Responding to Threats to Civil Society

00:00:04:08 

INTRO

Welcome to the Fun The People podcast. I'm your host, Rusty Stahl. I'm president and CEO of Fund The People where our mission is to maximize investment in America's nonprofit workforce. We give funders and nonprofits cutting edge ideas, research and tools to help drive equity effectiveness and endurance in the social sector. So let's start the show. 

00:0:33:07 

RUSTY

Welcome to the show and thanks for being part of the Fund The People Community. In today's episode, you'll learn about the useful concept of civil society. You'll get a sense of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing civil society around the world and in the U.S. and you'll learn how one foundation is working to bolster and support the people, organizations and ecosystem that has civil society.

You know, in our business oriented society, we have very limited language to describe and educate people about the space that is not for profit businesses and that is not government. And we use terms like nonprofit sector and non-governmental organizations. And those phrases define what we do and who we are based only on what we are not. And beyond that, you know, our field is not only composed of sort of formal, legally recognized institutions, it's also a space for protest, for worship groups that are not part of formal churches or religious institutions, community gatherings, block associations and various kinds of social movement groups that just emerge and go away.

And in the United States, civil society both reinforces and is reinforced by our First Amendment to the Constitution. Our efforts, our work is where freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of assembly come to life. And these tend to get left out of our sector focused language. So civil society is one of the terms that some people around the world have started using to frame our space, including the formal and less formal parts in a positive way, an affirmative way based on what it is, not what it's not.

And another thing that gets overlooked often, whether we use the term nonprofit sector or civil society, is the workforce. The leaders and workers, the people who are both paid and unpaid who make it all happen. Which is why I'm excited to talk today with a funder who is focused on civil society and leadership: Jamaica Maxwell is the Civil Society and Leadership Director at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. She oversees grant making in support of strong leaders, organizations and movements and a thriving civil society across the foundation's goal areas and global geographies in Asia, Africa, South America and North America. Before joining the foundation, Jamaica spent 11 years at California Environmental Associates, where she provided guidance to nonprofits, foundations and businesses. And in addition, Jamaica has run her own organizational development consulting firm and served as the founding program director for the Roots of Change Fund, a nonprofit and funder collaborative that works to increase the sustainability of California's food system.

I'm pleased to share in full disclosure that Fund The People is a proud grantee of the Civil Society and Leadership Program, and Jamaica and I first met around, I think 2017, over a lunch, and it's been interesting to watch her work change. And I think you'll glean valuable ideas today from Jamaica about how this relatively new civil society and leadership program has evolved at one of America's and the world's major foundations. So with that, Jamaica, welcome to the Fund The People podcast.

00:04:19:17 

JAMAICA

Thank you so much, Rusty. It's so great to be with you here today.

RUSTY

Thanks! So to get started, I'd love to just ask you about who you are and what were some of the key motivating factors or experiences in your life that brought you to your role in your work, in your career?

00:04:38:11 

JAMAICA

Yeah. Thank you for asking this question and giving me the heads up you were asking this question, because it gave me a chance to reflect a little bit. As you know, this is not a question we typically talk about, where the original motivations for doing this work comes from. And so it led me to remember one of my earliest memories, which was when I was at a protest with my mother, I was probably three or four, this was in Los Angeles, which is where I was born. And it was at a moment in the early eighties when they were using helicopters to spray pesticide over large swaths of central Los Angeles to kill an invasive insect. And we were protesting the spraying and my mother, who was an artist, had designed this skull and crossbones logo, but the skull had helicopter blades coming out of the skull, it was a very powerful image. She has passed on, but I still have that shirt of that really powerful image of that moment. So I remember that, that's a really clear memory. 

Another memory I have was when I was, I think around eight, and I learned about the deforestation, the cutting down of tropical rainforests in Madagascar and I did a report to my class and I remember just being so disturbed, moved and so frustrated by the injustice and these decisions that adults were making that were hurting so many people and communities and animals and the forests themselves. So those are some really early motivational memories that I have. And then I had a chance, as you mentioned, to work at a boutique consulting firm really early in my career where I started, called TDA Consulting, based here in San Francisco that focuses on working with foundations, with philanthropy, with nonprofits, with businesses all focused on environmental outcomes. So, I very much clearly come from an environmental background, and it gave me a chance to be exposed to the role of philanthropy for the first time and the role of the many players within the ecosystem of changemakers.

