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Foundation Leaders Institute at GFE's Eighth Annual Conference
10/18/2004 to 10/19/2004
Atlanta, GA, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel
Foundation trustees and executive team members were invited to participate in
Grantmakers for Education's second Foundation Leaders Institute, which tackled the intersection of education results and foundation effectiveness. A
special concurrent program at GFE's annual conference, the institute helped
philanthropy's leaders apply their stewardship and accountability
responsibilities to their education grantmaking portfolio.
Today, leaders in our sector are rightly focused on issues of foundation
effectiveness: How can foundations best deploy their resources to meet their
social change goals? How can they gauge their impact? And, in seeking to change
education outcomes, how can we know if philanthropy is making a difference?
The Foundation Leaders Institute recognizes the essential role a foundation's
trustees and senior leadership team play in shaping strategy and measuring
results. It provides a unique learning opportunity to meet in a smaller group
with experts and peers to share knowledge and build networks.
The 2004 institute program included the following sessions:
Monday, October 18
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3:00pm - 5:00pm
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Foundation Effectiveness in Education: Assessing Our Impact
Beyond simply collecting grantee results and project
evaluations, how can foundations best assure and ensure their own
effectiveness? Through an interactive discussion with foundation
leaders with significant education portfolios, this session compared different approaches to drive choices and achieve desired
outcomes.
DISCUSSION LEADER: Kathleen Enright, Grantmakers for
Effective Organizations
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5:00pm - 6:30pm
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Networking Reception
Opportunity to visit with other foundation leaders at the institute, and to find
colleagues who have similar interests and face similar challenges.
Following this reception, institute attendees also were invited to
attend the GFE conference host event at the Imagine It! Children's
Museum.
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Tuesday, October 19
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8:30am - 10:30am
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Foundation Effectiveness in Education: Using
Communications to Advance Our Mission
Foundations can use communications as a critical strategy for
advancing knowledge, generating support and strengthening programs
that improve education. Using results of a national survey on
foundation practices and emerging models, this work session helped
participants understand the fundamental questions to answer before
investing in communications and align communication goals with the
capacity of their foundations and grantees to deliver.
DISCUSSION LEADER: Amber Kahn, The Communications Network
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10:45am - 12:15pm
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Site visits
Tours of innovative programs supported by philanthropy
in Atlanta:
- East Lake Community Foundation / Drew
Charter School
In 1995, a coalition of foundations, business and government
redeveloped Atlanta's most blighted neighborhood, replacing a
crime-ridden public housing project with an "Educational
Village" including a new charter elementary school, YMCA and
child development center. Crime rates have been cut by 94 percent.
- Georgia Tech Student Success Center
Georgia Tech - one of the nation's top producers of African-American
engineers - consistently ranks among the U.S.'s top public
universities. Attendees learned about the university's Student Success Center,
which provides an intentional focus on successful recruiting and
sustained student achievement for minority students. Results include a
70 percent graduation rate among minority engineers.
- Project GRAD at Bethune Elementary
School
Working from pre-kindergarten to college, Project GRAD is a national
reform model offering special literacy and mathematics curricula,
family support services and college scholarships. In Atlanta, it
serves 16,000 students low-income communities. At Bethune Elementary,
since program implementation, students' test scores and attendance
both have increased notably.
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12:15pm - 1:45pm
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Annual conference lunch plenary session: Re-Examining the
"Public" in Public Education
At special tables for institute participants, attendees sat in on a
debate over the primary purpose of public education. In a system where
we have perennially failed to educate all students well, is there a
balance to be found between looking out for the "system" and
looking out for the students it is intended to serve? Two thoughtful
commentators deliberated these tensions.
DISCUSSANTS: Jeannie Oakes, Institute for Democracy,
Education and Access · Howard Fuller, Institute for the
Transformation of Learning
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Beyond the formal programs at the Foundation Leaders Institute, the full
conference program contained sessions, site visits and plenary sessions also
relevant to foundation leaders. Contact Grantmakers for Education for help
identifying programs throughout the conference relevant to your areas of
interest and work.
Registration Details
Foundation leaders had two attendance options:
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Enroll in the institute only for $250.
- Register to attend the full three-day GFE
conference and attend the institute for free as a special program track.
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 Read more and register for GFE's 14th annual conference, The Fierce Urgency of Now: Fulfilling the Promise of Excellence and Equity. The conference is the nation's largest gathering of education grantmakers.
Read our new report From Access to Success: A Funders' Guide to Ensuring More Americans Earn Postsecondary Degrees, which captures lessons from our recent member briefing.
Get the Buzz for the latest word in education grantmaking. Subscribe to the RSS feed, to be notified whenever a new item appears in Buzz.
Deepen your strategic grantmaking with Benchmarking 2009, GFE's annual report on trends in education philanthropy. Learn what Education Week says about the impact the report is having on the field of education reform.
Listen to Secretary Arne Duncan’s June 24th call with education grantmakers.
Access new GFE member benefits, including Philanthropy In/Sight, a dynamic mapping tool from the Foundation Center, and a discounted subscription to Foundation Review, the peer-reviewed quarterly from the Johnson Center for Philanthropy.
View GFE's web seminar: Expanded Learning Opportunities: A Key Lever to Turn Around Low-Performing Schools. 07/15/2010 (~ 1 hr)  presentation slides
 streaming audio
Watch provocative suggestions from Secretary Arne Duncan, Professor Nichole Pinkard, Matt Miller, and Larry Keeley on how grantmakers can transform education, by transforming their own funding strategies.
Access resources from recent GFE programs. Stream audio, view slides, watch video and read presentations from GFE web seminars and our annual conference.
Peruse News to Use, GFE's members-only monthly newsletter, highlighting learning activities, new reports and critical developments in the field of education grantmaking.
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