The Tides Insider

Momentum Mixer | Social Philanthropy
Wednesday, July 18th | 6:00-8:00 PST | Credo Restaurant, Financial District, SF
How can we leverage what the social web has done for social commerce and apply it to what we at Tides are calling, "social philanthropy"? How are the new generation of donors and philanthropists using social media to make impact and raise funds? Who better to speak to the topic than the leaders, innovators, and strategic thinkers of the social media space! Joining Tides for this conversation and networking opportunity are Ken Weber, Executive Director of Zynga.org; Libby Leffler, Strategic Partnerships Manager of Facebook; Connie Chan Wang, Social Media Marketing Manager at LinkedIn and Founder of LinkedIn For Good; Ramya Raghavan, News and Politics Manager at YouTube; moderated by John A. Byrne, CEO and Founder of C-Change Media, former Editor in Chief of Businessweek.com.

Tides Momentum Mixer Series convene nationally, providing an opportunity for all interested in making social impact to meet, network, and share innovations happening right now, fueling imaginations and provoking conversations as to how best tackle what lies on the horizon.

Space is limited. Please RSVP here. We look forward to seeing you there!

Collaborating for Success: Nonprofit Facilities & Shared Workspace
Thursday, July 12th | Baltimore, MD
Get a comprehensive crash-course on developing shared nonprofit facilities to generate positive impact in your community. This interactive full-day training is designed to lead you through the complex processes of creating a mission-enhancing, financially sustainable nonprofit center. Learn more and register >

National Farm to School Conference
August 2nd-5th | Burlington, VT

Join us August 2-5 in beautiful Burlington, Vermont where we’ll be Digging In! to all things Farm to Cafeteria!  Registration will open May 7th.  The Early Bird registration rate is $290.  Learn more about registration here!

Farm to Cafeteria is Digging In! Whether you are new to the movement or have years of wisdom to share, the 6th National Farm to Cafeteria Conference: Digging In! is a great opportunity to network, build skills and get energized!

Farm to Cafeteria began with the common goal of building strong communities, healthy individuals and resilient local farms. Across the country great progress has been made connecting farm-fresh foods with K-12 schools, pre-schools, childcare settings, colleges, universities, hospitals, prisons and beyond – now we are Digging In!

The conference will bring together food service professionals, farmers, educators, policy makers, representatives from government agencies and nonprofits, entrepreneurs, students and others who are breaking down barriers and expanding the impact of Farm to Cafeteria.

There will be skill-building short-courses, field trips to innovative Vermont farms and institutions, a diverse workshop program, and plenty of opportunities to network with inspiring individuals from across the country.

Independent Sector Conference
November 11th and 12th | San Francisco Bay Area, CA
GameChanging people, events and ideas that will ignite new thinking about what it takes to shape a strong and healthy future for the charitable sector and the communities we serve. Featuring talks by Jeff Skoll, Arianna Huffington, and more. Tides will be there along with many of our friends, and we hope to see you! Sign up before June 15th to get the early-bird discount.

Define American, a Tides Project, on the cover of Time Magazine

The cover of TIME Magazine features the culmination of a yearlong journey. It is a reflection on what I’ve experienced traveling across the United States, after “coming out” publicly as an undocumented immigrant a year ago this month.

I reflect on the tough questions I’ve been asked and tell the stories of some of the toughest young people I’ve ever known: young DREAMers who are American through and through --  whose courage and determination has now been documented by TIME filmmakers.

In the year since my essay went viral, at least 2,000 undocumented Americans -- and we are, at heart, Americans -- have personally contacted me and outed themselves. Their stories flooded in at public events and in late-night Facebook messages.

Across the country, more and more Americans are challenging how our politicians, the media -- and even the Supreme Court (in its current deliberation on Arizona's immigration law) -- talk about immigration.

These brave deeds must be met with equal bravery from those of us who have the power to pass it on.

Our mission is to spread these stories far and wide over the next few days, inspiring even more people to come forward and share theirs. 

Join us -- post a message to Facebook, or tweet @DefineAmerican with the #WeAreAmericans hashtag. Most importantly, let’s make this a conversation that no one can ignore.

With all my heart, thank you for being part of this incredible journey.

BusinessWeek names InterSchola, Thoreau Center Tenant, one of America's Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs for 2012

Founded in 2004, InterSchola, a California-based social enterprise, partners with school districts to facilitate the public sale of used or no-longer needed goods via a robust online auction marketplace. Whether selling surplus buses from one school district to another at an affordable price, finding new uses for used food service equipment through sale to a small business in the local community or finding a non-profit buyer for a 24-foot planetarium dome, InterSchola provides a unique service that helps raise money for a district's general fund.
A certified Benefit Corporation, InterSchola was established to help support the budgets of school districts and local public agencies to help maintain the important community services provided by the public sector. To date the company has helped its local public agency clients earn over $15M from the sales of surplus goods. Additionally, InterSchola is a certified Green Business committed to environmental sustainability. The company's sales of public agency surplus goods to the community help divert 2-3 million pounds of goods from landfills each year and give small business an opportunity to gain much needed capital equipment at a fraction of the cost of buying new.

