Alliance Online - December 2007
Fresh label, fresh content, fresh thinking
Walter Veirs
EVENT Grantmakers East Forum
Date 10-12 October
Venue Tallinn, Estonia
Theme Innovation
For more than ten years the Grantmakers East Group (GEG), now renamed Grantmakers East Forum (GEF), has been a place for grantmakers and other philanthropic organizations working in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and the former Soviet states to learn and exchange information on programmes and trends. The region has changed dramatically during this time, however, so the Steering Committee decided to update the look and feel of the event to keep it relevant for people working in the field. One notable change this year was that many more representatives of indigenous organizations attended the Forum.
GEF attracted 160 representatives of foundations, public donors and government representatives, and other philanthropic organizations. As in the past, this included both foundation executives and programme staff. While GEG historically has been shaped by large US and West European foundations working on democratic transition in the region, this year’s participants included foundations from Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Kosovo, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia and Ukraine, demonstrating that GEF is becoming an important meeting place for the region’s emerging foundation and philanthropic sector.
The theme of this year’s conference was innovation, and Tallinn – with Estonia’s transformation to full European Union and NATO membership and its reputation as a leader in internet communication technologies – provided the perfect setting.
Responding to the region’s most pressing challenges
GEF kicked off with an assessment of the state of democracy in the region by a range of its leading thinkers, including the President of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves. Recent polls show that popular dissatisfaction with democracy in Central and Eastern Europe is the highest in the world. Part of the reason is that liberal democracies have not provided people with the better living conditions they were promised, while in Russia, under an illiberal ‘sovereign democracy’, the economy is booming. The EU, suffering its own crisis of democracy, has lost its ability to inspire societies to embrace democratic values. Instead, it is seen as taking away decision-making from citizens and limiting participation. People find themselves in democracies where they have a voice, but no choice.
The panellists argued for the need to support democracy’s advocates around the region and encourage active and meaningful participation by people on issues of real concern to them. Yuri Dzibladhze, a prominent Russian human rights expert from the Centre for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights, urged non-Russian foundations to support the development of Russian philanthropy. It is only when Russians support the development of democracy in Russia that people will truly take an interest in shaping it, he noted.
Meaningful participation was a theme throughout the Forum. One plenary looked at the transformation of the way we communicate and network and how this affects young people. They, in particular, are using the internet as a platform for sharing their ideas and opinions, mobilizing global support for local causes and local support for global causes. New media, like blogs, are challenging traditional media and giving voice to alternative ideas. Young people who have grown up in the digital age – referred to as ‘internet natives’ – are extending the boundaries of these new forms of communication and redefining ‘participation’. Foundations – mostly run by those of us who can still remember what a postbox is for and who are referred to as ‘internet immigrants’ – are in danger of failing to capitalize on this communication revolution because we don’t understand it.
On issues of energy and climate change, panellists noted that there is a critical need for bottom-up innovation and changes in people’s behaviour as well as top-down policy reform and leadership. Panellists agreed that energy is a key issue for the EU; in fact, it could be the issue around which the EU builds its role in the world. Ironically, it is the EU’s dependence on an unpredictable Russia, which increasingly uses its gas and oil as an instrument of foreign policy, that may unite leaders in forging a common energy policy.
In the final plenary, participants reflected on their own practices. With leaders in the philanthropic sector on the panel, this session challenged them to think harder about lessons learned, particularly from their mistakes. Innovation, it was noted, is not the same as invention or entrepreneurship, but relates to how foundations and other institutions adapt to an ever-changing environment. It may mean, for example, doing something well and effectively over a long period of time. Or, like the Good Deed Foundation in Estonia, it may mean funding entrepreneurial projects that bring new solutions to social problems.
Changes in the conference format
Several fundamental changes were made to the conference format this year in order to create a dynamic environment for funders to share ideas and to ensure that GEF can be a venue for sophisticated discussions on key issues facing the region. The four plenary sessions, each tackling a critical, big picture issue, featured more than 15 outside speakers who shared their views with GEF participants, with plenty of time given to discussion and audience participation.
Small group discussions, as in years past, remained an important part of the event. However, participants were given the chance to organize these sessions on topics of interest to them prior to the conference through the interactive GEF website – another new feature. In Tallinn, these included discussions on corporate social responsibility, tax incentives for donations to NGOs, responses to the backlash against democracy, regional donor cooperation, approaches to working in Belarus, and building endowments.
These sessions were well attended and highly rated in participant evaluations. Seventy-five percent of participants said they would consider proposing and organizing a small group session at next year’s GEF. Based on this feedback, the organizers plan to create more slots for these side sessions in next year’s agenda.
Through GEF’s new website (www.gef.efc.be), much more information about the plenary topics, outside speakers and related reading material was shared with participants ahead of time than in previous years. In addition, there was a discussion forum where participants could share ideas and opinions. Now that the conference is over, the website provides a venue for further discussion, session summaries, photos, videos of interviews with panellists during the conference, and other information.
GEF also introduced multi-media to the conference, with participants responding to questions electronically, using hand-held voting devices. The audience’s responses were immediately tallied and presented on screens positioned around the room. Panellists and moderators used this input to shape the discussion. It also allowed for instant feedback and evaluation.
In a special report on innovation in the 13 October issue of The Economist, the authors adopted ‘fresh thinking that creates value’ as a useful working definition of innovation. Against this definition, GEF seems to have lived up to its ambitious theme. There was a great deal of fresh thinking about the region we work in and the nuts and bolts of what we do and how we do it – including how we network and communicate at conferences.
The real value, of course, will lie in the impact of the event on how participants do their work when they return home. As yet, no one has thought of an innovative way to measure this.
Walter Veirs is a Program Officer with the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and a member of the GEF Steering Committee. Email WVeirs@mott.org
For more information
www.gef.efc.be
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