2016 Annual Conference - Call for Abstracts
Call for Abstracts
The Council’s Annual Conference is animated by the ideas, experiences, and innovations that are happening every day in philanthropy. This year, our Call for Abstracts provides the broader field with the opportunity to shape the conference programming. Our hope is that colleagues will share their ideas, innovative approaches, knowledge, and expertise. Moreover, the Call for Abstracts serves as way to ensure that philanthropy is open to a wide variety of ideas and perspectives.
The Council respectfully requests that submissions through the Call for Abstracts focus on our theme -- The Future of Community including changes around identity, purpose and place.
Conference Frame
The theme of the 2016 Annual Conference is The Future of Community - Identity. Purpose. Place. All foundations, regardless of type or size, are thinking critically about how community is changing in an increasingly diverse, digital, and global age. Every foundation is in some way concerned with the future of community. The strategic grants, investments, and collaborations of today inform the communities of tomorrow. For this year’s conference, we will frame our discussions around the Future of Community through the lens of its three critical aspects:
Identity
With changes in demographics, technology and an increasingly mobile world, individuals are choosing to identify and create community in different ways.
Purpose
A shared purpose unites individuals into community; creating a shared concern around core issues and beliefs. Yet, despite new tools and resources for communication, forging consensus and collaboration remain challenging.
Place
Geography grounds individuals in a shared experience, yet the role of place in defining the future of community -- local, rural, national, global or virtual – is changing.
Focus Areas
Importantly this conference takes place during the 2016 Presidential Election year and presents us with a unique opportunity to discuss prevalent issues communities face. Though the election will focus attention on a wide variety of important issues, we have seen increased interest among our members in three topical issues that merit focused attention.
In particular, we will provide expert-level discussions on grantmakers’ work around:
Justice Reform
The United States has the largest prison population in the world, and many are routinely denied access to the civil legal processes that might help them overcome the pressing problems of everyday life, like home foreclosures, landlord disputes, custody cases, and unfair employment. Although a divisive topic in the past, today leaders of both parties have forged consensus around the need for bold action to fix this broken system. By examining large aspects of the justice system, including law enforcement, civil legal processes, and incarceration, this conference programming will look at the best ways that grantmakers can invest in meaningful reforms.
Education & Skill Acquisition
In today’s workforce, the ideal employee must constantly adapt to new bodies of knowledge. To date, our current education system has not prepared our youth for this future and existing certificates degrees, and other traditional markers of expertise no longer guarantee successful careers. Foundations are looking critically at investments that support essential skill acquisition as well as improve existing educational institutions. To cultivate talent and adaptive skills that can keep workers at pace with a shifting global economy, grantmakers have also begun investing in new strategies for lifelong learning and skill development. These conference sessions will examine thes e pilot efforts that grantmakers have crafted to prepare a modern workforce.
Climate Change: Disaster & Disruption
Climate change will continue to disrupt civil society as natural disasters increase, infrastructure is damaged, and populations shift because of new natural systems. Governments at all levels are expanding capacity to prepare for more frequent and severe disasters in many different places. With its ability to catalyze innovation, the philanthropic sector is looking at private/public partnerships and civic engagement among other strategies to address this increasing need. Conference sessions will surface on how grantmakers are addressing the global need for disaster preparation and impact on other issue areas.
Abstracts submitted for the 2016 Annual Conference must address one of the themes identity, purpose and place. An abstract that addresses the theme topics may also drill down and adress one of the three 2016 Presidential Election topical issues. A submitted abstract that does not focus on one of the three themes, identity, purpose and place will not be considered. However a session does not have to address the topical issues of justice reform, education & skill acquisition and climate change to be considered. Each of these issues have been designed to engage us in answering tough questions, seeking new solutions and sharing what philanthropy is learning.