hello! 
Welcome my name is Zach Sheets
and if you are here for a community
conversation about the tactics and
ethics of grant seeking you are in the
right place
or else you found a zoom link by
accident and you're welcome just the
same to stick around and talk about 
the tactics and ethics of grant seeking
this is a part of a broader series that
we're doing here at Community
Music Center of Boston. Our community
conversation series
it's this is the fourth and final
chapter of a series of conversations
we've had
throughout the year ranging from 
strategies for
early childhood teaching to racial
equity in the arts to disability
advocacy and something that we found has just
been an excellent way for us to
build our network and compare notes
and talk about
a lot of these these issues that so many
arts organizations and so many people in
our field
are are working on and so we're
delighted to have you here
um we
are not moving to the next slide so
we're off to a routing start there we go
i've said all this and today is june
3rd so we're going to go on to the next
slide um
the one last thing to tell you before we
do get started is for future use we are recording my
presentation you may appear in the background just
in that view of all the faces  if that's
an issue for you, if you prefer
not, you can just turn off your
camera and then we won't be able to see
you
um we're just recording my audio and
video but it just shows up in the
background
so today we are going to go through a
couple chapters here
um just start with a brief introduction
and then
get right into it we're going to talk
about
some of the stages of the grant life
cycle and about how to start a lot of
those conversations
we're going to dive into a couple case
studies and scenarios where
my wonderful colleagues are going to
join me and we're actually going to play
this out in practice and see how it
works
and then we're going to talk a little
bit about who we are
and and how we tell stories and how we
advocate for ourselves and think a
little bit about who's in the room for a
lot of these conversations
and what are the ethics of participating
in a lot of these conversations
and then we'll have some time for
questions at the end for questions
please do use
zoom's chat feature. we've got a lot
of folks so i'm not sure it's going to make
sense for people to unmute themselves
and talk and where that's just gonna be
kind of unwieldy
i am following along with the chat you
can either write me privately
or just type a question in the group
chat um
and we we can either clarify things as
we're going if there's something i'm
saying that's
that's not clear um or we can save
questions for the end
uh i will say please feel free to take
screenshots of the slides
i'm also happy to send them around to
anyone afterwards
some of our other community
conversations have dug really deep into
one particular topic and
really in an analytical and thoughtful
way covered every aspect of it
today uh we're going to cover a broader
swath of things at a little bit quicker
pace
um a lot of these sort of norms
and tactics and skills tend to be
closely guarded secrets that people who
work in philanthropy have
and in the interest of democratizing
them we're going to try to get through a
bunch of different things that are kind
of standard practices
in the field so i'm going to keep a
pretty quick tempo
but please do stop me if something's
unclear or confusing
and again feel free to uh to grab some
screenshots or for us to to share these
back
with you after the presentation
so let's begin uh we
are going to start today by looking
uh at the way the conversation begins
natural place to start
and backing up to some real basics here
let's just look at the three big kinds
of giving we tend to have right
individual donations foundation grants
and government grants
these tend to be three of the big
pillars of contributed revenue in an
organization
so individual donations as we know are
when
individual people who are well connected
and invested in community service get to
know about non-profits
get to know about the people who run
them and decide whether to make a
financial gift
foundation grants are when individual
people who are typically well connected
and invested in community service get to
know about nonprofits and the people who
run them and
decide whether to make a gift um
government grants
when people who are typically well
connected invested in community service
get to know about nonprofits right it's
all the same stuff in a lot of ways
because it's about people
there's some differences right the
formal application process a review
panel
government grants might have certain
standards or certain policies
individuals might need to be stewarded
or cultivated in a little bit of a
different way but at the end of the day
i think the thing people too often
forget is that grants are a lot about
people and a lot about relationships
so when we think about what goes into a
grant it really can't be achieved just
by wordsmithing it's an entire ecosystem
um it's it's thinking about effective
programs
it's thinking about having strong
executive leadership it's thinking about
financial management
and it's about having a supportive and
engaged board of directors as we are
very very glad to have here at cmcb
um and having an advocate in the room
when you make a decision
is is really indispensable um
immediately we get into an ethical
question there right
who has a big enough network and a big
enough set of professional contacts that
they
have ambassadors and advocates in the
halls of power
but whenever possible if you can
navigate a conversation such that you do
have
trustees of a foundation or program
officers of a foundation
who can vouch for you who know about you
and know that you do good work
that go such a long way towards standing
out and helping your application come to
the top of the pile
so so wordsmithing is important but
that's largely not what we're going to
talk about today
we're really going to talk about the
other stages of the grant life cycle
like how to gather information and how
to build relationships and
in particular how to work with program
officers
so the staff at foundations are often
called program officers or grant
officers or program staff
are invaluable to navigating this
process they answer questions they get
to know grantees they give technical
support for the application
and most importantly they really serve
as the interface
between the nonprofit and the trustees
who are making the decisions
so even if they don't have decision
making power themselves they're the ones
who present your application to the
people who do
and you can imagine immediately how
important this is right the difference
between someone who says
yeah so this next application is from
community music center of boston
i've met with them i've been to a site
visit they're terrific and i would
really encourage you to read the
proposal
versus this application is from
community music center in boston
they applied out of the blue we emailed
they were a little difficult i don't
really know them
of course one is much more likely to get
funding than the other
and i think it's worth saying that
basically every five or six figure grant
i've ever secured
at cmcb or any other organization where
i've worked
it didn't start with a grant it really
started with a conversation
so that's what we're going to talk about
in detail today
so what are the goals for this kind of
conversation
the first thing is that you want to be
able to present your work concisely
you want to be able to give an elevator
pitch for what it is you're doing
to help orient that the person you're
talking to and understand your work
as i was practicing with my colleagues
who are going to join me for some of
these case studies
uh one of the things we realized is that
a lot of the people on this call
like them are performers or teachers
or people who work in and administer
programs and the reason they're really
good at their job is because they're
really detail-oriented
and they really care about the nuts and
bolts about how to do that work well
when you're making a pitch you have to
pull yourself
up out of the weeds and really approach
it from 30 000 feet and that's a bit of
a shift for people
um and and oftentimes something that
doesn't necessarily come naturally and
that takes a little bit of practice but
you have to remember in a lot of cases
you're talking to someone who had
a phone call with the boston symphony in
the morning a phone call with harvard
university in the afternoon
the next day is talking to a wildlife
conservation agency and then the next
day is is talking to hyde square task
force right or a youth development
agency
so you have to be able to identify what
it is that you do in a way that's
very mutually accessible and well
tailored to the people you're talking to
but then critically you want to pivot to
be able to give
the person you're talking to that this
foundation representative
as much space to talk as possible you
want to hear from them you want to make
notes about everything
they say even down to the specific
language they use because that's
language that you're going to want to
mirror back in your proposal
you're going to want to copy down the
kind of phrases they use do they care
about the whole child do they care about
youth development do they care about
social emotional learning
and that's the kind of language that you
should use as you're talking about what
it is that you do
and as we all know in person or phone is
really the best here
um people can afford to be candid when
there's no record of something in a way
that they can't when everything's
happening over email
um so people tend to be very guarded in
writing a lot of people particularly in
my generation we love email we love
texts
doesn't work it's got to be on the phone
the kind of insights you might want to
have
are you know should you apply for
general support or for a specific
program or a specific concert or series
how much money should you be asking for
what should you mention what should you
avoid what rubric is used for evaluation
think like a teacher
what's the rules for the assignment
what's the framework how are you
assessing the proposals and how does the
foundation define its values and its
vision we're often very
um socialized to have a scarcity mindset
where we just want to get a proposal out
the door and not bother anyone and
that's most likely
to get people's attention but it's just
the other way around
these staff members are here to help you
to make sure that you put
your best foot forward in a proposal and
they want to help you answer these
questions they want to get good
proposals
so we'll start with some specific
