Name: Why More Funders Should Be Using Their Convening Power to Meet the Moment
Uploaded: 2025-09-18T16:30:59.692Z
Duration: 55 min 48 s
Description: Why More Funders Should Be Using Their Convening Power to Meet the Moment

Transcript for "Why More Funders Should Be Using Their Convening Power to Meet the Moment": Hey, everybody. Thank you for joining today's webinar on why funders should be using their convening power to meet the moment. I'm your host, Michael Olinger, from Blackbaud. I've been with the company for over three years, and I'm really passionate about all of our products. And I'm really excited to, learn more about this topic with our speaker, Adriana Cosgrove from Capacitive Consulting. And before we get started, I will just go through a few housekeeping items. First and foremost, the audio is being broadcast through your computer speakers. If you have any kind of issues, you just try refreshing your browser. That typically works. Or you can try to, go back to the link you had received before. After this webinar is over, you'll receive a recording of it within twenty four hours, and, you can use the q and a tab on your right side of your screen to ask questions. You can use the chat to answer any prompts that either Adriana or I give you throughout the webinar. And, if you need to adjust any of your settings, you can use the cog wheel below to do that. I'm gonna give people just a couple more seconds to join, and then I'm going to hand it over to our speaker, Adriana, whom I'm really excited to hear from. Alright. It looks like everybody who's joined us is going to. So, Adriana, go ahead. Take it away. Thank you. Hey, everyone. I'm really excited about this. When, Blackbaud kinda reached out to see if I'd be interested in doing a topic, I remember saying, wait. I can pick? Really? Like, I can I can choose? And they're like, yeah. Yeah. You can choose. Oh, I was so excited that I would be able to kind of talk about this, topic that you'll see shortly. I'm very excited to discuss. I think it's it's timely. I think, frankly, it's kind of fun. It's creative. It's, I think it's the right time to be thinking like this. I I will give you a little bit of context about myself later, but kind of as a former funder, it's one of my favorite tools that you have. So thank you, Blackbaud, for that was a long way of saying, for inviting me to this. I'm really excited to be here. I will not read my bio. I'll tell you a little bit about myself later. Let's get into the fun part. Alright. So the topic today is why I think more funders should be using their convening power to meet this this moment. So, let me start by just giving y'all a little bit of a sense of who I am and who my, my team and I are at Capacitor. So Adrianna Adrianna, if you're feeling spicy, Kaz riff. So my background so I, studied social psychology, specifically psychology at undergrad, at Harvard. And when I was there, I really enjoyed my classes on social psychology, organizational psychology, leadership and management. And, really, for me, I think part of it is I I am a first generation American. Both my parents are immigrants. Like, I've always kind of worked in and for kind of nonprofit or public sector, public interest organizations. And a lot of kind of a lot of the work that I've been exposed to since I was, you know, about 16 and started working is very kind of community oriented, collaborative, group group driven. And as a result, when I was there, you know, I was the first in my family to go to college and I remember being, like, kinda nervous like, oh god, I gotta do something, like, big and important. But my parents, shout out to them, I they'll probably never watch this. You know, they very much encouraged me to kind of follow the things that interested me because then I would find something that made sense in that kind of, you know, vein kind of naturally. Well, something that always interested me around those topics is what makes groups work really well together? You know, the kind of technical, you know, term of art is like high performing teams, but really just what makes groups of humans work really well together especially in the public interest. And the kind of flip side of that is and why do dysfunctions arise? And I find it fascinating that, you know listen. Humans be humaning in every context. You know? So usually, the issues that show up in one context show up in almost every context where there are people working together. So I'm really interested in the dysfunction piece too. So I, graduated from college, went to work at a nonprofit law a nonprofit, sorry, consulting company, which still exists, changing our world in New York City. And I worked on strategy and a lot of fundraising strategy for nonprofits and big NGOs and international organizations like the world food program. And, again, it was very interesting to me to see how the issues that folks were dealing with were really systemic and went beyond any one organization. And a lot of the issues were I don't wanna say fixable. I'm gonna say addressable, usually requiring some input of resources or capacity to kind of address them. I also was very interested in the fact that a lot of the kind of underlying issues that these nonprofits and funders, we work with funders too, were dealing with were kind of, bigger than any one kind of corner of the world. They were usually kind of addressed best through policy. I'm very interested in advocacy as well. So I ended up going to law school, which was great. And I assumed that I would work at a nonprofit, an NGO, maybe a funder, That's like a like a COO type flow. I was always I was always very interested in operations and people and and and teams, and I'm you know, I have that kind of love of the piece of the law that is about finding the issue and addressing it. But then I graduated during the recession. So no nonprofits were hiring. And as a result, it's very funny. I entered I ended up in the federal government almost by accident. So I got into the state department, the US Department of State via a program called the Presidential Management Fellowship that was just ended this year, but it was a great a great program for a long time there. And it allowed me to work, as an avid and, eventually, sorry, a funder. So I was hired by this part of the state department that does criminal justice and other kinds of rule of law for an assistance, so a good fit for me coming out of law school. And at the time, Afghanistan was the biggest, kind of project in that bureau issue foreign policy issue in that bureau. This is relevant later because I'll use use some of these things as examples later on. So I worked in Afghanistan for three years. I worked on Ukraine for three years, and I have so much love for that country. Man. And then was basically tapped to to lead the Caribbean team. So Haiti, Dominican Republic, 13 countries in Eastern Caribbean. I led an awesome team. We had seven embassies out in the field. So much cool, interesting, frankly, funding, work being done there. Kind of at the intersection of three really interesting things, national security policy, international development, and kind of, like, international crime, rule of law, safety, access to justice. It was just a fascinating little corner of the universe to work in. And frankly, as you can probably tell, I loved it. And then the last two years I was at the department, I worked directly for the director general of foreign service. Kinda tapped me to come help make it a better place to work. And, like, in line with, as you can see, the kind of theme of what I enjoy, some of my favorite work as a funder especially was around the capacity building that we did over time with some of these nonprofits and NGOs. And as a funder, I really enjoyed kind of building up a peer community of other funders. I mean, when I was US government, it was folks like, you know, my my