A Joint Initiative Between     Heart of Wisconsin     Business & Economic Alliance and     Community Foundation of     South Wood County

Home About Us B2B Club Breaking News Contact Donate Events / Programs Feedback Ideas Incubator Industry Clusters Links / Resources Progess Funds Progress Teams Public Art / Murals Publications		Breaking News May 4, 2007 - Taking Risk: Investing in Community Leadership Speech given by Steve Gunderson, Community Leadership Association - 2007 Annual Conference Thank you very much, Margaret [Walker Sellers], for that generous introduction. It’s good to be back in Grand Rapids. I was in Grand Rapids more frequently during the decade before I joined the Council on Foundations. During those years I was a senior consultant in a Grand Rapids-based firm that focused on strengthening leadership in organizations of all kinds and in all communities. My years with Greystone were good years, and I come back with good memories. And I’m honored to be with you almost literally in the shadow of two institutions that recognize the enormous contributions of two leaders from this community. Across the river is the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum and, since January, the president’s final resting place. When you are there for this evening’s reception, recall that no modern president taught us so much about decency as this modest man. He was lifted from Congress first to restore integrity to the office of vice president and then lifted again—in an even darker hour in American history—to achieve the same mission in the Oval Office. The legacy of Gerald R. Ford, from the power of his courage to the quiet of his grave, reminds us that history is kind to integrity and that political leadership belongs more to the decent patriot than to the noisy partisan. And if the name “Dorothy A. Johnson” is not as well known as that of President Ford, there’s a reason for that: Dottie Johnson spent most of her career building not a personal reputation but a sustainable institution, the Council of Michigan Foundations. Almost single-handedly at first, Dottie called leaders of Michigan’s foundations to come together and create a powerful force for good in this state. She not only organized them; she also inspired them. She made the council itself a means not to preserve and protect privilege but to empower and enthuse communities—including communities of poverty, of illness and of hopelessness. Today, the Council Dottie created is the largest and most respected regional association of grantmakers in the world. And on the campus of Grand Valley State University stands the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership—an institution devoted to making philanthropy, and the good it does, sustainable for generations to come. But it is neither the president’s museum nor Dottie’s school that brought me from Washington, DC, today. I agreed to be here today because a friend described you to me. He spoke about the leadership movement you represent and the leadership challenges that confront you. And I was easily persuaded that there would be no better place to be this afternoon than with you. My career ambition had little to do with leadership. Raised in an utterly middle class family in rural Wisconsin, I loved—and still do—University of Wisconsin football. So, after college, I went to broadcasting school, hoping to become the Saturday-afternoon voice of Wisconsin football. But a funny thing happened on the way to the studio. I got elected, in something of a fluke, to the Wisconsin state assembly. After six years there, I was elected to eight consecutive terms in the United States House of Representatives. Clearly, I believe that public service through elected office is an important and honorable path to leadership. During my decades in the Assembly and the House I learned lessons that would have escaped me in any other career. But by the mid-1990s, I realized that a new era of partisanship fueled by marketing and meanness had taken over national politics. When I announced that I would run only one more time, to serve a final term, there were moments of regret: to represent people you love is both an honor and a joy, and I was sorry to let it go. But I knew there were other ways in which I could serve. And indeed there have been. Now, a dozen years after that final election, I see a government that is in full retreat from traditional roles of leadership and service. While society’s needs grow, government’s response shrinks. Our communities are facing greater needs than they have known in at least three and perhaps four generations. And in face of these growing needs we have national political leaders who increasingly admit they do not have answers that will satisfy or programs that will heal us. If there is any good news in this sorry situation it may be that the need for leadership, especially within our communities, has never been greater. A void has been created, and continues to be created, at every level of our national community. A major contributor to our lack of national leadership today is the paralysis that results from bitter partisanship. The partisanship that has flowered in Washington, DC, has roots planted deeply in state politics where redistricting had produced more and more seats that are filled by those to the right and to the left but rarely in the middle. The stridency of campaigns filled with accusation and half-truth is a long way from the quiet dignity with which Gerald R. Ford debated his democratic rivals. The tone set by partisan politics is now the primary sound of the media. Turn on the television on a typical evening and you’ll have screaming, accusing, plot-finding men and women sensationalizing the least worthy stories. The best thing that ever happened to poor, deceased Anna Nicole Smith was Don Imus—but neither are models of heroic leadership for America’s youth. What partisanship, sensationalizing, and all other forms of noise teach us is that leadership is rare. And it is also necessary. Without it, we are a people in search of a vision that does not rise automatically from the ashes of a burned-out community. Communities that wait for the federal government to provide rescue, or support, or leadership are likely to be communities that are waiting on disappointment. I am not speaking now only of the great crises like Hurricane Katrina or the failings of our response to such moments. I am