Common Vision
Many grantmakers, despite their differences, share a commitment to addressing deeply entrenched inequities and improving our communities.
Yet without infrastructure support or formal coordination, the opportunities for deep, collective thinking among foundations of all sorts rarely materialize—often insulating the unique expertise of grantmakers from one another.
Imagine a welcoming space where those commonalities and insights are tapped, those differences are bridged, and a common vision for social change begins to bloom.
Together, we can shape the world we want to inhabit.
REGISTER NOW! To register for the New England Common Vision meeting, March 19, 2008, or the Midwest Common Vision meeting, April 24, 2008, please contact Karen Zelermyer at karen@lgbtfunders.org or 212-475-2930.
Download a brief synopsis of New England policies and populations. A full research report covering 11 issue areas and more than 80 variables will be made available to participants of Common Vision at the first meeting.
Read a progress report on Common Vision (PDF)
About Common Vision
Common Vision is a national, multi-year initiative that will convene grantmakers in various states and regions of the country who share an interest in creating healthy communities and widespread equity.
Common Vision will facilitate a space for individual and institutional donors to meet one another, share insights, learn, collaborate and, ultimately, craft a philanthropic approach that tackles structural inequities, enhances the health of individuals and communities, and helps create a just, sustainable world.
The project has been launched in New England and the Midwest.
Through participation in Common Vision, grantmakers will have access to:
- Meaninful conversation and exploration, with people like you, who want to get to the root of making effective change. Design teams made up of foundation leaders and national experts in each region will guide the process to begin teasing apart how a common vision for creating change, at the regional and state level, could better embrace equality for all of our communities, together.
- A regional approach to grantmaking that welcomes you anywhere you are on the funding continuum, including those already thoroughly engaged in this type of work and those simply interested in learning what it would mean to take it on. We are all, in some way or another, learning to be better grantmakers.
- Greater, more in-depth connections to grantmakers in your region—and across regions—so that effective grantmaking practices spread from grantmaker to grantmaker, region to region. If we join ideas, we can increase the amount of giving tackling structural inequities based on sexuality, race, economics, and gender—the goal of Common Vision.
- An effective grantmaking evaluation tool tailored to the specifics of your foundation. Grantmakers will be able to measure their contributions to efforts that are moving us to a greater level of social and economic equality in our communities. Further, as Common Vision evolves, this tool will draw on your best practices so that as our philanthropy improves, so can our world.
- Up-to-date foundation data and analysis per state and region, so that grantmaking strategies are rooted in the latest funding information.
- Coaching time with experts to ensure you have a greater capacity to give effectively. To ensure these skill sets, our process will include peer-to-peer learning, training, presentations, mentoring, and continual reflection, among others.
- Increased visibility among your peers and, as the program expands nationally, the philanthropic sector.
To learn more about Common Vision, please contact Karen Zelermyer, Executive Director, at 212-475-2930 or karen@lgbtfunders.org.
