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A two-part event series, the second of which will include in-person tour of flood affected communities in the Central Valley, including Tulare Lake. We strongly recommend funders attend both sessions, as in-person connections with communities and with other funders are critical at this time.
There is a new opportunity to allow Oakland residents the chance to participate in elections with a public campaign financing program. The initiative is modeled off of a similar, successful effort in Seattle. In the 2022 mid-term election, voters have a role in supporting this effort to combat large corporate and interest group campaign financing – passing this proposition is a vital step toward democratizing campaign funding.
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.
I am new to philanthropy coming from movement-building and nonprofit work. Feeling a little out of place, not knowing all the jargon, institutions, or resources out there. Where do I start? How can I stay connected to my roots with movement-building work in this field? What does building community mean in philanthropy?
If you're new to philanthropy, or interested in sharpening your skills, the New Grantmakers Institute (NGI): Grantmaking for the 21st Century, helps build your understanding of best practices for ethical and effective grantmaking and helps you place yourself within the ecosystem that you are now a part of.
The American banking system is broken, and the evidence is unmistakable. From the recent failure of one of the largest banks in the U.S. to ongoing predatory products blanketing lower-income communities, it is clear that we are at an inflection point. Bank regulators currently fall into the familiar trap of trying to fix the symptoms such as banning certain products, minor regulatory modifications without fixing the root causes of structural inequities. This results in repeated crises usually requiring taxpayer-funded bailouts but no meaningful change of the system. We must find better opportunities to address staggering losses of wealth through failures in the banking system while also building new structures that support economic equity and help build and preserve more local community wealth.
I’ll be the first to acknowledge that I’ve arrived as NCG’s CEO on the shoulders of many others that came before me. Two of the strongest shoulders belong to my first professional mentor and a heavyweight in philanthropic circles, Joe Brooks. During my seventeen years as a work partner and friend at The San Francisco Foundation and then PolicyLink, I learned more from him than I could ever adequately describe. He had a habit of saying things that were increasingly profound the more you thought about them. One of those sayings was, “how much do you need to know to act?”, often dropped in a setting surrounded by other foundation colleagues where he was about to propose bold action to engage some of the Bay Area’s most vexing social challenges