speaking to the notion that the federal government, by virtue of its very character, must approach all issues and all communities with a “one size fits all” mentality because all constituents in every corner of the nation must be served by one law, one set of policies, one response to what are typically very complicated, deeply rooted and highly varied problems in diverse communities. The bad news is that there is no cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all solution to problems that plague our communities. We learned it first in the Great Society where sweeping solutions turned out to be no solutions at all; this lesson came primarily courtesy of the Democrats. But we Republicans provided our own lesson when we could not stop believing that massive tax cuts would produce a rising tide to raise all boats when, in fact, it appears mostly to have lifted only the better yachts. No matter what our political philosophy and agenda, one-size-fits-all solutions will almost never be cut to the size of our communities. Philanthropy has also needed to learn this lesson. In the past, we have been eager to receive tax advantages so that we could make grants. What we, too, are learning is that we are not really in the business of making grants; we are in the business of making a difference. And most of the difference we must make is within the communities where our philanthropies are located. The Grand Rapids Community Foundation—without which some children would not read, others would not have healthcare, and others would have no opportunity to dance or sing or hear great music—is one example. The Council on Foundations where I serve is also learning lessons. For many years we waged only defensive strategies on the Hill, moving to prevent losses of privilege or power whenever our base was threatened. Those days are over because such strategies do not, in fact, enable us to make a greater difference; they may protect us, briefly, against change—but the truth is, we need to lead change, not hide from it. We cannot sit on the sideline hoping that federal legislation will somehow increase our ability to make a difference in America’s communities. We need to become a more creative and persuasive voice on Capitol Hill with ideas that are new, promising, and—where we have time to try out ideas—proven. One illustration that may interest some of you is the concept of “low-profit limited liability companies.” Most of you have heard of or know about LLCs, limited liability companies. They first became popular as an organizational structure about 20 years ago and have, since that time, become the dominant form of new businesses and many charities in America. Our Council has adopted a proactive and pro-growth legislative agenda, the “2007 Agenda for Philanthropic Partnership,” which we are offering to our colleagues on Capitol Hill. Of the five primary objectives, securing federal legislation that would allow foundations to make program-related investments—through loans or grants—to low-profit LLCs has the potential to make vast differences in our communities. It would mean that private and community foundations could support start-up businesses who will have small profits but whose primary goal is community enhancement. New childcare options could be created by businesses who could afford, because of philanthropic money, to focus on safety and learning. New healthcare ventures would be made possible at a cost neighborhoods can afford, because philanthropy would join business in a shared mission. Instead of retaining the high wall between nonprofit and for-profit, this legislation would allow common sense economics supported by philanthropic dollars to go to work in neighborhoods and communities across the nation. And in every case, because the L3Cs are shaped to the needs of specific communities, the outcomes can be measured and supported on a community-by-community basis. This is only one example of how philanthropy is searching for solutions that will allow us to partner with others to make local communities healthier, more hopeful, and truly sustainable. And, in fact, the reason I’ve come today is to invite each of you into such a partnership with us. We need your vision, your passion, your time, and your leadership. And we are willing to invest with you in the risk of a partnership. I needed to say the word “risk,” because there is no leadership without it. I understand too well how comfortable we all want to be. I am no exception. I love my home, my partner, my garden, my life away from public inspection, and the worry of risk. But here’s the reality: The return on all our investments is a measure of how risky the investment itself is. High risk means high return—or perhaps no return at all. The risk of social change is even higher than the risk of monetary investment, because it is risk made in public, often accompanied by public claims and public expectations. The reason the government can rarely lead is because the government can rarely risk. It dares to speak boldly, but not to act boldly if failure is one of the potential options. No elected official can afford to preside over a failure if he or she hopes to be re-elected. Drums will roll when we open a new neighborhood swimming pool or community healthcare center; but heads will roll when the pool is infected with bacteria because no funds were provided for sanitation, and the healthcare center is boarded up because no staff can be hired to keep it open. It is one thing to call for change; it is quite another to make change sustainable. Sydney Harris had it right: “Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time. What we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.” Philanthropy has taken too few risks in the past. We have taken refuge in private board rooms too often and taken hard positions on community crises too seldom. We’ve used our checkbooks to support the causes that were safe and sometimes bland, rarely supporting the edgier artist or community leader. We have not been champions of diversity—whether defined by ethnicity, gender and race, or by philosophies, ideas, and religions. Philanthropy is the one area that can, literally, afford to take risks and fail; to our shame, we’ve done it too seldom. To the credit of a new generation of leaders with whom I’m now blessed to serve, this is changing. And changing quickly. By definition, leadership entails risk. It invites