Whole Funding in the New Economy September 4 - 7, 2012 A Whole Communities workshop at Knoll Farm in the Mad River Valley of Vermont Facilitated by Peter Forbes, Deborah Schoenbaum and Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey
What is the new, interdependent story of environmentalism and social justice in our country? How are funders interconnecting the ecological, economic, and cultural crises we face? How can funders help organizations and communities move out of isolation, fragmentation, and competition to reach the full potential of their vision? The Challenge Today’s world is shaped by fragmentation, stemming in large part from the divides of class, race, politics and privilege. Fragmentation has entrenched social and environmental organizations into their own specialized silos, such as environmental justice, land conservation, food justice, anti-oppression, sustainable development, and more. And yet the complexity of today’s challenges—from climate change to water scarcity to undoing racism—makes it impossible for any effort to succeed in isolation. These times ask us to work together, to find unified values, a shared language and common story. What is Whole Funding? Whole funding is a practical approach to achieving tangible goals, not by increasing funding, but by inspiring greater collaboration, resulting in transformation and innovation. Grounded in today’s economic realities, whole funding is about reweaving the isolated strands of activism into more potent and resilient movements for change.
Register today for the Whole Funding Workshop September 4 – 7 in VT! Go to: www.wholecommunities.org/workshops/register3.php Center for Whole Communities, 700 Bragg Hill Road, Fayston, Vermont 05673, 802.496.5690 www.wholecommunities.org
About the Workshop The goal of the workshop is to help the funding community play the key role of helping organizations and communities become more adaptive and resilient, less competitive, and to foster coalitions that are inclusive, creative, and politically agile. Center for Whole Communities offers the Whole Funding Workshop as a safe, trusted forum for the funding community to consider challenging questions and reveal lasting solutions together. This workshop is a four-day intensive in “whole thinking” designed for, and in collaboration with, the philanthropic community. The Whole Funding Workshop explores how funders and funding institutions can achieve these attributes themselves and model them for grantees. The workshop will help funders develop their own transformational leadership skills, enhancing their ability to support movements for change in a troubled economy. In this workshop, funders will learn how to: Help funding institutions themselves and their grantees rise above limiting silos and collaborate with others toward larger common goals. Begin to effectively address the power dynamic between grantor and grantee. Develop the funders’ voice, with humility and self-awareness, about race, power and privilege. Understand the practical role that story, dialogue, and personal creativity can play in visioning something new for funders and for grantees. Find new, transformational ways to support grantees beyond general operating or specific program funding as they work toward greater collaboration. Workshop Leadership This workshop will be facilitated by Peter Forbes, Deborah Schoenbaum and Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey. Learn more about Center for Whole Communities faculty by visiting our website. We would like to acknowledge that this workshop came to be in 2009 through the thinking partnership of the following leaders in the philanthropic community: David Grant formerly of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Diane Ives of the Kendeda Fund Jenny Russell of the Merck Family Fund Ann Fowler Wallace of the Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities Kolu Zigbi of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation
Center for Whole Communities, 700 Bragg Hill Road, Fayston, Vermont 05673, 802.496.5690 www.wholecommunities.org