Report to Members
The New Economy: A Rising Tide for All?

by Sara Gould and Mary Jo Mullan, Co-Chairs

We hope you’ll join us in Detroit at the end of September for our annual conference. We’re very excited about the site visits, plenary sessions and workshops that a very thoughtful and energetic planning committee has put together. Bob Kuttner, editor of The American Prospect magazine, will kick off the conference, framing discussions about the New Economy, what it is, and what it means for working poor and low-income people. Our closing plenary session will feature William Julius Wilson, whose most recent book is reviewed in this issue of NFG Reports.

Mary Jo Mullan chairs the conference, and the other members of the conference executive committee are Jane Downing of the Pittsburgh Foundation, Ed Egnatios of United Way Community Services, Sherece West of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Bob Jaquay of the George Gund Foundation, Jack Litzenberg of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, and Janet Shenk, Trustee of the Arca Foundation.  Many thanks to them and the rest of the planning committee for their countless hours of work organizing conference-related activities and putting together a stimulating program.  Don’t forget that during the conference, NFG will hold its annual meeting, during which we will choose our board members for the coming year.

Local funders have organized interesting site visits that will demonstrate both the challenges and exciting developments for working poor families in Detroit’s communities. We think you’ll find at least one of them to be of particular interest to your grantmaking.  For those looking for a more in-depth understanding and appreciation of Detroit, its past and present, we are hosting two pre-conference tours. One explores Detroit’s labor history; the other traces the patterns of neighborhood disinvestment and reinvestment. And, there will be many opportunities for informal networking, making new contacts and renewing acquaintances during the conference.

For the first time, we have put together “Recommended Readings” about the conference topic for those who want to read up on the New Economy before coming to Detroit. The selected articles and other annotated publications are on the NFG Web site, www.nfg.org. Detailed information about the tours, site visits, speakers and other updates are there, and this year you can register online!

Working Groups 

In June, NFG’s Rural Funders Working Group (RFWG) held its first site visit, to rural South Carolina. A photograph from the site visit is on page 11. RFWG has site visits coming up in Nebraska; Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia; and Hawaii. After each visit, a case study write-up will be posted on NFG’s Web site, www.nfg.org. The RFWG Group raised funds from the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, Fannie Mae Foundation, Ford Foundation, F.B. Heron Foundation, and W.K. Kellogg Foundation to explore the feasibility of establishing a National Rural Funders Collaborative. We would like to thank these funders for their generous support. NFG hired Jim Richardson to work on the project and members of the RFWG are working with him to organize stakeholder meetings around the country.

A group of funders interested in workforce development is hosting a two-day meeting in Milwaukee, WI on September 11 and 12 to explore issues of capacity building utilizing community colleges and organized labor. The Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership, highlighted in the last issue of NFG Reports, will be featured. For more information, e-mail Spence Limbocker at spence@nfg.org.

NFG’s Web Site Expands

As more of our members use the web in their work, we are putting more information online. We hope that those of you who are NFG members have already received the print version of the 2000 NFG Member Directory. The Directory is now available online, where you can search for the phone numbers and e-mail addresses of your colleagues, as well as identify individuals who are willing to share their grantmaking expertise. Our recently released public policy paper on welfare reform, Welfare Reform: Next Steps Offer New Opportunities, A Role for Philanthropy in Preparing for the Reauthorization of TANF in 2002, is also  available online at www.nfg.org.

We look forward to seeing you in Detroit!

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