New Year, New Tides

Happy New Year! We are so excited to kick off this year with new and exciting programs and initiatives aimed at better supporting our clients, partners and the field.

Last year Tides spent a great deal of time revising internal systems to support organizational sustainability and improve service delivery to our partners and clients. This year we are poised to continue to offer our current services to donors and activists as well as explore new opportunities to support positive social change.

For donors, we are thrilled to continue our partnership with RSF and Tides Canada to support Play Big, an intimate gathering that inspires and informs people with large capital reserves who seek to align their money more fully with their values. In a similar vein, we are pleased to announce a new partnership with Bolder Giving to inspire and support our donors to give at their full lifetime potential.

TIDES I s pleased to be launching (ad)venture philanthropy, an opportunity for donors to learn and engage in communities across the globe in the spring. We are also creating a MRI Pooled Fund for institutional and individual donors to support investments in selected sectors.  We will also public launch the Tikkun Olam Fund creating a vehicle to support the work of progressive organizations and efforts within, and on behalf of, the Jewish community. Lastly, we are kicking off our 1% Campaign, thanks to the support of TIDES board member, Anne Mosle. The campaign is designed to encourage Tides donors to give 1% of their Donor Advised Fund to Tides as a 1% investment that will yield real results.

For our activist partners, we are excited to kick off our capacity building initiative intended to provide technical assistance and timely, strategic advice to support the sustainability of key progressive institutions in our communities. Recognizing that this type of support is both expensive and hard to fund, we are launching the Technical Assistance Fund whereby institutions and individuals can make a contribution of any amount to help offset the cost of training and technical assistance for nonprofit activists and organizations across the country.

Tides is also launching predictive philanthropy—a strategy and framework for analyzing data to identify emerging at-risk communities for pro-active infrastructure funding. Leveraging the power of these tools, we are also creating three new Collective Action Funds in support of gender equity, the environment and education.  For all of our partners and clients we are excited to increase our support for grassroots civic engagement during this election year. We look forward to hosting more learning communities—including public conversations with Tides Fellows Gara LaMarche, Sonal Shah, and Anthony Jewett—as well as officially launching our new online magazine, Momentum, following a successful pilot launch last month.

And last but not least we are thrilled to announce “21cf powered by Tides,” Tides new partnership with Toby Thompkins dedicated to supporting African American and Latino donors and communities. Philanthropy must adapt to the growing diversity of donors, activists and communities. We need to work with and support the new global majority—people of color—to create the next generation of leaders, overhaul our failing educational and health systems, and conquer pervasive structural racism.

We look forward to partnering with you to make 2012 a record year for Tides and the communities we serve.