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Today’s Northern California Grantmakers Annual meeting featured Bill Strickland, the legendary President and CEO of Manchester Bidwell Corporation in Pittsburgh. Strickland began his presentation with an emphatic statement about his belief that people are a function of their environment.  And that by providing an environment which respects and promotes the creativity and promise within each individual, even the person with the supposed lowest potential can exceed beyond expectations.  His own life story is a testament to that. Bill related this belief to his experience with philanthropic investment. He spoke of the role philanthropy can and should play in providing leveraged capital opportunities for social entrepreneurs such as himself, backing that up with example after example of success from Manchester Bidwell. Such successes are as varied as four Grammys awarded to recordings by its subsidiary MCG Live Jazz Mission; a 92% college attendance rate of their high school graduates; and award winning greenhouse orchids grown by “welfare moms” in their Horticulture Technology Program, which also supplies retail grocers.  Next for Strickland and the MBC is to scale the center concept globally.  This has already taken him to San Francisco and Grand Rapids. Brazil, South Africa, Israel, Los Angeles and Austin follow. His inspiring speech was followed by Q&A moderated in excellent style by Crystal Hayling of the Blue Shield Foundation.  Esther Kim of REDF, Vincent Stehle of Surdna, and Bridget McNamer of Skoll shared their approach and philosophy around social enterprise, innovation and leadership. Of course, as a budding funder of social enterprise, I enjoyed it all. But for any style of funder, this is the kind of offering from NCG that makes it a leader among regional associations seeking to serve the interests of its membership with current and relevant programming.

Disclosure:  I am on the board of directors of NCG