1. Coaching Grantees to Build Evaluative Capacity. What would it be like if grantmakers coached grantees to become experts in defining their own evaluation questions and themes to yield the most valuable insights?  Talking with two teams, each comprised of a grantmaker, evaluator and community based organization, attendees will discuss the practices that most effectively bring grantees into the evaluation process, foster more collaborative relationships that make evaluation less threatening, and yield better insights about the work of all three.  This session will allow participants to hear from and ask questions in the context of real evaluation capacity building projects. 
   Session Designer: Annemarie Riemer, Hartford Foundation for Public Giving
   Speakers: Anita Baker, Anita Baker Consulting; Amy Studwell, Hartford Foundation for Public Giving; Yvette Bello, Latino Community Services, Inc.; Toni Freeman, The Duke Endowment; Philip Redmond, The Duke Endowment; Elizabeth Ralston, Dee Norton Lowcountry Children’s Center
   
   
2. Funder Partnerships: What Happens When Grantmakers Come Together for the Benefit of their Community? How can grantmakers — working toward increasing nonprofit capacity but in different ways — effectively partner in a way that is truly beneficial to their community and themselves? This session will explore three different models of grantmaker-grantee collaborations and the common elements that contribute to improved nonprofit results. Participating initiatives include the BEST Project, The Rochester Effectiveness Partnership and Zip Code Assistance Ministries Organizational Development Program.
   Session Designer: Jennifer Acree, BEST Project
   Speakers: Kathi Horton, Community Foundation of Greater Flint; Beth Bruner, Bruner Foundation; Carolyn Watson, Rockwell Fund
   
   
3. Working with Intermediaries. With ambitious plans and sometimes limited resources, many grantmakers are enlisting the help of intermediary organizations. Intermediaries can help with a variety of work – from research to regranting to execution of capacity building programs. Intermediaries can offer needed expertise, connections, and delivery capacity, increasing the potential impact of grantmaking dollars. Forging a strong relationship with intermediaries involves careful planning, shared decision making, agreements regarding confidentiality and reporting, and two-way accountability. This session will explore types of relationships, share findings from research on success factors and red flags, provide case examples to dissect, and encourage audience stories and experiences.
   Session Designer: Carol Lukas, Fieldstone Alliance
   Speakers: Carol Lukas; Gladys Washington, Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation
   
   
4. Taking the Plunge — With a Life Jacket: Three Promising Practices in Policy and Advocacy Grantmaking. Grantmakers are increasingly supporting advocacy and policy change efforts with the goal of bringing about long-term, systemic social change. This type of grantmaking, however, poses a number of challenges — long timeframes for change, real and perceived restrictions on lobbying, potential undesired visibility and risk of failure. This session will engage grantmakers by examining three promising practices grantmakers are using to cope with the challenges: 1) shifting the way grantmakers perceive their role in advocacy efforts, 2) increasing internal dialogue about risk, and 3) using evaluation methods geared specifically for advocacy and community organizing work.
   Session Designer: Justin Louie, Blueprint Research and Design
   Speakers: Justin Louie; Julie K. Kohler, Communities for Public Education Reform; Katherine Peck, Gill Foundation
   
   
5. Designing Grants Programs to Promote Field Building: A World Café Conversation. How can a funder mobilize resources to advance an entire field? What lessons can both large and small grantmakers apply to their work in capacity building? These questions will frame an interactive session that will explore the experience of the Community Clinics Initiative (a joint project of Tides and The California Endowment) and then engage participants in a World Café process to exchange and synthesize lessons from their work.
   Session Designer: Tom David, Community Clinics Initiative
   Speakers: Ellen Friedman, Tides; Jane Stafford, Community Clinics Initiative; Ralph Silber, Alameda Health Consortium
   
   
6. Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits. What makes great nonprofits great? Four years ago, the authors of Forces for Good set out to find the answer.  The authors studied a dozen nonprofits that have achieved significant results at national and international levels, including the well-known (Habitat for Humanity), the less-well known (Self-Help), and the surprising (The Heritage Foundation). Their findings have important implications for how leaders run and philanthropists fund nonprofit organizations — particularly donors who seek to maximize the social return on their charitable dollars.
   Session Designers: Heather McLeod Grant, Stanford Center for Social Innovation and Leslie Crutchfield, Ashoka
   Speakers: Heather McLeod Grant, Leslie Crutchfield
   
   
7. The Cultural Data Project: Lessons Learned. The Cultural Data Project, a state-wide data collection and management tool for cultural organizations, standardizes the financial segment of grant application processes and provides multiple ways for organizations to track trends over time and benchmark data against peers. The CDP launched in Pennsylvania in 2004, in Maryland in 2007 and will launch in California in 2008. The panel will discuss what has been involved in bringing the project to other states, lessons learned, research products, and progress made to inform best practices in management and capacity building.
   Session Designer: Barbara Lippman, The Pew Charitable Trusts
   Speakers: Barbara Lippman; Moy Eng, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; John McGuirk, The James Irvine Foundation
   
   

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