There are two challenges facing us.  As can be expected, our success is generating demand.  As more organizations, cities, and states focus on older youth and working towards the goals of Connected by 25, there is more demand for philanthropic funds. This makes it even more important that we work together strategically.

We also need to maintain a balance between our original motivation to come together as a funders’ network (which assumed that we could be more effective on behalf of youth through strategic collaboration) and the implementation of specific strategies that our members have been authorized to carry out in their foundations. 

Committed, collaborative leadership is the primary ingredient to the success of YTFG. This type of leadership is very different from just coming together as program officers who ask the question “How will this help me implement my strategy?”  Our challenge now is to balance our three functions:  continuing to engage new program officers, enabling collaborative grantmaking within the work groups, and expanding our leadership as YTFG to ensure older youth stay on the public agenda.

Without keeping the broader themes in mind, our members and work groups run the risk of not seeing as much progress in the specific areas of foster care, school dropout recovery, and juvenile justice.

Our country gets election fever. We know that it is coming, but we rarely start thinking about it before it is upon us.  If philanthropy hopes to use campaign season as a time to generate discussion on the issues in which they invest, we need to think beyond pushing messages during campaign season.

First, we have to get started much sooner if we want to influence policy development through campaign season. We are probably already too late to highly influence the agenda for 2008 through investments. Our focus should be on developing investments that may have some influence in 2008, but are primarily focused on 2010 and 2012.  Philanthropy continues to approach policy through short-term investments when what is needed are strategies that build the capacity for us to move policy over the long run. Unless foundations begin to segment their funding streams based on success rather than issues or solutions, the only way to build this capacity is through strategic coordination across foundations.

We place a lot of hope that communications or the right policy will bring about the change.  Certainly, inside advocates have proven to be very effective at times.  But we all know that the implementation of a policy is where we lose ground.  The only way to generate effective policy wins and maintain the integrity of policy through implementation is through community engagement.  Although we need to look at this more carefully, my estimate is that we should be shifting our investment portfolios to about 20% community engagement that builds public will to push policies and make sure they are carried out so that young people benefit.

Finally, we need to make sure that our grantees are the most politically savvy they can be.  It isn’t up to the foundations to put a message on the agenda during campaign season. That’s the job of grantees.  If they haven’t figured out ways to do that, then they need to learn. Or maybe we don’t have the right grantees. 

I think one of the most exciting investment opportunities is the Youth Policy Action Center, which is organizing advocates across a number of issues. With the right investments, they could become an extraordinary asset to mobilizing all of our advocates – employers, youth, parents as well as all of the youth advocates that work day after day to improve policy.

The recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to limit the use of race in school assignments is troubling. As a country, we will naturally become “color blind” as the gap is narrowed between outcomes based on the color of our skin.  The graduation gaps clearly indicate that it is obviously too early for us as a country not to keep a clear eye on race and discrimination.

I think philanthropy is just at the beginning of understanding how structural racism operates and how it impacts the way we design strategies, how they are implemented, and our effectiveness.  It will become even more important that we begin to take race and structural racism into account early in our work, rather than hoping that race-neutral approaches will somehow narrow the gap.  Equity requires us to be intentional.

There is also an irony here:  On one hand, philanthropy is just starting to get smarter about structural racism, and even starting to explore the gender issues related to why our boys, and especially our young men of color, have lower levels of achievement. On the other hand, public policy – I’m thinking of the recent Supreme Court decision – appears to be shifting towards an unwillingness to even acknowledge what’s going on with racial disparities.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out – and what role philanthropy can play in shaping the conversation.