counterparts at The UK, or in the EU or various countries that were kind of also working in that country. But I I enjoyed very much here. It is again, like, the group and community and, like, people oriented dynamic of trying to kind of build the ability to make an impact in the world over the over over a longer timeline than, you know, maybe a day or two and thinking more in terms of years. So when I decided to leave the state department in 2021 and start my own consulting company, which now is a team, we have four full time staff, another seven that work with us on a project basis. Most of what we do is kind of developing strategy, which I think of as like, okay. What are you trying to do? No. But for real. No. Really. But, like, how are you gonna do it? And then building the capacity to actually do it. It's my favorite work. It's why we named it Capacita. I'm really as you can see, I love this stuff. But today, again, when Blackbaud asked me what I wanna talk about right now, I thought, you know, I really wanna talk to funders. We work with a lot of funders as our clients. And I just love this topic of, you know, and under and I'm not saying folks don't know what it is, all of you on here. There's, like, however many of you. I'm sure you've used convenience before, but I do think of it as an under kind of discussed element and a and a more flexible one than I think a lot of my clients and and the communities that I'm that I spend a lot of time in think about as, like, one that is particularly effective when you're not quite sure exactly what would be most effective. That's what I'm getting at. Okay. So, let me move on from here. I want a little bit of engagement from all of you just to hear if you feel comfortable. If you could oh, Carrie, humans definitely be humaning. Thank you for the validation, man. If if any of you could change could share your name and org. I just like to kind of see who's here so I can, you know, format what I'm saying a little bit to the to the humans in the room. Shout out, Carrie. If you feel comfortable. No worries if you don't. But if you do, I would love to kind of scroll quickly and see you here. Alright. Oh, thank you, Tricia. Okay. Well, I'll just speak to the moment just for a minute. I mean, I think, you know, it's it right there in the title. Without getting too deep and and without spending too much time on it, I think what I will say here is, you know, I was thinking about it in preparing, and I think history has shown us that nonprofits and funders have always kind of worked through cycles of change and disruption. And I think today's dynamics feel particularly intense. But I honestly believe that the sector's history, you know, especially here in The United States, it really shows how, you know, creative and, like, community driven, empathetic solutions can emerge in some of the most challenging times. Right? And I think there therefore, it's really critical and I think crucial, honestly, for funders to be and and nonprofits too, I should say, but really for funders to be to be keeping, like, our eyes on the really long view, you know, and and, like, investing now in the systems and and really, like, the people and the relationships that are gonna sustain impact long after the current moment. You know? So when I'm talking about this topic today, I'm really trying to think beyond thinking about how to address the current moment by thinking beyond the current moment, if that makes sense. So thank you. I should quickly look in to see everybody. Oh, y'all are from such you're you're from all over. Super cool. Oh, I see a North Carolina person there. High five. I'm in Raleigh. We're outside of Raleigh, technically. Oh, awesome. Okay. Sorry. Thank you. Thanks for for those of you that put your name in. Okay. So today, what are we doing? So I really wanna get into, you know, the pieces of convening that I think folks don't think about as much. So I wanna talk about, you know, how you can think about convenings that, you know, yes, deepen relationships. Sure. Share knowledge, which I think is one that people often think about. You know, spark ideas, man. I'm obsessed with this one. We'll we'll get into this later. But really, again, the name is Capacitor. So, obviously, I have a bias in a point of view, but strengthen organizations too. You know, people don't obvious don't often think about how well designed, well, like, strategic convenings can really strengthen the organizations in the room, especially, in this case, thinking of your grantees. So let's get into that as well. So as you can see, I was a you know, I I I had I had the kind of US flag right under my name. And I know I don't I didn't see anybody who's coming from US government. Like, I am aware that, you know, a local non a local non profit or a local funder is not gonna have the same name recognition as the US government is convening you to a conversation. I'm aware. But I am saying that it it's not, it's not completely different. Right? Like, the power that you have as a funder especially in being able to kinda convene, you know, I joke with people, but, man, they're at least gonna read your invite. You know what I mean? Like, they're at least gonna think about attending your convening or coming to your convening. And some of it absolutely has to do with the power dynamics, obviously. Some of it has to do with this kind of concept I think a lot about around, you know, the Eisenhower matrix, folks call it. So apparently president Eisenhower. I don't know if this is an apocryphal story at this point. I've heard it so many times. But apparently, he once spoke about kind of, you know, how does he get things done and how he thinks about his work in terms of the urgent and the nonurgent and the important and the not important, and that kind of gives you a quadrant and how he tries to kind of, you know, spend as much time in the important and urgent and not necessarily urgent, but important. And I would say it's easier for funders to create space for the not necessarily urgent, but important conversations or learnings or, you know, strategy sessions than nonprofits who are constantly really having to live in the both urgent and important quadrant just because of resource constraints and, you know, demands on their time. So when I was a funder, I often really a lot thought about what can we do that it's harder for our community to do? What can we like, it's it was nothing for us to host folks for a lunch. Whereas for my nonprofit, you know, grantees, it was hard for them to do it, not even getting into the politics between and among them, small p, politics between and among them. And, like, oh, you're hosting. Well, I'm not going to your thing. And it's sometimes easier as a funder to just step into that spot and kind of could be. Okay. Oh, well, I gotta press this. There we go. Because, honestly, like, this is where I'm a total oh, listen. I'm a self, self loving nerd. Like, I I am proud of being a nerd is what I'm saying. And I I don't mind being a little bit, like it's worth being being aware of the kind of big picture and being a little bit, twee. Like, listen, being a funder is such a gift. We're so lucky when we're playing that role. Right? It you have power to help. And at the end of the day, like, man, what a privilege. Right? Like, what a what a gift. And I also like to think about kind of the role of funders in terms of ecology. Right? I actually shout out to some peer friends of mine over at the INE Institute up in Boston. They do a lot of writing around this, around kind of the the ecology of social movements. Like, there are all these different roles. Funders play a role as well as grassroots, as well as educators, as well. There are all these different kind of, like, actors in creating social change and creating whatever it is we're looking for, a a better world. Right? Funders play a really crucial