us to measure the future, create a better vision, and pursue it, in public, where people can hear our speech and judge our character. This is risky business. I know. I’ve given speeches where I heard the hecklers; I’ve published editorials and books where critics and cynics are welcome readers. Of course leadership entails risk. And if we are not willing to risk our ideas, and ourselves, then we are not ready to lead. But you, by virtue of your affiliation with the community leadership movement and association, have committed to taking the risk of leadership. I welcome you, and I commend you, and I invite you to join those of us in the world of philanthropy in a new and rich partnership. This partnership has already begun in specific communities. In my home state of Wisconsin, the Community Foundation of South Wood County is focused exclusively on community leadership. It’s attracted national attention and potent funding from, among others, the Ford Foundation whose president, Susan Berresford, singles it out for praise and long-term support. Called The Community Progress Initiative, you can research it yourself by way of their website. And community leadership is not just a one-region interest for philanthropy. The community foundation field itself, represented in the Community Foundations Leadership Team, sees it as such a critical issue that they are commissioning a national task force on community leadership. The work of community foundations today is in building communities. Building foundation assets is just one of the tools used to accomplish this important work. We all recognize, I think, that for philanthropy to develop sustainability within the communities we support, we must make investments in community leadership through new and novel strategies. What we need to invest in, to be specific, is you. We need to find ways to attract you—each of you, as individuals—into a partnership that results in community change and community sustainability. Let me call it, for the moment, “The Philanthropic Community Leadership Partnership.” And let me tell you things about this partnership that you and I will share. First, we will anchor our work in better knowledge. This is not 1950, when television was new; or 1980, when the fax machine was still an idea. We are well into the 21st century and it offers us a time of unparalleled knowledge, if only we want to have it. To be successful as leaders in this century we must give up the leadership mythology of the past that lauded men and suspected women, quietly favored whites over blacks and English over Spanish, and set the expectation that leadership would belong to the descendants of European immigrants over the descendants of Native Americans. We will need to bring an asset-based approach to our communities recognizing that every neighborhood in America, every community no matter its color or tradition, has assets on which we can build. We will come to these communities, together, philanthropy and community leaders, knowing that knowledge is now available to all of us, and all we serve, 7/24/365. We can build on leadership lessons gleaned from other movements: the “livable communities” movement and, now, the “sustainable communities” movement. In short, I invite you into a partnership based on better knowledge. Second, the partnership must be local. What I want you to do is go home and immediately find the name and address of every foundation and corporate giving program in your community. The people who fund, lead, and manage these organizations are hungry for community partners. They need to meet you, if they haven’t already. And you need to meet them. Don’t be put off by stuffy images of philanthropy in the past. It is a new day. There is a new philanthropic spirit, and it is committed to the communities in which all of us live. Give us a chance to partner with you. Come with your ideas, your needs, your passion to lead and change the community. Join the foundations in their efforts to make a difference. Let us do this together. If we do not partner, local leaders and local philanthropies, there is every reason to believe neither of us will succeed. But if we find our way to learning and leading together, there is every reason to believe that both of us will succeed. More importantly, the communities we serve can be made sustainable long into the future. Third, we must create a partnership of listeners. I understand that the immediate image of an effective leader is someone who’s a great communicator—by which we ordinarily mean a speaker, a writer, someone who persuades. But this is not the starting point for effective leadership, or for building sustainable partnerships and communities. Talk radio isn’t leadership; it’s noise. Nightly television rants and headlines do not promote real leadership; they prohibit it. Good leaders are great listeners. I’m standing before you today, as the president and CEO of the Council on Foundations, because of the importance I place on listening as a tool for leadership. When asked by the Search Committee to describe my style of leadership, I explained that leadership is achieved through the “3 L’s.” We listen. We learn. Then, and only then, can we lead. This sector was looking for a CEO who used listening as a tool for leadership. I named two listeners earlier. Dottie Johnson famously drove her cars back and forth across the state of Michigan, fueling her mission with fast-food stops and unstoppable commitment, listening to the private fears and personal loyalties of philanthropists of all stripes. She played no favorites, violated no confidences, and led because she was trusted. If we want to lead, and we want our partnership to lead, then we will need to commit to listening. Some listening can be done with polls, surveys, and focus groups. But some requires presence—your presence as leaders in your communities—where fears and regrets season hopes and promises. Come into my church basement, visit the new mosque we just built. Come with me to the barbershops and secondhand stores, not just the country clubs and fashion boutiques. Let us become, together, great listeners so that our philanthropy speaks to real people’s real needs, and our leadership is rewarded by those who’ve learned to trust us. Fourth, our partnership must reflect inclusion and diversity. This is no longer an option; it must be a mandate, for all of us. Earlier this week, at our Annual