Social Impact Blog

By Karl Stauber, President & CEO, Danville Regional Foundation

Kania and Kramer’s latest piece in the Stanford Social Innovation Review is a great addition to understanding what works in the field of philanthropy. For the last four years, I have been working as a “place & issue-based” funder, rather than an “issue & approach” funder, and it has changed my view of much of what they have written. I suggest taking their ideas several steps further.

Ever since the publication of Peter Senge’s book, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, organizations in every sector have talked about becoming learning organizations. Senge described a learning organization as one, “where people expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together.” Throughout the early 1990’s I remember walking up and down airplane aisles and seeing every third person reading Senge’s book. While the idea of being a learning organization clearly struck a chord, operationalizing the concepts of what it means to be a learning organization, has been more elusive. Dilbert’s parody of Captain Kirk from Star Trek epitomized the time – Dilbert’s boss hands him The Fifth Discipline, and tells him “to make it so.” If it were only that easy!

How do you give? Do you write a check or are you an active participant in solving complex social problems? In the forthcoming book Do More Than Give: The Six Practices of Donors Who Change the World, Leslie Crutchfield, John Kania and Mark Kramer explore how different donors, from individuals to the largest of foundations, have played a more transformational role in solving social issues – beyond writing a check.

While we write and speak about “better ways to solve social problems,” we rarely write about ourselves. Stack it up to our love of ideas or a dash of humility – we’re more likely to share the newest idea related to school turnaround than what goes on behind the scenes at FSG. Yet, one of the questions I’m asked quite often by recruits, clients, and friends is: “what’s it like working at FSG?”