tactics here and this is where the
screenshotting may be
maybe particularly helpful if you want
to copy these down for yourselves later
so an introduction is
often uh of course a really good first
impression
and since often these staff members are
being approached by so many people all
the time
they can try to sort of dismiss people
quickly even though
they're nice people lovely people their
time is valuable
so it's essential that you get right in
the door with the the key hook right
i've reviewed the information on your
website and i'm wondering if
you could share some time to talk with
me i have a few more questions
i've researched your history of generous
giving with a lot of interest
and i think that we should probably chat
about our programs i'd love to be able
to submit an application
if you have a personal connection that's
great i learned about the foundation
through our board member andrea kaiser
who was the executive director of boards
of bird street for a long time and she
recommended us to you
uh we were wondering if we could chat
with you also hello andrea
from you know from what i've read uh i
think we might be really aligned with
your support areas so i was wondering if
you could share some time to talk with
us we have a few questions about how we
make an approach so
once you've got that out of the way um
you well sorry to summarize your basic
formula is
i've learned some things about you i
think you might be interested
and could i ask you a few questions once
you've got that out of the way
uh you are ready to really have a
conversation in earnest
and you have to do your research so the
first thing is you have to actually do
this stuff on the previous slide you
can't just tell them you reviewed their
website
and hope that it'll be okay in the
conversation but it's amazing how often
that step is a problem
and you have to learn everything you can
about the foundation so that you don't
have any surprises in the call
we're not going to talk about that step
in detail because that's its own entire
presentation
but if you google something like
foundation prospect research or how to
research a foundation you'll find lots
of stuff on the internet about that
and you want to learn who you're
speaking to there again it's about
people it's not just about institutions
so think about their seniority their
responsibilities
um are they actually a trustee or are
they just a staff member
um are they you know are they voting on
the board or are they coordinating
uh administrative responsibilities
what's their focus area their background
their expertise in your work it's going
to be really different
if you're applying for a music therapy
grant to a health and human services
funder where all of their program staff
are licensed social workers
then if it's a general funder who has to
be responsible for
animal welfare and poverty alleviation
and higher education no one person can
be an expert
in all those things and you have to
approach it really differently
and finally i love this quote from gina
gibney as a contemporary dance
maven in in new york she says you know
fundraising is what your grandmother
taught you
say please say thank you keep your
promises
um so much of this is just about
etiquette and politeness and building
good relationships and
often the step kind of goes out the
window
so in the heart of the conversation here
are some more specific tactics that i
like to use
i find it a little bit like teaching
where i have to have multiple ways to
ask the same question
or get the same point across so things
like um
you know at community music center we
have a broad ecosystem of programs that
all face financial need
we're assessing the focus of our
proposal and we're wondering if anything
stands out to you
right or we have a number of ways we
could frame our work and after what
we've shared today
could you recommend the best way to make
an approach
you can even make it about them say you
know we have
you get hundreds of proposals i'm sure
you're busy people we want to make sure
we put our best foot forward
what would you suggest and then you can
get into your specific questions or
whatever is relevant to your
your program all of these are basically
ways of saying you know there's multiple
ways we could approach you
the risk is you don't want to sound like
you're phishing because then they're
just going to tell you to look up how to
write a grant right they're just
they're going to think you're
unprofessional or disorganized but
the the language that i find is very
powerful is around
we have multiple ways we could frame
this there's a number of things we do
that align with your work
and make it sound like there's multiple
possibilities rather than
you don't know what the possibilities
are
similarly i i find it's useful to define
my terms a little bit with funders
um we were joking that it's a little bit
like being with little kids you give
them a forced choice
so if you just ask how they like to
think about data
they might not tell you or they might
not know exactly what kind of answer
you're looking for
but leading with a question like um i
know some funders really like
anecdotes and stories but other funders
really like quantitative data about the
state of the field
do you know whether you're you and your
trustees tend to have a preference in
your applicants
that's a really useful and really
valuable question that will frame how
you think about everything else that
follows
i also find it's useful sometimes to
just tell funders that some policy they
have
is reasonable so for example with a lot
of bank foundations
uh i will say for example um you know i
know
a lot of bank foundations like to have a
depositor relationship with their
non-profits a lot of
a lot of banks like to support
nonprofits that bank with them that's
totally understandable i
definitely understand why you would want
to do that do you think that would be a
challenge for us here
they're by far more likely to say you
know what yeah it's really not worth
applying in this round we already have a
bunch of account holders who are
applying
if you just ask out of the blue kind of
brusquely they're going to say no
everyone can apply please apply
um and it'll be a big waste of your time
so helping the person you're talking to
feel comfortable
is extremely useful
then there may come a time in the
conversation where you have to pivot um
you might get a no
or a sorry this doesn't work it's not
the right fit first of all
that's an application you don't have to
do you can go on to the next one
so often our shortcomings in fundraising
are just that we
spend too much time on the wrong things
but you don't want to give up the whole
thing immediately so
consider something like um would it make
sense to consider this at some point
down the road
uh you know some of our future plans
include the following
do you think that's something that would
be more aligned with what you're talking
about here
but there's sometimes you know your
future plans your other opportunities
uh just just aren't right in that case
uh other pivots can be really helpful um
the question that that our executive
director
my boss locally in washington often asks
is
you know please keep us top of mind with
your colleagues or
is there anyone else you think we should
know about this can be extremely
valuable because maybe they can't give
you money
but maybe the wealth manager down the
hall has a foundation that does exactly
what you do
maybe they'll remember your name at a
lunch with someone who says yeah you
know i've been looking to support music
and arts charities in boston and we
don't really know where to start
then that person can volunteer oh i had
a great conversation with these guys a
couple a couple months ago you should
really check them out
finally i find it's always useful to
close with a really open-ended question
on something like uh is there anything
else that you wish i had asked you today
or is there anything else we should know
most people's tendency
is to fill in awkward silences so often
after you ask a question like that if
you don't get an answer right away
you'll start chattering again
this is just a general development trick
like don't do that
just ask the question and then hush wait
for them to talk
you don't own that awkwardness they do
it's up to them
to say something um great strategy after
you ask someone for money as well it's
exactly the same thing
um then of course this is probably
pretty rudimentary but later that day
send a thank you note
um when you submit your application
maybe send another one and just say
just letting you know our application's
in thanks again for chatting with us
um here's a link to this concert we did
last saturday you know whatever it is
if you work in the performing arts um
ask if they want to be kept on your
invitation or mailing list
ask if they'd like some complimentary
tickets for your upcoming performance
in new york there's a whole kind of
cottage industry around this around
members of the press and foundations
getting free tickets to
performing arts events there's someone
at the met whose entire job it is just
to do this
um and then once you get the
notification
be gracious whether it's an award or
rejection and
ask for feedback and see if you can do
better um
first though do double check if they
have a standing policy uh
the numbers of applications are so high
now that a lot of foundations just put
out a policy which is either
if we have something to tell you we'll
call you or we don't do this
don't call us
so just as a review right present your
work concisely
uh from 30 000 feet then give the
foundation staff
space to talk make note of how they
think and try to get some of these
questions answered so that you're ready
to give a really competitive proposal
and with that we move on to chapter two
which is some of our
live role playing and examples i am
so excited to introduce a couple
colleagues for these who are going to do
hypothetical scenarios where we're going
to play through this i'm going to play
the part of the program officer
and my colleagues are going to play the
part of the grant seeker so
they are all experts in their fields in
finance music therapy
arts administration overall and so on
they are not fundraisers
um so you will get a sense to see how
this plays out for someone who is
probably a peer in in their background
in the arts but
maybe being relatively new to
fundraising or grant seeking
for a lot of you and we will start today
with uh our first scenario which is
Megan Jasani who is our chief finance
and operating officer here
at CMCB and who is also a board member
for Project Step
and she will be doing a mock scenario
with project
step. Megan are you here and ready to go?
