Be Fearless

Be Fearless Spotlight: Global Press Institute

Posted on by Case Foundation

This Spotlight is authored by guest writer Caitlin Kelly as part of a special blog series by the Case Foundation featuring Be Fearless stories from the field. Follow along with us as we meet people and learn about organizations that are taking risks, being bold and failing forward in their efforts to create transformative change in the social sector.

Global Press Institute (GPI) is an award-winning, high-impact social venture that uses journalism as a development tool to educate, employ and empower women in the developing world to produce professional news coverage. Using this innovative model, “we employ women journalists in places where opportunities for economic empowerment and literate leadership are very few,” says Cristi Hegranes, founder and executive director of GPI.

This bold organization is no stranger to making big bets and letting urgency conquer fear—and its reporters embrace those same characteristics. GPI now has a staff of 135 reporters, full-time and part-time, from underprivileged, underrepresented communities in 26 developing countries. This cohort of journalists includes members of the untouchable caste in Asia, former sex workers in Africa and indigenous women in Latin America. Many have no professional background in journalism and limited formal education when they join the program. Others possess formal education and work experience, but live in communities where unemployment and dynamic opportunities for women are extremely rare.

In GPI’s 2014 Annual Report, a Congo trainee, Merveille Kavira, revealed, “Before GPI, my job was that I took care of my elder sister’s children and in return she would buy soap for me… GPI will help me to be self-sufficient. I will be independent and I will no longer work taking care of someone’s children. I will be a powerful woman in my society. I will be empowered.”

All of the women use their unique perspectives to provide coverage of issues often overlooked by mainstream media and “disseminate the news they find both locally and globally through GPI’s networks and subscribers,” Hegranes says. Recent coverage by GPI reporters features topics such as: citizens’ right to access government information; human trafficking; and election violence. In some countries with little or no freedom of the press, “the ability to identify stories that no one else is talking about is fearless,” she explains.

It’s not a simple job; working as a female reporter in a developing nation, often within a culture that typically expects women to devote their energies primarily to marriage and motherhood. GPI offers women a daunting array of challenges and opportunities. “We ask our reporters to be fearless every day in bucking social norms and challenging cultural and family norms.”

To help the women navigate the challenges that come with the job, GPI’s in-country reporters all receive intensive training in safety and security. While interviewing their own countrymen and men “gives us extraordinary access” it also leaves them more vulnerable to attack. “It’s very difficult work. They’re not white people in SUVs with tons of equipment,” Hegranes says.

No matter where GPI hires its reporters—now in 26 developing nations and looking to expand in North Africa and the Middle East—there “are always safety concerns.” But that’s part of being fearless: giving women opportunities wherever they need it most, no matter what—not to mention bringing unbiased news of current events to those who need it most. Which might be why Hegranes says northern Nigeria, home to extremist Islamic group Boko Haram—known for targeting government offices, the United Nations, and civilians—“is our next big target spot for Africa.”

Despite the dangers associated with the job, GPI’s retention rate is an impressive 90 percent after nine years. As reporters grow their skills, they often rise within GPI’s ranks to become managers and editors. “Our biggest problem [right now] is being overwhelmed by applicants,” explains Hegranes. “In November 2014, we had four training spots available in the Congo and we received 309 applications.”

GPI, focused on training women to be journalist, is part of a larger global news organization; the Global Press Journal (GPJ) similarly employs training graduates to report. And the stories GPI and GPJ gathers are bought by a wide variety of clients, syndicated by the Global Press News Service to journalism giants like Al Jazeera, PRI and Reuters to curriculum developers, universities, corporations and governments. That revenue proved sufficiently valuable that, in a major shift organizationally, this year Hegranes is spinning off the news service as a for-profit business. “The non-profit income is so necessary to what we do, but it’s slow and it’s risk-averse. We need to be able to generate much more of our own revenue and it will allow us much more flexibility than using restricted funds that won’t allow us to buy a plane ticket or for cameras, for example.”

