Alvertha Penny 
Program Officer of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

NFG members have identified grantmaker interviews as their favorite part of NFG Reports. In this issue we’re featuring an interview with Alvertha Penny by NFG Board member Regina McGraw, Executive Director of the Wieboldt Foundation. Alvertha spearheaded the development of NFG’s strategic plan three years ago. Now retired from NFG’s board, she offers her insights as NFG embarks on an effort to develop an updated plan and strategy.

Regina McGraw: Please tell us a little about yourself and your involvement in philanthropy.

Alvertha Penny: I have about 26 years of experience in community economic development and human services in program administration and program development. I’ve had that experience within three sectors: the nonprofit sector, both local and national; the public sector, in municipal government; and private philanthropy, for a community foundation and a national foundation, where I am now. I’ve been in philanthropy about 8 1/2 years.

RM: Did anything surprise you as you moved from grantseeker to grantmaker?

AP: I was surprised by the insular nature of this business, the small size of the industry, and the finite network that exists. Also I was surprised, having been in the nonprofit and public sectors, by the enormous flexibility, unlike other sectors, that philanthropy provides. It gives you such a great bird’s eye view of the work that’s going on at the local, regional and national levels. When you’re employed in the nonprofit or the public sectors you rarely have that kind of broad conceptual framework.

RM: In the 8 years that you’ve been in philanthropy, have you seen many changes in the field of neighborhood funding?

AP: Yes, quite a few. In the area of philanthropy I think there’s been quite a decrease in the amount of funding going into neighborhood-based development work. We lost the only national monitor of private giving, the National Council for Community Based Development, which used to actually track investments on the part of foundations into neighborhood-based development work. Since it closed, back in 1991, we’ve not really had an entity that has tried to monitor and track the level of investments in the same manner. I thought that the demise of the organization was a significant loss to the field.

RM: And your perception is that the amount has in fact gone down?

AP: Yes, it’s my perception that it has gone down, at least from the private philanthropic sector. Given the growth of community foundations, there is an enormous opportunity to increase their commitment in neighborhoods. I believe there are unexplored possibilities for significant investment that could be helpful to the field.

Some of the increases I’ve seen are in concentrated initiatives and expansions in affordable housing funding through efforts such as the National Community Development Initiative. Also there’s been a refocus by some of the federal agencies, particularly the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), to reexamine neighborhoods as untapped markets. But overall, since I’ve been doing this work, there’s clearly been a diminishing federal role. Targeted efforts have emerged within the past 10 years, such as the Empowerment Zone/Enterprise Community effort and the Community Development Financial Institutions – work that seems to represent the extent of federal policy around neighborhood development. Those programs and policies have been isolated events that have not been linked in substantive ways to illustrate a vision of comprehensiveness.

As a result, I’ve seen the growth of comprehensive community-based initiatives. They have served to bridge the gap between those of us who do neighborhood-based development through the traditional CDC model approach and those of us focused on human services in this country. But the two seldom work closely together in our neighborhoods and communities. As such, there’s been a definite movement and growth in these types of initiatives among foundations.

RM: Do you see this as a good thing?

AP: Yes, I do. I think it challenges practitioners, intermediaries, and funders in the community development world to reflect on the core principals of the field. Originally, when CDCs began, the early ones were very comprehensive. As the federal funding streams began to change and the focus became very targeted to housing, we began to follow the funding stream. Several activities, such as social services – traditionally part of the CDC operational structure – were reduced or actually eliminated in many CDCs that represent the second and third waves of the movement. CDCs such as New Community, Bethel New Life, the Unity Council – some of the major and oldest CDCs in the country – have maintained a comprehensive breadth. Several of the newer CDCs have not approached community development in that holistic way. In the Bay Area, we have more than 70 CDCs. Approximately one-half of them are housing-development organizations. The movement is reexamining its mission and recognizing housing as one of many tools in the tool box. We are trying to understand better the connection between housing, the people living in that housing, the jobs issue, and the support services network required to help keep people in the housing we are producing. We seem to have come full circle. After more than 20 years, we are rethinking our original premises of community development. I am elated that we are being challenged in this way.

RM: As you depart the NFG board, do you have ideas for NFG’s future directions?

AP: I have three. There are some areas in which we can do better. First, certainly in terms of simple things like aggressive membership development – increasing the participation of community foundations and family foundations. I think we’ve got to mount a public relations campaign to aggressively go after funders whom we have not been able to convince that the common unit of analysis is neighborhoods and communities for a major segment of our work. We have got to figure out a way to better engage these funders.

Second, we should launch a very targeted communications and publications strategy about the important work that goes on in the field. We have produced several exciting pieces, however, most opinion leaders are unaware of their existence. While we distribute them to our colleagues and the members of NFG, we have not reached successfully the key persons and or institutions in the opinion making and legislative fields. We must develop a concentrated strategy around distribution and follow up. I think we’re the best kept secret in philanthropy and we should inform others.