And that's where I had a chance to gain skills related to strategy work, to fund development, to organizational start up, to recruiting... I had a chance to help stand up new organizations, especially in the climate space, both here in the United States and in a variety of geographies around the world. And that also gave me an opportunity to get engaged with a group of funders, also you mentioned that group of funders, that organized eventually into the Rock Fund, and that group of funders wanted to look at issues related to food and agriculture in California from a systems lens. And it was the first time I had been exposed to that approach, to thinking about a system. And it was so powerful to see that intersection of environmental activists, labor rights leaders, food justice leaders, sustainable business farmers, all coming to the table to try to support a common vision and make change happen in California. This is pre-organic label, etc. And then a lot of that happened following this work, and it was really exciting to be with a lot of those players during that moment. So yeah, that really sparked my interest in systems work, which I think continues on to this day.

00:08:07:10 

RUSTY

Thank you for giving us those different glimpses into your experiences. Yeah, I think you're right. We often don't go back and think about what motivates us. It's almost hard to dig back into your life and be like, why do I care about this thing so much? You know, I have an eight year old daughter now who, you know, as you were talking, I'm thinking, boy, what are the things happening now and the things we're exposing her to, that will shape her life and her worldview. It's such a powerful thing as a parent to think about.

JAMAICA

Yeah. And there's a lot happening now in the world that I'm sure is influencing how she's seeing the world.

RUSTY

Yeah, exactly. And I also remember things from around that time in my life that were very influential on who I became, so. But thank you for also bringing us kind of into your adult self too, at that consulting firm. And how sort of going from the protest experience and the experience of like, here's this injustice and here's the protest and here's the research report I did to, you know, how do I work with organizations and activists and all these different players and what's the role of philanthropy in this, that sort of ended up bringing you to where you are now. So give us a quick introduction for people who aren't so familiar with the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

00:09:27:08

JAMAICA

For sure, yeah. So, we are a family foundation, we were established 60 years ago by David and Lucile Packard and David Packard of the Hewlett Packard Corporation. And we support leaders in organizations, that's really the heart of what we do around the world, working with children, families, communities, working for more just and inclusive societies and a healthy ocean and climate. So those are sort of our core issue areas and our focus. We work again around the world on these issues, but also here in the United States and with a special focus in our home state, of course, California. 

And values, I think, are a really important piece of how Packard operates. And those values have really come directly from David Lucile. They've actually been a through line, I think, through those 60 years and definitely have played a big role in the conversations we've had internally as we've gone through our strategy process. And those values are: integrity, respect, equity, thinking big and -especially relevant to this call today- leadership.

00:10:33:10 

RUSTY

Great. Well, thank you. Thank you for the introduction. I'm glad you said it's a family foundation because, of course, people immediately jump to, you know, the company that the name is famously a part of.

00:10:44:01 

JAMAICA

And there's also the Hewlett Foundation, of course, which is a separate foundation, we get confused all the time, which is fine. I mean, we spend a lot of time collaborating, so that's great. And then there's also the Lucile Packard Hospital Foundation, which is a large hospital in Palo Alto, and something that happens quite frequently is people are trying to come visit us at the Packard Foundation and end up at the hospital. And so, yes, there are many places you could end up in Silicon Valley when you're trying to find the foundation, right?

RUSTY

Right, exactly, right. No, but Lucile Packard clearly had a focus on children is my understanding as well. So that's a through line as well with these institutions. So, how long have you been at the Packard Foundation and how has your job or set of roles kind of shifted over time? What did you start out doing?

00:11:34:16

JAMAICA

Yeah, so I'm over 11 years in, believe it or not, I can't believe it sometimes it's actually been 11 years. And I've actually been with the same program that entire time. Even though the name has changed (which we'll talk about). I came in as a program officer basically making grants for the types of projects that I had been working on as a consultant when I was outside of the foundation. And then I had a couple promotions and I've been in the director role for almost three years.

RUSTY

So the name has changed, but it's the same sort of department or core area.

JAMAICA

That is right now. And there has been a bit of a reorganization of where people sit within the foundation. But yes, it's basically the same program.

00:12:15:13 

RUSTY

Right. Okay. So one of the reasons I wanted to have you on was because it's so rare to hear foundations talking about and funding civil society and using that concept and frame and also leadership. And so I was curious, how did the Packard Foundation come to establish this department or this funding area in this way?

00:12:37:03

JAMAICA

Yeah. So, to start with, this is not a new area of the foundation. It is a natural evolution of an existing program. So that's the first thing to say. And it really is an evolution driven by listening deeply to partners over the past decade and aiming to be responsive to what we're hearing from the folks we're working with around the world.

As mentioned, some of your listeners may be familiar with our previous name for our program, which was Organizational Effectiveness, and the work of organizational effectiveness was very much about investing deeply in the strength of organizations and leaders working in the issue areas of focus for the foundation. And as I mentioned: leadership. Leadership is sort of in the DNA of the foundation, right? It's one of our values. I think you'll find leadership across the foundation in many ways. We have the Packard Science Fellows that give significant funding to early career scientists. We have leadership development programs really integrated at, I would say, almost every initiative at the foundation. So we do hold leadership close to the work we do across the foundation.

