounded by the fact that competition among land trusts for limited public and private dollars can make collaborative work more challenging.
With these thorny, sector-wide issues in mind, in 2017 the Gates Family Foundation worked with a number of other funders and land trust partners to convene a series of five all-day meetings. Over the course of the year, topics explored included:
- Valuation, appraisals and tax credits;
- Operating challenges, new service models and potential for collaborative solutions;
- Financial sustainability and best practices for stewardship planning; and
- Strategic communications opportunities and challenges for the Colorado land conservation community.
The open-ended, exploratory meetings resulted in more than just discussion. Propelled on by the urgency of various issues, tangible outcomes of the convening series included:
- A Colorado State University study, which found that each dollar invested by the state for land conservation produced economic benefits of between $4 and $12 for Coloradans;
- Regional meetings that allowed local land trusts to explore opportunities for collaboration around business models and programming;
- A beta version of a financial sustainability calculator tool and best practices for estimating the optimal size and overall health of stewardship endowments; and
- Public policy ideas to address current bottlenecks with land appraisals and tax credit decisions.
A common thread running through all of these issues and solutions was a recognition of the need for more collaborative capacity and leadership at the statewide level. Simultaneous to the Gates-hosted discussions, board members from the Colorado Coalition of Land Trusts (CCLT) were embarking upon their own strategic planning process aimed at increasing the organization’s member engagement and financial sustainability.
As a result, the core group of partners involved in Gates’ 2017 series – including the CCLT board chair and vice chair, and other board members – decided to launch the Conservation Futures Project, a time-bound initiative to unite the state’s land trust community around a common purpose:
- To envision and launch a new, statewide coalition that has the vision, capacity and structure to most effectively guide and support Colorado's land conservation community as it evolves to meet current and future challenges.
- To develop and advance tools for navigating land trusts’ common path forward – such as a stewardship endowment calculator, a modernized valuation model for conservation easements, staff and board training resources, and collaborative models to support local land trusts.
Throughout 2018, the Conservation Futures Project – which is made possible with financial support from Gates, GOCO, and others – will bring diverse funders and land conservation interests to the table to identify a path forward. So far, the project has:
- Established a steering committee with a mandate from the CCLT board to shepherd the process toward developing a new coalition;
- Conducted national research to identify a range of statewide organizations whose models are most effective in serving their constituents and advancing common conservation goals.
- Launched a strategic communications effort – including a project website, newsletter, and outreach plan – to ensure that land trust leaders and conservation advocates throughout the state remain informed and engaged throughout the project.
In the coming months, the Conservation Futures Project will conduct a survey of Colorado’s land conservation community, convene a statewide summit in May, and host regional conversations over the summer. The process will culminate in the development a business plan for a re-imagined, resilient, relevant statewide coalition prepared to lead Colorado’s land conservation community into the future.
If you are interested in learning more about this work, please contact Beth Conover at bconover@gatesfamilyfoundation.org.
About the Author
Beth Conover, Senior Vice President – Natural Resources, Rural Communities and Urbanism, Gates Family Foundation. Beth has worked for more than 25 years at the intersection of environmental protection and economic development. She is a senior vice president with the foundation, leading its initiated grant making for natural resources, rural communities and smarter, greener, healthier urbanism. She also chairs the steering commitee for TFN's Intermountain West Funder Network.
About the Intermountain West Funder Network
The Intermountain West Funder Network is a unique opportunity for funders to promote meaningful engagement, strengthen communities, and build philanthropic connections that will leverage funding and support for one of the nation’s most iconic and fastest-growing regions.
Our goal is to create a network of funders who can work alongside each other, as well as with their partners in the nonprofit, public, and private sectors, to address local and regional growth and development issues through meaningful community engagement and innovative solutions in the Intermountain West.
Water, water everywhere: Join us for two upcoming webinars focused on important water issues
By: TFN Staff
Water, water everywhere — and so many issues to consider.
Join us for two water-focused webinars this month that will delve into important issues facing communities across the country.
April's TFN Learning Network Webinar, Let's Fix it Together: Effective Ways to Engage Your Community on Water Issues, takes place from 2 to 3 p.m. ET Wednesday April 11. (Register here!)
Community foundations across the country are increasingly engaging on a variety of local water issues, including aging water and wastewater systems, water and human health challenges, flooding and climate resilience, and disaster preparedness.
This learning webinar, organized by TFN's Urban Water Funders, will feature work and insight from community foundations working in diverse regions, including participants in two community foundation initiatives housed at TFN: the California Community Foundation Water Initiative, which is coordinated by Smart Growth California, and the Philanthropic Preparedness, Resiliency and Emergency Partnership (PPREP), a cohort of community foundations in the Missouri River basin. This webinar will also feature the Great Lakes Community Foundation Water Initiative. Funders will discuss effective ways to engage their community on water issues, sharing success stories, lessons learned and opportunities for future improvement. The webinar will also include relevant information for national funders looking to support the working being done on a wide variety of water issues.
(Please register for this funder-only webinar by Friday, April 6, 2018 to be sure that you receive log-in details.)
