At Play in the Fields of the Board

When Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus delivered the talk that has everyone talking, they chose an influential audience: environmental grantmakers. Although the now (in)famous pair focused on mainstream advocacy organizations in their discussion of the death of environmentalism, others have contended that new thinking by the folks who write the checks is key to revitalizing the movement. We've invited four representatives from foundations around the U.S. to discuss the issue. Most recent post of the day.

From: Hooper Brooks
To: Stuart Clarke, Enrique Salmón, Rhea Suh
Subject: The next steps
Thursday, March 31, 2005 2:53 p.m. PST

Enrique's points are well taken, but I doubt that we will go successfully down that path unless we find an intentional way to do it. Beyond exchanges like this, do we need a "big," organized conversation, or series of conversations, between interested funders (and even skeptical funders) and leading organizations (large and small, national and local) to reexamine and think about how we might retune the whole field and avoid diffusion and fragmentation -- which political think tanks, media collaborations, and social-justice issues? Given the widely differing nature of private foundations (going back to Michael Fisher's observation quoted by Rhea early in this exchange), would that be an impossible task?

There may be some lessons to be harvested from emerging network theory, and some tools from our ever-improving communications technologies that would allow something productive to happen. Much of this exchange suggests a rich diversity of new approaches and foundation-NGO collaborations, but we haven't really had the space or time to go into detail. Can we deliberately harvest the lessons we are learning and make something that is better than the sum of its parts, or do we have to hope that something will emerge more organically? Thoughts?

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From: Stuart Clarke
To: Hooper Brooks, Enrique Salmón, Rhea Suh
Subject: Responsibility for change
Thursday, March 31, 2005 3:24 p.m. PST

I think Rhea's comments analogizing social investing to financial investing are right on point. Sometimes I fear that too many funders do not think nearly often or carefully enough about risk, time horizon, or theories and models of social change. The only thing I would want to add to Rhea's comments is that I think there is a critical role for funders to play (perhaps through institutions like the Environmental Grantmakers Association and the Consultative Group on Biological Diversity, and also in cross-sectoral collaboration with the Neighborhood Funders Group and the Funders Committee for Civic Participation, etc.) in helping to develop, test, refine, and disseminate sociopolitical theories of environmental change. As she suggests, such theories should provide the context for informing strategy and for conceptualizing and measuring risk and progress. We certainly have a strong vested interest in clarity and credibility in these areas.

I have tried to avoid mentioning the "Death of Environmentalism" essay in these exchanges because I think the attention it is receiving is far out of proportion to the analytic contribution it makes. But I am going to break my little self-imposed rule to point out that, aside from the sensationalism of its "slaying the fathers" rhetoric, much of the essay's traction comes from the fact that it was dropped into a discursive vacuum. No one is performing, on a large enough scale and in a consistent enough way, the function of establishing, sustaining, and communicating persuasive analytical frameworks relative to which the health, vitality, and progress of the environmental movement can be charted. Were someone (like us!) to perform this function, it would be much more difficult for folks to construct "environmental movement" strawmen and to curry favor with the media by running around pointing out that those strawmen have no clothes.

So I fully agree with you, Rhea, that foundations "need to work with grantees to figure out how to make the short-term and longer-term strategies more effective." I'm inclined to emphasize the role that foundations, working together, might play in generating the knowledge that would inform more effective short- and long-term strategies. It is certainly appropriate for us to expect grantees to be deliberate and reflective in their work. But I also think foundations are better positioned to be in the knowledge-generation business than are most NGOs. We certainly have the resources to be about that work in a sustained, systematic, and collaborative way, if we felt (as I think we should) that it was essential to our effectiveness in helping to advance the movement. So in the funder-grantee partnership in this work, I'd probably allocate a much larger share of responsibility to the funders.

This comes back for me, in a way, to my preoccupation in this exchange with ideology (I suppose that it is characteristic of preoccupations, that all roads will eventually lead home). I understand the inclination to believe that environmentalism will get farther by blunting its ideological elbows than by sharpening them. It is just not clear to me that that is an effective strategy for social change of the magnitude that we think we need. Ideological contestation is a component of social change, and in the absence of clear, grounded frameworks for thinking through and apprehending the meaning and meaningfulness of change, it is too easy to substitute metaphors like "pendulum's swinging" and "seeking middle ground" for historically grounded analysis that encompasses the processes by which ideologies are produced and reproduced, as well as their relationships to the production and reproduction of social relationships. George Lakoff's work seems to me to be grounded in a particular interpretation of these processes, and focused on strengthening the progressive hand in ideological contests. I have some doubts about Lakoff's methods, but I believe that this basic strategy -- strengthening the progressive hand in ideological contests -- is a strategy that the environmental movement ought to explore in a serious way.

