At the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, we remain committed to resourcing the field to develop new models for supporting people who are using leadership as a strategy for building greater equity. As distinct from our grantmaking, which which focuses on existing leadership development programs, we have developed Exploring Leadership as a learning and practice space for projects that support more sustainable, equitable, accessible, and democratic approaches to leadership.
RSCF uses the following Frameworks and Principles to determine which Exploring Leadership projects to pursue and how. These guidelines root us in our primary role as a funder and support us in creating accountable learning loops with the leadership development field.
Guiding Frameworks
We believe in Leadership Development as an Equity Strategy: Deep systemic inequities – new and old – demand that we actively work to right the balance and apply an equity lens as we support leaders from different races, ethnicities, religions, sexualities, and life experiences in creating solutions. Our grantee partners are inviting us to not only support them as individual leaders but also work to create the institutional and sector-wide conditions for them to thrive and achieve - where leadership is impactful, sustainable, and even joyful. Where leadership is aimed at the ultimate goal of liberating us all from the deep crisis we are facing as New Yorkers and Americans.
We are committed to Support Beyond the Check. The Robert Sterling Clark Foundation practices and promotes trust-based philanthropy which has six key practices. “Support beyond the check” is one. Funders have more to offer than dollars alone. Responsive, adaptive, non-monetary support bolsters leadership, capacity, and organizational health. This is especially critical for organizations that have historically gone without the same access to networks or level of support than their more established peers. We believe this makes a difference in the following ways:
Helps build the capacity and strength of leaders and organizations over time
Fosters a deeper sense of connection to grantees and their work
Creates opportunities to learn more about grantees’ work and organizational context
Acknowledges that grantee partners operate in a wider context, and offers to support them in the larger landscape of that work
Principles
Exploring Leadership Projects must:
Emerge from the experiences of our grantee partners and field partners
Align with our guiding frameworks (see above)
Include a ‘praxis element’ that involves funding organizations or organizational leaders who are actively exploring emerging leadership and organizational development models
Publicly document and share learnings - whether positive or not
Include an off-ramp process for direct Foundation involvement in the design or facilitation of the exploration after 3 years.
Project Design
Once a leadership question or hypothesis meets the frameworks and principles above, we move into project design - particularly around the praxis element named in our principles.
Our Practice for Managing Learning Tensions: Over the past several years, RSCF has engaged in a continuous, often-messy learning journey to develop, implement, and refine methods for gathering and sharing field perspectives in ways that acknowledge and transparently negotiate power dynamics with grant partners. We’ve learned that designing and managing the praxis element is its own negotiation, requiring us to balance the tensions between our principles around equity, trust-based philanthropy and liberatory leadership.
Each project goes through its own unique design process but most can be summarized using the following framework:
The project design begins by the Foundation and the the potential praxis partner (a field or grant partner) coming into alignment around the questions:
Who is the learning for?
How are we negotiating power?
What is driving the learning?
What are we willing to risk in the learning process?1q1
Next, both parties are given space to articulate their respective values, capacity, and desired learning.
Finally, the learning approach and overall project are co-designed with these understandings in mind.
Current Projects
The Liberatory Leadership Partnership (LLP) - The LLP work aims to bolster Black, Indigenous, people of color, women and gender non conforming-leaders through intentional capacity building to ensure long-term power as well as learn and share the ways that they are innovating around transformative leadership. Through this praxis, the leadership ecosystem has an opportunity to radically reimagine leadership and the organizational structures, frameworks, tools, capacities, and practices that scaffold the work as we support these movement leaders in their exploration.
Supporting BIPOC Leadership Transitions - In recent years we have seen more and more BIPOC leaders step into positional leadership in the organizations that RSCF supports. They, and we, wanted to learn more about the experiences of incoming BIPOC leaders, and surface strategies, policies and practices that can make these transitions easier and more joyful, and lead to the full flourishing of BIPOC leaders.
The Equitable Intermediaries Project - Our colleagues at Social Impact Commons assert that “The field of fiscal sponsorship stands at the threshold of a new era of growth and transformative potential for the nonprofit sector.” To capitalize on this moment, RSCF is working with a group of Equitable Intermediaries and funders who support them to bolster the field and leverage greater collective impact.
Alt.gov - Alt.gov is intended to take a step back and interrogate the current board structure that we use in this country and to identify alternative models that better serve and reflect the needs of 21st Century equity-focused nonprofit organizations.
Past Projects
To learn more about our Exploring Leadership work, please email EL@rsclark.org