NCG's Blog
April 26, 2018
The Kenneth Rainin Foundation is not alone in wondering how to make more of its dollars and influence to help organizations stay put as rents continue to soar across the Bay Area. Hear from Shelley Trott at the Kenneth Rainin Foundation on the story of its big bet, the risks they took, and the payoff for Bay Area arts organizations.
April 26, 2018
NCG President and CEO, Ellen LaPointe, interviewed our Senior Fellow, Pam David, on her next play in philanthropy and baseball.
April 13, 2018
Andrea Zussman, who joined NCG in the fall of 2016 to establish a Disaster Resilience, Relief, and Recovery program to support regional philanthropic disaster planning and readiness, will be leaving her position to devote herself full-time to the needs of her family. Andrea will continue to guide NCG as a Senior Advisor and consultant.
April 9, 2018
We are pleased to announce that California Attorney General Xavier Becerra will give the opening remarks at NCG’s Annual Conference next Monday on the question...
April 4, 2018
Our state is great because of the strength we draw from our diversity, including the 10 million immigrants who live here. Immigrants and their families are our classmates and colleagues, our neighbors, and family members. No matter where someone comes from and regardless of citizenship status, we are stronger when we work together, find new ways to deal with old challenges, and ensure that everyone has the opportunity to pursue their dreams.
March 29, 2018
Mayor Michael Tubbs recently spoke with NCG in preparation for an upcoming Stockton Reinvention Tour for funders. Mayor Tubbs was elected in 2016 in a landslide victory with 70% of the vote. Since then, Stockton has become the second most fiscally-healthy city in the state and has innovated new programs like a basic universal income pilot, which guarantees a monthly income of $500 to a segment of Stockton residents, and Advance Peace, which is a gun violence prevention program that pays those most likely to commit gun-related crimes.
March 29, 2018
NCG member Sonia Gonzales recently announced her departure from the California Bar Foundation. Thank you for your dedicated work, Sonia! The NCG community wishes you all the best. Take a look at her community letter discussing her departure.
March 29, 2018
The Bay Area’s real estate boom is on full display from our office windows. The dizzying new Salesforce tower gleams over the city, and smaller skyscrapers are quickly sprouting up in the blocks around it. Across the Bay, Oakland is seeing historically low office vacancy rates and, like San Francisco, skyrocketing rents. Developers in Oakland are renovating older buildings in downtown and uptown, many that have housed nonprofits, to convert into Class A office properties. All of this construction will create new market rate office space and will likely continue to attract more companies to our region.
March 19, 2018
Last fall, NCG kicked off an exploration of the end-of-life care field. We wanted to see how we in philanthropy might be able to dig deeper on this issue that will inevitably impact every single one of us. Our goal is to uncover where there could be opportunities for engagement, learning, and potentially collaboration.
March 15, 2018
This year, NCG is creating a new kind of space adapted from the tech sector’s ‘un-conference’ and tracing its origins to indigenous practices of creating open space for differing views. This ‘new space’ which, for our purposes, we’ll call Idea Fest, plays off the resonant themes of the morning to generate 30 ideas that can change how we’re thinking about the opportunities before us and what we’re doing about it.