Breakout Session 8: Board Capacity: Engaging Board Members in the Information Arena

Facilitator: Alberto Ibargüen, president and CEO, Knight Foundation

Scribe: Elizabeth Miller, communications associate, Knight Foundation

Alberto began the session by explaining Knight’s evolution with respect to both the Knight Community Information Challenge and the News Challenge. These programs were and are the foundation’s way of admitting that it didn’t know what direction the programs would take, but that an important first step was being willing to pose the question: what is it that you think we ought to do?

From Knight’s perspective, it was important to seek input from the community for ideas. This type of approach, grounded in the principles of being fair and open-minded, was very different from traditional foundation partnerships. By posing the questions to the community (both to community foundations and the journalism and media innovation crowd), it allowed Knight to fund better projects. It pushed the foundation toward deeper and more aspirational thinking about its grantmaking. We weren’t telling communities what should be important to them, instead we let them tell us.

Q: What from your perspective could Knight do to better support the projects you’re interested in doing in your communities? What are issues Knight needs to be aware of as we support your efforts in these kinds of projects? How can it increase your capacity as board members?

Board Composition

Increasing a board’s composition and diversity, in age, geography, tech knowledge and interests. If you’re funding news and information project, it’s important to have digital natives as part of your board. As part of the on-boarding for new board members, there should some sort of training session or exposure to the world of the community foundation, as many new trustees come from different sectors like business etc.

Leadership

Related to board composition, there was a discussion about how to redefine leadership at community foundations – both internally and externally. Internally means understanding what it takes to be a better board member at a community foundation. But the conversation around leadership extends to the role of the community foundation in the larger ecosystem of the foundation, or externally. By acquiring and exchanging information, the foundation can obtain new assets, in various forms.

Understanding and Increasing the Assets of Community Foundations

There should be a broadening of the conversation around the kinds of assets and resources available to community foundations. Often there’s too narrow of a definition around money as the only asset, when in fact it can be much more broad. Sometimes assets in a community can be as simple as providing food. What are assets of a particular community, including the people who live in them? When it does come to money, what is its role, how can it be catalytic in creating change in a community? 

Continuing to Explore Role of Technology/Social Media

You can’t fund news and information projects without a deeper understanding of the role of technology and social media. At Knight’s 2^nd Media Learning Seminar, we had to explain how to use Twitter to community foundations, Alberto said. We’re clearly in a different place now. The growth of social networks is rapid and it’s important to understand its impact. The bottom line was if you think you’re doing social change without using social media these days, there’s an imbalance.

Leveraging partnerships

Importance of having third parties to bring different perspectives. How can you leverage partnerships within the community, paying attention to the diverse audiences you serve? How do you engage the community and bring them in as partners so they can participate in the process of what you do and why you do it?

Creating a Culture for Fostering Social Innovation

How do you create a culture for fostering innovation within community foundations, but do it in a thoughtful way? As part of that, there needs to be acknowledgement of taking risk and perhaps feeling uncomfortable about not knowing the outcomes. There’s also a necessity here for educating trustees that social change doesn’t mean building a new building, that you’re talking about capacity building in a different way, and educating people about the impact that this kind of work can have on their communities. Also the importance of treating social innovation as a start-up and being comfortable that you might not know the outcome. Part of this can be by funding new incubators and partnerships – (examples, what Knight has done at in Philadelphia).

Sharing and publicizing what you do

Don’t underestimate the importance of telling and sharing stories and experiences. It’s about being open, about lessons learned, sharing what’s worked and what hasn’t. There’s a significant learning opportunity to be gained from understanding and evaluating failures. This can often lead to increased partnerships (Alberto gave the example that with Knight, it lead to a partnership with Google for journalism and media innovation work). There was also a discussion about how you can best publicize what you do using various media channels by giving examples, sharing the impact of projects, etc. It’s not just about telling the story of your projects but the larger issue of what your community foundation does.

The Value of Transparency

This can be as simple as publishing 990s, making sure that anything that is published is easily searchable and accessible online. It’s important to know who your funding partners are. Transparency is important for all projects, not just those related to news and information, and also from an organizational perspective. There’s also the issue of transparency from foundations to grantee organizations: how and when do you make decisions, why do you make the decisions you make.

Future of Knight Community Information Challenge

Through the challenge, Knight has reached nearly ½ of the community foundations in the U.S. It’s currently looking at what the next iteration of the challenge should be. As a frame for the conversation, Alberto brought up the lack of sustainability in many of the projects supported and asked board members what issues should be taken into consideration for the future of the challenge and if there’s a role for Knight to target board members of community foundations.

Q: What from your perspective do you see that Knight could do better to support the things that you’re interested in from your communities? How do we make this more meaningful and not a series of one-off projects? How do we bridge to a sustainable way of informing communities?

The following ideas were discussed:

• Using Soul of the Community as a frame for whatever the next iteration is because its implications clearly match the work of community foundations. This will help foundation board members get at what drivers are that create success in their communities and the residents who live in them;

• Regional meetings and conferences for board members that bring content that is normally available at Media Learning Seminar closer to foundations, bringing speakers and grantees together; because board members have busy lives they may not be able to participate in a full, two-day off site Media Learning Seminar type of event;

• Producing five-minute YouTube videos to help inform board members about community news and information projects and their importance. The series of videos could be targeted to different size community foundations, those that have different interest areas, etc;

• Creating short, 30-minute presentations that could be made to community foundations either via Slideshare, videos, or in-person about the importance of community news and information projects;

• Launching a trustee track to whatever the “new” version or iteration of the Knight Communication Information Challenge and Media Learning Seminar;

• Workshops that focus on better understanding how to publicize and share lessons learned to the community.