EPIP: Day Three

Well things wrapped up very nicely in Denver. The last day of the conference featured Gara LaMarche, President and CEO, Atlantic Philanthropies, and Benjamin Todd
Jealous, President and CEO, NAACP. Because the three tracks throughout the conference were
Generational Change, Philanthropic Effectiveness and Social Justice Philanthropy, they were both really well poised to comment not only on these issues but also about the role of the emerging generation of philanthropists. In fact, LaMarche made a good observation that the word "emerging" may be a bit of a misconception, and that the field needs to look to young people as leaders not just in the future, but right now. I have been fortunate enough to hear Jealous twice in the past month (he spoke to our Board back in March, and I blogged about it here). But of course it was great to hear him again. One of the things that he mentioned that I found most relevant to the work of social justice philanthropy is that we are coming to a point where we are seeing the diminishing of a social class dominance, and eventually we will witness minorities becoming the majority. He pointed out that the Tea Party is a backlash against this kind of progress. Jealous also mentioned the importance of understanding who your allies are, and that they might not be who you think they are.

I really want to give a huge shout out to everyone who made the weekend possible, especially the folks at EPIP, Rusty Stahl and Rebecca Schumer in particular did so much hard work over the weekend. And thanks again to all the sponsors of the conference, the Marguerite Casey Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Levi Strauss Foundation, California Wellness Foundation and Council of Michigan Foundations. And a special thanks to the Knight Foundation, who sponsored the LiveFeed of the conference and DoGooder TV, which made it all possbile. Yesterday more than 2000 watched Benjamin Jealous from the NAACP!

And of course, I wasn't the only one who blogged about the conference and its participants. If you're interested in hearing what others thought about it, head on over the EPIP Blog, Epiphanies. Thanks again to all who participated, it was a great weekend.

If you want to follow the rest of the Council on Foundation's 2010 Conference via Twitter, the hashtag is #cof10 and they have a great list of live bloggers. I suggest checking out the Philanthropy411 blog for updates.