Grantmakers Without Borders Conference 2009

Event Grantmakers Without Borders Conference
Date 8-10 June
Venue Washington DC, USA
Title Global Giving Now: Meeting The Challenge, Seizing The Opportunity

As I stood in an elevator with others on our way to the opening plenary of this year’s Grantmakers Without Borders (Gw/oB) conference, someone asked us if we were together. Only one person clearly said yes. By the end of the conference, I came to understand that we should all answer that simple question with an affirmative: if we work together, we can learn from each other and increase our impact.

Gw/oB’s conferences bring together about 200 grantmakers and NGOs to discuss critical issues connected to the field of global social change philanthropy, with the goal of promoting more strategic and effective international giving. Previous Gw/oB conferences were simply titled Just Giving. While the core elements of the Just Giving conferences were still evident, this year’s conference, Global Giving Now: Meeting The Challenge, Seizing The Opportunity, also concentrated on the negative impact of the economy (on the organizations grantmakers serve as well as grantmaking organizations). At the same time, hope was expressed that the economic earthquake (along with the new US administration) has opened the door for positive change.

The conference’s programme included over 30 sessions that fell into two main tracks. The first of these encompassed elements of grantmaking practice such as monitoring and evaluation, collaborative grantmaking and grantee collaborations. The second was concerned with social change and social justice issues, such as connecting grassroots group to international policy and strategies to promote rights to resources.

While sessions like these have occurred at past Gw/oB conferences, it seemed that there was a new hunger to develop more meaningful relationships and networks. This was partially accomplished through ‘speed networking’, where two people were given a chance to spend six minutes describing their work to each other (three minutes of speaking and three minutes of listening). When the time expired, both would move on to another encounter. Since this occurred on the first day, it allowed people to later seek out the people they had met briefly met to discuss in greater detail how they might collaborate in the future.

Additionally, there was a ‘reciprocity web’, in which groups of about eight people sit at a round table. Each person would describe what they needed help with or what they wanted to learn more about. The group would then brainstorm solutions. If an individual had a particular solution or resource, they would write down their name and contact information for the person who needed assistance. As with the speed networking, this session fed into the individual discussions throughout the conference.

The annual meeting focused on both challenges and opportunities. There are new challenges faced by all of us because of the economy, but there are also opportunities to reflect on our current practices and to confirm whether they are still relevant or not. We can create new paths and seek innovative ways to accomplish our goals. My hope is that all advocates, activists, catalysts, and partners – both those who attended the Gw/oB conference and those who didn’t – will both look for these innovative ways and tell others about what works and what doesn’t work so we can learn from each other.

Kathy Bonnifield is International Program Administrator, East Africa & Southeast Asia, for the McKnight Foundation. Email KBonnifield@mcknight.org