We’ve Moved!

The Forum’s Forum blog is now part of the Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers website at www.givingforum.org!

You’ll see the blog on our homepage as “Recent News.” If you want to see all news items, go to www.givingforum.org/news.

Donors Forum of Wisconsin and Northern California Grantmakers Announce New Leadership

The Donors Forum of Wisconsin and Northern California Grantmakers both announced new leadership last week as Jill Van Calster was named President and CEO of Donors Forum of Wisconsin (DFW) and David Greco was named Northern California Grantmakers’ (NCG) Interim President and CEO.

Jill Van Calster brings to DFW more than two decades of experience serving high profile Wisconsin nonprofit organizations. Most recently, Jill was the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for Curative Care Network. In this role, her broad scope responsibilities included leadership and oversight of day-to-day operations for Curative’s seven divisions. She has a passion for and proven track record of developing and leading high performing teams with a focus on exceptional quality service and outcomes.

David Greco brings more than 25 years of experience in driving the growth of social sector organizations working for a more just and equitable world. He is joining NCG after more than five years as Vice President of the Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF) where he led much of NFF’s funder services work including partnerships with NCG, Southern California Grantmakers, Philanthropy Northwest, and Grantmakers for Effective Organizations.

10 Questions or Less for Charlotte Anheier

10 Questions or Less is a feature through which we get to know regional association staff members a little better—their work, what drives them, and more. If you would like to suggest someone for a profile through 10 Questions or Less, contact Dan Brady. This week, Charlotte Anheier, Online Community Manager for Southern California Grantmakers.

Congratulations on launching your new site. It looks great! You’ve clearly put a lot of work into it. What do you hope to accomplish with the new site that you couldn’t do before?

The goal was to create a site that is easy to navigate, provides great resources and news to members, and functions as an important member benefit. I also hope that the site will provide a strong platform for future developments like collaborative workspaces and all those other great ideas we haven’t thought of yet!

From your perspective, what is the best part of working with the Forum and other regional associations on a common Drupal-Salesforce platform?

The amount of knowledge shared within the group is really incredible. When you’re really lost and have no idea how to create that formula field in Salesforce or how to set up a mandrill template, you have 50+ experts to email or call about it. Also, having the Forum staff (especially Val) available on the Saturday afternoon before you launch the site to assist with the inevitable “everything is going wrong” moment is priceless.

The Power of Partnership: Cutting-edge Partnerships, Decades in the Making

Guest post by Jane Lowe, Senior Adviser for Program Development, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

@jisaacslowe
LinkedIn

For more than two decades, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Local Funding Partnerships (LFP) program has created partnerships with local and regional funders and organizations in communities across the country to address critical health and health care issues. I’ve served as LFP’s program officer for the past 14 years, and work closely with LFP’s National Program Director Polly Seitz, former chair of the Council of New Jersey Grantmakers and a past Forum board member.

With the program in its final year of operation, we celebrate the hundreds of partnerships that have improved the health of communities across the US, not the least of which is our relationship with the Forum’s regional association members. Over the years, we’ve networked with the Forum, Grantmakers in Health, and other affinity groups— you’ve spread the word about our call for proposals, and we’ve presented at your conference sessions with local funders about cutting edge projects. Thank you for modeling collaboration with us.