The Ultimate Impact: Unifying an Investment Portfolio Within a Donor Advised Fund, an issue brief jointly authored by Tides, RSF Social Finance, and ImpactAssets, is out now.

Donor Advised Funds (DAFs) have grown in use over recent decades, serving as the core philanthropic vehicle for community and public foundations and, more recently, being offered through commercial investment firms as a philanthropic option for clients. When linked with an impact investing strategy, the DAF may serve as a unique, focused asset management vehicle for creating a unified portfolio generating financial performance with social and environmental impacts. This Issue Brief introduces the concept and structure of DAFs and explores their potential as impact investing vehicles. The DAF as a core component of a unified investment approach is explored together with discussion of why DAFs are especially suited to impact investing. The potential for DAFs to expand options for impact investors is discussed along with possible barriers to their introduction.

Total Portfolio Activation: A Framework for Creating Social and Environmental Impact Across Asset Classes, a white paper jointly authored by Tides, Trillium Asset Management, and the Tellus Instittute, out end of July.

Tides is a firm believer in the concept of Total Portfolio Activation—the idea that endowment and foundation investors have an opportunity and responsibility to leverage impact across all asset classes in alignment with their programmatic focus.  We believe this report provides a beneficial framework and guide for any mission driven organization to consider how to put their investments to work in support of their long-term social, economic and environmental goals.  We look forward to a day when individual and institutional investors talk equally about their impact returns and their investment returns.  At Tides we remain committed to supporting investors, donors, doers in creating the world they want to see through the use of traditional and philanthropic asset allocation and management.

The author line-up of our June issue of Momentum, focused on LGBT issues in America today, is full of stars: Tim Sweeney of the Gill Foundation, Ineke Mushovic of MAP, Kate Kendell of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Eliza Byard of GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network), Michael Adams of SAGE (Services and Advocacy for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Elders), Rea Carey of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and Brad Sears of the Williams Institute at UCLA. The topics covered range from poverty and elder issues in the LGBT community, anti-discrimination in K-12 schools, marriage equality, and more. We hope you enjoy this issue full of insights, and that a happy Pride Month was enjoyed by all. Read more >

The past few months have brought surging momentum to our campaign to win the freedom to marry.  From the President’s heartfelt and powerful embrace to the unanimous federal appellate ruling that the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional, we continue to make huge progress along the Roadmap to Victory, Freedom to Marry’s national strategy.  But until all loving, committed couples can share in the freedom to marry nationwide, the work is not yet done.  And the necessary work won’t just do itself. Read more >

Launched by Secretary Clington in December 2011, the Global Equality Fund supports programs advancing teh human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) persons around the world with more than $3 million of funds fromt he U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development. As administrator and manager of the Fund, the Department of State is also pursuing partnerships with foreign governments, foundations, and corporations in this important effort. Programming areas include emergency funding for advocates, civil society organizations and LGBT people; technical assistance in the areas of human rights documentation and legal assistance; institutional capacity building and development; protection from violence; and combating societal discrimination. Fore more information, go to www.humanrights.org.

Philanthropy traditionally focuses on problem triage: what can we fix? Predictive philanthropy, a new strategy for aligning funding resources across sectors, requires that we shift our stance from reactive to proactive and ask: what can we build up? Inspired by real-world applications of predictive analytics, like the predictive policing strategies used by police departments in Los Angeles and Santa Cruz, predictive philanthropy uses data to identify tipping-point communities across the nation, where significant changes and needs – like new population influxes and single-industry regions – are beginning to emerge. Imagine if we had invested in alternative economic models in Detroit in the 1960s, or in immigrant integration services in Tucson in the 1990s. What if we could build out infrastructure in these communities now so that we move towards progress, not fragmentation?

Predictive philanthropy posits that, as grant-makers, we can assess and mitigate community distress as one, and before it feels like issues scale at a faster pace than solutions. Instead of efforts by siloed institutions to fulfill their missions or explore pet-projects, predictive philanthropy brings together donors and investors around a common set of data to drive collective decisions about where and how resources are deployed. Instead of data being a means to justify work already in process or information from which people develop their own conclusions, data becomes a powerful means for donors and funders to collaborate, organize and act on what is needed for the sustainable development of our communities. Learn more >

The problem:
Philanthropy has traditionally been just another word for grant-making, and the sector has been locked into using just one form of capital to fuel social change. Individuals and institutions looking to leverage their money for both financial and social returns have been forced to develop in-house expertise and complete their work in costly silos, as there are very few vehicles to support collaborative investing by and amongst individuals and institutions.

The solution:
The Pooled Impact Investing Fund at Tides enabels individuals and institutions to use alternative financial models to move away from philanthropy as a "one-size-fits-all" method of changing the world. Come together to collaborate with a community of investors committed to impact and return that spans individuals and institutions and the private and public sectors. Learn more >