Allio Consulting

Bringing funders together to build alliances for change. 

Funder convenings bring diverse practitioners from philanthropy together to share ideas, experience and opportunities.  I hear frequently from funders today that they are too busy to go to these events.  While I know many of you do attend, here are a couple of highlights from a couple of convenings to hightlight change efforts that are afoot.

Grantmakers Without Borders  San Francisco, June 2008The GWOB Conference took a new approach with about half of its programming focused on the issue of climate change and how funders can respond at many levels.  Climate change is an over arching issue which will impact the issues funders are working on in dramatic ways and the conference explored issues ranging from indigenous responses to climate change to carbon markets.  Participants from the Global South providing important perspective on international funding strategies throughout the conference.  The closing session on “Strategies for Systems Change” brought the dialogue back home with Van Jones of Green for All in Oakland delivering an important message about addressing climate change across diverse communities in the US.  Allio Consulting had the privilege to work on the planning committee for this conference. 

Council On Foundations

National Harbor, MD  May 2008

The COF Conference today was a great effort to learn about what colleagues in the field are doing and to build our skills.  There were many interestings sessions an plenaries convened and many deserved awards given.  Highlights this year included a series of mini summits  - the Summit on Migration brought together COF members with US and International practitioners to share experiences on common issues in the US and abroad:  it was great to here the Human Rights Perspective articulated by our international colleagues at this event.  As always with the COF conference the pre-conference events were excellent and here is some info on two of them - HIP and NFG   Hispanics in Pilanthropy HIP had their 25th Anniversary Celebration prior to COF and announced their exciting initiative to protect child migrants called “Our Children/Nuestros Hijos.”  The first lady of Mexico Margarita Zavala, gave a keynote speach in which she noted that thousands of children migrate to the US alone, and of the 45,000 children deported from the US last year, half were unaccompanied.  Nuestros Hijos will focus on bringing together funders, scholars, and policy makers to better understand and make policy proposals regarding unaccompanied migrant children.  Contact HIP for more information.

Neighborhood Funders Group  The NFG sessions included a key note by former White House Chief of Staff and now Executive Director of the Center for American Progress, John Podesta, sharing his 12 point strategy for cutting poverty in half in ten years.  For details on this exciting policy proposal, see the Center for American Progress web site at

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/04/poverty_report.html