So the work of supporting strong leaders in organizations continues to be at the center of the Civil Society and Leadership Initiative. And really, what is the change? I think that's the question, right? In reality, it's been a decade in the making, and I think that that decade really started under Kathy Rich's leadership, I know Kathy has been on the show before, and it's when the OE program began to invest in networks and network development. So that was the beginning, I think, of the evolution. And then this work evolved into thinking about how can we support movements and investigation and what is the appropriate way for philanthropy to invest in and support movements. And we could talk more about that if you'd like.

RUSTY

Yeah, that's very interesting.

00:14:29:14 

JAMAICA

Yeah. And then in a similar time frame, we began to formally invest more in the infrastructure that was supporting strong leaders in organizations. And then in direct response from what we were hearing from our partners on the ground, we began working on security and safety. And so I'll go on to a little story here, and that is that in Mexico, which is a country that the Packard Foundation has worked in for a long time, we were hearing directly from our partners, you know, thank you so much for your support on strategic planning or communications work or board development and I'm under threat for being arrested tomorrow. And it led us to sort of this existential moment of we're about supporting strong leaders in organizations, but they could be the strongest organizations with the most incredible leadership and if their lives are threatened, then of course, they won't be able to achieve the bold goals that they have.

 And so it felt imperative for us to step in that moment and provide security and protection support. And so we started initially with work at Mexico with a holistic security program that not only tracked threats to defenders, environmental defenders, which was who we were supporting in Mexico, but also provided preventative training, as well as responsive support if a threat occurred. And I just want to say that Linda Baker, who was my predecessor, was really key in being supportive of this work getting off the ground. And not surprisingly, in this moment in time, we started to see those threats multiply in many of the geographies where we worked. And so we started to do more security and protection work in multiple places around the world, including launching a global security offering. 

So we kept pulling the thread and hearing back from partners: Is this meeting your needs? Do you feel set up for success? And we received great feedback that there was thanks for the security support was there, but also an acknowledgment that it was a reactive form of support, and that we weren't working, of course, at the root causes of the problem, which was the fact that the space for civil society to operate in is actually shrinking around them, and that if we wanted long term durability of progress and for civil society to thrive, then that space needed to remain open for them to operate. And like you mentioned in your opening, those key pieces of civic space are related to core civic freedoms of being able to organize the freedom of association, of expression and of assembly or protest. And when those go away, then formal or informal civil society can't hold those in power to account. 

And so then, we were at a moment when the foundation as a whole, so I think this was early 2021, our then new president and CEO, Nancy Lindborg, had been in the position for about five months, and we launched a foundation wide strategy process at that moment to take a look at the very challenging moment we were in. Of course, that was still early in the pandemic, this is post the murder of George Floyd, and it was a moment of what I think many funders started referring to and civil society leaders around the world as a poli-crisis, which feels like it's definitely continuing to this day, of course, of a variety of crises occurring at the same time. And it led the Packard Foundation to move toward a new, more integrated approach to thinking about the set of issues we were working on. 

And what emerged from those conversations with senior leadership and the board is that strong leaders in organizations, and civil society as a whole is a key enabling condition or fundamental factor for success on any issue. And the way that we've thought about it is -and what I presented to the board was- you think about a tree. You think about a tree and if the programs, the individual issue areas are these beautiful branches, they've got flowers, they've got fruit, they look great, they're doing great work, it's all wonderful. But if those roots of the tree are weak or nonexistent, that tree is going to fall down.

It won't matter how great the thinking was or potentially the strength of even the leadership and organizations were, unless you have those strong roots there to support the strength of civil society over time, and the space for civil society to operate. And so that really helped reinforce the evolution that was coming for us, and led us to evolve into the civil society and leadership program. Here's the way I think about it, I think about it as a series of nested circles. So at the center, we have leaders in organizations, right? They were the heart of the Organizational Effectiveness program, and they are the heart of the Civil Society Leadership program. We can accomplish nothing if we're not investing deeply, if we're not ensuring that the leaders and organizations at the heart of change have what they need to accomplish their missions and goals.

One ring out from that we have the networks and movements. Those are the groups that are making connection between those leaders and organizations, coalitions, etc. One ring out from that, we have the infrastructure of civil society that's supporting the strength of all of the above. And then one ring out from that we have civic space. 