Yes i am hello welcome again hello how
are you zach
thanks for having me thank you of course
thank you for doing this
so megan has already been through this
presentation before and she has seen her
scenario
in advance um but i'm going to throw it
up here on
on the screen so this is an example of
the kind of thing you might see on a
funder's website
right um the edrington foundation
supports educational development and
active learning
for youth in missouri and the northeast
region of the united states
we award grants for stem learning as
well as arts activities that enrich
young people and expose them to culture
applications should come in the form of
a letter with a budget and financials
and are due on the 15th of the month
before a board meeting
for questions please contact grant
coordinator zack sheets
cpwa at that financial firm
cpwa stands for certified private wealth
advisor
so this is a common arrangement
megan can expect that i'm someone who
works with wealthy clients and helps
them do philanthropy as part of their
overall wealth management
um and then a list of their recent
grants so you can see a combination
uh st louis symphony st louis youth
symphony the bs
so uh ymca this is all hypothetical
um edrington is my father's middle name
and he's from missouri
uh he's listening hi dad um and
and so this gives you like a really good
sense of um what their
granting is prior grants are a really
good way to establish what someone
actually does because sometimes on their
website they tell you what they want to
think they do
in this case it seems pretty well
aligned so
megan is going to imagine that she is
calling zach sheets
at the firm Dewey Cheatem and Howe to
make a call and find out maybe some
questions she might have about how to
approach this foundation
megan is there anything you want to say
up front any like observations or things
that you're
trying to focus on as you make this call
sure
um so i think some of the first things
that stand out as i look at this
is you're just the fact that they've
made grants
in st louis in the missouri area as well
as also the northeast specifically
in boston massachusetts cape cod so just
really one of the things i'd be
interested is how they've gotten to the
point of
what they're you know kind of focusing
on in terms of region kind of what their
draw to the northeast is
um since they are located in missouri
and then um the other thing is just
really understanding
what split that they would look at for
awarding grants do they focus more on
stem learning
or more on arts activities and within
the arts activities
is it specifically for specific
concrete things such as perhaps
performances or
summer camps or even something
such as funding towards a certain type
of training
or instruments or something discreet or
is it a little more broad around overall
development
sure yeah so so back to that that first
bullet point on the insights of like
should we apply for general support or a
specific program and like what's the
what's the story what's
what's the foundation great sounds good
so
um let's do it we'll do a
uh like ring ring ring banana phone
situation but yeah uh
hello this is zach sheets at Dewey
Cheathem and Howe
hi zach this is megan jasani with
Project Step
nice to speak with you today uh yeah
it's nice to speak with you uh
you you emailed me yesterday yeah and
just sent ahead a little bit of
information about your organization yes
absolutely so project step is a
non-profit we're located in boston
it's a string training educational
program for talented young
musicians uh they're from communities
that are historically underrepresented
in classic music
so really um a board fellow board member
of mine
uh alexander fuchs who is with the
boston symphony orchestra who i know
you've funded in the past um she has
recommended that i reach out to you so
she was telling me about you and i
really wanted to set up a call to
learn more about your organization and
how we may be
in a best position to apply for funding
from the edrington foundation
oh yeah great i know i know alex she's a
friend um well wonderful uh
so i know a little bit about project
stuff but maybe you can give me sort of
a two-minute
explanation of the things you do and uh
then you mentioned you were interested
in applying so
uh maybe we can get you get your
questions after that
okay that sounds great so um project
strap it's a
comprehensive long-term string training
educational program
uh students start as young as
kindergarten um
and then through a kind of a general
focus program that's in our
public school system and then um
students can apply in
and the program goes up through 12th
grade
we've been around for about 35 years
and you know all of our students in that
time over 2,000 graduates have gone on
to
either university or conservatory with
60 pursuing music as their profession
in some way shape or form we are
reliant on
government grants we have a budget of uh
just under a million dollars
so really what we do is look for um
funding you know we have a lot of
funders both um individuals as well as
many foundations that support us
that uh will support us in different
ways whether it's for a specific
program for whether it's a specific
development area
or instruments uh in various aspects of
it
okay great so it's basically like a
arts learning or like specifically like
classical music instruction
yes specifically classical music and on
string instruments so
violin viola cello and double bass okay
great those are the only instruments
that we uh practice it
well so you know we we support like uh
the conservatory and in cape cod
the music school in springfield and like
the the youth orchestra here in st
louis uh yeah mr edington is on the
board of the symphony there
uh which is kind of our long-standing
connection um
how would you differentiate your
services from what these other
you know youth music folks do sure
so one of the differentiating factors is
uh one the size of our program we are a
smaller program in size
our current class is the largest we've
ever had with 60 students
and when i say class i mean that's all
the students that we are currently
teaching
from kindergarten up or first grade up
through 12th grade
so that is the largest we've had we've
been growing over
the years and one of the things that
really differentiates us is we really
try to identify talent you know highly
talented students
from communities that are historically
underrepresented in classic music we
really at project step we envision a
world in which classical music
the classical music profession will
represent the diversity of the community
so the majority of our students are
either black or latinx from those
backgrounds
okay and i'm sorry latinx what is latinx
uh latino uh oh okay i haven't heard
that
before um and uh yeah okay
um good well uh listen um
uh you said you said you had some
questions could we get to your question
absolutely um so what i would love to
understand is
as i look at your funding and some of
the other organizations really
understanding
if you do drive your dues try to focus
your funding on a specific area within a
program or if it's a more general
funding
for a program so is it specific to in
the arts organizations
a particular string instrument is it
around chamber orchestra
is it around um you know could it be
around instrument
repair rental and maintenance or summer
camp fees so really just trying to
understand
what the best approach is as we're
putting to our uh best foot forward here
yeah so no good question so the thing
that's important to us
is really that we are sort of you know
bringing culture to kids who might not
have it otherwise
so what's really important is that uh
you know you have a program that that
can make a
transformational opportunity for a young
person
who you know otherwise wouldn't have
opportunities so we don't care whether
it's
violin or cello or horn or whatever but
you know what we want is is to see that
you know these
poor poor kids can just get access to
you know things that they don't have at
home oh well uh
forgive me if i misspoke or gave an
incorrect
impression this program is not
necessarily
geared from a socio-economic perspective
towards students all students receive
funding in this program regardless of
need or
many students do not have a financial
need for support but it's just part of
the way our program is run it's really
about identifying
talented musicians and providing them
with the
high quality rigorous training that they
would need in order to go on to a
profession
in music which many of them choose to do
some of them do not end up pursuing
music but it becomes a lifelong passion
of theirs
ah okay sounds good
um so uh yeah
is there anything else sure so if in
terms of um
you know putting our best foot forward
on a proposal
would you suggest we really focus on
the scholarship aspect of our programs
for
things such as summer camps or should we
focus on
a specific area around providing
more perhaps master classes more focused
trainings around
ensembles or chamber orchestra or sp or
anything such as that
uh that all sounds pretty specific um i
think any of that would probably be good
the scholarship angle probably makes a
lot of sense i think that's something
that the trustees would probably get
behind
okay excellent yeah our students go to
all sorts of summer camps both
domestically and abroad and it's really
for every one of the students every year
they do this every year it's a
transformative experience for those
students
it really has a huge impact on their
performance and playing level
and their lives in terms of experience
that's what we like to hear
excellent that's great so i see that um
the budget and financials are due on the
15th of the month so i assume our
prior year budget audit financials would
um be sufficient
and when you say the 15th of the month
before the board meeting uh could you be
a little bit more specific are your
board meetings monthly are they
quarterly so i just want to make sure as
we're preparing our materials
sure they're usually quarterly but you
know sometimes we have to move it a
little bit
uh depending upon when people are free
okay
so if we wanted to get in our
submissions for the next cycle
we should would that be the 15th of june
for the um board meeting that would take
place in july
that docket is really all full i'm
afraid so i think you would have to get
it in
uh for for august 15th for our september
meeting okay
that sounds fantastic we will certainly
be working on that um
myself or one of my colleagues may be in
touch if we have a few more
follow-up detailed questions we
certainly would be happy we'd love to
put you on
our distribution list so you can learn
more about our programming
our concerts currently we're online so
we'd love to
uh given the closure we'd love to have
you you know get exposure firsthand
i don't i don't really do that i'm
afraid we have too many people we work
with after you become a grantee we might
we might do that kind of thing but
uh you know it's just you understand
it's just too many emails of course
totally understand it can certainly be
overwhelming if every single
applicant does that so what we will do
is we'll look forward to
um submitting our application and coming
back from you with any next steps
uh sounds good thanks thank you so much
for your time zach we really appreciate
it
yeah have a great day thanks
all right yeah uh applause for megan
great job
uh so wonderful the the one thing i
should have said by way of framing is
with each of these i'm going to be doing
a bit
um i obviously said a number of things
that i personally do not think during
the course of that conversation
um and uh that will become relevant
later
um but as you saw megan had to navigate
a couple pretty obnoxious things that i
said
um because she is trying to get a grant
for her organization which is doing
really good work
um and i loved her response when i had
this
very like a deficit mindset mindset
confusion
between uh you know the students being
people of color and the students
necessarily being poor
and she said oh actually no our students
aren't poor
they're just students of color um and
and
we are working with really talented
individuals and giving them a place
to thrive and she did it in such a way
that she sounded like a leader right she
wasn't correcting me so much to to get
back at me but
she was saying it in a way that i
realized she actually knows a lot more
than i do
and that can often be valuable because
it means that when i go to my trustee
my trustees what i'm telling them is
yeah they're doing great work they
thought of a bunch of stuff i haven't
thought of
it's easy to let that slide because you
don't want to risk hurting someone's
feelings
um but we it's really past that point as
we
have all seen with a lot of evidence
that we can't really operate that way
anymore and we gotta speak up for
uh how things work um
megan was there anything that you you
wanted to comment you thought went
particularly well or you wish you had
back
so i think um i didn't do as good a job
as i could have in terms of digging in