A second webinar, Clean Water for Community Health and Justice, takes place from 3 to 4:15 p.m. ET Monday, April 16.
TFN is proud to co-sponsor this webinar along with the Biodiversity Funders Group, Environmental Grantmakers Association, and Health and Environmental Funders Network.
These are turbulent times, but some important progress is being made. New alliances across issues and geographies are forming and strengthening around the nation. The Clean Water for All Coalition brings together advocacy organizations with diverse backgrounds, from all levels of interest to protect and strengthen federal protections and funding for clean drinking water and healthy waterways. Likewise, the Health & Environmental Funders Network’s (HEFN) Drinking Water Group is an informal group of funders that is interested in improving children’s and communities’ environmental health, through a focus on access to safe, affordable, accessible drinking water, and continuing efforts to elevate philanthropic attention to drinking water issues.
Please join us for a conversation with colleagues and representatives of the Clean Water For All Coalition, HEFN Drinking Water Group and other groups for a review of the latest progress and targets for action to protect clean drinking water and healthy waterways for everyone.
Speakers include:
• Nancy Stoner, Water Program Director and Senior Fellow, Pisces Foundation
• Amy Panek, Senior Program Officer, Park Foundation
• Rosemary Enobakhare, Campaign Director, Clean Water for All Coalition
• Nsedu Obot Witherspoon, Executive Director, Children’s Environmental Health Network, and Clean Water for All Coalition Steering Committee member
Register for the Clean Water for Community Health and Justice webinar here.
TFN is proud to announce our 2018 PLACES Fellows!
By Tere Figueras Negrete, Director of CommunicationsTFN is proud to announce our 2018 PLACES Fellows — 16 exemplary leaders in philanthropy who will embark on a year-long curriculum focusing on equity and inclusion. A key element of TFN’s mission is to ensure these important values are reflected in the work we do — and ensuring that we support those working in philanthropy with the tools they need to turn ideals into outcomes. For the second year in a row, our fellowship has drawn a record number of applicants from across the U.S. and Canada, and reflect a deep diversity in experience, expertise and backgrounds. As we grapple with the real-life consequences of structural racism and other inequities, it's hard to understate the important role philanthropy can play in these contentious times. PLACES, whose alumni now number more than 100 individuals, is designed to help professionals in philanthropy embed an equity lens into the work they do. Recent cohorts have addressed issues impacting disenfranchised communities, including structural racism, gender justice, health equity, environmental sustainability, economic development and community engagement — asking difficult questions, exploring uncomfortable truths and confronting their own biases along the way. Many of our PLACES fellows and alumni will be at our TFN 2018 Annual Conference in Houston March 19-21. Feel free to ask them about their PLACES experience, and don't hesitate to reach out to me directly if you'd like to know more about this extraordinary fellowship. Join us in congratulating the 2018 PLACES Cohort, and look forward to seeing you in Houston! To learn more about PLACES and to learn more about our 2018 Fellows, visit our PLACES Fellowship page.
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2018 PLACES Fellows |
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Thomasina Hiers, director of Baltimore civic site, The Annie E. Casey Foundation |
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Maarten Jacobs, director of community prosperity,
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Randy Lopez, program officer, 
Kumar Raj, program officer,
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Suganthi Simon, westside program officer, 
Joanna E.V. Trotter, senior program officer,
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Natalia Valenzuela Swanson, program specialist for healthy eating and active living,
ABOUT PLACES |
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In 2008, the Funders' Network launched PLACES (Professionals Learning About Community, Equity and Smart Growth), its first philanthropic leadership development initiative. PLACES is designed as a year-long fellowship program that offers tools, knowledge and best practices to enhance funder grantmaking decisions in ways that are responsive to the needs and assets of low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. We are currently at 95 fellows and look forward to going over the 100 mark in 2017. As a result of participating in the PLACES program, fellows develop: An in-depth knowledge of how decisions about growth and development relate to issues of race/ethnicity/class; Check out our most recent newsletter. For more information about the PLACES Fellowship, contact Dion Cartwright at dion@www.fundersnetwork.org. |
This Boston teacher defended his ancestral Mississippi home from bulldozers. Hear his story at #TFN Houston | Sunday Night at the Movies
By Tere Figueras Negrete, Director of CommunicationsHow did a young Boston teacher become an unlikely activist fighting to keep developers from bulldozing his ancestral Mississippi community? Join us for Sunday Night at the Movies as we kick off TFN’s 2018 Annual Conference in Houston with a special screening of the gripping documentary Come Hell or High Water: The Battle for Turkey Creek, which chronicles the painful but inspiring journey of Derrick Evans, a Boston teacher who moves home to Mississippi when the graves of his ancestors are bulldozed to make way for the sprawling city of Gulfport.  The screening, produced in partnership with the Wyncote Foundation, takes place from 7 to 9 p.m. Sunday, March 18 at the Hotel Zaza in Houston’s thriving Museum District. We’ll be joined after the one-hour film by Leah Mahan, the film’s director, and Christopher Hastings, executive producer and editorial manager of content for WORLD Channel and WORLDChannel.org, for a Q&A session moderated by Laura Isensee of Houston Public Media. Sunday Night at the Movies has become one of the signature events at TFN's Annual Conference, offering timely and relevant documentaries that help shape our conversations about equity, sustainability and resilience—key issues that we'll explore throughout the Houston conference. Come Hell or High Water: The Battle For Turkey Creek is also a notable example of the power of storytelling and the crucial role funders and allies can play in ensuring these important stories are not only told, but heard. Join us for a movie-friendly dinner of pizza, popcorn and sweet treats, plus wine and beer, during the event. |
About the Film |
Come Hell or High Water: The Battle for Turkey Creek is a film that was more than a decade in the making, said Mahan, who first embarked on the project with Evans in 2001.
