Another Kind of Grantee? Entrepreneurs and Journalists as Change Agents

We often think of grantees as people who provide a service or act as advocates. But are they the only ways grantees can make change? And are there other kinds of grantees worth considering?

I had the pleasure of attending the Brainstorming Bus Tour, hosted by the Greater New Orleans Foundation, with a number of community foundation communications professionals. I do strategy and evaluation, so it was fun to spend time with my communications colleagues and see how they approach communicating impact.

I was particularly struck by the need for this skill given the purposes of two of the three sites we visited. (The third was Market Umbrella, a farmer’s market organizer/"public market think tank.") The first, Idea Village, is an incubator space for entrepreneurs, and The Lens is an investigative journalism site. The dynamic leaders of these two groups both talked about the unique value of the change agents with which they each work: entrepreneurs and investigative journalists. I’m doing or have done consulting work for organizations that work with these kinds of professionals, but these two groups helped me think about them differently.

We tend to think of entrepreneurs as small business owners or job creators, but Tim Williamson and Idea Village view them as change agents. They make connections where none existed before, opening previously closed networks. Williamson challenged the funders in the room not to try to build a network among local actors like universities, government, and technical assistance providers in a top-down fashion. "Use entrepreneurs as a way to bring people in, rather than trying to create the links yourself," he said.

Entrepreneurs can engage not only civic institutions, but community members. Like many groups that support business owners, Idea Village has a pitch event. It’s held in a public square (rather than a hotel ballroom or corporate boardroom) and community members walk around talking to the entrepreneurs. Their take is community-oriented. People are given wooden chips, and they give them to the entrepreneurs whose ideas they like best. It’s a live version of those Facebook fundraising voting challenges that have become so popular. But the face-to-face interaction makes it that much more real.

Investigative journalists, like the kind Steve Beatty and The Lens work with, play similar roles of breaking up closed networks and engaging community members directly. "Once you establish yourself as someone who cares about these issues," Beatty said, "people come to you with tips." Such tips have helped expose corruption in the administration of post-Katrina housing funds and changed the practices of the New Orleans Police Department in the unequal treatment of black and white suspects.

Foundation grantees are frequently service providers, researchers, or advocates. If your change strategy in your community faces obstacles of closed networks or low community engagement, these are options to explore. A participant on the bus tour mentioned that there are already 13 community foundations that have entrepreneurship centers, and The Lens has 60 counterparts in communities across the country. Kudos and thanks to the Greater New Orleans Foundation for an engaging, fast-paced, and well-run tour!

Chris Cardona is associate director of philanthropy for the TCC Group.