Grantmaking in the Shallows

I just finished reading The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr. Fascinating read for anyone interacting with the web (you, perhaps?), and particularly engaging for those raising future generations whose brains are rapidly being remapped. The book provides a stimulating romp through the history of information technology and discusses how our current intellectual ethic is not only being transmitted via the internet into our individual minds, but this combo is also restructuring our environment and changing the rules that create and maintain our culture. The internet is not merely a tool, a conduit for content, it is the content; and interacting with this tool is rewiring how we see the world. Although this is true of all tools that humans have created, there is a subtle difference in the ways we are changing through internet usage. Our current intellectual (from the above link) "ethic is the ethic of the industrialist, an ethic of speed and efficiency, of optimized production and consumption — and now the Net is remaking us in its own image. We are becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming, but what we are losing is our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection."

So, of course, this all made me think about grantmaking. The process many foundations are going through to maximize their impact closely resembles this current intellectual ethic and it’s interesting to consider how it might be tied to the rise of our internet culture. I was struck by Carr's correlation between Google and Taylorism, an -ism I hadn't given much thought to since my graduate studies. Carr states: “Google holds to its Taylorist belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized … In Google’s world, which is the world we enter when we go online, there’s little place for the pensive stillness of deep reading or the fuzzy indirection of the contemplation. Ambiguity is not an opening for insight but a bug to be fixed.” How often in meetings did I remind volunteers and staff members that grantmaking was a mix of science and art, that there rarely was a 'right' answer when the question was which agency should receive funding. Yet, wasn't it me that was leading the charge to create systems that would help show us the big picture in order to prove our community was 'getting better'? What about ambiguity as an opening for insight? What about that fuzzy indirection of contemplation? Part of the challenge of grantmaking is that real world problems can't wait - there isn't a lot of time to be introspective and still when attempting to keep the lights on at the homeless shelter. Yet, it is the introspection and stillness that allows space for insight and genius to emerge.

After being out of the grantmaking trenches for 2 years I've had a bit of that introspection. The quiet of thinking and reading about grantmaking removed from the mechanical process of grantmaking has given me some new insight. I believe more than ever that grantmaking is about relationships and just, ... well, just giving the money away. Get to know the smart people in your community, the ones that are connectors and entrepreneurs and thought leaders, and give them money to make it happen. And, although this "internet culture" might be adding to the frenzy over how we quantify and monetize our grantmaking, it is also creating a culture of connection and relationship (though sites like Kiva and Donors Choose). So how do we maintain that balance when we're making grants? How do we keep from over thinking and over working the process? How do we, as grantmakers, hold the whole community in mind while discussing the intricacies of one issue, without isolating that issue from its interdependency on everything else?

Grantmaking, like the internet, is a powerful tool. And as long as we maintain a healthy skepticism about that power, we might be able to use the good (illuminating the musty corners of a community that need further exploration; promoting great new ideas that solve entrenched problems) while keeping the bad (over reliance on data; placing more faith in the measurements of success than individual success) in perspective. I also think it has a great deal to do with scale: being able to make system wide changes for the long term while also ensuring individuals live better today.

And finally, I think of the beautiful chaos of nature and how humans continually try to impose order. Perhaps the "bug to be fixed" is actually something that needs to remain messy. Maybe the homeless shelters are our real world fuzzy indirections, meant to slow us down and provide reflection. Perhaps if we were to "fix the problem" of homelessness, hunger, domestic abuse, we'd complete our transformation from contemplative human beings to pixels in an optimized Net.

just one word at a time

So, ugh, remember how I said one of my goals for 2011 was to complete the first chapter of my novel? And then remember how we bought a house and I got pregnant and I stopped writing altogether? Well, I just did something crazy to remedy this little predicament: I signed up for national novel writing month. This participation dictates that I write an entire novel in November. Yessiree, starting November 1 I will attempt to write 50,000 words in 30 days. And if I only get a first chapter out of the exercise? Golden.

I realized this week that although I'm incredibly happy from the outside-in, I've lost my way in how to be happy from the inside-out. Being in the trenches 24/7 with a toddler has wrecked havoc on my self esteem; having very little control over the outcome of anything in my day has begun to make me feel invisible. I need to do something completely for me as I close out this year. I'm the only one responsible for that journey and I'm hopeful that this commitment will force me to look fear and failure in the face. Stop thinking about the damn story and write it!

The revolution will be led by a 12 year old girl

In 1998, to supplement my sporadic film production work, I picked up a few gigs as a substitute teacher at a private school. I had no idea how mesmerized I would be by the honesty and moxie of the girls in middle school. I had heard that girls at that age were horrible, but I was smitten. It seemed clear to me that they sat at the nexus of change for our society; that within their emerging womanhood they held the real solution to all of our problems. There was a light unfiltered, and a story unfolding, that felt like a glimpse into possibility. Perhaps 'horrible' was the dark side of possibility unexpressed, muted, ignored.

Five years later, as a part of my graduate studies, I wrote:

I believe that a girl’s experience provides a mirror on our culture’s desires and downfalls ... In Action Learning: A Holographic Metaphor for Guiding Social Change it states, “A hologram is a photograph, taken with a lens-less camera, where the whole is represented in all the parts. If the hologram is broken, any piece of it can be used to reconstruct the entire image. Everything is in everything else; just as if we are able to throw a pebble into a pond and see the whole pond and all the waves, ripples, and drops of water generated by the splash in each and every one of the drops of water thus produced..." And indeed, what might we learn if we used the two entities, the larger cultural self and the individual self of the girl, to reflect back to each other the present we are fulfilling and the future we are attempting to create. I want to explore the current literature and research available about the development of girls because I think we can illuminate a broader perspective in which to view current culture by seeing girls as a holographic metaphor. By establishing a foundation for healthier women we would in turn be creating a healthier society, and vice versa. 

I spent my time in graduate school focusing this belief by mentoring middle school girls, starting a nonprofit to support high school girls, and reading and writing about how girls are affected by government decisions and media blitz and how they can create change for society.

As I transitioned into my role as a grantmaker I realized the power philanthropy held in this conversation. I witnessed how philanthropy targeted to the needs of women could unlock many of the social problems we faced in our community. The nasty problems, the ones without an easy solution, the ones that are so inextricably linked to everything else that it seems like untangling a rats nest of necklaces. Hunger, homelessness, child abuse … all of these things had a similar leverage point. Get to the young woman, give her an education, a sense of self worth, the opportunity to make choices about childbearing and partnering, a chance to give back to her community, and you see a ripple of change take hold in her family tree. The facts are clear and the studies continue to support this belief. The exciting bit here is that there are now numerous opportunities for philanthropists of all abilities to get involved and make an investment in the revolution.

I am proud to support The Girl Effect. Ridiculous to think it could be this easy, and yet, the message resonates so deeply in my bones as a known truth it feels like something rustling in the wind from long ago.

Watch the video. Consider making a donation. Join the revolution.

Oh, and if after watching that video you're inspired to write your own response to the girl effect, you can do so for the rest of this week and be included in the 2011 Girl Effect Blogging Campaign (where you'll get linked in with all the other bloggers writing about it this week) Be a part of the movement!