Conference, I served on a panel to define ways we might go forward to expand diversity’s role in philanthropy. Our moderator began the discussion by asking each of us to define the importance of diversity in our sector. I said simply: It is morally right. It is essential to achieve our best talent. It will contribute to all our other goals. It is the key ingredient for enhancing the effectiveness of our philanthropic work. The organized philanthropic world is embarrassingly Anglo and white. If we are not trusted by some communities, it’s at least in part because we are not known in these communities, and we look nothing like them. Where there are new, up-and-coming leaders who represent America’s new growth, great ethnic traditions, new immigrant populations—wherever such leaders can be gathered, philanthropy needs to prowl for its new leadership. In the coming ten years, according to a study published by the Johnson Center, American philanthropy will need 640,000 new senior leaders. Some of them must be here, today; perhaps one of them is you. We need leaders of all kinds in our field, including Anglo whites—so long as every person who presumes to lead in this field or in our communities will value, deeply value, to the core of her soul and the marrow of his bones, the urgency of inclusion and diversity. And, finally, our partnership must reach toward better outcomes. It is the role of leaders to bring a vision, and the vision must be built on change that produces healthier communities, more educated children, higher rates of employability and employment, decent housing, and compassion for those who cannot compete. Sustainability is the measure of outcomes, of change actually achieved—not only to make a difference, but also to make it again, and again, and again. Healthy children and communities are not “programs,” nor are they mere ideals. They are outcomes that flow from hard and sometimes dangerous work, results that are earned by sweat and sometimes blood. Communities are not clouds that drift by or wishes that go gently to sleep: They roar with traffic and crying children, they grow with investment and a neighbor’s steady nurture, they shrink and collapse when poverty grinds them down. They burn when we are so angry we no longer have hope. They are resurrected when leaders come forward with integrity and a vision built on better knowledge, keener listening, greater diversity, and a commitment to finer outcomes. Let me close with two brief stories that teach us, I think, lessons on leadership that could inform the partnership your movement and ours could have. Earlier this year, Congressman Elijah Cummings of Maryland spoke to our Family Foundation Conference in Baltimore. His Sunday morning address was a combination of political update and powerful sermon. He shared with us that day the powerful memory of his election to Congress in April of 1996. His family and friends filled the House gallery as he took the official oath of office from then-Speaker Newt Gingrich. When the ceremonies were over, he walked to the halls outside the chamber to greet his family. And there, for the first time, he saw his father with tears in his eyes. “Dad,” he said, “What causes you to be so emotional at this moment? I’ve never seen you like this. Is it because of the political success of your son?” His father, by now a retired minister and long-time civil rights activist, looked up at his son and said quietly, “No, it is because now I know—what could have been.” We as leaders of our generation must go forward with a vision that prevents any citizen wondering what “could have been.” What I learned that day, and offer to you today, is that I cannot lead backward, into history. I cannot change what happened to my father, or yours. What I can change, if I am a faithful leader, is the character of the future. And what we could change together, you who aspire to community leadership and we who aspire to community sustainability, is immeasurable. We must not allow yesterday’s tears to diminish today’s promise or tomorrow’s achievement. We can partner to make a difference. We really can. Friedman taught all of us that the global is so small it’s best imagined as “flat.” Nothing is far from us any more. We call to open a checking account in Topeka but the phone is answered in India, the checkbook arrives from Bolivia, and the account is managed in London. The “community” in which we live is, potentially, as small as my grandmother’s garden or as large as the globe itself. We need to be willing to work intensely in the Laotian community in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, or South Los Angeles; among the Hispanic barrios of suburban Washington, DC, or San Antonio; and the dangerously marginalized communities of Caribbean immigrants popping up along the coasts of Florida or the inner city of New York. But we will do it knowing that the tsunami that rolled over an Indonesian coast carried 200,000 bodies into our homes. The genocide of Rwanda occurred in my neighborhood. The 15,000,000 African orphans are my children. And the students of Virginia Tech are my family. If we presume to lead, you and I, in the 21st century, then we must be ready to lead in a world of vast complexity and stark simplicity. And we can do it—we can partner, we can lead, we can build sustainable communities—guided by a very simple question. We should follow the wisdom of the founder of a Midwest foundation who told his children, “Ask yourself, ‘What will I wish ten years from now that I had done today?’ When you know, do it.” What I will wish ten years from now is that I had been with you. I’m honored by you and by the promise you represent. And I will be grateful, then as I am now, that we had spent this hour together. With my thanks to you come my very best wishes for these days in Grand Rapids and your leadership when you return home. I’ve now been at the Council on Foundations for almost sixteen months. During this time, I’ve answered hundreds of emails and letters from those directly engaged in this noble journey called philanthropy. I’ve come to close each letter with the same words, “Thanks for all you do.” Let me close these remarks with those same words to each of you. Thanks for who you are and all you do to make our communities a better place for everyone of your fellow-citizens. Thank you.
		Copyright © 2005, Community Progress Initiative, South Wood County & Town of Rome