Grantbook is excited to announce the launch of The More Good Podcast—a 5-part audio series that explores the intersections of philanthropy and technology.
One of the perks of working at Grantbook is the opportunity to have in-depth, nuanced conversations with folks in the sector about their challenges and their successes—and in those conversations, we see that the path from setting a strategy to sharing the success story can be rocky, and downright difficult. And so—like so many other people in pandemic lockdown—we turned a few of those conversations into a podcast to reflect those hard won lessons and victories back to the sector.
We started this series because we wanted to provide a channel for people in philanthropy and technology to describe their own journeys and share these experiences with others. So in November and December of 2020, we sat down with grants managers, IT directors, and foundation leaders for some candid conversations about their technology journeys.
Here's a list of our episodes for you to check out:
Episode 1: System Selection and Implementation With Karen Guile
We sat down with Karen Guile, Grants Administration Manager at Health Forward Foundation, to talk about the Foundations journey from knowing they needed a new GMS solution, through the selection process, and into a difficult implementation.
Episode 2: Digital Maturity and Cybersecurity with Charles Boname
We sat down with Charles Boname, Director of IT at the Vancouver Foundation, to talk about the journey to digital maturity in a community foundation, and the significant shifts in the technology landscape over the past 6 years, and what those shifts mean for cybersecurity.
Episode 3: How Digital Strategy Enables Innovation with Wendy Rinella
We sat down with Wendy Rinella, CEO of the Oakville Community Foundation, to talk about the foundation’s journey from paper-based processes to a digitally mature operating model that enables innovation.
Episode 4: Platform Vs. Product with Jonathan Mergy
In this episode, we were joined by Jonathan Mergy, who at the time of this recording was the Director of IT for Tides, to talk about the systems needed in complex organizations.
Episode 5: Operationalizing Trust Based Philanthropy with Ashley Clark
We sat down with Ashley Clark, Knowledge and Grants Manager at The Libra Foundation, to talk about how technology enables values driven work, particularly the principles of Trust Based Philanthropy.
Come see us at PEAK2021! We’re thrilled to be leading a session on May 6th at 3pm, Where Intention Meets Action: Operationalizing Trust Based Philanthropy. Or swing by the exhibitor hall to chat with one of our friendly team members—we’ll be there throughout the conference!
Teaser Episode Transcript:
Wendy:
We started at the end of 2017 to begin the transition in the last quarter. And then we did the transition for all of 2018. And so, we had no idea we were getting ready for a pandemic.
Charles:
The scarier stats are, since the pandemic happened, these [cyber] attacks are up about 600%. I think that's a pretty accurate quote. And they're getting more and more expensive [both to prevent and address].
Jonathan:
Dealing with this decision-making around the build or buy, there's different ways to address it, but ideally, you want to be able to buy a solution. Ideally, you would love to be able to step into something and say, "Great, this is awesome."
Karen:
And we talk all the time about out of the box. What does it cost out of the box? What's the solution out of the box? And the truth is, there's very few solutions that can meet your needs out of the box.
Ashley:
Who is at the intersection of a lot of the challenges that we're seeking to solve? We see people of colour working hard, working hard because they're having to navigate through these issues, and working hard because they have solutions and they want to solve these issues. And so when we think about who we're funding, we're also trying to find the organizations, we're seeking to fund the organizations that are led by people of colour in particular.
James Law:
In philanthropy, we know that the path from setting strategy to seeing success can be a little difficult. In this series, we dig into the experiences of grantmakers, figuring out this journey for themselves, to help us all better understand how to operationalize our mission and our vision.
I'm James Law, Director of Innovation here at Grantbook, and this is The More Good Podcast. We started this series because we wanted to provide a channel for people in philanthropy and technology to describe their own journeys and share these experiences with others. So in November and December of 2020, we sat down with grants managers, IT directors, and foundation leaders for some candid conversations about their technology journeys.
As you'll hear on the first season of The More Good Podcast, technology is so much more than just a tool. It's a part of the foundation that enables grantmaking organizations to make the world a better place.
Over these five episodes, we talk about the triggers for selecting a new system and the process of implementation, trends and risks in the philanthropy tech landscape, the journey from paper-based processes to digital maturity, and the inspiring ways that tech enables innovation as a values driven sector.
Of course then, we have to cover the strategies for managing such massive amounts of change. We hope that you'll follow along over the next few weeks as we share these conversations.
Subscribe to The More Good Podcast wherever you get your audio to make sure you don't miss an episode. Learn more about Grantbook at grantbook.org. And feel free to reach out to let us know what you think of the podcast.
We hope that sharing these lessons will you and your organizations unlock the transformative power of technology to do more good, even better.