How does Hegranes and her team make everything work around the globe with a 24/7 news cycle? “In the developing world you have to be nimble, responsive and intuitive and foundations’ pace is just not how we operate. We’ve just got to jump!” she exclaims. She also relies on a seven-member board—“the best we’ve ever had”—as well as a full-time staff of seven, their largest ever. These dedicated individuals help to ensure the success of GPI and its reporters. Hegranes values their willingness to act quickly, unlike the “glacial” pace of large, more conservative groups. “The world changes every second. Who has time for that?”

Together, GPI and its cadre of women reporters have clearly made an impact, at both the policy and personal levels. GPI’s stories have changed laws in Nepal and Rwanda—and 80 percent of its reporters are now the major breadwinners in their family. The work of GPI and its reporters contributes to the development and empowerment of communities, brings greater transparency to countries and changes the way the world views their people and cultures.

Feeling inspired? If you’re ready to begin your own Be Fearless journey start by downloading our free Be Fearless Action Guide and Case Studies.

Be Fearless Spotlight: Open Road Alliance

Posted on by Case Foundation

This Spotlight is authored by guest writer Caitlin Kelly as part of a special blog series by the Case Foundation featuring Be Fearless stories from the field. Follow along with us as we meet people and learn about organizations that are taking risks, being bold and failing forward in their efforts to create transformative change in the social sector.

It can happen to the longest established, best-funded and most carefully-run organizations—a sudden disaster that throws off months or years of planning, disrupting its ability to continue important projects. It might be an essential piece of equipment, a truck or generator, that breaks down and can’t be replaced using restricted funds. It might be a natural disaster that disrupts operations, with no contingency capital to address it.

Whatever the catastrophe, Open Road Alliance (ORA) stands ready to help, able to offer grants of up to $100,000—with decisions made within two to six weeks of applying. Their average grant is $76,000 and, since 2012, it has awarded $3.5 million to groups including the Global Press Institute and the Grameen Foundation.

“Those ‘Oh my God’ moments are where our funding is focused,” says Executive Director Maya Winkelstein.

The typical funding model “is not working on a micro or macro level,” she adds. “On a micro level, it traditionally takes six to nine to 12 months for a grant application to be approved and to access the capital. It’s so restricted and there’s no mechanism to address problems, so [when problems arise] that initial investment and all the work is lost. So, we provide that money. We’ll be fast and flexible and we’ll solve the problem.”

On a macro level, the inherent power imbalance between funders and applicants perpetuates a culture of obfuscation, she adds. “There’s a lack of transparency and honesty thanks to the very real fear NGO’s have” to be truthful about troubles they may face and need funds to solve.

Some ORA grants are also recoverable funds, offered at varying interest rates, essentially a bridge loan to pull a group through crisis—knowing that committed income from their funders will eventually arrive. That program began in 2014, scaling up in 2015, a response, says Winkelstein, “to what NGO’s told us they needed. We found that when organizations encounter these unexpected obstacles and need money the problem isn’t access to capital, but access to capital right now.” ORA offers these loans in three situations: when the obstacle is cash flow, when capital is needed for unexpected growth and when raising the needed funds would simply take too long.

Recoverable grants allow Winkelstein—and ORA’s founder, philanthropist Laurie Michaels, whose personal income funds their projects—to take much greater risks than other groups. “The opportunity cost is much lower,” explains Winkelstein. When a traditionally funded project fails or stalls, “you’ve basically lost a bet and that makes people risk-averse. We’re betting on impact, not financial return, because we use the same re-paid funds to make multiple bets over and over. It allows us to take more risks.”

But, like every funder, ORA insists on regular reporting. “When we accept an applicant, it has specific measurables for the short term and we talk to them four times a year, plus a full report at year’s end,” says Michaels. “We make as much effort to judge our [own] effort as anything else.”

Their decisions—made quickly, with applications accepted on a rolling basis—are sometimes a “no-brainer” and sometimes, Michaels admits, “we’re teetering on the edge of ‘Is this risk unacceptable?’ We don’t expect every project to be perfect.”

Michaels urges other foundations, and grant applicants, to be far more open and honest about their projects’ potential difficulties. “One of our goals is to have a discussion of risk, and planning for risk as a normal part of any grant application. At the moment, there’s no place to openly address what could go wrong. Not vaguely, but matter-of-factly so I know what they’re up for. What’s your Plan B? Plan C?”