And just a couple more words on civic space, because I know for some it's a newer topic. I described civic space, I know others in this area also describe it this way, it's like oxygen, in that when it's there, you don't notice it, you don't worry about it, you're just going about your day. But when that oxygen starts to thin, when the threats to civic space start to close in around you, it's an existential threat. You're unable to actually do anything because all you can worry about is survival. So that is why we think about the whole, now we're thinking about the ecosystem of civil society and how we can make investments in the system as a whole. And it's complex, it is. But at this moment in time, it feels like those complex approaches are really the solution to the complexity we're seeing and the problems we're facing.

00:20:37:16 

RUSTY

Great. You know, I don't think this would have resonated for me ten years ago in the same way, because at least in my lifetime and certainly in the past before my lifetime, but in my experience, we haven't had that kind of closing down of civic space in the U.S. like in some ways we do now or we’re threatened to have that.

You know, it's obviously conceptual, right? You're presenting this to the board with these kinds of images of the tree and the concentric circles and you've talked a lot about climate and environment because that's where you're really coming from and Packard works on that. But also other issue areas like reproductive health, but if you could, you know, give us a couple like concrete examples of things that you're funding or supporting at those different levels, those concentric circles to bring it back down to like, okay, so that's the theory, what does it look like when it comes down to how you fund stuff?

00:21:31:23 

JAMAICA

Yes, Thank you, Rusty. I'll start where you were just referring to, which is in the United States. So actually, just this week, we launched our first security and safety program in the United States for 140 Packard grantees. It will be a platform to meet the moment based on the threats that these organizations are facing. These are organizations working on reproductive rights, abortion rights, issues related to children and families like children's health care.

These are local organizations that are direct service providers within California and other focused geographies in the United States. These are racial justice organizations. So that is a starting point for us. We recognize that in this moment we needed to react. It's a reactive response, but ensuring that these organizations have access to experts who are on call on physical and digital security, as well as psychosocial and wellbeing support, legal defense and legal aid and crisis communication.

That's the starting point. So that platform was actually launched earlier this week. We're hoping it can be really useful during this immediate time, but also going forward. This is the first time we've launched something like this in the United States. So that's a pretty specific example.

00:22:48:14 

RUSTY

Yeah. So in an initiative like that, Packard would be engaging those experts and kind of like paying for them to be available as needed to that 140 set of grantees? Is that?

JAMAICA

That's right, yeah. So we have six or seven providers that are on call and are holding funds to then use to work directly with organizations as the need arises. It's paid for by the Packard Foundation.

RUSTY

Fantastic. Thank you for giving that example. And it's, yeah, it's needed in the U.S. now.

00:23:23:18 

JAMAICA

Yeah. And it's hard for me to give direct examples and name names from either within the U.S. or elsewhere, because of course, there are security and safety concerns and there are many stories of individual leaders who, let's say, have received an organizational strengthening grant for themselves, for the organization, for their leadership. But then in addition to that, they make access to safety and security platforms that we've supported in order to have both, not only the ability to invest in the strength of their organization and their leadership and the leadership of their teams, but also ensure that they are working on those questions of safety and security.

RUSTY

That makes sense. So the concentric circles may be serving the same people or institutions in different ways.

00:24:14:23 

JAMAICA

That's right. Actually, we've talked about how a menu meets the moment that we've talked about and how, this actually, I think, goes into another one of your questions. I hope it's okay to go there.

RUSTY

Go for it.

00:24:26:21

JAMAICA

So, in our work to continue investing deeply in leaders and organizations we have a couple different tools we use. We continue to do what was previously our bread and butter, which was investing deeply in leaders and organizations directly. So these are our Packard Foundation Partners making organizational strengthening grants. The one change I will say we've made is we're making them bigger and longer. And this is in direct feedback from what we've heard from partners over time. This is related to learning that has come out of the Built Ford program evaluations, as well as also great evaluations from the Haas Leadership Initiative at the Haas Jr Fund, related to longer, deeper investments in leadership and organization strengthening. 

So we are making bigger, longer grants. And in addition to that, we also support leadership and cohort work specifically. So cohorts are when a group of organizations have a common need and there's an interest, it's all optional, it's all opt in. If there's an interest of working together can be really useful if it's a group of organizations that are in the same region or collaborate regularly on a certain topic. If they have a common need, let's say advocacy, training or communications work. And then we also do leadership work, and that could be leadership development programs for sure. But in the new strategy we’re really open also to a variety of forms of leadership support. It could include twinning or mentoring exchanges, we've been exploring that, we've supported a bit of that. And we're open to other expressions of supporting leadership. We aim to be responsive and in deference really to our partners to understand what sort of leadership support they're looking for.

RUSTY

I love that deference. Never heard that before from a foundation. So, responsive, deferring to what they need, what they say they need.

