Notes from the Left Coast

Drummond Pike’s Blog

Check out this short film that was made with sponsorship from Tides Foundation. This YouTube clip is a preview. You can watch the whole 20 minute film at: www.storyofstuff.org

We had a good tidings hike to Fort Point, by the Golden Gate Bridge, then had fun at the holiday party singing along to a Sir-Mix-a-Lot tune, “Dredeil“, and “Frosty” — enjoying homemade wine, cocoa-marshmellows, and washabi mushrooms. Thanks to Scott Cardel, our gracious caterer, and our mistletoe flower decorators.

Help The Tides Center Body Positive project receive $25,000, by taking 2 seconds to vote for Connie Sobczak in the Volvo for Life Awards:
http://www.volvoforlifeawards.com/cgi-bin/iowa/english/vote/quality/index.html

We have one month left before the voting period ends (January 7th), so please VOTE, VOTE, VOTE! The rules state that you can VOTE AS OFTEN AS YOU’D LIKE, but no more than once per minute, otherwise your votes won’t count. Vote NOW, vote OFTEN and SPREAD THE WORD!

About Body Positive:
Many therapists and counselors in the psychological community are labeling the current state of eating disorder illnesses in this country as an epidemic. This project provides education on eating disorders and awareness of body-image issues to Bay Area pediatricians, middle and high-school students, teachers, school administrators and staff, as well as to the community-specific support systems for schools. The Body Positive believes the epidemic of eating disorders among teens warrants thoughtful, practical, effective change in the shape of a preventative awareness education approach.

For your Thanksgiving pleasure (especially for those of you in NYC), “our” Tides film on the politics of climate, Everything’s Cool, which we essentially co-produced, is opening this weekend:
www.everythingscool.org

If you are in LA or NY, go see it! The screening times are the same every day:
from Friday Nov 23rd - Thursday Nov 29th
1:10 PM: 3:20 PM : 5:10 PM : 7:00 PM : 9:10 PM
http://www.cinemavillage.com/chc/cv/show_movie.asp?movieid=1167

We want a hit on our hands!

IN BRIEF:

EVERYTHING’S COOL is a film about America finally “getting” global warming in the wake of the most dangerous chasm ever to emerge between scientific understanding and political action. While industry funded nay-sayers sing what just might be their swan song of pseudo — scientific deception, a group of global warming messengers are on a high stakes quest to find the iconic image, the magic language, the points of leverage that will finally create the political will to move the United States from its reliance on fossil fuels to the new clean energy economy — AND FAST.

The good news: America finally gets global warming; the chasm between what scientists know and the public understands is closing and the debate is over.

The bad news: the United States, the country that will determine the fate of the globe, must transform its fossil fuel-based economy fast, like in a minute!

Just when you were thinking green is the new black, the candidates will make the clean energy revolution a central part of their presidential platform and everyone “gets” global warming, EVERYTHING’S COOL is here to offer up an energetic and surprisingly lighthearted look at the politics of climate change and why it took so long to go from SO WHAT? To NOW WHAT?

Hope your holiday was full of love and good food.

Tides’ presence was strong at the Bioneers conference last weekend. Tides folk, ably led by Berit Ashla, produced three panels, including “Race, Class, and Power: Structural Analysis and Fairness.”

Over 350 participants filled a conference room to learn from: Gihan Perera (Miami Worker Center),
Manuel Pastor (USC, Economist),
Colette Pichon Battle (Moving Forward Gulf Coast),
and Van Jones (Ella Baker Center).

I thought they were at the top of their game addressing themes central to Tides Foundation’s emerging ECO Initiative, including:

• How environmental degradation in communities of color is a symptom of the way we have structured the economy, distributed resources and excluded communities of color
• Communities of color must be part of the solution, and that means political and economic power building in communities of color
• There are terrific opportunities based on current work, and there is a need to build more and different kinds of capacity; and
• The high costs we will all pay if we don’t recognize the critical importance of this work.

ECO Initiative LAUNCHED

Over the past year, a Tides Foundation staff team, headed by Cathy Lerza and Sara Gruen, and aided by consultants Angela Park and Henry Holmes, has been building the mission, vision and values of a new sustainability initiative, now called Environmental Equity, Community Opportunity/ECO. Through a comprehensive scoping/field conversation process that engaged more than four dozen leaders and activists from around the country, ECO now has a mission and goals statement, and is putting the finishing touches on its program, which will include convenings, training, technical assistance, and grantmaking.

On October 17-18, Tides hosted a powerful convening of 20 ECO leaders from across the environmental, economic justice, and social justice fields to advise funding and program strategy; participants included:

• Bob Bingaman (national field director of the Sierra Club);
• Gihan Perera (director Miami Workers Center);
• Maya Wiley (director of the Center for Social Inclusion; and Tides Network board member)
• Dan Chu (vice president for state affiliates of the National Wildlife Federation;
• Deepak Bhargava (executive director of the Center for Community Change);
• Judy Hatcher (director of the Environmental Support Center);
• Eveline Chen (director of Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice);
• Lucy Blake (CEO of the Apollo Alliance);
• Pat Sweeny (director of the Western Organization of Resource Councils);
• Felicia Marcus (vice president of the Trust for Public Land);
• Richard Moore (director of the Southwest Network for Economic and Social Justice);
• and Luther Propst (founder and director the Sonoran Institute).

