6-6+Draft_Letter+from+the+Network+Weaver

A Letter from the Network Weaver
Few funders would argue that meaningful progress on tough problems can happen by building siloed organizations. And few would argue that the primary role of grantmakers is to process financial transactions. Rather, funders understand that they need bigger platforms with diverse players to tackle the complexity of twenty-first century problems. Funders also know that to do this work well they need to act as conveners, champions and matchmakers, connecting together people, ideas, and resources—in addition to getting money out the door. This means investing in more than discrete programs and more than individual organizations; it means investing in understanding ecosystems and catalyzing networks.

Since early 2007 I’ve had the privilege of working with funders who are experimenting with ways to increase their impact by catalyzing networks. Some grantmakers I’ve been in conversation with have been supporting groups of organizations and individuals, convening grantees and pooling funds. Others are brokering connections among leaders in a field, initiating conversations online and in-person and spreading their reach by using social media. The approaches are many.

The problem is that there aren’t best practices yet. Effective ways to catalyze network impact are being invented today and shared conversations about this work are few. Plus, most foundations aren’t set up to work or think in this way—even if it makes intuitive sense. As Marion Kane, former ED of the Barr Foundation told me, “Foundations are built on the banking model. We tend to think of them as being financial transaction institutions, but a lot of our time is spent connecting people and knowledge… [The banking model] structure inhibits their work.” So it’s hard to get up the learning curve as fast as the work deserves and demands in today’s turbulent environment.

To address this challenge, in early 2009, the Monitor Institute formed a community of practice for grantmakers who are intentionally supporting networks and trying to weave connections between people, ideas and resources. It was the brainchild of Chris van Bergeijk, VP of Programs at the Hawaii Community Foundation who was looking for peers who were also trying to support networks.

Around the same time, my colleagues and I had been working with the Packard Foundation in a multi-year partnership to understand how the foundation and the field could tap network potential. Engaging with the community of practice was the natural next step for our work.

In addition to Hawaii Community Foundation and Packard, early leadership also came from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and Grantmakers for Effective Organizations and the process of weaving a group that is now called “Network of Network Funders” was underway. Our community of practice has since engaged about 40 funders from private foundations, community foundations, and donor intermediaries, as well as individual donors, with people coming and going over the two and a half years and growing numbers linked to our “periphery.”

Participants came into the learning network for different reasons. They wanted new strategies for engaging stakeholders. They wanted to open up their foundations to the outside world and experiment with greater transparency and engagement in online conversations. They wanted to better understand how they might participate in networks and what they should invest in. They wanted to step back and assess what’s working with their networks work. While their entry points were diverse, they shared an interest in nurturing networks in order to increase their impact—making connections that lead to better shared understanding, coordination, and access to resources, and creating space for collective intelligence and action to emerge.

Alongside the evolution of the Network of Network Funders, there has been a parallel set of conversations going on in the field of philanthropy about related topics like understanding ecosystems, stakeholder engagement, social media for social change and collective impact. All of these are pieces of the puzzle that members of the Network of Network Funders have been connecting together. Done well, the work requires a deep awareness of the systems in which you’re participating. It requires listening to and engaging diverse stakeholders. It can be enabled by interactive and multi-way communications using social media tools, it can be focused on aligning stakeholders around a shared vision and collective indicators of impact, and more.

This guide is an early attempt to put these pieces together and articulate a set of principles and practices that can help funders catalyze social networks for social change. The community is still actively inventing this space. Our understanding of social change networks is still forming, and the guide is a first stab at organizing what we know. There are still gaps in our knowledge. For instance, the content currently is U.S.-centric and will benefit from more experience of funders working outside the U.S. and with global networks. Think of it as a version 1.0.

The guide will be successful if funders are inspired to apply some of the concepts, develop new and better approaches and share them with their peers in philanthropy. We hope you will join our community of practice by diving in to contribute what you’re learning, or simply observing from the periphery.

Sincerely, Diana Scearce

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