Fast Forward

“Trying to put band aids on things will never work," says John Schwartz, director and founder of the Voqal Companies. Here Schwartz talks about the work of Voqal to address the “Homework Gap.” He also addresses civic engagement and why political change is vital in making sure everyone has access to good schooling. A public media advocate for 40 years, Schwartz has founded community radio and television stations and brought wireless broadband services to cities throughout the U.S. In 1983, he started what is now called Voqal—five nonprofit organizations that have licenses in the Educational Broadband Service (EBS) band. Using the organizations’ spectrum, commercial operator Clearwire (a Sprint subsidiary) delivers 4G wireless broadband to most major U.S. cities. In exchange for use of the spectrum, Clearwire provides Voqal with royalties, which they allocate to their operations and grantmaking efforts. 

“There are aggressive attacks on voting rights that we did not see in the 1990s," says Judith Browne Dianis, executive director of Advancement Project. Dianis has an extensive background in civil rights litigation and advocacy in the areas of voting, education, housing and employment. She has protected the rights of people of color in the midst of some of the greatest civil rights crises of our modern times, including in Florida after the 2000 election and in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. In this episode, she talks about voting rights today and why she believes the trend of making it harder to vote is something that will continue. She discusses her work on the ground in Florida during the 2000 election, what that tells us about today and how she started a voting protection program as a result. She also covers communities’ relationships to voter rights laws and shares opinions on potential structural change to voting in the U.S.

Ruy Teixeira is a senior fellow at both The Century Foundation and American Progress. He is also co-director of States of Change: Demographics and Democracy project, a collaboration that brings together American Progress, the American Enterprise Institute and demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institution. He is the author or co-author of seven books, including America’s New Swing Region: Changing Politics and Demographics in the Mountain West; Red, Blue and Purple America: The Future of Election Demographics; The Emerging Democratic Majority; America’s Forgotten Majority: Why the White Working Class Still Matters; and The Disappearing American Voter, as well as hundreds of articles, both scholarly and popular.

“Impact investing is a practice and it’s something you get better at or you get more comfortable with," says Elizabeth McGeveran who joined The McKnight Foundation in 2014 as director of impact investing. She is responsible for the foundation’s $200 million investment in businesses and funds that are building the low-carbon economy, improving the water quality of the Mississippi River and contributing to a thriving, sustainable Minnesota. This portfolio represents 10 percent of the foundation’s $2 billion endowment. McGeveran also provides environmental, social and governance expertise and evaluation across the entire endowment. On this episode, McGeveran talks about how the foundation looked at ways to leverage its assets and came to view its endowment's market earnings as an underused resource. She talks about the process the board went through to assess potential shifts in alignment, describes the Midwest Climate and Energy Program and the Carbon Efficiency Fund.

Susan Voigt is program manager at the Medica Foundation. Before joining Medica, she was employed by several nonprofits, start-ups and IBM. As someone who has been on the grantee end of incorporating evaluation into the work and is now on the funder side, Voigt has real insights about how evaluation tools can and should be used as tools for learning rather than just accountability. In this episode, she also talks about common shared metrics as a big picture idea and explains the idea of field of practice evaluation.

"We're trying to get the funding closest to the people who are most impacted by these social and economic issues," says Carolyn Link, executive director of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation. In her role, Link oversees all operations and strategic direction for the foundation. On this episode, she talks about changes to a grant application process and how it can alter who you're welcoming in, and how funder/fundee collaborations are perceived. 

With decades of experience in the civic sector, Marcia Ballinger and Lars Leafblad work with foundations, nonprofits and institutions of higher education to help them make important decisions about leadership hires. In this episode of the podcast, Ballinger and Leafblad talk about what organizations must think about when recruiting new leadership and how they can include stakeholders.

“One of the best signs of a financially healthy nonprofit is a nonprofit that ends its operating year with a surplus," says Kate Barr, executive director of Nonprofits Assistance Fund. Barr has been making meaning out of financial information and strategies for decades, with stints as an arts administrator and a bank executive. Her goal is “to help people connect the dots between mission and business model.” In this episode, Barr talks about how funders consider which organizations they elect to collaborate with or support. She also explains the challenges of a one-size-fits-all approach to evaluating whether an organization qualifies for funding, and she breaks down the idea of core mission support.

