Managing Mission, Sustainability, and Relevance During Uncertain Times

On October 9, 2001, Community Wealth Ventures, Inc., The Fannie Mae Foundation, and Venture Philanthropy Partners hosted a forum to discuss the impact of the September 11th events on DC area nonprofits.  More than 250 individuals from 200 area nonprofits attended.

On this page, you will find an excerpt from the forum's transcript with a link to the complete transcript (25 pages) in PDF.

Transcript Excerpt:

Managing Mission, Sustainability and Relevance During Uncertain Times 

Hosted by:

Community Wealth Ventures
Fannie Mae Foundation
Venture Philanthropy Partners

October 9, 2001

Panelists:

Bill Shore, Community Wealth Ventures  
Mario Morino, Venture Philanthropy Partners  
Rev. Tom Knoll, Community Family Life Services  
Lori Kaplan, Latin American Youth Center  
Siobhan Canty, Greater DC Cares  
Terri Freeman, Community Foundation for the National Capital Region Stacey H. Davis, Fannie Mae Foundation

Mr. Shore:  My name is Billy Shore and I am the chair of Share Our Strength and Community Wealth Ventures. On behalf of our organization and Venture Philanthropy Partners and Fannie Mae, who have co-hosted this, I want to thank you for coming. I also want to thank our partners for being here. This is a pretty remarkable and diverse turnout. As diverse as we are, I think one of the things we have in common is we are all trying to make sense of the new world around us. On the way in the door just a minute ago David Brad said to me, "I hope you have some wisdom for us," and I said, "I wish." But I think it is pretty clear that we aren't here today because we have answers, but more because as a community we are searching for answers and we know and have the conviction that when we come together as a community, those answers begin to develop. My experience over the last couple of weeks at Share Our Strength is somewhat reflected in what we are doing here this morning. There were a number of occasions in the early days, after September 11, where people inside and outside the organization came to me and said, "The issue is not poverty and hunger anymore. What we are doing may not be relevant, it may not be a priority." I think, like you, that thought flashed through my mind. But I quickly rejected it, and in fact, I came to the opposite conclusion. In a time when America is under particular pressure to be strong and to be united, we have to think what our role is in that, and what the front line of that effort means for many of us. 

A nation divided between Black and White, a community divided between rich and poor, between fed and hungry, is not a united nation. I think many of us have felt that it's not military might that makes our nation strong, it is military might that protects and defends the strengths that already exist within. We are meeting in a very timely way. Many of you have probably seen this morning's front section of the Metro section, "Reverberations on Giving and Living, September 11th donations and the economy leave many non-profits strapped." This is part of what we want to talk about today, not so much our response to the emergency in terms of direct response, what our various organizations are doing on behalf of the victims of September 11th, but how we are managing internally, how we are thinking it's not about hunger and poverty anymore, it's not about healthcare, it's not about education, it's not about literacy. If we are to continue to have the public understand, not just the relevance, but the absolute crucial significance of what we are doing now, we have to understand it ourselves first, and we have to believe it first.

So we originally decided that we would convene a conversation, thinking it would be a small number of people, and then the e-mail started to circulate and we ended up with about 275 R.S.V.P.s. So we want to keep it conversational. We have got six very short presentations that we are going to have this morning. Again, our presenters don't necessarily have the answers, but what we are hoping people will be able to take away from this morning are one or two or three ideas that you can be discussing within your own organization. On a going forward basis, how do we position ourselves? How do we communicate to our key stakeholders? How do we respond? And how do we continue to be prepared for ongoing international activities, both American activities and potential terrorist activities here on our own soil that will continue to keep our nation off balance. 

Before I introduce our panelists there are a couple of other things I would like to say. One, I would very much like to thank Evan Hochberg and Chuck Scofield for putting together this conversation on a very short time frame. They made all the arrangements for this morning and I am really grateful for their helping in doing this in a very quick way. I also want to point out that in your packet there's a registration form for address and e-mail that you can leave on the back table, it is simply so we can keep in touch with you, and as other ideas come to of this convening, we can share them with you. We are making a transcript of this morning's discussion, and that will also be available on our website and most likely the websites of Venture Philanthropy Partners and Fannie Mae, but it will certainly be available on ours, or you can order it separately if you want it. We are going to try to keep the initial presentations to between five and seven minutes. Then at 11:00, for the next hour, we will open this up. We will take questions or comments for the panel and/or have an open mike period where you can describe to us some of the ways that you have thought about your response that you think would be helpful to the rest of the community. Our presenters this morning, I think many of you are going to know most of them. We have Mario Morino here from Venture Philanthropy Partners, and the Morino Institute, you will see that we have a mix of foundation leaders, we have a mix of thought leaders, and we have a mix of direct service providers. Tom Knoll is here from Community Family Life Services, he will speak to you on some of the implications that their organization has dealt with and how they have reacted. Lori Kaplan is here from the Latin American Youth Center. Siobhan Canty from Greater D.C. Cares. Terri Freeman from the Community Foundation, and Stacey Davis from the Fannie Mae Foundation, our partner in putting this on. Without further ado, let me turn this over to Mario Morino. The speakers should feel free to use the podium or speak from their seats.

Click here for link to complete transcript (PDF)