Giving Compass' Take:

• Jennie Curtis writes on how her team found ways to create alignment and support better collaboration among organizations looking to advance renewable energy and address climate change.

• How can you combine or align resources with other funders to embolden your grantmaking? What practices might incentivize collaboration and collective action?

• Here's why collaboration is key to creating systematic change. 

The philanthropic sector in the United States has, since the rise of industrialization at the turn of the 19th century, grappled with how to do more to improve society, do the work better, and achieve lasting results. And yet, philanthropy’s “operating system” itself has been a major impediment to progress: power dynamics, competitiveness, linear thinking, a demand for short-term results, working in silos, desire for attribution, and a lack of transparency all create conditions that make real change difficult at best. The Garfield Foundation isn’t immune to these aspects of our sector, however, we have been keen to find a way around these core challenges in order to unleash the impact we know is possible. As a result, sixteen years ago we made an explicit commitment to experimenting with new ways of working that might help mitigate these constraining tendencies.

In 2004 we identified a group of 20 willing leaders from both foundations and environmental advocacy organizations who agreed to come together to experiment with systems mapping to better understand the system we collectively seek to change. The system in question was the electricity sector in the Midwest, and our collective intent was to understand what was holding back the advancement of renewable energy versus carbon-laden energy such as coal.

Read the full article about philanthropic practices by Jennie Curtis at Medium.