00:26:19:09 

JAMAICA

Yeah. I want to say, because movements, we haven’t talked a lot about movements, but I think leadership programs are a really powerful way to support movement leaders. A lot has been said around how funders can co-opt movements, but I think it's really important for funders to reflect on what is the role of philanthropy in supporting movements. And one of the ways that we've found most appropriate to support movement leaders is through leadership investment. 

And then finally, I'll say one more thing about our ways of supporting leaders in organizations is through platforms. We call them resource hubs, and we feel like this is a critical part of civil society infrastructure in the places where we work. You know one of them quite well, which is the Resilience Initiative here in the U.S. that's our major US platform. It's now reaching about 800 organizations in the U.S. Those aren't all Packard grantees. Now, I think there's five or six or seven other funders whose organizations or partners are in the Resilience Initiative, which as a reminder for the folks who haven't listened to that podcast, is a platform that provides easy access, bite size opportunities for getting support on a range of organizational and leadership topics. They have Wellness Wednesdays and Fundraising Fridays. You can drop in and get a couple hours of support. You can sign up to get 5 to 10 hours of coaching from an expert. There's also trainings and cohorts that you can join. 

So, zooming back to what I said before, all of these together are a menu, everything is opt in. And what we're finding is, especially post-pandemic, this was a huge learning from the pandemic, is a $50,000, $100,000 grant to work on organizational strengthening is not necessarily the right next step for every organization or leader on their journey to grow to gain the skills they're looking for in order to reach their goals. And so we're hoping that this menu of options will meet a broad range of leaders where they are and provide a range of opportunities that are right sized for the moment that each leader is in.

00:28:36:06

RUSTY

Yeah, thanks for sharing the work around leadership and yeah, the Resilience Initiative, the leaders of the Resilience Initiative did come on this podcast, season 4 episode 4, Janet Nami McIntyre and Paula Morris. Paula was the outgoing sort of founding director and Janet is her successor and they're both amazing and really wonderful. So they were on here together and I definitely recommend people check out that episode, it was called Doubling Down on Wellness in Capacity Building. And it is a pretty popular episode, I think, because of the word wellness in there and the amount of issues we're having with burnout and all of that in the field now. People are looking for that. 

So and then, yes, Kathy Rich was on here, season 1, I'm having trouble finding what episode it was, but it was very near the beginning of this podcast in 2020. And that episode is called Investing in Nonprofit Staff as an Equity Strategy. And so for those of you who aren't familiar with the Build Initiative, so Kathy worked at Packard, as Jamaica mentioned…

JAMAICA

She hired me.

00:29:50:03 

RUSTY

She hired you! And then she's been running this sort of organizational grantee strengthening, capacity building grants program at Ford Foundation called Build. And I think when she was on this show, she talked actually more about her experiences at Packard than at Ford. So I want to get her back on to reflect more on Build as an experience, because it was such big money going to groups for, I think, five year long grants. So, talk about the length of the grants, and it was sort of going beyond the grant too, it was a lot of assessment and helping all the staff come together at a nonprofit to assess what their priorities were in terms of strengthening the organization. And I always reference one of the findings that they blogged about on the Ford Foundation website that, you know, staffing issues were one of the top priorities when they assessed across the grantees, where the grantees had prioritized using their Build grants, a lot of it ended up being about staffing issues. So there's definitely connections between these episodes that people should check out. Both connections between the people and the institutions and the ideas. 

So yeah, I was curious to hear a little bit more. I had this question about, you know, how does civil society's workforce relate to civil society’s leadership in your mind and in sort of the framework that Packard is using? So, you know, leadership can mean a lot of different things. It both refers to a skill set or… it's a noun and a verb, right? Like leadership can mean the people, it can mean the ability to lead. At Fund The People and on this show, we tend to not talk about leaders in leadership because those ideas get so much airtime and so we've sort of shifted to talking about workforce, because it gets to thinking about us as, you know, as workers and not just leaders. And everyone in the organization is part of its workforce, even if not everyone considers themselves or is viewed as a leader. 

So I was curious to hear, you know, in your experiences working with Packard grantees and on leadership, what comes to you in your mind when you think about leadership in your program? What do you see happening in the workforce of the groups that you're supporting?

00:32:11:21 

JAMAICA

I'm wondering, Rusty, if we could step back to talk about the words as a whole and then talk about the leadership and workforce question. Here's how it works in my brain, and I think actually I loved your opening, which included some of the exact points I was going to make because, of course, we realized we wanted to reframe who we are as an initiative. This question of, well, what words do we use to describe ourselves in the work and what we're putting out there in the world, who we are in service to and all of that. Like, how do we do that? And so of course it was a journey. 

