Some people know Peter Karoff as founder of The Philanthropic Initiative, others as the wise advisor to donors and foundations and many local nonprofits, still others as a long-time member of Social Venture Partners.
The lucky ones have heard Karoff recite his beloved poems at public gatherings and address meetings of funders of nonprofits.
He cares deeply about philanthropy and social issues and has contributed immensely to these important fields.
I had the rare opportunity to interview Karoff recently in his eclectic and fascinating home office. I know you will enjoy his wise counsel and appreciate his profound intellectual curiosity.
The Heart of Nonprofits
I see two themes emerging from the nonprofit sector: one operating theme and one from the 30,000 foot level. From an operations standpoint, I am concerned about nonprofit burn-out that results from the way the system takes advantage of people.
Nonprofit workers are there because of their heart and motivation to help, yet often they aren’t paid enough to make a living.
This is particularly true in the human services field which was largely created when the government got out of human services work and nonprofits took it over.
This field deals with the toughest issues many of which are less sexy and less apt to attract donors who want to combine philanthropy with a cause they are personally engaged with, and with people with whom they identify.
This dynamic helps high-profile organizations who know how to attract donors, but often leaves out the small ones, especially those dealing with what a colleague of mine called “the wicked issues.”
I’m interested in supporting efforts to help these smaller human service nonprofits deal with this funding challenge as well as with the void created by so many senior leaders retiring.
Nonprofits Cannot Succeed Single Handedly
The second point I want to make is that nonprofits cannot solve this in isolation. Small nonprofits don’t have resources to bring in adequate funding.
Fund for Santa Barbara, Hutton Parker Foundation and Santa Barbara Foundation support nonprofit infrastructure and operational challenges, but we do not have a comprehensive support structure. I’d like to figure out how to develop that.
One thing that stands in the way of real collaboration is the fierce competition for resources. Many nonprofits have a disinclination to sit down with others in the same field who are their competitor for contracts, grants and donations.
All the management-science rhetoric around being the best and having the greatest brand sets up a dynamic for distancing and separation rather than encouraging an open and transparent collaboration.
Overall the effectiveness-movement rhetoric reinforces the problem. This movement has many positive components — it’s evidence-based and emphasizes the importance of well-run organizations, results and impact.
But pushed to extremes it also develops a toxic inward-looking culture without appropriate boundaries. Because Santa Barbara is blessed with so many nonprofits, we have this issue.
The Nonprofits Sector Needs to Go Deeper
On a different but not unrelated note, I think the nonprofit field has trouble going deep, of thinking systemically. We have a few good examples in Santa Barbara but not many.
The Foodbank, for instance, has moved over the last decade from being a place to feed the hungry to finding systemic ways to eliminate the hunger problem through better understanding of food for the whole population with a particular focus on those who do not have enough access to quality food.
The Orfalea Foundation has been a partner in this work with the Foodbank and our local schools. The Foodbank has the scale and dedicated leadership to be able to address an important issue in a deep way.
But how can you take the idea of going deeper and implement it when you aren’t the size of Foodbank? There’s an opportunity for learning and collaboration to take on this idea of going deep.
The Santa Barbara Foundation has developed two programs to encourage this sort of deeper approach. One is LEAF, which stands for Landscapes, Ecosystems, Agriculture, and Food Systems. It provides a big tent for all actors in the county to work together to co-create solutions for the major environmental questions facing the region.
The Santa Barbara Foundation is also addressing the caretaker situation. With 60,000 family members and friends acting as unpaid caretakers for the elderly and infirm in Santa Barbara, we have a large, complex issue. They are hoping to approach it in the same way as the LEAF program.
Other issues in consideration at Santa Barbara Foundation involve seeing their role as connector as well as funder. The funding needed to do this kind of research and planning is manageable, and I like this approach very much and it would be great to see other donors and foundations look at what they might do to encourage this deeper approach to issues.
The Benefits of Operational Collaboration
I see an opportunity for nonprofits to work together on topics that relate to their operations such as staffing, payroll, turnover, impact, trends in the field — all those things that are important and tough to deal with in isolation.
It would be helpful for organizations and their leaders to create a network and meet regularly for mutual support, knowledge-sharing and understanding.
For instance, look at all the organizations in town serving our youth. A collaborative approach to their work would become a powerful story for funders.
