Members tell us they crave more networking opportunities as well as forums for peer exchange and learning. Inspired by the traditional book club model, we created the Conversations in Philanthropy Reading Group offered in partnership between Northern California Grantmakers and the Foundation Center.
This group will help you get through that stack of work-related reading you've been meaning to do while also helping you to connect with colleagues. We've all had that pile of recent reports, articles, and guides that we hope to find time to someday read. Please join this newly-organized reading group to follow through on that aspiration and stay up to date on the latest studies and trends, while exchanging ideas and inspiration with your NCG colleagues.
The group will meet approximately six times per year, and as the group takes shape members will help identify themes, schedule, and readings. Facilitator Janet Camarena, librarian and director of the Foundation Center-SF, will draw from the vast content the Foundation Center regularly indexes for the field from a variety of partners and publishers, as well as from the suggestions of group members.
Pre-Conversation Reading
Opening Up: Demystifying Funder Transparency
Opening Up: Demystifying Funder Transparency, explores how transparency can strengthen credibility, improve grantee relationships, facilitate greater collaboration, increase public trust, reduce duplication of effort, and build communities of shared learning. Opening Up encourages foundations to implement transparency strategies, including increased web presence, clarifying and posting grantee guidelines and qualifications, and making internal reports (including performance and program assessments) accessible to the public. Why transparency? According to Opening Up, "Transparency can help foundations build and strengthen relationships that can ultimately help them make a bigger and stronger impact."
Target Audience
All reading programs are free and open to staff of NCG member foundations. To learn more about the series contact NCG Program Specialist Angela Jones at 415.777.4111 ext. 15 or at ajones[at]ncg[dot]org.
Facilitator
Janet Camarena has served as director of the Foundation Center San Francisco office since 2001 and has worked for the Center in a variety of roles since 1995. As director her responsibilities include leading a team of six professionals in offering extensive outreach for the Center's resources and services in the Bay Area and beyond, planning and overseeing educational programming offered in the Western region, carrying out donor development and cultivation, producing and conducting online programming such as the Philanthropy Chat podcast series, and most recently the creation and evolution of the Glasspockets web site, which is dedicated to promoting foundation transparency and was recently nominated for a Webby award as one of the top five nonprofit web sites worldwide.