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From: Rhea Suh
To: Hooper Brooks, Stuart Clarke, Enrique Salmón
Subject: Where do we go from here
Thursday, March 31, 2005 5:59 p.m. PST

I couldn't agree more with Stuart: the funding community needs to do more to build and disseminate the knowledge base around theories of change. Every day, program officers read proposals, reports, and evaluations. Every day, they engage in strategy discussions with grantees. What have we learned? What are the lessons, and are they broadly applicable? Have interesting patterns emerged? Where are the models? Think about the cumulative body of knowledge about social change that exists within each of our foundations. How can we distill that and, as Stuart points out, disseminate it?

I think the huge challenge here, however, is how we then evaluate these theories against each other. There is no commonly agreed-upon metric for how progress is measured, and there are real value differences around the definition of success. For example, what is more successful: a project that creates a collaborative, community-based coalition in a local watershed designed to help restore flows for native fish populations, or a lawsuit that forces the agencies to restore rivers for the same native fish? Is it possible or even desirable to have a standard? Nevertheless, there are clearly fundamentals that are translatable to a variety of issues and problems, and there is clearly a need and an ability to be smarter about how we craft our strategies.

I want to address some of the questions that Hooper raised in his email, regarding the need for "big" conversations. I think we do need to have these conversations, and I think they are actually already happening (or just about to happen). For example, with respect to foundations, the Environmental Grantmakers Association is planning a series of five regional gatherings for its members to brainstorm positive visions and concrete ideas for how our funding, and the field in general, could be more effective. The idea is that the regional "salons" will bring in speakers from the field to share their visions about how our movement can have greater impact in achieving change. This will be followed up by discussion around questions just like the ones posed by Hooper. How do we define success? How can we improve collaboration? How can we avoid diffusion or fragmentation? And to pick up on Stuart's contribution, how can we work together to build knowledge around social/environmental change?

I have to say I'm inspired by this dialogue over the last few days. And I'm inspired by the conversations I'm having with grantees these days as well. The movement is faced with overwhelming issues and challenges. But I believe we are responding, and we are responding with discipline, creativity, and excitement. Examples: in the face of "Healthy Forests," funders and NGOs met in Santa Fe to exchange new ideas about forest protection involving a decentralized, community-based, and tailored approach to restoration; in the wake of Kyoto implementation, funders and NGOs met with religious leaders in D.C. to discuss the amazing organizing efforts in congregations throughout the country on climate change; in the boomtowns of the West, environmentalists, ranchers, and hunters pile into public meetings to fight irresponsible energy development, talking about the value of "clean water, wildlife, and a Western way of life." We may not be winning legislative victories in Congress, but we are making progress on the ground in ways we would not have dreamed of five years ago.

As this is my last post, I wanted to thank Grist for hosting this forum and all of you -- Hooper, Stuart, and Enrique -- for a great conversation these past few days. While there are many things I feel fortunate about with respect to my job as an environmental grantmaker, having smart, caring, and dedicated colleagues at other foundations definitely is at the top of my list.

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Hooper Brooks is the program director for the environment at the Surdna Foundation in New York City, a family foundation with assets over $700 million and an 80-year history. The foundation's environment program makes more than $7 million in grants annually to organizations working on transportation, energy, biological diversity, and urban/suburban land-use issues throughout the U.S.

Stuart Clarke is the executive director of the Town Creek Foundation in Easton, Md. For nearly 25 years, Town Creek has supported public education, citizen action, and advocacy to achieve a healthy environment, an informed society, and a peaceful world.

Enrique Salmón, Ph.D., is a program officer for The Christensen Fund, an independent private foundation that supports bio-cultural projects worldwide. His primary funding region is the greater Southwest of the United States and northwest Mexico. He is a Tarahumara Indian.

Rhea Suh is a program officer with the environment program at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, where she manages the Western grants portfolio. She currently serves on the Environmental Grantmakers Association board, and has been its chair and vice chair.