Participants universally termed it one of the most powerful meetings they had ever attended, expressing a desire “to continue to meet together to help shape a powerful new movement rooted equally in values of environmental protection, social and economic justice and democracy “. The vision of this meeting poured over into the Bioneers Conference .

Not surprisingly, climate and energy were recurring themes throughout the ECO gathering As part of the ECO initiative, we are exploring the ways in which Tides can manifest leadership on climate and energy. Senior philanthropic advisor Cathy Lerza, assisted by consultant Henry Holmes and with great support from Center program director Farnaz Golshani, have begun to explore a Network wide climate and energy gathering to bring together Center projects and Foundation grantees addressing climate and energy along with representatives from Shared Spaces and CCI to identify what we as a Network are already doing and how we could amplify the impact of that work. Preliminary research indicates that over 50 Center projects and 200 Foundation grantees are taking on climate and energy. Still in the scoping phase, a Network climate and energy event might take place in mid 2008, perhaps in conjunction with Momentum. Great work, Cathy, and stay tuned, all!

BTW, I’ll be on the road all next week (in DC, NY), spreading the Tides gospel and exploring new business.

The Key Element of a Strong Organization:
Establishing a Management Capacity
As many of you know, Independent Sector hosted its annual conference in Los Angeles October 21-23 , 2007. I was there with Heidi Gatty, as well as 1,000 philanthropic and nonprofit leaders from across the country.

I moderated a session for CEO’s titled, “The Key Element of a Strong Organization: Establishing a Management Capacity“. Have you seen the recent Independent Sector Conference publication: Principles for Good Goverance and Ethical Practice (PDF)?

Heidi led a hot topic roundtable on the role of fiscal sponsorship, a great way to extend the reach of the National Network of Fiscal Sponsors network Tides is building under Heidi’s leadership.

Join the National Network of Fiscal Sponsors E-newsletter to stay up-to-date on best practices, and aspire to ensure responsible use of the tool of fiscal sponsorship.

The Inaugural Gathering of NNFS
Tides, as the largest fiscal sponsor in the nation, has taken leadership in organizing a National Network of Fiscal Sponsors (NNFS), in order to improve the practices, capabilities, and awareness of fiscal sponsorship through education and advocacy. This work is aimed at increasing funders’ and the publics understanding of the benefits of fiscal sponsorship to increase the use of fiscal sponsorship as a key strategy to support forward-thinking social entrepreneurs, activists, and philanthropists. Last week, on Oct 18 and 19, Tides Center hosted the Inaugural Gathering of NNFS at the Biltmore in Los Angeles, under Heidi Gatty’s leadership, with seamless logistical support from Luba Palionny, and under Jane Levikow’s wise guidance.

50 participants from 30 organizations from across the country participated to share information about best practices, understand the similarities and differences across fiscal sponsorship models, and promote fiscal sponsorship as an important tool to strengthen the progressive nonprofit community. Participants identified opportunities for collaboration, including development of a website to help the sector understand fiscal sponsorship, guidelines for responsible practice, and case studies to showcase the important work fiscal sponsors do. Heidi reports that participants left the meeting energized, with a renewed sense of purpose and deeply grateful to Tides for its commitment to convening and connecting such a diverse group of practitioners.

The List

I want to share with all of you something I recently shared with Lorenzo, Jane, Mike A and Farnaz, for their persistence in working with a new client, the “List” project.

This all started with a phone call from a very perplexed young man intent on starting a new program to advocate on behalf of the hundreds, even thousands, of Iraqis who have worked for American interests in the war (as translators, drivers, cleaners, etc.). Turns out we Americans were fine having them work for us there, but now that they are targeted for having done so, we have no interest in offering them visas to come here and avoid almost certain death. Instead, we are consigning them to questionable fates in refugee camps in Syria and Jordan. He had a deal to become a program with Amnesty fall apart (they wanted to charge him 35% overhead!) and was at a loss.

In the course of two or three days, Tides redirected a grant from the Tides Foundation, set him up as a consultant in the Tides Center, and got him moving through the process to become a full Tides Center Project within 60 days. He couldn’t believe it. This is from my email to this extraordinary team - clearly all Cranes at heart! - after learning what they had all accomplished.

“I want to appreciate just how amazing this team was. They were responsive, thoughtful, and so smart. I was really impressed. I know from talking with this particular client that his [terrible] experience with Amnesty - one of the most respected institutions around - was the opposite of what he experienced with Tides. I really hope that he can appreciate what happened here.

A special thanks to Lorenzo, for moving through the Foundation’s processes so adroitly. Just splendid. Sometimes, we find a client for whom we want to go out on a limb. In this case, if he achieves half of what he has set out for himself, I think we will all take pride in having helped the work.

“What I hope we all can take away from this is a lesson in discerning those situations where time is of the essence, and recognizing what a difference creative work-arounds and adroit intake can make. I know we cannot do this regularly, but when we can, its impact can be huge.”

I also want to take a moment to acknowledge Tod Hill for playing the key role in working with Tides’ biggest donor ever, a philanthropist who is moving her 8 figure Donor Advised Fund to a supporting organization under Tides, from Silicon Valley Community Foundation, because she loves Tides’ ability to help her achieve ‘what’s possible.’

Fantastic job, Tod!