The two—who work from offices in D.C. and Aspen, and without a board of directors—researched their unusual model for a year before starting the organization, consulting other non-profits and philanthropists to determine who they would fund, and under what circumstances. “One of the critical criteria is that the problem be unexpected. Could it have been anticipated? Some of our applicants’ stories are heart-wrenching, but they won’t get funded,” says Winkelstein.

“The unexpected is not a sign of incompetence, but a sign of the world.” After all, she adds, “the private sector calls it a pivot.”

“We believe that philanthropy is going through a fundamental shift, from a charity model to an investment model,” says Winkelstein. “It’s changing from donors’ desires and intentions to seeing this work as an investment, doing good to actually achieve results. That’s where the trends are and the more sophisticated funders are going. They use metrics and look at ROI, an attitude that didn’t exist 20 years ago.”

In their autonomy, sense of urgency and willingness to ask tough, perhaps uncomfortable questions, Michaels and Winkelstein know they’re often working outside typical philanthropic norms. But for ORA, urgency is standard operating procedure.

 

Feeling inspired? If you’re ready to begin your own Be Fearless journey start by downloading our free Be Fearless Action Guide and Case Studies.

Be Fearless Spotlight: Fail Forward

Posted on by Case Foundation

This Spotlight is authored by guest writer Caitlin Kelly as part of a special blog series by the Case Foundation featuring Be Fearless stories from the field. Follow along with us as we meet people and learn about organizations that are taking risks, being bold and failing forward in their efforts to create transformative change in the social sector. 

 

Can you make a living—and help others succeed—by failing? Ashley Good, founder of Toronto-based Fail Forward, likes to think so, though it took a lot of personal failure before she figured this out.

Good wasn’t always so easily categorized as a risk-taker. She got her start studying geophysics and environmental science at the University of British Columbia, after which she had the opportunity to work with the United Nations in Cairo—a sobering experience that taught her “how complex the problems are and how inadequate the solutions.” Later, Good worked as a consultant in the oil and gas industry, flying in and out of Fort McMurray, Alberta, and with Engineers without Borders Canada in Ghana. It was when she followed a sweetheart to Ghana that she first encountered risk head-on.

“I ended up heartbroken, unemployed, living in my parents’ basement in Toronto,” she recalls. “Everything I’d poured my heart and soul into hadn’t gone anywhere. I very much needed a way of dealing with failure.” Good was inspired to take on the leadership of writing a report to document the failures of Engineers without Borders Canada.

Her analysis garnered her a lot of attention. As she puts it, “Failure needed me, as well.” Speaking truth to power demanded a special sort of fearlessness, she says, and that report “played a provocateur role. It was taboo to discuss failure openly, especially to the international development sector and especially charities. It was a learning tool.”

Naiveté helped. “I don’t think I appreciated how dangerous it was when I walked into it,” she laughs. “The failure I was describing was not a question of the quality of effort being applied. The entire system is one of power and ego at its heart.” She admits her own role in this: “In Ghana, I saw a problem and wanted to contribute to a solution. I wanted to succeed!”

Today, as she helps others cope with and mitigate their own painful failures, “it actually starts with decoupling ego from activity. The higher up you get in the hierarchy there’s so much at stake, millions of dollars, all those people who believed in you, who believed that you had the answer…”

“My work asks people to talk about their failures which is painful,” she says. “You have to be true to how that feels for you. Failure looks very different depending how much power you have. Your role is key.” Failing is painful because “we tend to build our identities around certain labels: smart, hardworking, personable, successful, etc. Failure often puts those labels into question, so being fearless in the face of failure is difficult if we don’t have an understanding of what we can hold onto that goes deeper than those labels and allows us to remain a healthy, whole human being. We don’t talk about it enough. Our economic contribution is valued above our spiritual or wise selves.”

The fearless piece of Good’s work is often conceptual—breaking long-held and cherished notions of what works. “We have to stop talking about solutions! If the problem we’re trying to solve had a ‘solution’ it would have been done. Instead we often have no idea! We have some little sparks of ideas but we’ll go into these massive complex problems,” sometimes investing a decade of one’s life and work to solving them.

Key to success, says Good, is redefining what it means to fail. “The word failure is an interesting one,” she says. “I don’t think anyone can be truly fearless. At our best and most courageous, we feel our fear and do it anyway. I do love the spirit of fearlessness… Everything we do has elements of failure and success when we’re involved in something complex.”

