Dear WISE Members,
We're excited to announce an upcoming event with one of our very own WISE women, Meg Massey -- a member of the WISE-DC Chapter.
Earlier this year, Meg Massey and Ben Wrobel released a book entitled Letting Go: How Philanthropists and Impact Investors Can Do More Good by Giving Up Control. The book tells the story of the "participatory" grantmakers and investors who choose to shift decision-making power away from traditional experts and toward people with lived experience. We've included a short summary of some of the stories from the book below.
Join us for a lively discussion with Meg on some of the key themes and interesting models from her research, which touch on many issues of the day including diversity, equity, and inclusion as well as declining trust in government, democracy, and elites.
Please register below so we can send you the Zoom link for the event.
Date: Tuesday, September 14th, 6pm - 7:30pm ET
Location: Zoom (link to be sent to confirmed attendees before event)
We look forward to seeing you then!
Best,
Mary, Katherine, and Katie
Examples of specific stories from the book of foundation leaders and impact investors:
The Disability Rights Fund is run by and for people with disabilities advocating for their rights. DRF has been around for a decade; it’s made eighty grants and is now operating in thirty-four countries. They have funded work around the world to ratify the United Nations’ convention on disability rights; by 2018 more than one hundred and seventy countries had ratified, and many of those victories tie directly back to activists funded by DRF.
The Brooklyn Community Foundation launched their resident-led Neighborhood Strength Initiative in 2015. An “advisory committee,” made up of residents from across the borough, decides which organizations get funding. Though BCF’s board technically has veto power, they’ve never used it. BCF also determines overall funding priorities through a participatory process.
The Boston Ujima Fund is the first-ever “democratic investment fund” in the United States, giving residents of Boston’s working class communities of color total control over local small business loans. It’s a community loan fund with a twist: though it accepts investment from anyone, only residents (or those who have been displaced by gentrification) can vote on where the funding goes.
Village Capital invests in seed-stage startups via a “peer-selected investment” process, led by groups of social entrepreneurs working on similar problems in health care, sustainability or education. They’ve run this process more than 70 times; a 2019 study found that female founders dramatically over-performed (46% of Village Capital’s portfolio companies have a female founder or co-founder, compared with <15% for traditional VC) and that the portfolio performed slightly better than traditional investment portfolios.