Foundation Grants
Community Vital Signs
About Us
Operating Archetypes Webinar - Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors
Foundation: Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Skoll Foundation, California Wellness Foundation
Operating Archetypes is a new resource created by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors to help philanthropies and other donors better understand their distinct position in the philanthropy ecosystem. The webinar was moderated by Renee Karibi-Whyte, Senior Vice President of RPA. A Talent Agency is in the business of spotting emerging leaders, often using open competitions to get new ideas into the field. An Underwriter is an insurance company is an underwriter, although they're kind of close to it. There is no philanthropy that works the way a Talent Agency does, although that would be fun to see.
A Campaign Manager partners with other organizations and often the public sector to try and tackle a very big, complicated problem that needs a lot of players. Think Tanks don't just fund experts in a field, they hire experts and bring them into their enterprise. Field Builders look to fill in gaps where things don't even exist. The California Wellness Foundation's mission is to support health and wellness across the state of California. Georgia's organization Humanize works with sustainability and income generation of vulnerable populations in Brazil.
Richard's top three out Operating Archetypes are Campaign Manager, Field Builder, and Venture Catalyst. I think the power of archetypes is it helps you understand both your intention and what it is that you're doing. It's a combination of things, and all the archetypes bring some angle that you've never thought about as a donor in the ecosystem. Richard and Renee ask Georgia and Melissa about whether their teams are equipped to operate in the archetypal mode of Sower and Designer. Georgia: Net weaving helps us to evolve as a group of systematic thinkers on how to do philanthropy in these tough times.
Many of the people that we spoke to talked about transitioning from one kind of archetype to another, as the field they're working in changes. We are moving into a period at Cal Wellness where we're examining our current strategic framework. It's a strategic planning tool I find really valuable. Are we achieving what we intended? What's happening in response to the way that we're behaving in the world?
And what capacities do we need to build out? Thinking about how you assess your internal capacity is a great opportunity for funders for many reasons. One of the innovations that we've seen in the last 10 years is recognizing what Georgia called soft power: influence, convening capacity, voice. Those require a different set of muscles, and skills may be there, but you may need to work inside your organization to develop those muscles.
Read the Entire Article
Selected Foundation News
A customized collection of news from foundations from around the Web.
PepsiCo has selected eight startups from the Middle East and North Africa region as finalists in its Mega Green Accelerator program, which aims to " nurture the next generation of innovators as they...more
A vegan restaurant chain in Los Angeles is adding dairy and beef to its menu, reports the Los Angeles Times. Sweetgreen, formerly known as Sage Vegan, says it will start serving dairy and beef by...more
Funding for green technologies is on the rise in India, and the country's biggest investment fund is aiming to raise $1 billion for a climate-related fund by 2022, Bloomberg reports. The fund,...more
"A little bit ago, I went through an abusive relationship with my mother, and that didn't turn out so well," Gabi Karl tells the Denver Post. "But it was around that time that the theater at...more
When Richard and Mary Jane Weeks of Fallbrook, Calif., died last November at the age of 90, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports, they left behind legacies so large that it's hard to believe they...more
Foundation: Oshkosh Area Community Foundation
A nurse in Fond du Lac, Wis., is this year's recipient of the DAISY Award, given to those who go "above and beyond" to provide excellent patient care. Haley Birschbach, a nurse in medical...more
When Ferdinand and Mafalda DelGrosso were starting out in the food industry in Pennsylvania in the 1940s, they didn't have much. But over the next 77 years, the DelGrossos have donated millions...more
It's time for the US to get serious about regulating artificial intelligence, according to a new report from a bipartisan group of senators. The report from the Bipartisan Senate AI Working...more
If your child is struggling with self-esteem, depression, or anxiety, there's a summer camp for you. The Lukin Center for Psychotherapy in New Jersey is offering a week-long " Therapeutic...more
For the first time, a team from the United Arab Emirates took home the top prize at an international robotics competition. The UAE's Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum Center for Giftedness and...more
Social Entrepreneurship
Spotlight
Vertical Farming: The Way to Feed a Global Population
Vertical farms are designed in a way to avoid the pressing issues about growing food crops in drought-and-disease-prone fields miles away from the population centers in which they will be consumed.