Bush Foundation communications director Dominick Washington joins us to explain what he calls “Whole Pig” philanthropy, a way of trying to have an impact at every level and part of an organization. He also talks about how his political and nonprofit background informs his philanthropic work and the ways he thinks about partnerships and cross-sector relationships. He also covers the use of budgetary systems as models for other operations and how to encourage a culture of collaboration within an organization.

MCF President Trista Harris shares her take-aways from a training at the Institute for the Future and provides a look at where philanthropy is headed. She also talks about what hover boards mean to philanthropy.

Ho Nguyen is a program officer at PFund Foundation. Formerly, she was the grassroots advocacy coordinator with Pro-Choice Resources, and she has been actively engaged in anti-racist work and social justice strategies for over a decade. Her background is in housing, homelessness, poverty, and ensuring that all people and families have access to safe and affordable housing. She is currently on the Board of Directors for the MN Coalition for the Homeless.

Leah Goldstein Moses founded The Improve Group in 2000 with a vision to improve programs and organizations that impact the world. In this conversation, we talk with Moses and The Improve Group’s research and evaluation director Jennifer Obinna about how grantmakers can and should be using evaluation in their work. They address best practices in evaluation, the importance of thinking through how evaluation aligns with your identity as a foundation, building evaluation capacity, how to decide when to bring in outside help for evaluation and what to do with evaluation data once you’ve captured it. They also talk about setting realistic expectation for the outcomes of investing in evaluation and share why they are personally passionate about their work.

This past September, Sarah Eagle Heart became CEO of Native Americans in Philanthropy. Eagle Heart is a 2014 recipient of the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development’s “40 under 40 Award,” which recognizes emerging Native American leaders who have demonstrated leadership, initiative and dedication and made significant contributions in business or their community. She is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Nation of Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, and she has a master's in business administration, a BA in mass communications and a BA in American Indian studies. 

Beth Zemsky is a community organizer, educator, psychotherapist and organizational leader. In this interview, Zemsky talks with Alfonso Wenker, MCF's director of program strategy and racial equity, about her multidisciplinary approach to intercultural organizational development.

“My life has been focused on a deep belief that education is a liberating force in human development," says Dr. Eric Jolly, new president and CEO of Minnesota Philanthropy Partners. In this episode, MCF president, Trista Harris sits down with Jolly for a conversation about his transition from decades spent working in academia and the non-profit sector to the world of foundations. He talks about the unique role community foundations play in philanthropy, the outpouring of support he's received from the sector, where Minnesota Philanthropy Partners is as they celebrate 75 years and where they're headed in the next 75.

Terri Ann Lowenthal is a nationally recognized expert on the census and a consultant specializing in the census, the federal statistical system and the use of data for policy purposes. Lowenthal is currently part of The Census Project, a nonpartisan collaborative of census stakeholders supporting the census and other vital Census Bureau programs. Go to censusprojectblog.org for her writing on the subject. In this interview, Lowenthal talks about the importance of the census and the American Community Survey and gives examples of how the collected data is used. She talks frankly about how and why certain legislators and politicians are trying to disrupt data collection and the census overall.

Molly de Aguiar directs the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation’s media grants, while also managing the foundation's communications initiatives. She’s working at the intersection of grantmaking, communications, media and community building. In this interview, she talks about tools and the ways grantmakers can tell their own stories as well as the stories of their grantees. Go to www.grdodge.org to see more.

Akhtar Badshah is the founder and chief catalyst of Catalytic Innovators Group. He led Microsoft’s global community investment and employee program for 10 years. Badshah spoke at the 2015 Minnesota Council on Foundations Annual Conference. In this interview, he talks about impact investing, mission-driven corporate giving, and the importance of putting a face and name to the communities grantmakers serve.

Trista sits down for a wide-ranging talk with Paul Williams, president and CEO of Project for Pride in Living. Topics they discuss include the need for grantmakers viewing communities as assets, the importance of scale in making a real impact, and Paul's wish for philanthropy to create greater leverage with government.

MCF President Trista Harris sits down for a wide-ranging conversation with Paul Williams, president and CEO of Project for Pride in Living. Topics they discuss include the need for grantmakers to view communities as assets, the importance of scale in making a real impact, and his wish for philanthropy to create greater leverage with government.