IgKnight Philadelphia connects and inspires grantees
2014 Philadelphia Grantee Gathering at The Free Library of Philadelphia.
Gregory Walker is managing and creative director of The Brothers Network, a 2012 Knight Arts Challenge winner. RELATED LINKS
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Last month Siobhan Reardon, president and director of the Free Library of Philadelphia, welcomed Knight grantees to her institution for IgKnight Philadelphia. The second annual gathering opened with one of the most compelling yet harrowing stories most of us had ever heard.
The executive director of First Person Arts, Jamie Brunson, shared a personal story of loss, fear, shame, reconciliation and affirmation. At 10 in the morning, each of us sat erect in our seats, hanging on her every word. Words turned into sentences, sentences turned into stories, and stories turned into the human experience. Jamie’s first-person account of humility and humanity got our morning off to a great start and placed First Person Arts front and center. Jamie presented herself as a brilliant model for exactly what First Person Arts does so well as a Knight grantee.
In the vein of storytelling that springs from the tradition of the newspapers operated by the Knight brothers, David Clayton of Ignite Philly introduced amazing IgKnight talks that spanned the history and culture of jazz, high-tech mapping and the importance of engaging broad and diverse communities at their doorsteps. These stories, carefully crafted and curated, kept the flames ignited by Jamie’s opening talk burning brightly.
After a short break and a bit of refueling, grantees were treated to the brilliance of Stephanie Taylor of Dunleavy and Associates on engaging younger generations as donors and volunteers. Stephanie provided an analysis and deeper understanding of baby boomers, Generation X, Generation Y and the magnificent millennials. We sat eagerly, waiting for answers on how we might understand the magic of the millennials, who grew up in the time of flat screens and instantaneous access to one another through 140-character snippets of information. Stephanie’s analysis stressed the importance of creating multi-generational frameworks that include and engage younger generations in the way in which they choose to be engaged.
Our afternoon continued with a great box lunch in the Skyline Room of the Free Library of Philadelphia, which was a perfect backdrop to engage, inform and ignite doers, thinkers, makers, artisans, journalists, all who are a part of the Knight network in Philadelphia.
After this hearty lunch, we began to think about thinking and acting lean. Impact Hub Philadelphia Executive Director Dominique Aubry’s participatory workshop on “Practicing Lean in Social Enterprise” informed us how business practices have crept their way into the not-for-profit world. We heard about implementing new strategies that allow us to use our digital platforms to work remotely but also more accurately and smarter than ever before. Lean follows the ideals of working in an agile environment, such as a startup, where the entrepreneur is also the “intrapreneur”—the enthusiastic person of any age who pushes the mindset to quickly accomplish tasks and rapidly derive lessons from any failure. Dominique talked about the the benefits of failing fast, innovating and acting to bridge the gap, mining data from the failure to quickly assess different metrics and understanding the long-term impact of those metrics, exploring previously held assumptions, problems and risks, and quickly pivoting on the problem to eliminate waste, inefficiency and deficits.
The conclusion of our afternoon began with a wonderful presentation by Brian James of Technical.ly Philly. Brian provided concrete tools for us as makers, doers, thinkers and writers. He offered a call to action and an opportunity for Knight grantees to connect through CommitPledge.com, which matches nonprofits with civic engagement and their ability to sustain their work in the digital environment through his volunteer team of technologists, who donate their time and talent to technical needs, such as helping build websites, that align with our missions and values.
The final presentation came from Donna Frisby-Greenwood, Knight’s program director in Philadelphia, who answered questions about the Knight Cities Challenge, which was seeking ideas to make Philadelphia more successful (the finalists will be announced in January).
Knight brought forward the best and greatest minds to share their expertise with all of us in this second IgKnight Change convening. We left the Skyline Room excited and ignited for the future of Philadelphia.
Learn more about The Brothers Network at brothersnetwork.guru or follow @TheBroNet on Twitter.