University Times

A pair of local nonprofit leaders spoke of their organizations’ own experience with catalytic philanthropy and offered their observations in response to Leslie Crutchfield’s message.

The power of coffee

Kristy Trautmann, executive director of the FISA Foundation, whose mission is to improve the lives of women, girls and people with disabilities, described FISA’s role in correcting a lack of access to health care and dental care for those with disabilities.

“We are a foundation that does not have nearly enough money to solve a problem like this,” she said. “So we have to be really, really creative and think outside what the traditional boxes are.”

About a decade ago, the foundation discovered that female wheelchair users who could not stand up independently could not receive a mammogram in Pittsburgh, couldn’t receive gynecological exams and couldn’t receive a physical exam or be weighed in most doctors’ offices. “There were women in Pittsburgh who had not had a physical examination for 20 years or longer,” Trautmann said. “It was appalling.”

About 10 percent of the foundation’s portfolio over the past decade has been invested in improving access to health care and dental care for people with disabilities. “But 10 percent of our portfolio is just a little over $2 million. … In addressing this kind of a problem we could not have the scale to go at it alone and to fund and figure out what the solutions were.”

The most effective thing the FISA Foundation does, Trautmann said, “is buy coffee. We buy a lot of coffee.” Beginning in 2000, foundation representatives shared what they had discovered with countless potential partners over coffee, then started to meet regularly to share information and find solutions to the problem.

Kristy Trautmann of the FISA Foundation and James Denova of the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation shared their thoughts on catalytic giving.

“It’s really hard to say what change FISA Foundation created because a lot of it was about the magic that happens over coffee.”

A decade later, much remains to be done and the foundation is continuing its work to solve these problems, but, Trautmann said, “I think that we were part of conversations that led to the fact that down the street at Magee-Women’s Hospital there’s one of only four comprehensive health care centers for women with disabilities in the country.

“Here at the University of Pittsburgh, you have a dental clinic for people with disabilities, … one of the only clinics on the eastern seaboard where people with complex disabilities can get really good, really important, dental care,” Trautmann said.

“These kind of issues are not things that we can take credit for but things that we are very proud to be part of.”

Lessons learned

Trautmann shared some observations on what the foundation leadership learned in this process.

“One is that you can never get confused about who the customer is. When you engage in philanthropy it’s really heady stuff. You can get really excited about the data that we need and all of the hoops that we can put in to make sure that we are effective. But when it comes down to being burdensome to the people we are trying to help, I think we can take another look at what our strategy is.”

Another caveat, she said, “is that big complicated entrenched social issues take a long time to fix.” People attracted to work in the field of catalytic philanthropy often are used to getting results and seeing things change based on their efforts.

But two or three years isn’t long enough, she cautioned. “We need to make a long-term commitment,” she said.

“Catalytic philanthropy is a lot like marriage,” Trautmann said. But, in addition to the romantic and fulfilling moments, “there’s a lot more of folding the laundry and packing the kids’ lunches and making sure the dishes are put away. I think that we are facing problems that need us to be engaged far beyond giving away money, and that need us to stay engaged.”

James V. Denova, vice president of the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, said his organization devotes its philanthropic investments to efforts in West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania.

The foundation enjoys access to state-level policymakers in West Virginia as the state’s largest philanthropic giver. “That’s an opportunity of geography,” he said.

Leverage

Foundations have very little money compared to the vast resources that are available for social change, Denova said. The larger pools of public dollars, however, “drive the machine that affects people’s lives.”

What his foundation can offer, he said, “is flexibility and the opportunity to experiment and fail.”

The Benedum Foundation works closely with government, with most of its grantees being public authorities and much of its investment revolving around economic development and public education.

“But we want to invest in some things that are very risky, that public authorities cannot invest in with taxpayers’ dollars because of their accountability to all of the contributors that really make government run. But we can fail at a higher rate — and we try to,” Denova said.

“If we can do anything, we can experiment and see what works and broadcast it. And we’re accountable to no one except the public and to our own trustees about what works and what doesn’t,” he said. “And that’s a unique gift: the ability to take chances.”

Once successful initiatives are discovered, the government grantees have the money to keep them going. “We can take chances on experimenting with preschool curricular change or technology, and we can do it in partnership with state officials who are watching our experiment under the proviso that we will work with them to take on what works, as opposed to what doesn’t.”

Observations

Denova commented on the empowerment style of philanthropy Crutchfield outlined in her talk in the case of the Jacobs Family Foundation, which built an enterprise zone in a blighted area of San Diego based on residents’ requests. “The most interesting contrast with that kind of philanthropy versus the traditional philanthropy is who gets to say,” Denova said.

“If you think about it, that was philanthropy based on what people want, on listening to constituents. That may seem obvious to folks who work in human service nonprofits, but it’s not so obvious in the tradition of philanthropy.”

It’s a marked contrast, he said, to the supply-side philanthropy as practiced by early givers such as Andrew Carnegie. “When his workers asked for a living wage, he shot them — and decided that he would give their widows and orphans a library.”

Denova cautioned that it’s easy for donors to slip into the “dangerous hubris” of funding what they deem best for society, “because there are not a lot of people to challenge us.”

He said the Jacobs Family Foundation took a greater risk than perhaps may be evident by investing in a community and transferring the assets to it, based on what the residents wanted. “That ought to be the poster child for what responsive philanthropy really is.”

In a similar vein, he commented on the Cincinnati-area Strive education improvement project’s student-centered focus. Rather than being focused on the nonprofit or private or public sector, “it has to do with kids, kids on a pathway through life,” he said, noting that the consortium was built around the needs of children and their families.

“It’s an important dynamic to keep in mind when you think about what organizations ought to be involved in any kind of network building,” Denova said.

Too often, the nonprofit itself can be seen as the client or the recipient of the philanthropy. “We often are told, ‘We need your money or we will go out of business,’” he said.

Rather than viewing the nonprofit sector as the end, or the sector that should have a voice in the giving, donors need to work backwards from the intermediary toward the actual people the nonprofits are serving, who are the people the philanthropist wants to affect.

“That’s why I advocate for social change, and at least knowing what social change you wish to effect is really the first question that you have to ask when either running a nonprofit, building a consortium or deciding your strategy as a foundation,” Denova said. “The nonprofit sector is a means to an end and we always have to know and always understand what that end is.”

—Kimberly K. Barlow