Good began her work focusing on the non-profit sector, but, as she quickly learned, everyone fails and everyone needs help figuring out what went wrong. Today she works with foundations, grant-makers and governments. “I really moved up to that level quite quickly,” she says. “I started to see that failure wasn’t a non-profit problem, but was really a ‘how we communicate’ problem.”

Key to examining failure without the usual shame-and-blame requires a fresh point of view—using what Good calls blameless post-mortems. With calm, open-minded discussion, failure offers a useful learning tool.

Living with fearlessness is really what Good does, while performing the fundamental work of “transforming our relationship with failure so we can solve complex problems. That’s a pretty audacious goal! There’s always a tension between optimism and clarity of which path to take.”

 

Feeling inspired? If you’re ready to begin your own Be Fearless journey start by downloading our free Be Fearless Action Guide and Case Studies.

Announcing a New Partnership to Support Young Social Entrepreneurs

Posted on by Case Foundation

The Case Foundation has long been a believer that entrepreneurs can change the world, and that young people have a particular set of skills and impact-oriented ambitions to build great social enterprises.

Today, we’re excited to announce our sponsorship of the Forbes $1 Million Change the World Social Entrepreneurs Competition – the largest ever competition for young social entrepreneurs.

Through our participation, we will support the most promising of the for-profit entrants into the competition with disruptive and scalable ideas who can best demonstrate how business can change the world.

Check out Jean Case’s blog announcing the competition—Searching for the Next Big Thing—for more information and to learn how you can get involved. Please share this opportunity with your networks of young changemakers far and wide!

Celebrating Exploration with National Geographic

Posted on by Case Foundation

This post was written by Aaron Coleman on behalf of the Case Foundation:

National Geographic has celebrated explorers for more than 120 years and each year they honor these fearless individuals by sharing their stories during Explorers Week. Through a series of panels and TED-style talks, National Geographic spotlights intellectual pioneers from around the world. This June, the Case Foundation team attended the “Explorers Week: Disrupters Panel” to hear scientists and designers discuss the triumphs and failures from their explorations. The topics varied from recycling nuclear waste to constructing urban farms, and while eclectic in subject matter, the presentations emphasized the urgent need to catalyze social and scientific change.

“Create another world if you’re not happy with the one that we have,” suggested Caleb Harper, an Urban Agriculturalist and National Geographic 2015 Emerging Explorer, who is building vertical farms to address the global food crisis. His daring proposition was echoed by fellow emerging explorer Leslie Dewan, a nuclear engineer, whose company converts nuclear waste into a “resource to be tapped instead of a liability to be disposed of.” By harnessing energy from discarded nuclear waste, Dewan and her team are working to “reduce the radioactive lifetime of the nuclear waste from hundreds of thousands of years, to a few hundred years.”

Dewan calls this a transition from “a geological timescale to a human timescale.” This concept, that a society we can fix big social problems on a human timescale, is a bold shift away from the incremental change typical of social progress; it challenges us to find solutions in our lifetime.

For too long, we have believed that some problems are too big—that tough issues should be left to gradually dissolve under the tides of time, but in this void of timid and unimaginative thinking entire communities in need have languished. Persistent social problems require bold solutions. Just because you’re faced with cumbersome legal regulations and political red tape “doesn’t mean that you have to do small scale things,” said explorer Skylar Tibbits during the closing segment. Tibbits notes that “there are lots of opportunities to innovate.”

At the Case Foundation, we stand alongside Caleb, Leslie, Skylar and countless other explorers in the belief that the impossible is possible and that we must move from a “someday timeline” to a “right now” timeline. These explorers inspire the work that we do and remind us how to be fearless in our efforts to change the world.

We encourage you to get inspired by learning about National Geographic Explorers and learning how you can Be Fearless and take on a new approach to making big change.

