To understand how we share knowledge, foster networks, and encourage funder leadership, take a look at these three member stories.
Giving Members Tools to Shape Policy
The Neptis Foundation—Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Throughout the 1980s, the Canadian philanthropist Martha Shuttleworth
had focused most of her resources on the anti-tobacco movement. When
she started the Neptis Foundation in Toronto in 1996, she was looking
to support groups and issues that would have an equally big impact. “My
intention from the beginning was to do something with the big picture,”
she explains. “I wanted to address things at a systemic level, to move
issues forward.” At the time, she says, the region surrounding Toronto
was adding about 100,000 new residents per year, a growth rate with
huge environmental, social, and economic consequences. The board saw
an opportunity to address environmental issues in an urban context, but
rather than funding organizations working on these issues, Neptis set out
to fund research. “We wanted to produce reliable information that would
lead to action,” Shuttleworth says.
Over the years, the Neptis Foundation has become one of the leading
funders of nonpartisan, scholarly research on important public policy
issues related to land use, transportation, and environmental issues
in urban regions. Over the past eight years, Neptis has funded over 30
original research reports on growth management and policy issues in the
Toronto metropolitan region. When the foundation was starting out, there
was little public interest in comprehensive regional smart growth. Since
then, however, the foundation has helped spur a renaissance among
policymakers and citizens alike, transforming the scale at which issues of
energy, congestion, transportation, and CO2 emissions were addressed
by the last two provincial governments.
“Liberal and conservative governments have been supportive of regional
growth management,” says Tony Coombes, the foundation’s executive
director. The government has created an “extraordinary apparatus” to
manage regional issues including a 30-year growth plan, a greenbelt,
and a regional transport corporation called Metrolinx. “It’s hard to claim
credit for all of that, but our research has definitely shaped the debate,”
Coombes continues. “Government doesn’t always like what you produce
because the research might not accord with political agendas, but the
nonpartisan nature and quality of our research has given us credibility.
It’s hard to argue with the facts.”
The Funders’ Network has been a key ally throughout the foundation’s
development. Through Hooper Brooks, a founding board member of the
Network, Shuttleworth met other funders who were interested in smart
growth. After Neptis joined the Network, Coombes served as a board
member for six years. “TFN conferences, meetings, and publications have
been of great assistance to us in developing the foundation’s mission and
activities,” Coombes says. “The Funders’ Network enabled us to connect
in depth and breadth with the activities of other smart growth funders
and the issues they faced. It provided us with an extensive network of
people with whom we could discuss topics. The board structure and the
excellence of staff were key to facilitating these benefits.”
Creating Greener Communities
Green Building and Green Neighborhoods Working Group
In 2005, a small group of Funders’ Network members began talking
informally about the opportunities that exist at the intersections of green
buildings, green neighborhoods, and smart growth. Led by Jon Jensen,
then a program officer at the Cleveland-based George Gund Foundation,
the funders conducted an online survey of dozens of funders to gauge
the level of interest. “The response was overwhelming,” Jensen recalls.
To build on this newfound interest, Jensen asked the Funders’ Network to
host a national conference for funders. Demonstrating its commitment to
collaboration, the Funders’ Network invited several other funder networks
to participate as co-sponsors. The conference was held in Cleveland in
October 2005.
Drawing on the enthusiasm emerging from the conference, the Funders’
Network created the Green Building and Green Neighborhoods learning
network. The group’s work plan calls for supporting funder collaboration
on issues such as providing technical assistance and support to cities
that are working to reduce their carbon footprints, assessing state
and federal policy oppor tunities, and strengthening green building
standards. Equally impor tant, the learning network has brought
together funders from a variety of program areas, including healthy/
active living, affordable housing, workforce development, education,
climate change, and transpor tation. “We see this as an oppor tunity
to help cement the bonds between green building and smart growth,”
says Jensen, now the executive director of the Park Foundation in
Ithaca, N.Y.
“The emergence of the green building group is really about TFN being
strategically opportunistic,” Jensen continues. “They are close enough to
their members that they have early insight into what members’ interests are,
what trends are out there in the grapevine. So if the interest is there, they
throw some resources into it. Once that buzz and energy builds, it becomes
more formalized. The take away is that I’m hard pressed to think of another
affinity group that would have been willing to take on something like this,
and to pull it off as well as they did. For me, it’s really a hallmark of their
willingness to extend beyond their mission at times to keep growing. Now,
they have funders thinking about green buildings as a smart growth issue.
That agility is critical.”
Just three years-old, the working group has already influenced how
members approach their work. The George Gund Foundation, for example,
is considering a policy that will only support construction of LEED-certified
buildings in its community development and housing programs. “We would
never even be thinking about this if it were not for the Funders’ Network,”
says John Mitterholzer, senior program officer for the environment at
Gund. Through the learning network, Mitterholzer was able to connect
with the Kresge Foundation and Heinz Endowments, foundations that
already had robust green building policies. “They told me what to do and
what not to do,” he says.
Maximizing Community Benefits
Central Corridor Funders Collaborative and Learning Network—Twin Cities
A few years ago, the Metropolitan Council of the Twin Cities announced
plans for a light-rail transit line to connect the Minneapolis and St. Paul
downtowns. On the surface, the 11-mile Central Corridor line is an ideal
smart growth investment. It has the potential to reduce traffic congestion,
improve air quality, make neighborhoods more walkable, and create jobs
and economic development for the neighborhoods along the line. Yet, it
also has the potential to exacerbate gentrification, or, depending on the
placement of stations, do little to improve access to public transportation
for low-income residents.
In 2007, recognizing both the promise and the potential perils of the
Central Corridor project, the Funders’ Network helped funders in the Twin
Cities create the Central Corridor Funders Collaborative and Learning
Network, a par tnership of 11 funders that are working to maximize
community benefits. For the start-up phase, Anne McEnany, a former
Funders’ Network consultant, functioned as the Collaborative’s de facto
staff person, working with members to initiate their work together, connect
them with outside resources, and support the hiring process for a fulltime
staff person. When the Collaborative hired a permanent coordinator,
McEnany moved into a more conventional consulting role.
“Funders’ Network members, particularly The McKnight Foundation, The
Saint Paul Foundation, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation,
were the driving force and inspiration for the members of the collaborative,”
says Jonathan Sage-Martinson, the Collaborative’s new coordinator. “The
conversation started around the fact that this is a huge change for our
communities, but we didn’t know that we had the information we needed
to get ahead of the curve. The Funders’ Network provided the staffing
and the organizational glue to help our members think through what they
wanted to do.”
In its consulting role, the Funders’ Network was able to share
insights from similar work elsewhere around the countr y and to
connect the members with other funders. “Anne has been key in
helping provide continuity as we have gone through the transition
with me coming on staff and ramping up activity,” Sage-Mar tinson
says. “She’s been working before, during, and after my hiring,
and has helped provide continuity and outside wisdom.”
The project is scheduled to break ground in 2010, but Collaborative
members have already started laying the groundwork to ensure that the
planning and execution of the project is inclusive and beneficial to all
members of the community. Collaborative members have raised a $5
million Catalyst Fund, which will identify and fill gaps in existing efforts
and catalyze new initiatives to more effectively develop stable, healthy,
walkable, and diverse neighborhoods near the Central Corridor.
With the combination of a strong learning agenda and seed money to
support new ideas, the Collaborative is poised to become a model for
inclusive, equitable transit-oriented development planning. Says Sage-
Martinson, “Our goal is to help other actors in the corridor have access
to good information so they can make good decisions.”