 “This is a community that was very much grounded in the land, and the ecology of place. But they didn’t necessarily see themselves as environmentalists,” said Mahan, who travelled with Evans to Turkey Creek, a Gulf Coast community founded in the 1860’s by former slaves — including Evans’ grandfather’s grandfather. “Derrick recognized that there were all these forces aligned against them, and it became clear that he was going to have to find allies.” Evans, a sixth-generation native of Turkey Creek who had forged a teaching career in Boston, became consumed with protecting the community and the creek’s rich wetland habitat: He and his neighbors stand up to powerful corporate interests and politicians, as well as endure both Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill, disasters that further imperil this Gulf Coast community. The award-winning film was first shown nationally on the WORLD's America ReFramed series and has has been official selections at film festivals across the country, including the American Film Showcase and the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital. |
Bridge the Gulf |
 The themes explored and illuminated in the film — such as grappling with the thorny issues of history and race, building strategic alliances, and recognizing the powerful role a mobilized community can play in their own preservation — have a resonance far beyond the banks of Turkey Creek. Mahan and Evans worked with allies to co-found BridgeTheGulfProject.org, a strategic partnership between independent media-makers, regional experts, and grassroots community leaders that has shared more than 700 multimedia stories and other content about the places, cultures, histories, and challenges that define the Gulf Coast region. “The important takeaway is that this is about having a voice, a seat at the table,” said Mahan. “We’re seeing this shift where people tied to the land have a voice, and a recognition of just how powerful those voices can be.” |
About Our Panel |
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Plan Your TripHave you registered yet? Early bird registration ends this Friday, Feb. 16. Register now! Have you booked your room? We've extended our booking deadline to Feb. 21! Call 1.888.880.3244 for reservations and mention the FUNDERS’ NETWORK to receive the conference rate of $229 plus tax per night. You may also book online using the booking code +TFN. Check out our TFN 2018 Annual Conference page for hotel information, conference highlights and other information. Download our TFN Annual Conference Schedule for a full list of events, speakers and sessions. Or you can download our one-page Schedule-at-a-Glance to help plan your visit.
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Casey's Community Matters webinar will focus on embedding equity in large-scale infrastructure projects
By: TFN Staff
The next webinar in The Annie E. Casey Foundation's Community Matters series will address how to embed equity into large-scale infrastructure projects.
The webinar will be moderated by Scot Spencer, associate director for advocacy and influence at foundation, as well as a TFN board member. Spencer is also a member of the advisory board for TFN's PLACES Fellowship, which focuses on helping leaders in philanthropy embed an equity lens into their work.
Inclusive Procurement: Embedding Equity Into Large-Scale Infrastructure Projects
Wednesday, Feb. 21, 1 p.m. ET.
Trillions of dollars will be spent over the next several years to fix our nation’s aging infrastructure – including our transportation, energy, power and water systems. These public and private investments offer a unique opportunity to advance equity and expand contracting opportunities for minority, women-owned and other disadvantaged businesses (MWDBEs). An intentional shift to inclusive procurement is key to growing America’s business pipeline and advancing wealth-building opportunities for entrepreneurs of color.
This webinar will explore strategies to expand the use of inclusive procurement programs in the infrastructure and construction industries. Experts from the Emerald Cities Collaborative, PolicyLink and the business community will share research from the field and offer best practices to better position MWDBEs to compete for large-scale development projects.
Presenters:
- Scot Spencer, Associate Director for Advocacy and Influence, The Annie E. Casey Foundation (moderator)
- Denise Fairchild Ph.D., President and CEO, Emerald Cities Collaborative
- Rick Moore, Vice President and Director of Community Relations, Swinerton
- Kalima Rose, Vice President for Strategic Initiatives, PolicyLink
- Bernida Reagan, Esq., Director of Community and Client Relations, Merriwether & Williams Insurance Services
- Rodney K. Strong, Chairman, Griffin & Strong, P.C.-
To register here for the online event. Please note the registration password: communi
Once the host approves your registration, you will receive a confirmation email message with instructions on how to join the event.
Casey's Community Matters series explores the complex issues surrounding community change — and the lessons we and others have learned from our work in communities around the country.
Need help registering? Contact Alexandra Roose at the Annie E. Casey Foundation.