And so I will start where you started, which is related to the word nonprofit, right? Which I consider myself part of the nonprofit sector, it's where my career has been, it's my people. And it's kind of a weird word, right, it’s describing us by what we're not, it's a tax status. So I think if we got 100 nonprofit leaders together and said, like, how would you describe the sector you're in? I mean, maybe nonprofit would come out, but I don't think it would be the heart of the change we're looking to make in the world. Right? 

Okay. So, I'm going to now do a little bit of an aside on a piece of art and a story… you're like, where is she going?

 RUSTY

Go for it.

00:33:32:11 

JAMAICA

So one night during the pandemic, I live in San Francisco, so I was walking down the street in San Francisco at Civic Center, actually in San Francisco, and on Polk Street on the side of a building there had appeared this giant new art installation of neon, and in the center of it is the word CIVIC and it's an entomological history of the word civic, okay? And there's a line going to civicus, and it says underneath “of a community”, and there's a line going to civilis, which means “of citizens”, and then there's a line going to this other word on the far end “bewan” never heard that word before, which is an old english word for family. Anyway, I looked up this piece of art afterward, and to give credit, it's Joseph Kosuth, W.F.T. San Francisco, which is Word Family Tree, and I highly recommend going and taking a look at it some night when you're in San Francisco. But it gave me goosebumps because to me, it captured something much bigger than tax status, right? Civic and civil is much more about a community, much more about a family, much more about, I think, what we're trying to achieve, and our variety of goals as a sector. And so civil society is the sector that represents and organizes communities to unite around shared passions and take action, right? There's a lot of other definitions of it, but that's how I think of it in my head.

RUSTY

Say it again?

00:35:03:22 

JAMAICA

Well, I don't think this is a formal definition, this is sort of the one that I hold in my heart. But it is the sector of society that organizes and represents communities to unite around shared passions and take action. It is the sector of society that holds the other sectors, business and government to account. And what I love about the umbrella of civil society, and you mentioned this at the beginning, is that you find informal and formal groups within it: movements, labor unions, philanthropy, faith based organizations, as well as formally organized organizations, NGOs, nonprofits. 

And also whereas nonprofit or not for profit is used frequently in the Global North, in the United States, in Europe; civil society is much more broadly used and embraced worldwide. And it is frequently used as a term to describe the broad umbrella of those trying to make social change happen. Okay, so that's civil society. So let's talk about leadership now, getting to your question. 

RUSTY

All right, I know you're getting there. I know I threw a lot at you, so I'm glad you're breaking it down.

00:36:09:22 

JAMAICA

So I think we knew that we wanted to describe the sector that was so important to support. But again, like I said, the nested circles, at the heart of it, it's about leaders in organizations. And we really wanted to honestly signal to you, to everyone in the sector, that investing deeply in leaders in organizations continues to be a part of our DNA and continues to be something we do every day. However, we were ready to let go of the words organizational effectiveness. First, because organization was no longer accurate. We were funding networks, movements, individual leaders. We were looking to support informal organizations. It was time to say goodbye to organizational. 

And effectiveness. What came up for us is effective according to whom? And we're not in a position to define that. We definitely looked to our partners on the ground to understand what they need to achieve their goals., but putting it in our title did not feel accurate. So we respect and appreciate the words we use for many years, we felt it was time to retire them. And so what replaces that? 

Well, leadership is a term that's used by many other funders in the field as an inclusive term to refer to their investments in supporting strong organizations and leaders. This is what the Haas Jr Fund does, this is what many of our friends that fund both leadership development programs and investments in organizations do. So we decided to use this as the all inclusive term. And are there issues with the word leader and leadership? I think that's true, but it's really hard to find a word that is completely neutral, let's say.

And I will say that on leaders and leadership, I remember being at a listening session with our reproductive health team in Louisiana like ten years ago now, and hearing reaction to the words leaders and leadership. And people said: this to me represents the people that are in the seats of power, that are trying to limit our rights. And we had a discussion. It's like, well, can we instead reclaim these words because we look around this room, we are all leaders in this room. Can we actually reclaim the words leaders and leadership and recognize it's not only about positional power, it's not about the role or the title you have. You can be a leader in your community, in your church, in your neighborhood block. And can we, as a movement, as a sector, say we're all leaders? We're all leaders.

00:38:41:09

RUSTY

Yeah, it is definitely a malleable word in that sense. And actually, when I was helping to start Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy, we avoided the term leaders too, you know, because there's a lot of emerging leaders' language out there, some people mean the second in charge, you know, like the deputy director is the emerging leader. And I think that's well, are they really emerging? And then, you know, some people use it for like the most junior people. Are they leaders yet? I don't know. So we ended up using emerging practitioners, which is not as appealing a word or as easily “roll off the tongue” word. So yeah, I guess I've struggled with this question myself, but yeah, I can understand how you landed there.