to really find out the areas
that you in your organization are
interested in funding
um you know it sounded like it was very
general and i was trying to figure out
the right way to dig in to really
understand
what the best approach was in applying
which
you know certainly this is not and we're
all thankful for this this is not my job
to do this so we're all very happy about
that
um we are very happy that you're going
to
so i think everyone's happy but uh i
think that's certainly a trickier area
to navigate especially
um i would imagine when you're new to
this or even just
with different conversations and again
to your point earlier
it's easier to be live in person than
over the phone
yeah yeah so i think that's a great
point um i think that is probably the
the big one that um if i had been in
your shoes i just wanted to
would have wanted to know more about the
story like um
you know so a question like i can see
that you support stem and the arts
that's a little unusual
uh is that something mr edrington was
passionate about what's the story behind
the selection of your grantees
um right or like um yeah there's so much
generous giving mr edrington was clearly
an amazing patron of the arts as well as
the sciences
uh what what inspired that legacy um
and then you can start to learn a lot
about like how how the foundation thinks
and then you can just tell them what
they want to hear
because we all know that the work that
steph does is great and it deserves
money so at this point you're just
trying to find a good way to say that
the things that you do
are the things that we do because in any
reasonable universe this person should
be interested in funding you um
i would maybe suggest uh a little bit
more framing at the beginning i know i
know it's a little bit abstract since
we're just jumping in and out of things
but i found it's very useful
um just to start with like you know
hello i'm from community music center
um i have some questions about the
foundation uh
i was wondering uh if you'd have some
time to talk i can give you a brief
overview
uh we can chat about some of my
questions and then i'd love to hear from
you
or something like that just to have them
like have a scaffold so that they're not
waiting they're like how long am i gonna
stop be stuck on this call with this
person
um uh great job on the next cycle
uh this might have flown by folks but
i gave megan an unsatisfactory answer i
just said oh you know it's quarterly but
sometimes we reschedule
and she held me to it and said okay
great i want to be in the next docket
when can i apply to make sure that that
happens because if we apply
you know every six months say if our
board meeting was only every six months
she might miss the deadline by which the
proposal would be reviewed
if she asked for support for summer 2020
and it doesn't get reviewed until
september
she's thrown away her application
because we're not going to fund it
retroactively
um the uh
only other two little points i would
suggest are um
with each statement i would always try
to ping a question back to me and get me
talking
because we talked about roughly the same
amount of time i think um and
really you should try to hear from me
even more um
if there's you know just always kind of
find a way to like
turn your explanation into a question um
and finally i would have maybe asked me
about what size of grant to apply for
as a new grantee and since it's all over
the map from 5 000 to 150
and are hypothetical um
but uh yeah um
oh and i'm sorry one last thing just
since i know step and i know how many
like
major prominent awards and recognition
you all have um
in your pitch i might have led with like
the you know getting the medal from
michelle obama
you know your students often get
national recognition and major press
like that's the kind of thing that i
think is very useful for a person
like the person i was playing in that
example to be able to hear
yeah no i think in our practice i
actually did do that but yes
somehow today at the moment on the spot
um
but yeah absolutely i actually had that
written down in my notes for
today so i i have definitely forgotten
to mention things about cmcv before put
it that way and this is my job
uh well thank you so much megan we'll go
on to example number two
and that is uh my friend and colleague
tanika patrick
please welcome taniqua who is cmcb's
registrar
as well as the board chair for dunamis
boston
are you here taniqua i'm here hey
hello welcome uh
so Tiniqua also got kind of briefed in
advance
this is a little bit of a different
scenario from
the hypothetical o'connor family trust a
small
501c3 based in boston. The trust has
long-standing relationships with a
number of catholic schools and hospitals
and makes regular grants to the nursing
program at mass general hospital
the trust also has a new competitive
program for organizations in the
performing arts. we support 501c3s and
organizations with fiscal sponsorship
that are bringing new innovative
operating models to promote and enhance
the reach of the performing arts
for information on the application
contact Zach O'connor, trustee
and CEO. So in this case Tiniqua was
actually talking to someone who's a
trustee of the foundation so someone
who's gonna vote
on whether a grant is made um however
it's a common name
so she she tries to do her research she
tries to look me up
but she doesn't know who i am so she's
just got to go into this call
totally blind um she's you know i could
be
75 and used to be in an orchestra i
could be 23 and some idiot kid who
inherited the foundation. she has no idea
um so Tiniqua you
are an interesting position of pitching
on behalf of Dunamis which has quite a
unusual and special and really vital
mission but not a very common one if
if i understand correctly
um yeah so our nonprofit
Dunamis is a nonprofit that is
dedicated to providing professional
development
and nurturing growth for emerging
artists and arts management
and arts managers in boston so um
there is definitely um development
opportunities in different organizations
but we are
i'm purely focused on helping artists of
color to
be able to stand on their own feet and
um
have their own agency and you know
provide transformative growth to
themselves and to their community
yeah great you i mean you just sort of
did your elevator pitch but
we'll pretend now that we're uh we're
jumping into a call so
in this case there's no real information
on the application
um other than that it's a competitive
proposal so in this case
uh what the neuqua's really got to do is
get me on the phone
um tell me a little bit about her
organization give me a little pitch
and then see if she can figure out what
the next steps would be to apply
this would be a very common situation
for a small family foundation
you'd probably find this information in
their tax records they might not even
have a website
um it's very very very common so uh
are you ready sneakwood yeah
great uh well ring ring ring hello this
is uh
zach o'connor at the o'connor family
trust oh
hi zach my name is tiniqua patrick i'm
calling on behalf of dunamis
hi taniqua yeah thanks for making some
time oh
not a problem um i was actually calling
because i had the opportunity to look at
your website
and i was super interested in the work
that you're doing i feel like it aligns
with what we're doing and
i was hoping to introduce myself and get
a little more information on your grant
program
uh yeah absolutely um well you know
thanks for the introduction and uh
i'd love to hear about what you do and
then let me know what questions i can
answer for you for sure absolutely
um so dunamis is a nonprofit that seeks
to
uh nurture the transformative growth and
professional development of
artists and arts managers in boston we
do that in a variety of ways by
community building by consultations um
teaching folks to advocate for
themselves and a bit of production as
well so we have
multiple venues and um we're doing a lot
of great work in the city
that's great and and so uh where does
the money
actually go it goes towards events or
concerts or
uh professional development like how do
you actually spend uh
contributed revenue absolutely um
so a great bulk of our finances go
into providing the professional
development act
aspect for our artists and our managers
and we have a cohort called the emerging
artists fellowship
that is dedicated to nurturing our
artists within their artistry providing
professional development
um and then we also have an arts
managers program
um that allows the same aspects but for
arts managers and
people who are interested in producing
events on their own um so those are our
main
uh streams of venue um our other streams
such as
um we have a young artist picture series
um primarily a house sessions that
is a way that helps spotlight the
artists that we work with
but it is also a source of income for us
um
as well as our seeds of joy program
which
is um actually sponsored um and they um
are provided they're just providing joy
to the community
um through our personal cohort and
through our
um colleagues across the city
got it well you know that certainly
sounds like something we'd be interested
in
you know we have a competitive grant
program that's that's for organizations
in the performing arts that are doing
sort of new or innovative approaches
to you know to promoting and enhancing
the reach of things like
like music like classical music or going
to museums
or you know things like that um
you uh you said you had some questions
or things you wanted to know
yeah absolutely i was hoping to just get
a better idea of
the grant um itself um specifically what
how do we apply um and what specifically
are you looking for
um as far as things that align with your
mission and goals
um and the organizations that you
currently work with
sure yeah so to start you know we like
to start with sort of a simple letter of
inquiry so you could just send us one or
two pages
a lot of the kind of stuff that you just
said to me um
and uh and we could probably go go from
there if you just want to send that
letter to the address that's on our tax
forms
sure absolutely um just wondering is
there anything specific that you would
like to hear
anything that you wish people said in
their uh proposals
oh that's an interesting question uh
well i mean we like to
you know we like to hear why your work
is innovative um and
you know since we're a small family
foundation every dollar counts we really
like to know
uh sort of you know what exactly how you
spend the money you know really specific
specifically
we don't often just give like five
thousand dollars as a lump sum but we'll
give
you know four thousand three hundred and
eighty seven dollars it's like exactly
reimbursing certain expenses
oh sure that's awesome um are you you
specified that you give between four
thousand five thousand dollars
i'm just wondering specifically um how
much
that grantee should be asking for um
yeah uh good question it's usually in
that range something like three to five
thousand dollars
okay um and are there any what's your
reporting process
um do you need anything formal informal
yeah
it's pretty relaxed you know after about
a year maybe just send us a note and let
us know what's
uh let us know what you've done with the
funds
sure okay um and then is there anything
else that you think that
we should know about you um we are
definitely a community-based
organization and i would love to get to
know you
better yeah well that's great you know
i'd love to learn more about what what
you all do and
you know i'd love to stay in touch if
you got a mailing list or something i
can give you my email
um let to stay on it i i i keep
telling the website people though they
keep forgetting to update this but you
have
you have an annual operating budget of
at least 200 thousand dollars right
because that's a that's a requirement to
apply
oh actually at this time we do not um
ah oh shoot i'm so sorry
we really i told the guys they just
they don't they don't change it
oh you know website developers or their
issues tell me to tell me about it right
yeah yeah but you know is this something
that we could
uh potentially be considering in the
future
yeah so absolutely it's a strict
threshold you know
my mother she put it in place she's
really restricted about budgets and
numbers and stuff but
you know that might change in the future
and as soon as you hit that threshold
you know then then you could come come
back and apply
oh absolutely um well that's awesome i
am hoping um
even though we can't apply with you it
would be awesome if you know you thought about keeping us
in mind. if you know any other
organizations or funders who are
providing organization organizational um
organizations with funds like um like
our organization we would be
really grateful to to be a part of those
conversations.
yeah you know actually come to think of
it um this is what we can do i'm so
sorry it didn't work out today but
my uncle michael he lives down in dedham
he's got a foundation and he does sort
of like economic development stuff.