role in that, and it's worth, like, kind of, you know, being aware of how important it is and frankly how cool to do. So, when I think about how you're a part of it, I this is where I'm a big picture person who likes detail. I'm like, hey. I love I was joking with one of my, coaching clients this morning. He and I were talking about how we kind of thrive in the gray. And what I mean by the gray is I love the big picture. That's why I'm doing this in that corporate law. Like, I'm doing this because I'm trying to kind of make the most of my my one precious one one wild precious life. Shout out, Mary Oliver. But I also I like the big picture, but, like, at the end of the day, what really gets me going is yeah. But how? But how can we affect change with the resources and the reality and the landscape and the context that we have in front of us? And for me, it's all about strategy, baby. Like, I love spending time with my clients, with the team, anytime. I'm really, frankly, using my power, whatever it looks like. I love spending time thinking about how do I wanna use this lever? Like, how what do I want what what chain am I looking to make, and how can I do it? So when it comes to convening, even more so, you know, like, I really like spending time in this, like, what are we trying to do set of questions. Right? How how can we use the money, the time, the resources, the fact that they'll open our emails, the fact that, like, it's us, so they're probably gonna feel like they wanna come. Right? How do we use that to make a difference for the folks and the issue that we're that we're trying to kind of affect? So when I think about kind of the the way to approach convenience, I I just love to start with the why. And, you know, there was a book that came out in 2020, I wanna say, maybe 2021 by Priya Parker on, like, the art of gathering. And I love the way she kind of talks about, like, even a birthday party, even a a baby shower, these things where we kind of assume function well, sorry. Form equals function. In other words, well, it's a birthday party, so we're gonna have to have, you know, birthday candles and a cake and and, you know, I don't know, the the the the right the flowers and the she's like, stop thinking about the kind of what it looks like and spend more time thinking about what you're trying to get out of it. Right? A a twelfth birthday party may be different than what you're trying to get out of a fortieth birthday party in terms of support from your friends or connection. And what does it really have to look like? A wedding doesn't necessarily always need to look like a wedding. I took that, and I remember reading that book and going, yes. But nonprofits and funders because it's the same idea. Like, don't just take the fact that you hear convening, you hear gathering, you hear meeting, you hear workshop, you hear conference, and think and this is what it needs to be. To me, I'm like, zoom out. Why do you want to convene your community right now? What is it you're trying to do? And I'm like, this by the way, this is not a final list. These are just the ones that I thought of as I was sitting around in Canva going, and there's this one and there's this one. So sharing knowledge and tools is one. It's again, capacity builder. Of course, I love this one. Like, I and I really especially love it when you can do it kind of create community and teach. My favorite, and we'll get in more about this later. Building community and trust. I I wanna spend 2 seconds on this because, again, as someone from social psychology kind of undergirds everything that I do and that my team and I do, I'm often talking to my nonprofit clients around. Like, they're always like, well, how do we, like, kind of build a stronger pipeline of funding? Like, we know that's important to, like, our overall health. Like, should we just, like, write really great applications having, you know, having you reviewed and led technical evaluation panels for for massive amounts of grant applications? Yes. A strong and solid application is important, but it's the trust underlying your ability to show me via that application or because you're already doing the work in the country or because I've heard of your organization or or or that I can trust as a steward of that fund funding. I know those of you that are funders think of it this way too. As a steward of that funding that I can trust, frankly, investing in you. That trust conversation is such a big part of the, like, two way street between funders and nonprofits and between nonprofits that are working on similar issues or on sim or in similar areas. We're building trust. I often say to my clients, you can't fast forward it. There's no shortcut. Because, again, Carrie, humans be humaning. Like, we can't shortcut trusting another person. You have to, I think it's Brene Brown who uses the kind of analogy of, you know, building trust is putting, like, one marble at a time into a jar, and it takes time, whereas losing trust is, like, dumping them all out in one fell swoop. It's similar for me where every additional convening allows you to build trust with your grantee community and then with each other too, you know, and you can't pass forward that. It takes physical time in proximity, in community with each other. Again, not necessarily everything needs to be in person, but spending real connective time, and you can't pass forward that as people. Okay. Sorry. That was that was as you can see, I feel very strongly about some of these things. I love this third one because there's this an idea there's this idea. So Adam Grant, who is the year above me at Harvard, actually. So I was, like, in a class with him. And it's so funny. He's just, like, so well known for this now. He I remember reading, an article that he put out a few years ago on this concept of burstiness, he called it. So it's I think he was using the example of, like, the daily show lighters room and how, you know, the after a certain amount of time spent in psychological safety between and among the people in the room, they were able to kinda have this, like, bursty energy where they were sparking new ideas and being really creative and really kind of innovative, but they have to be in the room. They have to have been convened. And I have seen this happen with groups of nonprofits working on the same issue, with groups of funders working in the same issue, and with mixed groups where you can get the kind of burstiness if you create the kind of conditions for it, where you can have real breakthroughs, that that translate into impact, you know, in real life. So I love that one. Supporting grantee wellness and resilience. I'll get into this more later, but one of my favorite funder clients, they hosted a massive convening in Puerto Rico, like, right after the pandemic for their folks that were working on one of the hardest issues, frankly, in The United States. And I love the way they framed it. It was like, we are flying you here. Number one goal is restore, relax, go to the pool, go to the beach. And we're also gonna provide learnings and trainings, and we want to get you to know each other, like, sure. But and, man, I was walk I was I was doing kind of a some capacity building there and doing a session, but I loved talking to all the participants about how meaningful it was for this funder to, frankly, acknowledge and see that this was a need. And to stinking provide it. I mean, the the levels of, frankly, like, goodwill and depth of again, I'm aware that not all funders have the ability to do this. I'm not trying to say that you all need to be doing it tomorrow, but I am saying to the extent that you can this is something that deepens trust and relationships, and and and I would almost say, like, serves as, like, the compost for anything that comes above it. Right? So, elevating grantee voices in leadership. Right? Hearing from