Third, we’ve got to identify our public policy strength. We should choose a theme, for example, “urban centers as new markets.” We could then launch an effort designed to influence national policy and existing regulatory efforts that can be implemented at the local level. For example, we could propose to HUD or the Department of Labor or the Department of Health and Human Services to invest in local experimentation. This poses some promise as an entree into the national level. NFG could identify other entree points as well. We were able to influence the housing agenda in the late ’80s and early ’90s. We worked with Washington officials and national community development organizations to help designate resources from the National Affordable Housing Act for Community Housing Development Organizations and for other local community development organizations. Several changes were a direct result of funders’ efforts. We must identify and replicate the elements of that kind of effort. We must understand the important role of urban and rural centers, articulate better the themes and interests, convene grantmakers concerned about them, and then develop a strategy to influence changes in Washington. NFG is poised for this mission. We have to step outside the traditional philanthropy box. We must align ourselves with organizations such as the Council on Urban Economic Development and Urban Land Developers that have a vested interest in neighborhood development. Members of these organizations derive professional and financial benefit from development in low-income communities. They have the attention of Washington and state legislators, and yet NFG hasn’t constructed ways to flak our efforts. I am impressed by new start-up affinity groups, such as the Funders Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities, that have amassed great energy and movement within the past year. We are therefore challenged to galvanize that kind of imagination from funders and others interested in neighborhoods and communities. We must envision our policy work over a 3 or 5 year time frame.

RM: I assume that the sprawl and urban growth effort started with 3 people 10 years ago.

AP: The pump was primed for years and it’s finally coming to fruition. Funders have recently gotten behind it, provided financial support for organizing and infrastructure development, and created a new energy through convening. They are moving from convening to creating an action agenda. We must expand our efforts beyond our excellent conferences to include a clearly articulated action agenda with specific legislative strategies.

RM: How do you identify programs and groups that you believe can really make a difference?

AP: I have a three-pronged approach. First, we do a lot of reading – an expansive literature review – of reports, studies, and papers beyond those products produced by the philanthropic industry to include those developed by national community development intermediary organizations and national policy and research institutes such as the Urban Institute, the Woodstock Institute, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The advantages of these documents include the national scope or scale of investigation and identification of people who are doing interesting things in other parts of the country. These institutions are an excellent clearinghouse on national policy and local practice.

Second, we convene local focus groups representing a range of nonprofit organizations, many of which are our grantees. If we’re exploring the start up of new programs, we bring together practitioners and others who we have information to share with us on the latest practice components and to explore their challenges and new interests. We discuss our ideas about new directions for the Foundation, and how we can refine strategies and programs we already support. We base a lot of the shape and design of our work on input from these local practitioners.

Third, we interface with government because it is the largest funder of nonprofit organizations, some of which are doing good work. As significant sources of contracts for services, government officials have some opinions or perspective about the capacity of nonprofits in the Bay Area. We try to be as inclusive as we possibly can to get a balanced picture of what groups are doing, the types of programs that hold some promise or have particular elements that we think might be applicable to our philanthropic work in the Bay Area.

RM: How do you personally feel about the need to fund public policy research and advocacy?

AP: I think public policy research and advocacy are key elements of any effort focused on developing and sustaining the infrastructure of a field or a movement. I don’t think you can do one without the other. You certainly have to have the voice of the people on the ground doing the work through advocacy. You need to understand better what works and what does not and you need the challenge of stretching to try new things through research. We must understand national as well as state and county activity levels and identify areas of intersection to be helpful as local partners.

RM: How can we bring the newly wealthy into neighborhood funding?

AP: We must provide them with examples of local efforts and projects that show promise. And I think we have to focus on outcome-based efforts. I am not sure if the newly wealthy view philanthropy in the same way we’ve looked at it before. They appear to be interested in more accurately measuring the return on investment from a traditional business model. Therefore we must be able to present to them efforts with a track record and identify those particular elements that make them successful. We also must bring them things that have promise based on some early outcome information.

RM: You’ve been particularly interested in diversity in philanthropy. What opportunities do you see for making a difference in this area?

AP: I’ve been interested in the diversity of perspective, of expertise, and also racial and ethnic diversity in the field. I don’t think we’ve made much progress in any of those areas. I believe we do have enormous opportunity when you consider our capacity to grow another generation of leaders in philanthropy. I think it has to be a deliberate effort rather than a haphazard one. We should adopt some techniques from the corporate world-– that includes mentoring individuals, to help them along the ladder to success. Instead, we have a tendency to solicit the same types of institutions and try to recruit leaders we already know. I think we’re missing an opportunity to attract leaders in other arenas, to apply their skills and expertise to our field. These individuals can make a difference in philanthropy. However, we must improve our outreach and networking beyond the traditional institutions we tend to solicit.

RM: What other arenas are you thinking of?

AP: Well, I’m thinking of public service as one. I am not sure how many administrators or CEOs of foundations have been public administrators. The demands of running a city like New York or Chicago or a state like California require a certain skill set that depends on credibility of management, of insight, that can certainly be applied to the work that we do. There’s such a broad world of expertise that we could use and bring to bear on the work we do. We should be recruiting more individuals currently employed by or who have retired from major companies such as Hewlett Packard or Cisco Systems to work in philanthropy. The results would be terrific. 

RM: Thanks for a terrific interview.
 

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