Our Top 7 Highlights From Yale’s Philanthropy Conference

The social sector is large, complex and full of perspectives around driving the most significant impact. The annual Yale Philanthropy Conference (YPC) is one of many efforts to share where we’ve been, discuss where we’re going and build connections across this network. It is the only philanthropy conference hosted by a top business school, offering guests a unique perspective on management challenges facing the sector.

Joining more than 300 other attendees, we discussed the power of convenings, opportunities for mergers within the sector and the growing need to share meaningful databases of research more widely. Equally important were the topics of funding the testing of innovative solutions with an appreciation for failure and the need to pivot as we improve outcomes. These conversations and connections were powerful!

Here are my top 7 YPC highlights:

1. There is a hunger for greater understanding of and impact investing. Traditional organizations are not sure how to move forward with this focus, and feel unprepared in many ways to do so. Several burgeoning organizations asked about spaces to understand this transition in the sector and be better equipped to participate in funding streams.
2. The influence of foundations on convenings is in a testing phase. Determining focused outcomes and metrics to measure success are a critical focus. As they begin to focus here more, will it strengthen the idea of collaborative funding/investing across networks?
3. There is an opportunity in merging organizations, and learning ways to do this well could be extremely beneficial to the social sector. Some factors necessary for this to be done well: confidentiality, ED agreement and support, and funding the process. The challenges of our fragmented market were lifted as a challenge to this type of collaboration.
4. How do we begin to value failure during the learning process in developing solutions? As funding is decided, can we work to create a space that allows organizations to share mistakes without reducing trust or funding? Do we need to change the language around failure and thinking of it more as product development? Also, how can we encourage set aside funding for innovation within grants that has an expectation of pivots that allow an organization to test, fail fast and implement new learning without damage to their reputation.
5. There was a lot of discussion around funding movements: he idea of getting funders to understand supporting an idea instead of just organizations. The example used here was Black Lives Matter, which is not a registered 501(c)3, but is making significant impact. While questions arose around national or regional support, defined leadership and potential impacts, funding movements garnered excitement among guests.
6. There were several times the value of shared data came up across sessions. Foundations, organizations within sectors and advocates wanted to determine ways to more effectively share large databases of research. This was both to create greater accountability across efforts/focus areas and innovate faster.
7. There is a significant opportunity for corporate foundations to influence beyond dollars and there are great examples in the marketplace. IBM was highlighted for their corporate volunteer teams that are dispatched for numerous issues, their complimentary super computer services and the roll out and implementation of Watson (a new computer being highlighted in current advertising) to support teachers in the classroom. During the conversation, we discussed being cautious about corporate foundations reducing dollars as they participate in other types of philanthropic solutions since some of the best solutions in the sector primarily need funding.

Want to discuss further? Follow me @MissCMS or use the hashtag #YPC2016