them, allowing them to learn from each other. You hearing from, like, them on what's really happening. Like, these convenings are such a great way to do that. Strengthening organizational capacity. My favorite. This is, like, the this is the kind of model of providing some kind of capacity building support via the convenings. I love this. And then sometimes you're just trying to kind of get folks together to seek a strategy or some coordination around some really sticky thing. For example, I'm doing the convening the second after like, I did one, and then there's gonna be another six month later one on, like, a big topic right now around some like, some policy reform changes. And when I was facilitating the first one, it was that what are like, what's going on and what are we gonna do? And it was very fascinating to have those kind of 50 or so people in the room and coalesce around, like, what are the issues? What are the opportunities? What do we think the priorities are? And to have funders in the room and nonprofits in the room and end up with something that ended up being really a very, like, pragmatic, actionable, there we go, takeaway that now six months later, many of them have moved on it. The funders have started to orient some money. There's some I mean, again, I I I know that I'm not trying to say that convening is a silver bullet answer to everything, but I'm trying to say that it is a very powerful tool in your tool belt as funders. Okay. Oh, James, I just saw. When you're a funder, people answer the phone. Yes. Hell, yeah. Absolutely right. I felt the same way when I was a funder. Like, look at this. I always get my emails answered. So thank you for that validation. And then I just wanna say this one one piece around, like, it's not just about the size of your convening. Right? I have a lot of funder clients that are like, well, we can't really afford a big conference right now. To me, that's no. No. No. It it's about being strategic about the options available to you. Based on the why, right, based on the why in the previous slide, what design, what format makes the most sense? Right? So we'll get into the different options in a second, but my from my real feeling of it is I love to think about it in that kind of again, I don't know, apocryphal, who knows, Einstein quote of, like, if I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend fifty five minutes defining the problem and five minutes solving it. The equivalent here is if I had a client when this has happened, when I have a client who's like, I'm interested in convening, we spend a lot of time thinking about the purpose and therefore the strategy. Like, what okay. So we're you're trying to do this or these sets of things. Okay. Then how can we design something that is in line with getting at these types of things? Like, man, there's nothing better than a well designed convening. I'm telling you. I've been to many. Okay. So I like to think about kind of convening on a spectrum. This is not, you know, mutually exclusive, exclusive or or or exhaustive list. But I do like to think of it kind of, like, on a spectrum. And, actually, let me just go to the next page and show you what it looks like. Unofficial convening spectrum. So I like to think of it as, like, big conferences on the left and these, like I'll call them, like, smaller conversations on the right. By the way, this is not a, like, the left is more expensive and the right is less expensive because there are some versions of, for example, pure cohort pure cohorts that can be very expensive if you're really investing in, like, a large group of people over a long period of time. By the way, I just realized, I get very excited and I talk fast. So I'm gonna talk a little slower for all of you. I can't see you all, but I am from New York originally, and I you know, sorry about that. I'll I'll slow down a bit. So I'll kind of walk through the spectrum from left to right. So on the left, it's kind of like I think what a lot of folks think of when they hear convenings, like funder convenings. I think they think big, high profile, resource intensive, lots of people there, you know, at a conference center, three days. You're staying over. You're inside all day. You haven't seen the sun in eight hours. You know? I have to say, when The US did something, it usually looks something like that on the left. I will say that. You know, the ones that I've that I've helped manage, you know, I I can't tell you. Sorry. This is world's smallest violin thing, but, man, I can't tell you how many times I would come back from some beautiful place in the Caribbean, you know, Saint Kitts. And my husband would be like, how did it go? And I'm like, well, I didn't see the sun at all for two days. He's like, okay. Cry me a river. You're in Saint Kitts. I know. But still, it's that kind of like, we're gonna get everybody. We're gonna put you in a big place. We're gonna create kind of a container, and we're gonna, you know, be in community with each other. And it might have some components of all the other things, but it's kind of big and huge and comprehensive. I went to three this year, and I think part of it is this moment. I I think part of it too is, like, as we're coming out of the pandemic, a lot of funders and and and kind of gatherers are are leaning into the ability to be able to all be in community and in in person with each other. And let me tell you, they're great because sometimes some of the best part about this is the, like, conversations in the margins, but I I'll get more into all of these in in subsequent slides. Then I think about kind of thematic summits as, like, one step kind of closer. So, you know, it's probably focused on a specific issue or like a field wide challenge. Right? It's it's how do we, address some new some new legislation or, you know, around, like, education, how do we address, like, you know, issues or disparities coming out of the pandemic? Like, let's specifically talk about this one thematic thing. Still can be quite big, frankly. Another one of these that I've seen that work really well are, like, all the folks across this region who are working actually, it's the next one. But across this region or across the country that are working on this one specific topic, let's all get together and talk about it. So related to the next one. I I often talk to my nonprofit clients about how they have to understand that funders tend to fit into one or two of these kinds of molds around usually, it's an issue or a place. Sometimes both, sometimes, you know, sometimes complicated, but in general and I really love when funders who work on an issue or funders that are very place based can convene around that place or that issue because you can get kind of a targeted group of folks that are, obviously, all looking at the same issue that are part of that movement ecology, if you will. Right? And that change ecology, and you can have really kind of deeper conversations around the issues that the that the field or the space are dealing with. Okay. Then going over to learning labs. So you can call it whatever you want, but these are, like, hands on skill building, experimentation. Usually, they're, like, a day or two. They're getting a little deeper into a topic. You're getting some kind of what we call it, like, walk alongside help. Like, it's not just here's the information. Let's use an example. We do a lot of training as you can imagine around fundraising strategy. Folks need help with that. This is not the here's how we think about this generally. Take this and, like, do what you will. This is more to me. You're gonna sit with us for two days. We do this. You know, you're gonna sit with us for two days. The first come day, we're gonna talk about this practice. Best practice. I I as a consultant, I'm so ambivalent about these consulting terms, and yet I haven't figured out good ways