so i can write you and introduce you
he also loves the arts
it's great i think he might be
interested in this sentence about this
kind of like skill building and
workforce development and preparing
future leaders
so just send me an email with kind of
what you said here and i'll forward you
to him and i can introduce you to him
and
i think he might be interested in
getting an application from you
awesome i i will absolutely do that um
and on top of that you said that you are
also interested in here with us so
i'll make sure to get you on our mailing
list as well so um thank you so much for
your time today
yeah thank you Tiniqua. All righty have a
great day stay in touch
all right let's hear from for tonight
that was awesome
terrific uh very well done um of course
the the crux
of that one was was the pivot where i
sort of surprised you by telling you at
the last minute that it wouldn't work
you handled it beautifully right you
immediately jumped
to would this make sense in the future
and um
and and got someone else out of me right
i made another point of connection
and you reminded me at the end you
confirmed that i wanted to stay in touch
um and wanted to be on your email list
and hear from you great
diligent thoughtful quick on your feet
awesome um
from you it was anything that sort of
jumped out or stood out
uh anything you would want a second try
out if you had another chance
um i don't i felt like i talked too much
uh
and i was trying to fill spaces there
was moments where i was trying to give a
pause
um but i i did the thing where you just
you chatted before they answered so
something to work on for sure yeah yeah
great
um and it was sort of in particular in
the middle part of the call as you were
doing like the second part of your pitch
when i solicited a little more
information
you maybe got pretty deep in the weeds
of your lines of business
um where you could have stayed just
maybe floated a little bit higher on the
surface
and then um it painted it back to me a
little bit more quickly
um but i thought that first pitch was
great the way you framed the
conversation was great like
did we all feel just how at ease i was
able to be the way Tiniqua first
answered the phone
to be like this is who i am this is why
i'm calling this is what i need of you
would you be so kind as to share some
time with me like immediately it
got us off on the right foot it was
great um
yeah i think we will go on to the next
scenario unless there's anything else to
negotiate
no that was great thank you so much cool
thank you
all right so
scenario number three i'll be joined by
a tag team
of uh chris perry he's a director of
music therapy here at cmcb
and michael depasquale who's our
director of in-house programs
uh chris and michael are you there yep
hey zach
hello so this is a very common situation
um i am very often on call
calls with Lecolion for example um it
takes some coordination
uh right because when you ask a question
you don't want to be like do i do
it oh well you oh sorry well i guess --
that's not a good look. so you
often want to have some sort of plan you
often want to coordinate a little bit
and what we often do is that one person
leads and then invites the other person
into the conversation
when relevant so often nicoline is
leading and then will bring me in
only if he needs something from me and
then i know
i keep my pie hole shut until nicole
points at me and says you know please uh
zach why don't you jump in on that one
um
so this is our final example a little
bit
wordier um so this is the hypothetical
lure family foundation
with three million in annual gifts
grants and contributions the lure family
foundation has established itself as one
of the foremost supporters of arts
culture and education in new england
for immediate release a request for
proposals from may 29th
in response to overwhelming
demonstration of need from communities
in 2020 we are implementing a request
for proposals for disability act
arts access grants arts and cultural
organizations with a budget of 1 million
or more
are encouraged to apply grants will
range between 50 000 and 100 000
and maybe either single or multi-year
the deadline is june 17th
awards will support organizations that
serve individuals with disabilities
either for programs or ada capital
repairs
there's some values around learning
education mentorship understanding and
so on
and then this little bit of information
to schedule a 15-minute appointment
please contact zach sheets program
officer for arts and culture
a dedicated leader within philanthropy
zach has over five years experience
administering grants in the arts and
culture sector
um so chris and michael you're you're
going to call on on behalf of sort of a
real-life cmcb initiative which is
called all-in
which is our our well i will let you
explain it during your pitch how about
that
um i'll maybe uh
maybe we'll dive right into this one i
imagine folks have some feelings about
some of the
information on this slide but we can
maybe talk about it after actually
and see how it shapes the way you
approach this um are you guys
ready to go yeah yeah cool
great so we'll imagine you have
scheduled your 15-minute appointment
for the purposes of this let's imagine
you sent a head up a one-pager on CMCB
so
i basically know about CMCB and in this
call you'll just tell me about All In
so ring ring hello uh this is zach sheets
at the lure family foundation is this
chris and michael from CMCB
hi zach this is chris and michael thank
you so much for making time to meet with
us today
yeah it's it's my pleasure and you know
thank you for sending ahead that one
pager
you guys do a lot of stuff you know so
many different programs but
uh you mentioned uh all in in particular
is something that
might be of interest to us here at the
lure family foundation on our new rfp
um yeah i'd love to hear about it
thanks so much for having us zach uh
this is chris perry uh director of music
therapy
speaking um and i know that you've
received a little bit of information
about the community music center in
boston but i want to talk to you
specifically about our work with
individuals with disabilities
um so we are in the middle of a
multi-year initiative called the all-in
initiative
to make sure that all individuals can
access all of our programs
and we have three parts the first one
we've started this year which is
awareness where we're doing a lot of
professional development
and what we're really looking forward to
soon is
increasing more access uh through
capital improvements
and then eventually more inclusive
programming
great well that that sounds like exactly
what we'd be looking at you have a
budget of one million or more
that is correct yeah okay great
um go go ahead yeah sorry sorry about
that
i was just wondering um a little bit
about
your story i noticed that um you have a
new initiative as part of disability
arts and i'm wondering
um how that came about and a little bit
about your vision for disability access?
yeah great great question so um the lure
family foundation historically was
supporting
pretty conventional arts and culture
organizations big shops like the
Gardener the BSO
um you know things like that and
we realized you know of course recently
it's become very trendy all the
conversations that we see
are about diversity and inclusion and we
realized a big space where we were
failing
was uh that you know a lot of our
grantees didn't do a lot with
accessibility
and so we decided that was a space where
we really you know
thought we could make a difference and
where we felt like we we knew
how our funds could be could be
leveraged for success
um and so we started this new program uh
you know as you know we were one of the
most
significant funders in new england uh
and 
this seemed like a really good direction
to go in for that
thanks so much for that response um
i'm wondering if if i can ask a little
bit more of a specific question
about your vision for arts experiences
with individuals with disabilities
some um some funders and some
organizations
like to provide more passive experiences
like sensory friendly concerts um but
other organizations like to provide
more active learning opportunities um is
there a specific one of those
that the lure family foundation is
interested in funding
whoa uh boy good question we haven't
really thought about that uh
we you know active learning is good
passive learning is good
it's really just about uh you know
bringing opportunities to to people who
might not have them otherwise you know
we want to see that both normal families
and
and families with disabilities can
access programs
thanks so much for that response um
michael do you have a question that you
want to jump in with
yeah absolutely um thanks again for for
having
having us zach and for giving us a
moment to ask the questions
um when i was looking at the the call
for proposals
um i did notice that you had mentioned
the possibility of
being awarded single or multi-year
grants um
and it made me wonder uh what for you
constitutes a multi-year grant for um
for this foundation yeah so you know if
there's a project you think you can
solve in one year
um that would really be a one-year grant
and if there's a project that you think
would take a little bit longer
uh you know because we really want to
see like a a major shift
in who you're able to serve um so if
it's like a bigger capital project it
would take multiple years or like an
ongoing program
uh that would really be more of a
multi-year grant i'm i'm really glad you
mentioned that because
as you know sort of the the things
that we hope to solve with a grant like
this
are long-standing and intractable
and so our all-in
initiative is really meant to serve as a
multi-year
initiative with a number of different
layers is it okay if we sort of walk you
through what those layers look like and
see if it's aligned with
your vision for outcomes that you'd hope
for
sure yeah great chris would you like to
yeah absolutely so i think i think
initially we
uh we are interested in uh ada capital
repairs we are a large community
organization
uh but we do have a home in the south
end of boston um that we're looking to
make some changes so that individuals
with disabilities can participate
and then once that happens we really
want to be able to invite individuals
with disabilities
uh more equitably and with more dignity
into all of our programs um you know
i really i really feel like the the
values of access
and equity um that the community music
center of boston has
lines up with yours i was wondering if
you could tell me
a little bit around your values um
around learning and education
sure yeah so so we like to have the
position that you know
um non-profits can can really learn
from our expertise and they can know you
know what the best ways are to approach
these problems because
we do a lot of this uh you know we work
with a lot of non-profits we invest in a
lot of organizations so
uh we can really share what we hear from
them with non-profits but
uh you know we also then want to hear
back from non-profits what their needs
are with us
and so for example you know i'm curious
to hear uh you know michael you
mentioned that these problems are
are intractable but i mean if they're
intractable
how would a grant help you solve them
well
um that actually uh reminded me that i i
noticed in
in the proposal or the call for
proposals rather um
that you mentioned that you can fund uh
either programs or ada capital repairs
and that brings me back towards the
sort of the the sequence of um things
that we'd like
to do with funding like this which would
start with capital repairs because
they're
certainly the first step to making our
building more accessible and inclusive
but then we would hope to really expand
that into scholarship
programs aimed at students with
disabilities to make them feel
