Jamie Allison is Executive Director of the Walter & Elise Haas Fund and has served on the board of trustees of The Whitman Institute since 2014. I have worked in philanthropy for two decades and have been honored to lead the Walter & Elise Haas Fund (W&EHF) for just over four years. For over eight…
In the past week, I’ve marveled at how swiftly my non-profit and funder colleagues have adapted to the drastically changed conditions of our lives. Complex, in-person events were seamlessly hosted on virtual platforms in what seemed like a 24-hour pivot. We are all now wizards of Zoom, Blue Jeans, Skype, and other technologies for virtual…
I just recently returned from a maternity leave that was both an eternity and a blink of an eye. I was deeply and shockingly unprepared for the experience of becoming a mother, something I thought would be so natural and easy breezy for a child-loving longtime auntie and former teacher like me. Perhaps it was…
“I can’t believe the year is almost over.” “I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that it’s December.” “How is it 2019 already?!” I’ve either used or listened to variations on these sentences a lot lately. Time seems to move ever faster and events that were a just a couple months ago…
Two years ago, when Dimple Abichandani stepped in as Executive Director of the General Service Foundation, she noticed a gap between the social justice foundation’s grantmaking processes and the type of relationship they had with their grantees. Soon after, she and the GSF staff started making changes to their practices in order to fully embody…