of, you know, promising practice, things that tend to work. And then actually walking with them a bit on the specifics of their situation and getting into their budget and what does their diversification look like, and what are they saying to funders? Oh, interesting. You're framing it this way. Okay. How can so I really like these. Again, my bias here, but I really like these ones where you can go a bit deeper, especially with your grantees and really, like, boost. Right? Like, their capacity on some specific issue or or or a topic. And that's very related, by the way, to the next one, which is around peer cohorts, which I love. I know. You're right, Tricia. They're very popular these days, and I I love it because, I you're right. And I've seen some of our funders. We have kind of massive funders, and we have some small ones that are clients. It's one of those, like, you can do a small peer cohort, and you get a couple of added benefits. Again, social psychology. Right? People are people. It's nice to learn from kind of like, again, it's nice to learn from a workshop because you're getting the the the the the data, like, the information. But it's really nice when you can learn with your peers because you're getting that validation. You're getting real world examples. You're you're able to kind of, like, role play, which is one of my favorite things to do. I know some people hate it, but I love making making, encouraging my workshop attendees or my peer cohort attendees to kind of role play things in their organizations with each other because it's a safe space. It's usually peers, you know. And and the other piece that I really love is you're building community at the same time. So for your point, Trisha, you you add capacity building, small group. They're getting to know each other. Especially, I love it for some of our clients that are funder clients that are place based. I love it because then they'll have, like, you know, someone from health care, someone from education, someone from, like, food security. In normal circumstances, they would never work together or even probably meet each other except that they're all grantees of this funder. But now they're getting to know each other as they're all learning, you know, financial best practices or fundraising or whatever. But now it's funny because I've seen this. You have, like, coordination and cool ideas and collaboration going between these kind of normally siloed, you know, actors in the nonprofit space. And it's hard again, it's hard to kinda find that kind of spark of collaboration all the way on the left side of the spectrum. And then I really like these again, call them whatever you want. But on the on the right side, it's like these informal, could be one off or could be kind of, you know, every Tuesday or one what you know, the first Tuesday of the month. Community circle with it it really is about community building, trust, building, and conversation, and less about kind of specifically sharing some piece of of, you know, some educational piece or some learning, but more about just building, honestly, human connection between people. So you can see, like, this could still be expensive depending on how you did it. But in general, it's, like, bigger, more formal, maybe is how I'd say it, and then, like, more kinda refined as you move over to this side of the spectrum. So now let's get into all of these. And by the way, at the end, I'm absolutely gonna open it up for questions, and I wanna hear from all of you on if you have cool examples of this, please share it in the chat or share it at the end because, like I said, it's very good for you to learn from each other too. Right? There's no one way one good way to do all this. Okay. So just quickly on conferences, you know, like I said, I I've been to many this year, and I should say in the last two years now that I think about it. You know, some that I've spoken at, some that I've attended. There is something about getting a big group together that is it can be very draining. As you can probably tell, I'm very extroverted. I know my introvert friends, get very drained at these big conferences, so use sparingly. But there is something about this kind of concept of, like, everybody will be there. But But there's something specific that I actually wanna say to all of you funders that are thinking about this because I've I've been kind of working with a couple of my clients on this. I often, our clients will hire our funder clients will hire us to do kind of capacity building for their grantees on, like, you know, coaching on discrete workshops and sometimes on pure co peer cohorts. Something that I've noticed because our work, we don't just kind of work in one kind of sector, you know, one nonprofit, sec like, we do a fair amount in, like, criminal justice reform and, like, environment and climate or food systems or or youth or, you know, whatever. Because we're not in one sector, it's very interesting to see how in different, for lack of better word, subcultures of the nonprofit space. There are some subcultures. In this case, I'm actually gonna use the animal movement. We do some work with, like, farm animal, farm animal funders and those groups that are working on farm animal welfare. In that sector, there are two donor paid for conferences that happen every year. It's like, for the last however many years, there are these two conferences, one's in the spring, one's in the fall, and, like, all the funders go, all the nonprofits go. I also work in these other sectors where there there are a lot of one off conferences. It's more dispersed. It's there's a lot of different groups doing conferences. There isn't, like, for for lack of better word. There isn't, like, one thing that everybody's going to. Pros and cons to both, but something that I find very interesting about that that sub that subsector that has the, like, meaningful every year everyone knows is they know they're gonna see each other every year, meaning that the nonprofit leaders get know they're gonna see each other. They get access to their funders, which, again, for some of my clients, they'll never see their funders because they're so far away or they're so dispersed. In this case, the ability to get feedback to hear from them on, like, what the priorities are. You know, sometimes the funders are doing sessions. Sometimes the funders are just around, but they're there. Man, there is something to be said before. If you were the kind of funder that works in a kind of smaller field and you have again, it's a it's a decision. Right? One conference could probably replace one or two really big grants, but there's such a benefit to the field beyond just the event itself in the, like, consistency, the being able to plan, the peripheral like, the penumbra around the conference itself. I've seen it now because I've kind of been working our team and I my team and I have been working that sector for about three years. And it was interesting bringing that thing that we noticed some of our funder clients in other sectors, and then, like, And now one of them has started a convenient. It's interesting to see because you can see how I almost wanna put it as, like, the consistency mattered almost more than, like, the the the the how big and fancy it was. It was just the fact that they did it every every May. Right? And hearing it in my coaching, like, yes. So then, like, we're planning out our kind of major donor cultivation over the course of the year, and we're gonna do a kind of, you know, collaboration with it. You could see how they were planning the convening into their own, frankly, fundraising strategy. And for me, as a capacity builder, man, like, almost all nonprofits can use capacity help on fundraising because nobody gets into nonprofits because they really like fundraising. I mean, there's very few of us. I think they do, but most of the