supported and like they have the optimum
amount of access to take part in our
programs
and then varied programming that's both
passive
like we mentioned being able to attend
concerts and events
but also very active we want we want
these students to
feel included and not othered and
welcomed to take part in literally any
program that we can offer
um so we would actually create programs
around that initiative
and then finally we would hope to use
funding to
market and promote um specifically to
members
of those communities so that they know
that these are options that we have and
that this is a very
strong um and poignant focus of ours
great so it sounds like where you would
you would really have some synergy with
us would be around this idea of like a
multi-phase program
so what i would probably recommend is is
uh you know you start with a sort of
you know year one you itemize some
certain things that you'd be doing and
then you know maybe year two where
you're doing the bulk of the work and
then maybe like a year three where
you're moving into this sort of
promotion
phase uh if i understand correctly and
you know
you can ask for different amounts each
year so maybe in one of the years it's a
little bit less maybe in one of the
years it's a little bit more and then a
little bit less again kind of like a
bell curve
um you know that that really seems like
it would uh
would work well with what you what
you're doing and with the kind of
strategy and tactics that we like to
have
absolutely um if you don't mind me
asking i did notice that you have a
pretty quick turnaround
um for the proposals um and
that made me feel like you have a very
strong sense of what you're looking for
um do you mind speaking to um sort of
the most
important qualities that you look for in
a grant proposal
uh yeah a good question well no you know
to be honest um
you know we set the deadline because
that's when we needed for our meeting
with our trustees
we had you know we're kind of delayed
getting the rfp out um
but so you know like i said i think what
we're looking for is that
you know we can really sort of get in
get out make a big difference
um you can really achieve a lot here um
and so
this idea that you know you could come
away with something really radically
different
uh than than where you started i think
would really be the turning point that
would help set you apart
yeah because of our mission alignment i
feel like
we could end up having a long-standing
relationship
um and and we're really excited to show
you
sort of what that the beginning of that
relationship looks like to our proposal
i think my colleague chris might have
another question
uh yeah i just i just had a brief
question about
um uh about how your organization
likes to likes to receive information um
we we have the option
of we have so many amazing stories of
the individuals with disabilities we
serve
but we're also an organization that
collects a lot of data
do you think um it would be more
successful for us
to focus on data and numbers
or to focus more generally on the
stories of the individuals that we are
already
working with yeah yeah i mean i would
say both
i would say both numbers are good and
stories are good too um i think both you
know both things could really factor
into a proposal
that that absolutely makes sense in in
uh in other proposals in the past has
there been
um has there been something specific
that the board has
that has really resonated with the
board um yeah
yeah you know that's a good question um
i i think
you know i think for them it's useful if
they can see
the way the system is changing overall
you know like the way an organization is
able to put in like a wheelchair
ramp or something like that but then
also to be able to understand the
specific story of a person who is
affected by that
generally that's been the most
successful thing that i've seen those
kind of proposals
generally tend to do pretty well but it
is a new initiative so
you know it can't always be too short
great um i think those are most of the
questions that i have um
michael is there is there anything else
uh that you have
yes i actually gotta run in a second
guys so if we can wrap it up pretty soon
all right all right great i guess we'll
just we'll just uh we'll just wrap it up
by asking is there anything else that we
should know that we didn't speak about
today
um no i i was glad to talk to you guys i
didn't mean to cut you off michael if
you had something to say but i i think
we're probably good no i just wanted to
thank you again for your time
i feel like we have a strong mission
alignment and i see
a long-standing partnership here and so
we really look forward to submitting our
proposal
and hearing your thoughts about it great
well
uh yes thank you gentlemen and i look
forward to your proposal
thank you thanks so much
okay so sometimes program officers
most of the time almost all the time
program officers are lovely wonderful
people who get involved with
philanthropy
because they want to make the world a
better place chris and michael handled
that
great i tried to get under their skin
and they weren't flappable
right there was this key moment in the
conversation where i revealed a lot
about myself
where i asked chris if they want to
think things both about families with
disabilities and
normal families that's super telling
immediately he
knew everything he needed to know about
me and at that moment in the
conversation they pivoted from trying to
get like
smart sophisticated strategy from me to
just like telling me
that they're a leader and that they're
gonna do good work
because they knew that like i wasn't
gonna be that helpful to them they tried
you know but like i was i was purposely
frustrating them a little bit and
sometimes that
that's how it works but sometimes people
like me in that scenario are a
gatekeeper
there were probably a lot of red flags
where they could have known this in
advance
um for example three million dollars is
not very much money for a foundation so
the fact that they thought they were
one of the foremost supporters of the
arts is incorrect
um they're rolling out a brand new
program and making hundred thousand
dollar investments in organizations when
they've never done disability before and
the person overseeing it as an arts and
culture officer who has only five years
experience in philanthropy
that's not an organization that's
thinking carefully and to michael's
point about the deadline
we only gave people three weeks to get a
proposal together that's not adequate if
we want to solve
you know significant challenges um and
each time i frustrated them
they kept their cool they were sort of
reserved and calm and thought about the
best way that they could put their best
foot forward it was really good
um it's really i feel like i need to go
take a shower now i said the word
synergy and getting get out like
ugh um did you guys
like i imagine that was like sort of
annoying but did you guys have anything
you know that you found worked well for
you
or like moments that you thought were
important to mention
uh you can go first michael if you have
anything
um i feel like
having gone through it live i feel like
it would have been helpful
to coordinate the arc of our questions
because we did jump around subject
matter a bit that being said
um like you mentioned once we realize
certain things about you as a person in
this character of course
um you know we we had to be nimble and
kind of move to something else because
time is precious and we recognize that
you weren't going to be on the line
forever
yeah yeah and you know unless you had
any doubts about the sophistication of
our foundation
our values spell the word lemurs um
so this is not an organization that
thinks very carefully right
so
um what we saw
throughout these conversations is that
so much of this work is about personal
interactions
and who you know and who's in your
network matter a lot
and the way you move through the world
is often really deeply shaped by your
identity and
and the way you interact with people
often emerges from aspects of that
right and so
we're gonna turn here to chapter three
of of this presentation and
look at the the ethics
of this and and the ways we move through
this world and
as with many features of american life
um segregation and inequality tend to be
particularly concentrated around
questions of race and ethnicity and that
is certainly true
of navigating arts and culture and
philanthropy
so let's start by looking at who we are
and let's start with foundations the
people who write checks who give out
money
is from a study done by board source
called leading with intent
and it was a series of surveys both the
foundations and to non-profits and on
the foundation side this shows
executives board chairs and board
members of uh
foundations who participated in the
survey and we notice
that executives are around 90 percent
white board shares are 90 to 95
white and boards overall are 85 percent
white
but unfortunately even that is too
soothingly vague
because there are a lot of foundations
that are by and for people of color that
tend to over
represent people of color among their
board executives and staff
which means that when you take that out
and look at the rest two out of five
foundation boards
did not have a single person of color
and this is organizations
that signed up to be part of a survey
about diversity and equity so we can
only imagine what the true sample looks
like
now small family foundations have a
different kind of composition structure
it's within a family but
even when we exclude them 35 have all
white boards and
i think the most astonishing to me is 44
of community foundations
have all white boards when we're talking
about these kind of exchanges
that megan and taniqua and chris and
michael were having
when we think about who it is who's in
these positions of power that matters a
lot
and this is a level of satisfaction with
demographic diversity
as reported by board executives and to
be fair
fifty percent of executives say that
they're not satisfied with the racial
diversity
but these statistics haven't changed in
20 years
the proportion of people of color on
boards and the level of satisfaction
hasn't changed as reported by the people
who could snap their fingers and do
something about it
and there's a lot of aspects to identity
unfortunately
it's pretty hard to get data about
socioeconomic status ability status or
gender and sexuality because we don't
often report those in the workplace
but it's worth considering given how
segregated and how unbelievably
homogeneous so many of these foundations
are
if 26 of executives are satisfied with
the racial diversity
what does it mean that 24 or 14 or 9
are satisfied with the representation of
people with a disability on their board
it's got to be so much worse
but it's easy to cast criticism at
foundations you know the wealthiest
among us
we ought to look in the mirror ourselves
as well
because if we look at nonprofits and
charities the kind of people who are
doing this work on a daily basis
well the statistics aren't terribly
different
around 90 percent of chief executives
are white 90 of board chairs and 85
percent of board members
now we are blessed to have such an
extraordinary community of supporters
and we have an amazing board uh
much more diverse than these statistics
but we still have a number of white
members on our board and we're so glad
to have them and so
welcoming that they're here that's not
the question it's not about individual
people
the question is about what it means
overall when all of these structures are
so homogeneous and then so much power
flows between these two parties
now you may be thinking okay but that's
the u.s overall right
we should look at cities which are much
more diverse than a place like idaho
or vermont well we don't have that data
for boston as far as i know if someone
