Lesson #6: Philanthropy Under Construction

Welcome to our journey. It is the story of the ages, change is necessary, so is stability. The wisdom is in knowing which is which, in growing deep roots while remaining flexible. Rigidity should have no place in philanthropy, just ask any front-line worker or a community leader. Deep relationships and the ability to respond to whatever comes your way is what generates impact.

While I can’t claim that the past 20 years of learning our way through philanthropy have made us wise by any measure, I can say that we learned a few things along the way.

We learned a lot about…

…who we are, our identity.

…what we care about, our mission.

…how we want to show up, our role.

…how we want to partner, our relationship status.

…how much we don’t know, our ignorance.

…how much we do know, our value.

…how much power we have, our privilege.

…how little we can do on our own, our limits.

All of the lessons above are the result of painful flexing of different muscle groups to help us establish a healthy, stable core that today allows us to step through our work confidently. To that, we can layer all sorts of variables that will change over time but the core remains strong and deep.

Until we meet next,

Sanja