time, it's some it's it's a weakness for almost everyone. And to see how conferences can help communeings can help with that kind of perennial issue is sort of too cool to see. Right? So, anyway, wanted to raise that for this specific group of funders. Okay. Then in terms of thematic summits, like, usually on an issue, right, on a topic. These have been really interesting too, and I have to say they're usually smaller. The folks that are there are usually, like, sent like, closer to the core of the topic might be how I'd say it. You know what I mean? And this has been interesting too because then you can have like, basically, you can go deeper on the sessions. The sessions could be more specific and more kind of, like I'm gonna use the word, like, spicy. You know what I mean? You could talk about more emerging issues and and, you know, cutting edge new ideas. You can just get more real. Sometimes if you're if you're keeping it, like, one click more narrowly tailored than, like, just a big open conference. So I really I've seen some really cool things in this in this area. And then I I we were talking earlier, but I really sometimes I really like these. We're just meeting on one specific topic or, like, in in other words, not everybody working I'll just use like, everybody working on climate change, which again would be too many people to fit the convening anyway, but, like, not just but, like, on this one specific subset, you know, food transforming food systems. Okay. And now is everyone just working on this one little piece. That's interesting too because, again, you can get kind of the right people in the room. You could have very deep conversations. You're building you're you're enabling, there we go, the building of trust build relationships around trust build relationships around that those, like, group of core leaders. That's cool. And then I love the ones that are place based too because you get that benefit of as I was saying before, folks that are normally siloed, Getting access to each other and, like, knowing who you are and, like, getting their business card and being able to you know, that stuff is not small. You know? We people are very basic. You know? Like, this is why I love kind of having started out with social psychology as my baseline because at the end of the day, the kinds of things that make, you know, a a an orchestra work well together are then are very similar to the kinds of things that make a kind of community of folks working on a similar topic in a field work together. Right? It is exposure to them, seeing them, being able to build up trust, understanding where you're going, being able to have hard conversations. Like, the it's the same stuff. Again, translated differently, but the same stuff. Again, we talked a little bit about learning labs. There's me with a bunch of college students up with the Harvard School of Public Health. Like, it's fun it's fun doing these because you can get deep on a specific skill. And I think, you know, I I I do not know all of you that are on this call, but I know most of you are funders. And I know having been a funder for twelve years and then also that fact that we've been working with funders since Capacitor got started, skills, skills, skills, skills, skills, skills are such a perennial issue in nonprofits and building up their kind of sustainability and their resilience and their I need, like, their ability to do what they need to do. It's a perennial issue in every sector that we work in, and I hear it constantly. And it's easier said than done, like, to do. But I do think as funders, we have the ability to kind of bring things to our grantees in a way that it's harder for them to kind of procure and find themselves. One of my clients, they're kind of like an umbrella organization. They have physical space. They do some capacity building. They do their, like, fiscal sponsors as well. It's been fun because, you know, when they they did, like, a big kind of input feedback summary process a couple of years ago, I'm like, what are all their different, physically sponsored project and, tenants, for lack of a word, dealing with. And, man, it did not matter what the sector was. There were, like, so many key. Like, they were all dealing with fundraising. They were all dealing with internal management and and, like, leadership. They were dealing with governance and and, like, risk mitigation. Another thing as a lawyer I love talking about. Because my feeling is you kind of understand what the edges are and then you figure out, like, you translate it to your current context and, like, what's the level of risk that you're willing or what are things you have to do? Like, you have to file a nine ninety if you're a c three. Okay. Sure. But beyond that, like, what are the kind of business decisions? That's a really fun one to go deep on. I did one one session for them on that. It was super fun. You know, they could come in with, like, their operating agreements and really get into it. Okay. Well, how what are the kinds of different ways you can attack this? And you can go deep in something like this. And they don't have to necessarily be, you know, all the time. This could be something you do twice a year. Man, what an impactful thing to do with, like, a day, a day and a half, two days. Anyway, as you can see, guys, I just I love this stuff. I could talk about it all day. Okay. Who is it? Patricia. You you pointed out. Yeah. They're becoming more and more popular. I love them. I love them because, you know, there's we've done a lot of designing of them. This is something like talking about, like, the strategy baby. Like, we have to really think about who are your grantees, what will work best, what's the right size, what capacity do you have, what do you want them to learn, what what do they wanna learn, what are they telling you they need. You have to kind of assume if they're senior that they won't be able to attend everything. You can talk about, like, a kickoff that's in person as you can see. We spend a lot of time on this. There are a million different ways to do this. None of them are you know, there's no one right way. That's what I'm saying. You have a lot of flexibility, but you get so many really cool benefits here, you know, in beyond the learning towards, excuse me, the community building. Like, it's just it's one of my favorite tools in the kinda convening toolbox. Okay. And then community circles, you know, this is one of the smaller ones. And I you know, circles as a concept I just really love because they're inclusive. You're kind of hearing from everybody. You're sharing. You're building trust. You're you're you're you're allowing space for deep conversation, for topical conversation, for sharing. You know, I I can't we haven't talked about this that much yet, but, guys, like, one of the biggest things that I think funders should always be doing is seeking feedback always from the people whom you serve, right, and from your from the folks that are the ultimate recipients of the kind of, things that your nonprofits are doing from your grantees themselves. You know? And circles are a great way to get feedback beyond things like surveys or, you know, other other methods. I just love circles because it it is it it's space to kind of show up. If done right, it can draw out the introverts and the extroverts. You can find ways, you know, to be culturally competent in this, to be inclusive. Like, yeah, this is this is just one of my favorite ones that folks you know, I I think the reason I spend time on this one is because mostly when I talk to our clients about convenience, they're thinking big, and that's great. And sometimes that's what it calls for. But you can think tiny too. This could almost be like no cost besides your time if done a certain way. You know, if you have space, if you're able to just invite people in, like, this this is