What a Lasting Marriage and Good Philanthropy Have in Common
This holiday season my wife and I are celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary. Ever the philosopher, my 13-year-old son asked me, “How is that possible, dad, I can’t imagine doing anything for 15 years!?” It’s not often your teenager gives you an opportunity to share a life lesson, and so, while I have many friends, […]
Getting More out of your Giving: Two Mindset Shifts that Can Lead to Greater Meaning
Recently, a well-respected philanthropist came to me on a mission to find more meaning in her giving. Many like her who come to us for strategic planning and advising help are, for one reason or another, not satisfied with their giving and are in search of both how to deepen their impact and achieve a […]
Why working toward equity takes more than a checklist
In my neighborhood in Philadelphia, the effort to improve a physically dangerous, unattractive thoroughfare has come to illustrate one of the biggest challenges facing philanthropists who wish to infuse racial equity into their work: how to move past checklist fixes and address the underlying biases that shape their approach. Washington Avenue runs across the city, including […]
Goals, New Year’s Resolutions, and Ted Lasso: Things I’m Thinking about as 2021 Comes to an End
As 2021 draws to a close, one of the year’s bright spots for me was the AppleTV show, Ted Lasso. At a superficial level, the show is a fish-out-of-water comedy about a small town American football coach who moves to England to coach a Premier League soccer team, and despite knowing nothing about the sport, wins […]
Stimulus Funding and the Trap of Incremental Thinking: The role that funders can play in supporting transformational change
As school systems around the country manage the challenge of returning to in-person instruction amidst the surging Delta variant and lost school time, they face yet another challenge: effectively deploying the massive amount of federal COVID relief funds they have received or will receive in the next few months. The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency […]
Overcoming the barriers to transformative change in philanthropy
So you’ve decided you want your philanthropy to be more transformative. Or innovative. Or to better live up to your aspirations around equity. Great. But now what? How do you put concrete action behind your intention? We advise philanthropists who want to take real steps toward transformative change to get moving in three big ways: We’ve worked with […]
Building coalitions for social change amid political turmoil
“We just can’t work with them anymore. Their political views are repugnant, even if they were with us before…” “…But they’ve been an ally on our issue. We can’t afford to lose them. We should just look past the areas where we disagree…” I hear this exchange play out again and again, and never more […]
Five Things I Learned in 2020
A few nights ago at dinner, my daughter asked, “What’s a train wreck?” My wife and I had used the expression earlier that day while describing our relief that 2020 was coming to a close. When I explained the meaning of the phrase, she thought for a moment and said, “But it’s not all bad, Daddy; you […]
Lasting Change Starts with a Landscape Analysis
Every few months, I get a call from a philanthropist that goes something like this. “Hey Mike, we know you specialize in policy and advocacy strategy. Could you write a strategic plan for our foundation?” My response is always the same: Before we can work together on strategy, we need to understand your landscape in […]
Sweeping Change and Moments of Opportunity
Forward-thinking philanthropists aren’t the kind of people to set up a scholarship fund and call it a day. The funders that we work with are interested in driving lasting progress by changing systems, and that often means changing policy. Right now, we are heading into what may be the most open window for major policy change […]
