Protective factors are those things that to most of us of a certain age and class came naturally: safe neighborhoods where we could walk to school, parks where we could play, front stoops where we could visit with the neighbors, bowling leagues where our parents shared recreation, and school bands where we could be part of a melodious team. You get the idea. These are the factors that help kids to grow healthy, curious, and engaged in their communities. And they are things that help parents to rely on each other when they are overwhelmed by the struggles of supporting a family and raising children.

So what does all of this have to do with how to cultivate support for the arts? Art and culture are huge protective factors that help to create strong families and communities. When they describe the importance of their programs to donors, arts organizations can help them to understand the relationship between their mission and the broader goal of promoting positive long-term outcomes for kids and stronger family and community connections. Many donors enjoy being engaged with their communities and want to improve the economic and social circumstances of their beneficiaries. But they often do not understand the role that arts organizations, as opposed to say, community clinics or charter schools, play in creating strong families and communities. When I meet with the arts leaders, this will be my primary message: that the arts are a protective factor that promotes strong kids and families and that, in turn, has a huge long-term positive impact on creating strong communities for everyone.

I always counsel my clients to treat their grant investment portfolio the way they would their 401(k) account. That is to say, foundations should allocate their grant portfolio across a broad spectrum of risk in order to maximize their long-term returns, and minimize sudden or precipitous declines. How does this work in practice? Foundation program managers should determine their risk profile at the beginning of an initiative or strategic plan and then make individual grant decisions to match this profile. Thus, when a “high-risk” proposal comes over the threshold, it should be assessed for its potential to make high returns if it is successful, but only in the context of a balanced portfolio that minimizes the risk if it fails. And, if it does fail, it should be mined for the lessons learned in order to inform their future practice.

Unfortunately, while most foundations and their boards of directors use risk as a factor in their decisions, most also never take the step of having a formal discussion about their risk profile, and then of creating policies and practices to monitor their portfolio relative to that profile. Rather, they use informal means, like “the front page of the newspaper” test, to assess risk. I think if they did take these extra steps, most foundations would find that they are more risk tolerant than they think, and could enable their grantees to experiment more, promote innovation, and see “failure” as a valuable learning tool.

We who are lucky enough to work in the non-profit field and for foundations, are accustomed to having to explain our impact in terms other than the bottom-line numbers of for-profits. Our numbers are: units of service, graduation rates, poverty rates, reading levels, etc. We use these abstractions to describe how well our grant investments are doing and how we are measuring our success. We think that they paint an accurate – or close to accurate – picture of the lives we are trying to impact.

But each of these numbers represents a life of a child, a family. And for the communities that we serve that are burdened by crushing poverty, on any given day, especially in this economy, the numbers may represent not just the loss of a job or a house, but also,

A loss of dignity,
A loss of opportunity, and
In some cases, even, a feeling that the child and the family have fallen from G-d’s good graces.

These are the numbers that matter, that we need to hold as close, if not more so, while we are busy measuring, tabulating, and analyzing. We need to keep the lives of particular children and particular families in our hearts and minds as we go about the business of our daily abstractions.

When I train Program Officers who work for foundations employing this strategy, the conversation inevitably turns to what is the PO’s role in the community. Since working in this mode usually means that the foundation wants its staff to be more present in the community than in the office, and to be community “partners,” they seek PO’s with experience in community organizing or activism related to the geography or population being served by the foundation. But are PO’s community organizers? And is their job to be advocates for the community inside the foundation?

I usually advise my trainees that there is a fine line to be walked between working “with” a community and working “for” one. And when it is crossed, that is when a PO loses credibility within their own foundation because they have become advocates for the community rather than for the goals of the foundation. If they lose credibility, and the ability to move a grantmaking portfolio through the foundation, then they are ironically no longer serving that community in their role as a PO. However, if the foundation’s goals incorporate input from the community, and are subject to timely and on-going learning from the PO’s experience there, then there shouldn’t be any risk of role confusion as the PO navigates both the needs of the foundation and the community it serves.

As a cancer survivor, I have been part of the community of survivors who has looked to Lance for inspiration, as someone who overcame a very serious diagnosis and punishing treatment, and then went on to some of the greatest triumphs of his career. Believe me, when you are staring down the drip-drip of a chemo bag, you hold on to the inspirational stories of others just to get you through the day. His survivorship was not branding, or marketing, or devious fakery; he was an icon of who you can be post-treatment, the life yet to be lived, better and stronger than pre-cancer. For the 20 million souls who will become cancer survivors in this country over the next decade, his pathbreaking foundation, LiveStrong, and the yellow wristbands it spawned, have become the symbols for the healthy, thriving survivor every one of us will strive to be. Not only that, he has raised lots and lots of money for the cause.

Now, the fakery is nearly known. Not only that, but one has to question whether the drugs he took, hormone disruptors all, actually contributed to his diagnosis. At the very least, he has created a grand illusion that for years has hidden the lie. For me, his disception is not just personal, it is also professional. He has used his foundation to burnish his image and create “survivor” credentials that make a mockery of all of us who do this work while living as survivors. Foundations aren’t, or at least shouldn’t, be vanity projects for the purposes of building elaborate lies about their benefactors. Live strong indeed. I will continue to do so, but my inspiration will be the philanthropists who create foundations for the benefit of others, not themselves. And the survivors who know that the simple act of riding a bicycle is a blessing, not to be taken for granted.

Sometimes I intend to write about food safety and systems, early childhood development, and being a cancer survivor. These are my other passions, and they get woven into my work all of the time. I’m probably breaking the first rule of blogging by not being narrowly focused in my subject matter. But to me, it’s all about work with care, hence the tagline of my business and the title of my blog.