00:39:27:02 

JAMAICA

And I didn't answer specifically your workforce question, I'm realizing. I like the term workforce and I applaud Fund The People for approaching it that way. And you know, it'd be fun to have a discussion over a cup of tea or a glass of wine on the resonance that you've experienced using that term. I think one question I have is, especially as you've heard where we're focusing on both informal and formal organizations, I think that workforce won't necessarily resonate, I don't have the evidence on this, but this is my guess with those that are maybe more informally organized or movement organizations.

00:40:05:06 

RUSTY

Yeah, that actually I think you're probably right on target there. I mean, another former guest of this show, Jan Masaoka, I had lunch with her in January 2024, before Fund The People began our California Talent Justice initiative work. And we were just like, you know, trying to figure out partnerships and what would make sense. And, you know, Jan is a longtime leader in our sector, as you know, and was retiring from the California Association of Nonprofits, which she had revitalized and led for over a decade. And she said, you know, include volunteers in the workforce. When you talk about workforce, don't leave out the board members and the activists and the volunteers, because that's a lot of the labor that goes into the work that our sector does. And, you know, there's more nonprofits in California with no staff than there are nonprofits with staff. And so those organizations with no staff are completely volunteer run. So she pushed my thinking on that. And so sometimes I use workforce to include the volunteers, and sometimes I say we need to focus on the paid workers because they're not only serving but making a living through this work and that ought to be a viable path. 

And, you know, there's Board Source and there's other groups that focus on the board members and on volunteer recruitment and management and volunteer management skills and all of those things. But there was no one really talking about how do we invest in the paid workers. So, I honestly have gone back and forth about that and I tend to come back to yes, unpaid labor activists, volunteers, board members are part of our workforce, but we still need to focus on issues of compensation, retirement savings and pay for people who are making a living doing this as a job as well as doing it out of passion and mission and all of those things. So I don't know. Yeah, I don't know if that…

JAMAICA

I hear you.

RUSTY

It's a both and, I guess.

JAMAICA

That is for sure.

00:42:10:01 

RUSTY

Yeah, that's good and certainly like safety issues, like if you're helping organizations and movements protect their people and their data and all of those things, that is going to be beneficial to everyone in the organization, whether they have positional authority or not, whether they're paid or volunteer. So, I think maybe it doesn't matter at a certain level.

00:42:34:06 

JAMAICA

I don't know if Janet and Paula spoke about this during the Resilience Initiative episode. I did listen to it but I can't remember if this was in it. The platforms, which we call resource hubs, are accessible to everyone in the organization. I mean, some organizations use it as an outsourced professional development opportunity. So of those 800 organizations that are in the Resilience Initiative, that means their whole staff can access information on comms, fundraising, those wellness offerings. So it's not just about the senior leadership or the executive team. 

And that is a difference, you know, frequently when we're doing the organizational strengthening grants, we're talking primarily to the organization leadership. We try to get perspectives from a variety of people, of course, but frequently we're hearing from the organizational leadership about those needs, and we're being responsive to what we're hearing that they define as the needs of the organization. So that's another reason why it's great to have this multitude of options to meet the various needs within an organization.

00:43:34:16 

RUSTY

Yeah, that's great. And then since we're a relatively new grantee of Packard and now also, amazingly, a grantee of the Hewlett, William & Flora Hewlett Foundation as well, totally separate, I think it was Jose from Hewlett who emailed me and said, you now have access to the Resilience Initiative, and so I'm like, oh, great! Now Fund The People gets to take advantage of it directly.

JAMAICA

Please, please do.

RUSTY

Yeah. And he specifically said in that email, like, make sure your whole team knows. So you're triggering that, like he specifically said that. One other thing to shout out, because you have mentioned Haas Jr Fund and sort of their Leadership Initiative and their, you haven't said it, but their Flexible Leadership Awards which was a big anchor of what they did for a long time and is now been spun out so other foundations can take advantage of it and get their grantees into that program. And so their Leaders Trust, Sydney Hardgrove was on this podcast, so wanted to make sure we shout that out. So that was season 2, episode 16, and Sydney is the executive director of the Leaders Trust, or President CEO.

00:44:47:14

JAMAICA

Yes and we partner with Leaders Trust as well.

RUSTY

Yeah, there's a cool network going on, an overlap among I know Haas Junior Fund and Packard and the Resilience Initiative and really developing, building up this set of tools and resources and supports for organizations and people.

00:45:06:09 

JAMAICA

And this is an example of what civil society infrastructure looks like, right? These sorts of platforms and connective tissue that are available for leaders and organizations to access when the need arises. And so we're doing this not only in the U.S., and of course we have many funding partners here in the U.S. that are interested in supporting this with us, but we're also doing it in other geographies of focus around the world: Indonesia and Chile are two that we're focused on right now, and in some of those places we have other funders with us and in other places we don't. So that's another thing that's been an interesting experience for us, is understanding who the other funders are. You know, they may be coming to these places because of issue areas, and exposing them to our approach to supporting leaders in organizations and the opportunity to invest in civil society infrastructure.

