Building Bridges between Philanthropy, Nonprofits, & Communities

My first foray into the grant-making world was rough. It was a sink or swim experience and after drowning, then swimming, then leaving the pool, I’m thankful for the learning opportunity. I now ground my consulting approach in an empathy and practice born from experience.

Sink or Swim

I joined an entirely new team at NewSchools. The prior team had moved on and we were appointed to take on their now vacant helm. We were former school-based personnel with little grant-making experience who had a deep, resounding commitment to NewSchools’ mission and vision. I don’t want to speak for my wonderful former colleagues, so from here on out, I’ll use first person to tell my story.

As a former teacher and education researcher, I was familiar with learning new institutional languages. In fact, it was expected. But when I joined NewSchools, it was like I was learning a new language without a dictionary or a translator. I felt like multilingual student who was put into a new teacher’s class mid-way through the year. And I felt incredibly stupid and annoying along the way.

Every conversation had a corporate sheen that made them feel like a holographic image — where one angle looks like a face and another angle looks like something else entirely. I stopped asking questions because I was halting important conversations mid-step by asking about the wrong image. From “breaking down silos,” “capacity building,” “bridge building,” “alignment,” “leverage,” “impact,” “strategic pivot,” “scale,” “wordsmith,” and more, I felt how much I was annoying people by asking them to define even the most basic of terms. I remember feeling profoundly dumb when I asked how we were defining and measuring “innovation” on our funding application. I probably came off as critical and nit-picky, but I just really wanted a rubric to soothe the constant anxiety that I was doing it “wrong.” And our applicants likely felt the same.

I struggled to translate my knowledge and my background using the language my organization preferred. And I misrepresented myself a lot. As I read grant applications from and talked to brilliant entrepreneurs and organization leaders across the country, I started to see parallels.

Building Bridges to Stay Dry

After my layoff, I addressed those parallels when I joined Food to Power. I had another language to learn — one related to the technical work of food recovery, distribution, environmental stewardship, and waste management. I learned what a “circular economy” was and how “food recovery” was a critical, common sense way to mitigate hunger. But I realized that the nuance of our work was lost in translation with our partners. The door opened both ways and by not translating our work into words familiar to our funders, donors, and community members, we were losing the critical supporters we needed to achieve our vision of a hunger-free, nourished Colorado Springs. I helped my team open the door, build the bridge, and then we watched our people walk through.

Teaching Bridge Building

I created Rocky Mountain Impact to continue building bridges between philanthropy, nonprofits, and the communities they serve. Each has their own language they use to describe themselves, their reality, and their work. And so much is lost in translation. That’s where I come in. With experience in philanthropy, education, research, development, and community-based nonprofits, I have a foot in each door and I’m holding them open so we can build the bridges needed to bring our people to us. Because it can take an entire village, city, state, nation, or world to make a vision of what our community should or could be into a reality.

So let’s break down the barriers that keep us siloed. Let’s work together to maximize your impact and realize the world you envision for your people.

Warmly,

Dani