Preparing Leaders for the Future
The organization Leading from Within led by Ken Saxon, began with Courage to Lead and now includes the Katherine Harvey Fellows and the Emerging Leaders programs.
So Santa Barbara now has a large — and growing — group of leaders that have gone through these programs. The totality is poised as a network that could help lead the community to a more comprehensive approach to civic engagement.
I have been connected to these programs as an adviser, and see believe they have great potential.
So Santa Barbara County is fortunate to have leadership development in place, and the Santa Barbara Foundation thinking overall more systemically.
Orfalea Foundation will be missed — not just for their financial contributions but also because they took on some important issues in food and security areas.
About Peter Karoff
Karoff has worked as both an editor and writer. After editing a collection of essays, he has published two books of his own writing with an additional work and collection of poetry pending publication.
His first publication is Just Money, a collection of essays written by a group who had just retired from running large foundations.
Next, Karoff authored The World we Want, which attempts to frame visions of the world that some very interesting and creative people have about how the world could get to a better place.
He wrote it between 2006-08 when lots of things were going on. The themes were around what are the guiding principles if you want to move the needle on important issues.
Karoff says, “There is lots of vision in this second book, but not a lot of how to do it. I would write this book differently if I had it to do over. There are too many interviews and not enough drawing out commonalities; but it was very important for me to write it at the time and I had a lot of fun. It’s being used in a lot of academic programs.”
His upcoming book is on philanthropy. He says, “I have been going over the 180,000 plus words in my speeches books, articles and interviews in preparation for this next book. Some of the themes are as valid today as they were 25 years ago. Yet some things have moved faster than the speed of light, especially with social media, affecting the way we think.”
This next book will be in the form of a memoir “absent the ego aspect of memoir.” It is basically his own interpretation of what he has looked at and seen over the last 25 years and tying it to the trends of philanthropy and what it portends for the future. He says he wants to discover what needs to be disrupted in the current process.
A long-time student and lover of poetry, Karoff is about to publish his first book of poems, called Parable, and is due to be out in early 2017. “I am most satisfied when I am challenged intellectually,” he says. His poetry has been published and anthologized.
Karoff is founder of The Philanthropic Initiative (TPI), organization founded in 1989 that promotes philanthropy.
TPI designs, manages and evaluates philanthropic programs for individuals, families, corporations and foundations. TPI’s goal is to help donors to invest in their own values, communities and societies for maximum impact.
In addition, TPI conducts research and publishes reports, articles, monographs and curricula, designed to add value to the field, both domestically and around the world.
Since inception, TPI’s clients have invested more than $1.5 billion in a wide range of philanthropic programs and social initiatives.
Karoff was president of TPI from 1989-2002 and was a senior fellow at the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University.
For 25 years, prior to founding TPI, he worked in the insurance and real estate businesses.
Karoff has been on the board of more than 30 nonprofit organizations, including The Synergos Institute, Massachusetts Association of Mental Health, Roxbury Development Corporation and New England Foundation for the Arts, Massachusetts Business Roundtable and Business Executives for National Security.
Current board affiliations include Gerald and Henrietta Rauenhorst Foundation, Robina Foundation, Elm Foundation and Ascent Capital Management.
He was also on the board of Blackside Productions and a producer of the PBS series Eyes on the Prize.
A graduate of Brandeis University (1959), Karoff earned an MFA from Columbia University (1988) and received an honorary degree Doctor of Humane Letters from Lesley University (2002).
He was made a fellow of the MacDowell Colony in 1989, and in 2006 he became a purpose prize fellow.
Karoff has taught a graduate seminar in the UCSB global and international studies program on the moral dimension of philanthropy and social action.
Karoff and his late wife, Martha, moved to Santa Barbara in the spring of 2008. Part of the Santa Barbara attraction was that daughter Deborah lives here with her family, which includes two of the Karoff’s seven grandchildren.
— Dr. Cynder Sinclair is a consultant to nonprofits and founder and CEO of Nonprofit Kinect. She has been successfully leading nonprofits for 30 years and holds a doctorate in organizational management. To read her blog, click here. To read her previous articles, click here. She can be contacted at 805.689.2137 or cynder@nonprofitkinect.org. The opinions expressed are her own.