(From the President and CEO of the Marguerite Casey Foundation: Luz Vega-Marquis):
Breaking Bread to Build a Movement: Harnessing
Philanthropy's Power to Convene
(posted on Huffington Post's Impact, Dec 3 2013:
As I join families across the country in making preparations
for Thanksgiving, I welcome the opportunity to come together with friends and
family. To strengthen bonds and buoy spirits, nothing is as powerful as the
simple act of breaking bread together.
The ritual of gathering people together is central in my
work as well. Although philanthropists are thought of most often as
grantmakers, our role as conveners is just as important.
Yes, we are charged with providing bread -- in the form of
funding -- to sustain the crucial work of our grantees, but our capacity to
spark and support change is magnified many times over when we focus equal
energy on setting the table: providing time and space for grantees and their
constituents to break bread together.
The importance of the foundation's role as convener was
never more clear to me than on Sept. 6, 2008, when 15,000 members of the Equal
Voice for America's Families campaign gathered at three sites linked by
simulcast to unveil a national family platform of their own design.
Conference halls in Los Angeles, Birmingham and Chicago rang
with animated talk in languages from Creole to Khmer, with the laughter of
children and the resonant tones of elders, some of whom had traveled all night
to be part of the convening. Rather than competing or drowning one another out,
the thousands of voices joined in a rousing symphony of purpose and pride.
When our grantee partners first conceived of the Equal Voice
campaign, we never dreamed we would bring together 15,000 family members on a
single day across three time zones. From the outset, however, we understood we
were embarking on something new -- and that there was risk involved in the
undertaking and that the foundation's and our grantees' ability to convene
would be tested.
The philosophy behind the Equal Voice campaign was aligned
with Marguerite Casey's vision and mission that families can lead and have both
the right and the capacity to speak for themselves, to identify their own most
urgent concerns, and can advocate on their own behalf. In keeping with that ethos,
we supported our grantees in mobilizing families across the country because
they -- like the foundation -- understood that Equal Voice would only be
successful if it were family-led.
In Birmingham, as I listened to what might have been
cacophony become instead a chorus, I was inspired to push further -- to make
more and better use of the foundation's capacity to convene. We are honored to
be able to support our grantees' work via our grantmaking; but we have become
increasingly aware of our responsibility to connect the grantees' diverse
efforts, through face-to-face convenings and through the social media
technologies increasingly central to what some call Movement Building 2.0.
As cries of "Sí, se puede!" rang out from the
podium, they seemed to merge into a single, unstoppable "Sí, podemos!
(Yes, WE can)." The sense of collective agency and power those voices
conveyed would last long after the halls had emptied. Those in attendance
seemed to understand that while each person on his or her own might have a hard
time getting a hearing from those in power, together, they would be
unstoppable.
Because the families and the grantees who participated in
the Equal Voice campaign expressed such a clear determination to continue -- to
take the call for justice the national family platform represented and support
a family-led movement to change their lives and those of millions poor
Americans -- Marguerite Casey Foundation has committed to act as the incubator
for a new, family-led membership organization to be launched in 2016.
This organization will be a vehicle through which working
families can continue to connect with one another, joining their voices --
their equal voices, as important and profound as those of any politician or
pundit -- in a common call for justice that is too loud to be ignored.
The organization will also be a mechanism to sustain a
movement, with membership acting as the great equalizer. Imagine 3, 4, even 5
million poor and working-class Americans, all voting members of an organization
with the capacity to speak in a single voice -- to have a say in determining
policies that affect their daily lives.
Ignoring a movement of that scale and scope will simply not
be possible for those in positions of power over families' lives.
We at Marguerite Casey Foundation are not the only ones
thinking about, and acting upon, the power we as philanthropists hold to
convene. With more than 46.5 million Americans still living in poverty on the
eve of the 50th anniversary of Lyndon Johnson's declaration of "war on
poverty," the philanthropic sector as a whole is called to step forward
and use our convening power like never before.
Together, we can unleash the multiplier effect that takes
place when foundations use our convening capacity to bring to the table not
only "the usual suspects" but those most affected by the issues on
the table.
The potent combination of funders, grassroots organizations
and the families with whom those organizations work can be transformative.
Through the new membership organization, we and our allies aim to meld the
thousands of connections forged at the earlier Equal Voice convenings into a
lasting movement for substantive change.
As I set my Thanksgiving table this year, I will be thinking
about philanthropy's role in setting the table for this most essential effort.
I will offer thanks for the opportunity to play what role we can in bringing
together America's poor and working families in the name of a new movement for
equal voice and equal opportunity, a movement propelled by the most powerful
fuel known to humankind: a parent's dreams for his or her children.