RUSTY

Yeah, and one thing we haven't touched on, which is probably the business of other podcast, but it'd be fascinating to hear from you about the legal and political and cultural context for civil society in these different continents and countries and societies. Because my little bit of exposure to our field in different places around the world is just very different. You mentioned nonprofits are a taxed status, those are things that are constructs that have been created in different ways or not created in different places….

00:46:33:14 

JAMAICA

Yeah, and there are many differences and there are many similarities, too. You know, we had a resource that we developed in Indonesia amidst the pandemic, and the highest demand topics from the Resilience Initiative were the same topics that were the highest demand in Indonesia. And I will say that, you know, we think a lot about when we are investing in civil society infrastructure, who are we investing in? And our focus is on local organizations, local leaders, right? Because this is about investing in those in place that are connected and committed to this work for the long haul. And that just relates to another topic that's really close to our strategy and to my heart, which is related to locally led development or localization, which is a global development issue, but is really about encouraging philanthropy and bilateral organizations around the world to move more funds to local organizations, as a key piece of the ecosystem of change agents working on issues around the world. So that's something that I'm working closely with our CEO, Nancy Lindborg, who's the co-chair of the Council on Foundations Leadership Circle on Locally Led Development, which has been partnered with U.S. AID on their commitment to increasing locally led development.

RUSTY

Wow. And that's very interesting.

00:47:57:11 

JAMAICA

Another area of focus that we're really seeing an opportunity right now is at the intersection of climate and civic space. And this is very much in response to what we're hearing from the folks working on the ground. So our climate program is very focused on ending tropical forests, deforestation and the major tropical rainforests of the world. Those are concentrated in Indonesia, the Amazon and the Congo Basin. And it is these forested communities, frequently indigenous communities, that are truly on the frontlines of the deforestation issues and trying to preserve their communities. They're fighting for their rights, the rights to exist, the rights for their communities to live where they live and for their livelihoods. And these are some of the climate activists that we're seeing civic space closed most quickly around.

We're really looking at the opportunity, actually leading up to COP 30, the major climate conference in Brazil that's coming up next fall, as an opportunity to highlight where all of these come together. The importance of supporting these leaders that are closest to the issues at hand in this moment in time, the importance of ensuring that they have their rights preserved, there's transparency related to actions that are being taken by their governments and by business, and that the fact that there are environmental defenders is recognized and is protected. So, that's an area that I'm working very closely with our climate team on and we're finding a number of groups that are preparing for that opportunity and are actively, of course, working to protect those defenders right now.

RUSTY

Thanks for sharing that. I think it's very sobering to think about people putting their lives and their families on the line on these major issues and causes, and more so in some places than others, with more or less protections from government.

JAMAICA

Thank you.

00:50:17:01 

RUSTY

Just as we come to wrap up our time, I want to make sure that folks know how to reach the Packer Foundation or find out more. So are there any materials you want to highlight and what's the website? And you know, how can people learn more and connect with you and Packard. 

00:50:34:07 

JAMAICA

For sure, yeah. So you can go to packard.org/civilsociety to find out more about the Civil Society and Leadership initiative and many of the topics I mentioned today, as well as a summary of our strategy, so please go there. And then I might just mention a couple of the funder affinity groups, the funder alliances that we’re a part of that have rich information that could be interesting to your listeners.

So some of the funder alliances that we're a part of are: the Funders Initiative for Civil Society or FICS; the Human Rights Funders Network, which actually has just released a super useful guide called the Better Preparedness Guide to help funders organize in moments of closing civic space; and the Trust, Accountability and Inclusion Initiative; and then finally, Wings. So those groups, and I can send you information on all of them, if you want to include them in your show notes, Rusty, I think would be interesting to your listeners as a follow on.

RUSTY

Yeah, that's great. I would definitely share those links, as you say in the show notes. Wings being Worldwide Initiative...

JAMAICA

Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support.

RUSTY

Got it. Well, Jamaica, thank you so much for your time and for your leadership and your work in this space and for breaking down your view of civil society and leadership.

JAMAICA

Thank you so much, Rusty. It's really been a pleasure talking today.

RUSTY

Same here and thanks for, you know, calling out all these other great guests. And I hope people who enjoyed this episode will check out some of those others. So thanks everybody for listening and stay tuned, make sure you subscribe and share the episode with friends who you think would find this valuable as well. And we'll talk to you next time.

00:52:24:07

OUTRO

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