this is one of the things that's the most kind of immediately reach reachable if you're if you're gonna testing the waters of of the convening universe. Operating agreements are totally fun, Carrie, and that's how you know that I'm a lawyer. But as a lot of my, clients say, yeah. But you're a lawyer who doesn't check practice. And I'm like, yes. So I'm a weird lawyer. Okay. So remember this guy, like, I think, you know, when I think about this, when I think about convenience and frankly, let me actually let me bring it a step up again and be a nerd again. Like, when I think about this power that you have as conveners of how you can spend the resource, how can you how you can can bring forth the resources you have beyond just the grant money and the funding, but also, like, your time and your attention and your space and your ability to bring people together. Like, it really comes back down to, like, in this moment, remember, like, addressing the kind of moment that we're in, but thinking beyond it, knowing that that that our work is gonna continue, what, you know, what rock do I wanna lift? And, therefore, how do I want to position my resources to do that? And let me also say, a lot of the questions that we have around this strategy conversation with my con with my my my clients and with, frankly, with my friends. I have a lot of friends who are funders too. This is the benefit of having been a funder for a long time is, you know, you also don't have to do it alone. Right? Like, I'll tell you what. They'll answer, who was it earlier on? Who was, like, answer your phone? Was it James? Yeah. So, like, they'll answer your phone call. You know, like, that will really show up if, like, eight funders are all funding this thing. Right? So I love also thinking about opportunities to kinda build up your peer relationships too. And and especially if you can be inclusive in, like, kind of who is there and how and and sharing the cost and thinking through the the the kind of strategy behind it. These are all opportunities to just be more impactful, more inclusive, more more just, you know, community led. Right? People forward, things that I love, things that I think are worthy. Right? But I think it's it's worth spending time, you know, channel Einstein. It's worth spending time on, like, what and how and why, before you kinda get into, like, what it looks like. So, really, for me, you know, when I think about again, I kinda touched on it earlier. It's like, you know, sure. I could be a corporate lawyer, but I'm not. Because, like, this is the stuff that I think I wanna be spending my time on because at the end of the day, the kind of work that we do with nonprofits and with funders, like, yes. Like, I would do it for free. Like, this is so important for us. And when I say us, I mean, all of us to figure out how to utilize philanthropy, public funding, you know, individual donations towards, like, making this all better for all of us. Right? And, like, the extent to which I think about your role in the ecosystem as funders is is in thinking about how you want to wield your power and influence. Right? You you are I guess what I'm trying to say is, like, you have a lot of power. You have a lot of ability. Like, heck yes. Like, good for you. You know what I mean? Like, how are you gonna use it? And how can you use it? And and I love thinking through this stuff because the truth is there is no just one way. And unlike I will say this to you. If you are not the ultimate arbiter, if you're not, like, the boss boss boss boss at your funder at your at your foundation or or whatever kind of organization you're at, and you're kind of, like, mid level, I look convenings too because it's something that you it's not a grant. In other words, whatever the process your organization has for, like, deciding on what you're gonna fund and how much via grants, usually, the convenings are a little bit squishier and you have more space to kind of, like, think about and be creative about what it could be. And that's fun when you're mid career. Like, I mean, when I was at the state department, I was relatively senior, but I was, you know, one step up from as high as you can go as a civil servant. But compared to the secretary of state, let me tell you, I had, like, eight people between me and her and then him and then him. You know what I mean? And yet, here I was able to convene hundreds and hundreds of people at one point thousands, you know, because I had the ability to kind of design this. There were spaces, what I'm saying, even in a massive hierarchy bureaucracy like the state department to be created in the space. And therefore, if any of you are kind of mid level, you know, you have some power but not the ultimate, this is a cool way a cool way to go outside of the kind of normal structure of your grant process, your grant making process. You know, I also sit on, a grant making foundation board and, you know, I'm still relatively new, and I'm learning the process. And even really cool, flexible organizations, you know, it it's hard to be like, how about we give a completely different kind of grant, you know, and and it's a little easier to say, how about we try something new to build our community and can be so keep that in mind too. In other words, you have the power to be creative. So first of all, thank you for listening to me yammer around. Look at that. I was trying for 11:45. Yes. I did it. In general, I gotta do the plug. Capacita, my team, so we're capacitaconsulting.com. We love doing this. Thanks to Blackbaud for, inviting me here to talk about this. And now I wanna hear from all of you. Oh, wait. Actually, can I go back to my thank you slide before I go yours, Michael? I wanna hear from all of you on any questions or even more exciting or slash as exciting. Any examples that you have to share with each other on any of those things on the spectrum? Or, actually, you know what? Why don't I go back to that slide? Hold on. Let me go back up here. Boom. Sure. I would love to hear from all of you on, like, your thoughts around things you've seen work really well or things you're curious about. I love answering questions in case it's not obvious. Okay. Michael, you told me that to go over to the q and a. Oh, I see questions. Okay. I'm gonna answer the first one. Rachel, so similar vein to Carrie's question let me read Carrie's question first. What recommendations do you have for creating psychological safety among attendees to get to that burstiness? What a great question, Carrie. And then, Rachel, similar vein to Carrie's, the power of funder the power of funders can get people into the room. Yes. But it can also impede honest commerce. I'm so glad somebody raised this. How you neutralize that or create a safe space for honesty amongst participants? Okay. So I'm gonna talk about that safety, honesty, psychological safety, and I will talk about the burstiness too. Okay. So this this is a as you can imagine, this is probably the biggest issue around, like, trying to have the I'm just gonna keep calling them the spicy conversations, the the productive conflict type conversations. Let's use the example again having been a funder and now having frankly, now working with nonprofits on, like, some of the dirty underwear stuff. They're never gonna say to a funder, like, yeah, we're a dysfunctional mess. And frankly, you can understand why. I think for me, the way you answer that question is, what kind of conversation are you here we go. We're right back to, like, the why. Right? So what kind of conversation are you trying to have via that, convening? I'm gonna assume you don't need them airing dirty laundry or needing to, like, you know, get into things they don't feel comfortable sharing either with you or with the like, their peers. Like, honestly, usually, it's things around management and, like, internal dysfunction, normally. But