 

Photograph by Lynn Johnson, National Geographic Photography Fellow

 

It’s In Our Jeans: How One Clothing Brand Conquered Fear

Posted on by Case Foundation

This post was written by J.D. Brady on behalf of the Case Foundation:

Few changemakers embody the Be Fearless mantra quite like Levi Strauss & Co. and its Foundation. For more than 160 years, the brand has implemented a unique approach to investing in causes. As a company, they have always strived to go first. In fact, they were one of the first brands to help fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic; their work force was racially integrated years before Civil Rights legislation was implemented; and the company was one of the first to offer domestic partner benefits. Levi Strauss & Co. developed “the code that launched a thousand codes” when it became one of the first companies to create a “code of conduct” determining how contractors must treat workers and the expectation of contractors to produce a quality environment in which to work.

Just last year the Case Foundation featured the Foundation as a Be Fearless case study. Led by executive director Daniel Jae-Won Lee, the Foundation makes big bets and causes they are invested in and was one of the first to set aside dedicated funds for an experimental, “innovation” portfolio. Each year roughly 15 to 20 percent of their budget is directed to potentially transformative projects and their leaders with great ideas.

In advance of MCON this month, Daniel shares his lessons learned at the helm of the foundation and how his team has worked to solve some of society’s most pressing social issues. We look forward to hearing him share his insights at MCON 2015.

CF: Part of your emphasis as an organization is improving worker well-being at apparel companies located in communities where your products are made. Tell us more about these efforts and what impact you have made.

DL: We have a longstanding commitment to improve the well-being and rights of people who make our products. Levi Strauss & Co. has invested more than $10 million in the past fifteen years on factory-based programs to enhance the health, financial security, life skills and awareness of apparel workers. But here’s the catch: when we asked how many of these terrific initiatives were sustained in the factory beyond our initial funding, the answer was resounding — zilch.

Out of this came a new business approach: Improving Worker Well-being. Our foundation is supporting efforts by Levi Strauss & Co. to foster the ownership and sustainability of these programs among key vendors in the supply chain, based on the premise that what is good for workers is also good for business. We recognize a lynchpin to factory ownership is measuring the social and business impact of these worker programs. Studies have shown that for every dollar invested in women’s health on the factory floor, there are three or four dollars of return in terms of improved productivity and reduced absenteeism. It won’t be turnkey or overnight success, but the company is committed to working with its key suppliers over the next five years to generating this business and social value – and making Improving Worker Well-being a way of doing business.

CF: What are the greatest challenges facing communities today? What are some ways the Levi Strauss Foundation is addressing these challenges?

DL: In the United States and across the globe, the rise of income inequality is one of the most critical issues of our time. It is striking to see both Democrats and Republicans speaking on this topic in the prelude to the 2016 Presidential election. The Levi Strauss Foundation has invested $7.5 million in asset building programs since 2007. These allow low-income people not merely to gain an income but also generate savings and invest in long-term assets like education or a home. More recently we joined SF Gives, a collaborative effort spearheaded by the anti-poverty champion, Tipping Point, and Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce. The initiative takes a full-circle approach by bringing together companies from across the Bay Area – including many new players from the technology sector – to leverage their support, employees and influence to address poverty in the Bay Area.

CF: What is one of the biggest bets that the Levi Strauss Foundation has made since its inception?

DL: In 1982, Levi Strauss & Co. was among the first corporations to respond to HIV/AIDS (even before it had a name, when it emerged a mysterious and deadly virus) due to its impact on our employees. One year later, our foundation was the first to help fund the fight against the epidemic. More than 30 years later, this global epidemic is expanding in key markets like Russia, China, India, South Africa and the United States. Due to stigma and discrimination, those people and groups who bear the brunt of this epidemic are viewed as not worthy of having rights.

In the early days of the epidemic, our funding helped seed and grow many incredible organizations – first in San Francisco and eventually in over thirty countries around the globe. Today, the Levi Strauss Foundation is proudly supporting the human rights response to this global epidemic, an approach that receives less than one percent of total HIV/AIDS funding. Only by changing discriminatory laws, bad public health policies and stigmatizing cultural practices – and cultivating those groups most impacted by HIV/AIDS as advocates and agents of change – can we claim victory over this disease and cultivate an AIDS-free generation.

This is the first in a series of blog posts featuring speakers from MCON 2015. Check back to learn about more innovators and leaders from the private, nonprofit and public sectors. Also, be sure to tune in to the live stream of MCON on June 24th and 25th!

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