Tough Times in Social Justice Philanthropy: Strategic Impact Through Stronger Collaboration, Capacity & Alliances
Funders and grantees gathered in New York Sept. 27 and 28, 2012 for the Public Interest Projects Learning Institute, “Tough Times in Social Justice Philanthropy.” The Institute featured provocative dialogue and interactive workshops focused on creating strategic impact through stronger collaboration, capacity and alliances. In the interest of continuing to connect social justice funders and advocates and share tools on collaboration, alliances and capacity building, the Institute agenda, below, has been converted into a resource list with embedded audio/video and links to resources distributed during the event. If your web browser does not display the SoundCloud audio players below, click on the session title or visit us on SoundCloud.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Welcome and Introductions (see video above)
Video Presentation: Voices from the Social Justice Community
A dialogue took place between generations of advocates and funders involved in struggles faced by LGBT, JLWOP, DREAMer, educational justice and civil rights communities. Each shared lessons and advice on strategies, alliances, and movement building. This conversation explored the history of these movements, the role of funders in helping connect these struggles, shared challenges, a vision for the future, and what is needed to get there. Watch the entire session via this video playlist below. For individual presentations, see video playlist of here or list below video.
- Bernardine Dohrn, Clinical Associate Professor of Law, Northwestern University School of Law.
- Eliseo Medina, The International Secretary-Treasurer, Service Employees International Union
- Tania Unzueta, co-founder Immigrant Youth Justice League and National Coming Out of the Shadows Day
- Hollis Watkins, Founder and President, Southern Echo
- Kim McGill, Organizer, Youth Justice Coalition/FREE L.A. High School
- Albert Sykes, Executive Director, The Young People’s Project
- Matt Coles, Deputy National Legal Director, ACLU-LGBT Rights
Moderator: Mallika Dutt, Founder, President and CEO, Breakthrough and Public Interest Projects Board Member
Southeast Spotlight: What Can We Learn from Challenges in the Region?
This session provided Institute participants with key data on the important changes in the Southern landscape and engaged them in strategic conversations about why those changes also matter to the rest of the country.
Chris Kromm’s Powerpoint presentation:
Performance: Raul Pacheco, Guitarist/lead vocalist for Ozomatli (introduced by Favianna Rodriguez)
Youth organizers shared their perspectives on finding common cause across school discipline, LGBTQ, and immigration advocacy. Conversations focused on what brings diverse constituencies together, challenges and lessons learned, and how new alliances can inform grantmaking and advocacy strategies across other issues.
Read Fernando’s handout here. 
Reproductive Rights and Civic Engagement
This session explored how issue-focused organizations are developing innovative strategies that enable them to engage their constituents in civic participation efforts in order to advance their missions.
Friday, September 28, 2012
Capacity Building Tools & Strategies
The Capacity Building Tools and Strategies session explored strategies for funders to strengthen the social justice field, increase sustainability and strengthen an organization’s scale and impact. It also featured a field case study of the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition.
Social Media for Thought Leadership: How to Use Online Tools to Advance Social Justice
This session explored how organizations can create a “social media mission statement” that supports their overall vision for the work; which social media tools are most effective in helping to advance social justice goals; and simple ways to leverage social media to connect and collaborate with staff, colleagues, allies and thought leaders in the social justice sector. See PDF of presentation here 
- Trainer: Rosetta Thurman, Non-Profit Trainer and Leadership Speaker
Scaling Up
This session explained the membership services model used by the largest and most successful organizations (AARP, AAA, and the NRA) and its applicability to social justice organizations. See PDF handout here.
- Trainer: Peter Murray, CEO, Accelerate Change
The Power of Art and Cultural Organizing to Inspire & Build Movements
A growing movement of artists around the country is using cultural tools to fight economic inequality, corporations and anti-migrant hate. In this session, artist-activists, writers and cultural leaders discussed models for connecting artists to movements for social change.
Designing Capacity Building Models: Goals, Strategy and Metrics Audio Record
Philosophy, lessons and challenges of different capacity building models were shared with a particular emphasis on evaluation questions and metrics used to assess impact.
Trainers:
- Magui Rubalcava Shulman, Director of Immigration, Public Interest Projects
- Melinda Fine, Director of Education, Public Interest Projects
- Leslie Ramyk, Senior Consultant, Communities for Public Education Reform (CPER), Public Interest Projects
Funder Ignite Talks: Reading the Tea Leaves on What the Future Holds for Social Justice Philanthropy
This highly interactive session featured quick thoughts from donors on what the future holds for social justice philanthropy.
Closing Plenary: Reflections on the Future of Social Justice Efforts
The closing plenary spotlighted intersections between education rights and civil rights issues, and identified key opportunities that exist for social justice philanthropy.