does know that i would
please be in touch with me i would love
to see it but our colleagues down the
road at the new york city department of
cultural affairs
did a landmark study in 2015 that led to
something called the create nyc cultural
plan
it's an extraordinary document it's it's
provocative
and in many ways quite radical for
philanthropy and it
governed the way the department of
cultural affairs there makes use of
their 51 million dollar budget
they surveyed 922 nonprofit arts and
cultural organizations
who return surveys about their board and
staff and just for reference
uh census data shows that new york is
around 67
people of color um new york city public
schools like the boston public schools
are
often more like 85 people of color all
right
so that's the the kind of layout of the
city we're talking about here
and yeah when we look at who's staffing
arts organizations
it's two to one in the opposite
direction almost two-thirds of staff at
arts and culture organizations receiving
public money
are white and there's no long-standing
history or or orthodoxy of who's
the composition of a foundation's
leadership these are just hiring
decisions that we make
every day so not that there's a good
excuse for the homogeneity of
foundations but
we have no excuse when it comes to the
arts and culture sector
we're just hiring people and if we just
hired people at random
it would look so much different than
this never mind if we took into account
all of the extraordinary talent
pipelines and all the extraordinarily
skilled people that there are making art
and leading organizations
and the higher up the latter you go the
worse it gets
white folks account for 55 of junior
staff but 75
of senior staff in arts organizations
which means that the talented people who
are there who are people of color
are often getting pushed out and
if we look even more specifically at the
kind of roles people fulfill
if you look at the right end of the
chart which shows the percentage of
white staff
broken down by role if we look at things
like curator designer
leadership board development marketing
the primarily artistic and fundraising
kinds of tasks
they're the most concentrated in
whiteness that is way out of alignment
with what the city looks like as a whole
but when we look at jobs that are often
much less well-paid
and often custodial or clerical like
security or facilities
retail or patron services
these are the ones that
disproportionately represent people of
color so if you think back to that pie
chart
that's 62 percent not only do white
folks make up two to one the overall
staff
they make up three quarters or or four
fifths
of the folks who are actually making
decisions about how money flows
and who gets investment and to come back
to our board point from earlier
even in the most diverse city in america
white people still account for
75 of the boards of nonprofit arts and
cultural organizations
which is barely different than the
statistics for america as a whole
and that's in a city that is
overwhelmingly uh
has a population of people of color at
every level of
you know civic service government
finance industry
software industry a lot of these
industries are doing even better than we
are in the arts and culture industry to
represent people of color among their
staff
most notably for me was this finding
from the
create nyc plan which is that the
largest percentage of philanthropic
support comes from individual donors
generally speaking around 42
but studies show that these resources
primarily go to large institutions
meanwhile a devos institute of
management studies showed that arts
organizations whose mission is to serve
people of color and low-income
communities
had only five percent contributed
revenue from individual donors because
those networks are just
unavailable to them so what that means
is that as we're under pressure to keep
our doors open
paradoxically organizations that work
with communities of color are much more
reliant
on average on precisely this kind of
institutional and government support
which we just demonstrated
are so homogeneous and so white
42 versus five and all of this plays out
as we saw in our examples
on an asymmetrical power relationship we
like to joke here about the golden rule
if you have the gold you make the rules
right if you're the one person who tells
a funder what they want to hear
maybe you're the one who's going to get
a grant so
what i would ask to my colleagues here
today who do work in fundraising
particularly if you work for
predominantly white institutions
is ask yourself are you trying to make a
bigger pie or are you trying to secure
yourself a bigger slice
because if you're not advocating for the
uh for the entire sector
you're actually doing the sector a
pretty significant disservice
and this brings us to our final chapter
which is how we tell stories
and how we talk about ourselves now
the way that we talk about ourselves
needs to be absolutely as sophisticated
as the way we talk about young people in
the classroom
or the way we talk about our
performances on stage
we use words to construct the way we
think about the world so they matter
a lot you have to say what you mean and
you have to name the problem
and so often we don't do this and that's
because
i think we like to think of grants as as
apolitical or
removed from the everyday world right
you just word smith and then
you get money but when we're talking
about schools we're
we're talking about what the future
looks like when we're talking about the
arts we're talking about a kind of
storytelling
that imagines what the future could be
and that's as political as it can
possibly get
so if you're working in grants you need
to find ways to build fluency in talking
about issues
like race or class or disability
advocacy
think about all the dumb things i said
on behalf of the lure family foundation
if whoever's on the other end of that
call thinks those things too
imagine how long that gets propagated
and i think it's important to remember
that we're not really talking about
policing language here
as eric gensler put it we're really
talking about what it means for people
to just be excluded
this isn't about jargon this isn't about
you know necessarily knowing the right
word to say it's about
knowing what the strategy is to solve
some of these chronic problems
so there's some very common pitfalls
that we tend to fall into
and and these reflect the biases that we
often absorb
from the world around us and and there's
three big ones that i'd like to talk
about
we may run a few minutes over i'm happy
to stick around for questions um i do
want to be respectful of people's time
if you have to drop off
at 7 30 um i totally understand there's
any questions you want to ask directly
feel free to throw them in the chat i
can follow up with you later or you can
send me an email
my emails is on the CMCB about us page
sheets@cmcb.org
so let's take each of these three
pitfalls
in turn which are ones we see quite
often and the first
is commonly talked about as a deficit
mindset or as a kind of savior complex
so ask yourself for example if you're an
educational organization
do you talk about your students as full
of potential or in need of a savior
and do you fantasize that perhaps that
savior is you
because if so you've stopped making it
about the students and made it about
yourself
so a test is try some of the language
you use while thinking of a student at a
private school or even just an average
kid from the suburbs
does it still sound right if you're
working for milton academy or
phillips exeter and you say yeah we're
just trying to get our kids off the
streets
does that sound appropriate to you no
you never have that expectation for that
student
but if philanthropists are thinking that
way and nonprofits are thinking that way
and they're orbiting one another
in a concentric circle that starts to
become a huge
problem and you know
like i said it's about unifying
ourselves behind the most successful
strategy because
saying things like urban or at risk it's
not just lazy writing
it can perpetuate the fundamentally
wrong idea about the way to solve a
problem
we saw this a little bit in chris
perry's talk on accessibility and and
disability advocacy when he talked about
the social structures of disability
right and he mentioned the example that
a blind person in a restaurant is not
incapable of going to the bathroom
that's not the problem
the problem is that the restaurant has
not invested in handicap accessible
restrooms they can be treated
that can treat people with dignity and
independence to be able to use the
restroom
it's a social function and it's much
larger than one person
and it's the same thing here right if we
talk about at risk well
all young people are at risk for
something but what that is depends on
your zip code
and so if you use at risk only to mean
certain zip codes then what you're doing
is taking
really broad societal problems and
making them about a specific block or a
specific neighborhood
and you're making the students and the
families who live there
the solution and the problem to this
issue when they are
neither they're just families who are in
your programs
but when you start using this language
or or dog whistle or be coded or
don't say what the issue is then you
flatten what actually specifically you
could be doing to help them
so for example let's look at a real life
example
it's a great nonprofit in harlem called
brosis it's founded in 1995
comprehensive holistic support they're
an evidence-based program they do great
work
organize and advocate for social change
publish curricula
train educators on our model here's how
they were described by the chronicle for
philanthropy recently
a harlem non-profit shows how to keep
kids in school and out of trouble by
giving them the tools they need to
transcend racism
poverty and now the coronavirus little
did you know
eight-year-olds were responsible for
racism poverty and the coronavirus right
it looks ridiculous and it feels
ridiculous because we've made
those students responsible for something
that's so much bigger than them
and yeah they will have to deal with all
of those things but it's not
their problem and it's not their fault
to solve and if we hold them accountable
for that
when we as a society of 330 million
people and the wealthiest country in the
world can't solve those problems
we're setting them up to fail and this
brings us
uh to another major
major uh pitfall we tend to fall into
and that's the idea of exceptionalism
and for this we look at number 42
himself mr jackie robinson
and we can consider this the story of
jackie robinson is often a classic
example of how whiteness obscures racism
because it makes racism individual
invisible
robinson is often celebrated as the
first african-american to break the
color line and play in major league
baseball so the subtext is that
robinson finally had what it took to
play with whites
but really the story is that jackie
robinson was the first person
that white's allowed to play baseball um
those of you might know this is a quote
from robin d'angelo's book on white
fragility
it's an amazing book particularly for
white folks
and what this lets us do is rather than
reckon with our biases and stereotypes
we pat ourselves on the back for being
able to name specific exceptions to them
and we erase the fact that the real
problem here was all of the great
baseball players before jackie robinson
who are people of color would have been
hauled off the field by police if they
tried to step onto the field
that's the real problem
so here are some basic examples of the
way this can play out in your thinking
when you're writing a grant right
instead of saying we serve urban at-risk
youth which is vague
and obscure what's actually going on
just say 60
of our students are black and hispanic
instead of saying many students are poor
