Search Results

I'm excited to share that NCG has launched its Collective Resilience Initiative, a new effort to support and strengthen the region’s nonprofit sector. The initiative focuses on the key factors impacting nonprofit sustainability in the region and the types of grantmaking practices that will best support evolving organizational needs. 

We no longer have to wonder what we would have done if we’d been around at the peak of the civil rights movement. Whatever it is, we will be doing it now. These words ring from our conference. This moment demands more from us. This moment demands we be explicitly clear: Black lives matter! This moment demands we say their names: Nina Pop, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade and remember Oscar Grant.

These past months, we've found ourselves returning to the same question: are our plans still serving their purpose or is there a greater opportunity made possible by the crises in which we find ourselves? We asked NCG's board, staff, and membership to weigh-in on how they're balancing this question. We'll publish their reflections in the months to come in this series on persistence and adaptivity. Glen Galaich of the Stupski Foundation kicks us off with insights, confessions from his consulting years, and a look at what he’s paying special attention to right now

Many voices in philanthropy are speaking up, some for the first time, about the protests, the killings, and the structural racism behind them. We welcome all-comers and stand in our belief in Black, Indigenous, and communities of color as defenders of democratic ideals. We too are grieving and angry; structural and anti-Black racism are root causes of wealth, health, employment, and education disparities. The enforcement of racist policies is putting Black and Brown lives at the mercy of the pandemic and police brutality’s deadly toll.

Philanthropy California, Environmental Grantmakers Association, and Smart Growth California organized the Grounded Action: Grassroots Movements and Climate Justice dialogue series in partnership with the CLIMA Fund in April 2021. This two-part series aimed to unpack different forms of grassroots climate action and hear from funders and movement leaders on how to support climate movements. The authors had the opportunity to share their experiences in the second dialogue of the series and get into the nitty-gritty of funding grassroots movements.

Philanthropy is full of paradoxes that hold us back. As we enter 2024, one of the most troubling philanthropic paradoxes is emerging across the field. Foundations tend to retreat when they are needed the most.  Why? Because foundations are taught to value perpetuity above our collective humanity.   

Philanthropy brings a special appetite for innovation and has the capacity for greater risk-taking – and those stances are needed at this moment to preserve affordable housing. When affordable housing is destroyed – through neglect and disinvestment, demolition, increased rents - people lose their homes, neighborhoods lose community, and the region becomes a more congested and less interesting place.