sometimes it's around the kind of more complicated stuff around politics or, you know, this funder feels like it needs to be done this way, but we think it needs to be needs to be done another way. You can only control so much of that dynamic, which to validate is systemic. Right? So you can't in other words, I am saying to you, it's not possible to completely get rid of it. It is possible to mitigate it in two ways. Number one is in how you design who's there and what you say what you're talking about. In other words, what I would, I'm very rarely to my clients, no. Bad idea. But there's one time where they were like, what if we just get everyone in the room and they can tell us the biggest, like, stickiest issue they're dealing with on an HR front? And I was like, holy smokes. No. Not that. But because, again, you're you're you're you're never mind the legal concerns. You're, like, asking them to kind of be almost more vulnerable than you need to get at what you're trying to do, which is to be helpful. Instead, design kind of, make sure the form, right, meets whatever the function is so that you have a conversation not about the dirtiest, stickiest, whatever, but around a shared problem, like, optimistic view, trying to find this or trying to learn, where you create the space for them to be able, if they feel comfortable, to actually talk about this stuff. But then you also need to be be aware that there there's always gonna be you're mitigating. You're not deleting, right, the power dynamic that exists. So you try and design it to mitigate it. And then the other way you do it is you create spaces where and this is why I think people like cope, peer cohorts so much because the funders don't always have to be in the room. The funders can set it up, but the funders don't need to attend to everyone. They can create great relationships amongst themselves so that they can talk separate from you. Like, these are things you can kind of design. Because, again, like I said, you're never gonna get rid of the power dynamic. So you're here when you are there, when you do wanna be in the room, you mitigate it by the way you design it. And then the other ways you create spaces for them to kind of have the conversation without you there. Let me use an example. So that convening that I mentioned that I'm gonna be facilitating for a big funder in about about about a month. It's on a really tricky subject. This one, you know, this is one funder, and I think there's gonna be two other funders in the room. They are the biggest funder for this issue. And even they were like, you know, we wanna be in the room because we wanna hear what folks think. But they created a lot of downtime space for folks to meet and talk, the kind of lunches they're not there, the, like, side conversations, you know, the the the group chats. Like, they're creating bubbles within their umbrella for the conversations to happen. Okay. And now, the burstiness thing. Burstiness for me, Carrie, you it's hard to create that in a one off. Nearly impossible. Not fully, but I it's it's quite hard. I've seen burstiness happen when the group is somewhat, like, storm the norm, like, it exists. And there's, like, an underlying level of, like, kind of, you know, there's a lot of research out there around the psychological safety stuff, all of which I love I do an entire other ninety minute thing on psychological safety. The short version of it is, you know, you have to be able to have the time to build trust in terms of the way folks are gonna react to you and trust, like, in other words, that you can bring complicated things into the group and that the group is gonna do what they say they're gonna do. So, like, you can trust them and kind of, like, you can show up the way you need to show up. Those are kind of a very short version of a very complicated topic. To create that takes time and exposure, so it's hard to do that in a one off. It's easier to do in, like, a learning lab, peer co peer cohort community circle context because those have, like, the time it needs to do the kind of group formation that is required to get to, like, bursty and bubbly. Like, the way you can picture the burstiness idea is like champagne fizzing in a glass or, like, soda fizzing in a glass that takes you kinda have to know each other. You know what I mean? So thank you. These are such great questions. Okay. I see more. Hi, James. Okay. A facilitator role beyond keeping things on track and on schedule is mediating. Meanings of words between participants. Oh my god. Yes. I've seen a lack of solid perception checking. Is this what you mean? In good meetings. Any advice on how to do that diplomatically? James, that's such a stinking good question. And I I will say, I consider it a practice and an art and not a science. You know, like, in other words, it's very context specific. It's very specific even to, like, the day based on what's happening in the world. It's specific and, like, you need to take great care. I kind of think of it as, like, a stewardship role. Like, I picture do you know you know the, like, movie I can't see you, so I'm just gonna imagine you're looking at me. You know the movie Wall E? Where, like, they finally find the, like, little seedling, and they're, like, it's like in that boot, and you're, like, stay alive, little seedling. I think of, like, the magic of the trust that's required in these kinds of conversations is, like, something as delicate as that. That requires, like, tending and, like, careful, like, observation. It's part of the reason I think I love facilitation so much is because it really appeals to that kind of very empathetic part of me that really loves kind of, like, the watching, the looking, the, like, where where is everyone checking in, lots of communication. And, you know, the the the the need let me put it this way. Human see through, the technical term is BS, very easily. So it's like they can tell if the commune doesn't really care. So you as the convener have to be very careful about showing in every way, one marble at a time, building trust to show that you do care and that you do want to kind of mediate, like, you know and, again, it's I think what I I think what I understand you're getting at is, like, you don't necessarily just wanna be the ref in a spicy conversation. You wanna have productive conflict. Those are two different things. I love productive conflict, but productive conflict requires a certain amount of trust. And you as the as the convener, you can help to kind of you can create the compost for that trust, but it still requires humans to create it in the moment, which is easier, like I said, practice, art, not science. And you really have to have, like, a curious kind of open stance to trying to get there and one that's deeply rooted in wanting it. You know? I know we're getting close. I'm sorry. Okay. Oh, I only see those three. Any more in the chat? Let me look. Yeah. I I I have to say I'm still laughing at what you said, Carrie. I some of the stuff that I find the most fun is almost like the least sexy on paper. And yet let me tell you, I've had so much fun working with funders and with nonprofits on their operating agreements. It's all about our perspective. Any other thoughts from anybody that I can answer in the last few minutes that I have your your wonderful precious attention? I appreciate all of you for taking the time. I appreciate your your, your input today. And the topic you you spoke on, it was really enlightening for me. And, I'm sure that the our attendees feel the same way, and they will receive this within a day. And, Adriana, I just really wanna say thanks again for your time today. Thank you. Hope you all had a it was enlightening for you all as well, and I hope you everyone has a great rest of their day. Thank you. Thanks for your time, everybody. I appreciate it. Oh, thanks, Gary. Thanks, Elizabeth.