Anne Krantz, President of the Eva Gunther Foundation, with Jahanara Romney, Executive Director of Camp Winnarainbow

Amy Ahlers, Grantwriter from Community Music Center, Jenny Lam, Executive Director of GirlVentures, and Maria Schell Hassid, Program Director from Project AVARY

On October 22, 2009, we had our third annual networking lunch for our past and current grantee organizations and other allied organizations at Farina Restaurant in San Francisco. For a full report, click here. Our goal with these events is to learn what the organizations are thinking about, and to get information to help focus our programs more closely. This year, we wanted to present our thinking about our collaboration program and see what everyone thought about it. Attendees overwhelmingly agreed that networking was worthwhile, and helped us understand the necessities to maintaining good collaborations, which includes not only having program goals in common but also shared values, dividing labor amongst partners equitably, and having their boards’ support for these efforts. Many organizations noted that organizational development priorities could get addressed through collaboration, such as marketing and publicity, professional development, and board development, and similarly displayed many of their strengths in developing strong organizations that they could share with other agencies. In addition, there was much interest in learning more about each others’ programs so they could increase access to services for their beneficiaries. It was suggested that our next events take the form of “brown bag” discussions where agencies and experts can share experiences around various organizational development issues.

Participant survey results indicate that people were most interested in working together on sharing relevant research and statistics, coordinating information about related programs and services, and publicity efforts. Because of this, we are working to list research and related resources on our website, have collated information about all of our programs and shared this with the organizations invited to the luncheon, created a social networking site for our organizations to continue communicating with each other, and are beginning to identify press opportunities for our collaboration program organizations.

The Eva Foundation is honored to be able to have a role in facilitating cooperation and engagement amongst this extraordinarily dedicated and hardworking community! Some cooperative work has already started in the wake of the luncheon, and as we hear them we’ll share these stories.