71 are economically disadvantaged look
up the statistic the school system has
it
just say the scope of the problem or the
scope of the need
instead of saying that communities need
your help say that they face
disinvestment
because that's what's real if they have
the kind of
money and access to resources that a lot
of suburbs have
they wouldn't need your help and instead
of talking about students like empty
vessels that you you serve each week
think about how many participate in your
programs it might be a subtle change in
your language or your thinking but it's
really
important because it changes the way you
fundamentally conceive of what it is you
do
and how it is you advocate on people's
behalf and that is where things get
really
important for the ethics of how we do
this work right
instead of talking about youth with
challenges to talk about
youth who behave informed by trauma
instead of talking about partners who
can't pay up talk about how there's
long-standing shortfalls in civic
investment because these are the things
we need to bring to funders attention
anyway now finally
something we've seen a lot of in the
past couple days in particular
is this final pitfall and that's the
idea of appropriating credit
that's the idea that you can you can pat
yourself on the back
for something that actually you had
nothing to do with
so these are a series of things i've
seen recently and and what i
see when i see them so several of our
prominent alumni
are people of color that sounds nice but
what i hear is
there are 127 million people of color
and three of them went here
if that's your bar for success you're
not doing very well and you're treating
those individual ones as tokens
without actually accounting for whether
they felt supported at your school
whether people were hostile to them
whether they have nothing good to say
about you after they've left
or for example we were one of the first
conservatories in the country to offer
jazz
what i hear is we teach a music that
some black people play
again what are you taking credit for
like who
what why why do you think this is
relevant and what do you think the
stakes are in this conversation
uh often this will play out on a number
of lines with marginalized people
um and so for example you'll often see
things like we're a really welcoming
work environment like we have
trans staff members which means like a
trans person exists in my office and i
haven't exploded
so we're doing a great job like that
just means that a person exists and if
that's your barrier
if that's your bar for success you are
probably setting up
so many barriers that you have no idea
about
and finally and this is one that chris
actually caught with me recently
is when you say something like you know
we have programs for people with
disabilities in our music therapy
department
what you're doing actually is saying
that you define people by their medical
diagnosis
why wouldn't someone with a disability
just want to take violin lessons why do
you have to route them towards a
specific
kind of service that you feel is the
only thing that they might want to be
interested in
but remember that it's it's couched
under this guise of
um like talking about how good we are
and patting ourselves on the back and
that's really dangerous
um so the thing to remember here is that
it's not what a claim says
it's about how it functions in a
conversation what role does it play
in the kind of bigger picture
understanding we have about how we
approach equity
um we're going to skip this example
because i think it's going to be pretty
basic but the vet put out a big like
black lives matter tweet while they
simultaneously have a performance for
rent on their website with an under
trump code performing in blackface
and like i just let's not even go there
um it's so bananas
so this is the kind of thing we might
see a lot um which
is on the surface of it like a
seemingly nice thing we serve urban
at-risk youth many of whom struggle with
truly unthinkable challenges many more
struggle to learn
english all of this language
is about deficits and it's about how you
can be a savior for people you think
have deficits
but compare it to this kind of language
which
says what's actually happening which
instead of talking
talking about students who can't learn
english talks about students who are
soon going to be
bilingual that doesn't just say that
you know schools are overwhelmingly
black but says schools are
overwhelmingly black and that's a
problem because of the wealth gap
right that doesn't just say we have dei
hiring practices it says
we hire people who have a history of
youth development work in disinvested
communities
and i know that grant writers are always
obsessed with word counts and
and want things to be as as slick and
punchy as possible but
i gotta tell you the second one's
shorter it takes a lot more work and
a lot more time to craft it this way but
it says what's actually going on it
educates funders on the problem
on the problem and doesn't throw all the
people you're trying to champion under
the bus along the way
so as we're wrapping up here just
remember
if you're responsible for securing
resources you have tremendous
authority and if you have a voice in the
hall of power you
have power yourself so you have to
consider
how you came to understand the world
around you and how that's reflected in
the way that you're talking
and writing and going about your work
every day because if you're like me
you're having conversations like the
ones i had with chris and michael and
taniqua all the time
so you have to embrace humility and
self-awareness if one of your colleagues
tells you hey that's actually not how we
think about our students
don't answer well it's how i think about
it in the grant say okay
tell me more because that's how you're
going to examine your biases and that's
how you're going to hang on to this idea
that we're all continuously improving
we've all grown up relentlessly peppered
with negative stereotypes and prejudices
and if we can acknowledge that and
acknowledge that this is much larger
than any of us
then we can start to break that cycle a
little bit and that i think is the most
important thing of all
we have some time for questions i'm
happy to stick around i know we're a
couple minutes over
um thank you all so much for for joining
us
here um you know as always
we do rely on our family supporters and
our community of friends
to help make our transformative work
possible every day if you would like to
make a donation you can text
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you know we would so value and
appreciate your support and we thank you
uh for joining us today for this
conversation
with that in mind um
are there any questions that people
would like to throw into the chat
or you can use the raise your hand
feature if you know how to do that
on the participants list
i'll give another minute or two for for
questions if people are thinking
um i i've got a quick
question zach if that's all right
which is which is just um you mentioned
that part
um when we were speaking
where you mentioned individuals with
disabilities and
in normal people um and i
regret the way that i did not
um change the language in the moment and
i'm just wondering
you know without have without sharing a
specific experience perhaps
um but where's your call on that i mean
i
i came out of it feeling really gross
um and i'm just wondering how how i
could have handled that situation better
in the future yeah so the first thing is
like
sometimes you just you can't fix it like
it's too
it's there's two it's too complicated
there's too many hang-ups
um you know i had a thunder tell me once
just in the middle of the call like um
every god forsaken chorus and
every god first taken village in africa
has a chorus so why should i give you
money right
i'm not gonna fix that one like i just
said okay thanks
um that's not like that's not
appropriate like have a nice day
um uh i think in in that case
the uh the best strategy is to try to
capitalize on it as an opportunity to
lead as gently as possible
um lukolian is very good at this i
really admire the way he approaches it
um and so for example
um what you could have said in that
moment is something like um
yeah you know actually as we're trying
to solve a lot of these really difficult
challenges
it's really important to us that we
think of all of our families as valuable
and we really want to embrace this idea
that with equity comes joy
and to be honest actually thinking of
families as disabled and normal
is precisely the kind of thing that this
initiative is helping us move beyond
um which puts me back on my heels but in
a way that makes me just think that like
you've thought about this more than i
have
um it's it's tricky it's tricky and i i
threw that at you on on purpose
i'm sorry to you know make you feel
gross but um it's the kind of thing that
happens all the time in these calls
and you know until you have a lot of
practice it's hard
and even then like sometimes you just
get totally caught off guard with the
wild things that people say to you
i appreciate that thank you yeah um it
looks like
ray rodriguez from action has a question
right do you want to type hey do you
want to
-- hi um so i created an organization
called
call for action we're new we just got
our 501 c3
we work with the latinx community and
this
to disenfranchises communities um so
thank you for this workshop it was
outstanding
i would love to chat with you later to
see how we can
bring this into the organization that
i'm in i don't know if you do this
outside but i would love to speak to you
about that um so just be on the lookout
for my email
um because i and i really want to thank
you for
including all those facts about um
our disparities within why being latino
african-american
or just a person of color i think not
many people talk about that so i want to
applaud you for that
thank you yeah i will i will look out
for your email for sure
thank you thank you for coming have a
um i will also say uh
we have these are some additional
resources that we'll send around
some organizations that are doing really
great work the create nyc plan board
source
this nourished a lot of the information
you saw today
and and finally uh as any last
questions are coming in i do
just want to invite everyone to join us
for some upcoming events that are also
going to be fantastic
um there's CMCB then and now which is
a fireside chat with
our executive director past and
present david lapin and lecolion
washington
that's on thursday night june 11th and
then
this year's fete de la musique is going
to take place online
and that'll be the afternoon of saturday
june the 30th you can click the links
over here the
bit bitly to learn more about those
things
and thank you everyone for your kind
words in the chat as you are on your way
out it was great to see everyone
uh it sounds like we are probably
wrapping up just about um
oh yes and thank you that's a great
point toniqua um
so while the situations were
hypothetical the organizations that
megan and tony
were representing very much are not they
do amazing work in the community and
they're
important uh you know partners and
colleagues and friends uh you can visit
dunamis boston to learn about dunamis
and you can uh yeah thank you megan
projectstep.org to learn about step and
the great work that they do
um they are very real and
and very uh great organizations to
learn about and to support
well on that note i think that is all
thank you everyone i appreciate your
little bit of extra time
as i said please feel free to drop me
a line by email
if you'd like to follow up on any of
this
and i look forward to seeing you all
soon there's a ton of old and new
friends on this call
and so i know i didn't get to hear your
voices you just got to hear mine but
it's good to see everyone thank you
so much
