What is working toward our collective vision?
What is working against it?

With these questions in mind, Blue Sky community members co-created this force field analysis at our last convening. As we prepare for our next gathering in the Bay Area in October 2024, Blue Sky is hosting a series of virtual Force Forums. Through these sessions, Blue Sky members will engage thought leaders and leverage their own collective experience, wisdom, and thinking to impact the forces working for and against us realizing our shared vision – a world where everyone has the right and opportunity to experience meaningful connections to the outdoors that improve the quality of life, health, and social wellbeing.

Blue Sky members and movement leaders identified three forces working for our vision: 1) Power Sharing, 2) New Leaders / Community Voice, and 3) Narrative.

Power sharing will be the focus of our first session, held on May 14 (3:00 – 4:15 pm ET / 12:00 – 1:15 pm PT). The session will highlight a spectrum of power shifts in philanthropy from building community voice on a family foundation board to fully community-led grantmaking. Our speakers Nancy Bales, Executive Director of the Grey Family Foundation, Rajiv Khanna, Vice President of the Center for Transforming Philanthropy at Thousand Currents, and Nwamaka Ngbo, CEO of Kataly & Managing Director of the Restorative Economies Fund, will:

• Compare and co-create definitions of power,
• Describe what power-sharing means in the context of their own philanthropic practice,
• Discuss challenges and opportunities they have encountered as they deepen power sharing in their work, and
• Lift up examples of power sharing in philanthropy generally, and how we may advance this practice across our sector.

This session will be open to all funders. A follow-up session (date TBD), Force Forum #2: Sharing Power – Strategies, Tactics, and Action, will be for Blue Sky members only, where we will facilitate small group discussions to surface actions toward shifting power on individual, organizational, and systemic levels.

Our Speakers:

Nancy Bales
Executive Director, Grey Family Foundation
Nancy Bales is the Executive Director of the Gray Family Foundation, a supporting organization within the Oregon Community Foundation (OCF), and a member of the Executive Leadership team at OCF. Nancy came to this role after more than a decade with the Portland-based conservation organization Ecotrust, supporting their work to build a resilient economy. Leading Gray Family Foundation since 2014, Nancy champions opportunities to help restore and deepen connections for all people in Oregon to our communities and the natural world. She believes that all youth deserve the opportunity to learn in, thrive and appreciate the outdoors so they can grow to become informed and engaged champions for our natural environments.

In this role, she led a coalition in the successful passage of the bill creating a statewide outdoor school education program for Oregon’s fifth & sixth grade students and worked to secure public funding for the program through a ballot initiative in 2017. She continues to be an active champion of this program at the state and national level.

She was a founding board member of Blue Sky Funders Forum serving from 2014-2023, and currently chairing the Blue Sky Program Committee. She also served as the inaugural chair of the Oregon Outdoor School Advisory Committee at Oregon State University, and currently serves as a CARET delegate for Oregon State University Extension Services, advocating for national support and understanding of the land-grant university system programs. A rain-or-shine bike commuter, you will also find enjoying the outdoors camping, hiking and paddleboarding.

Nwamaka Ngbo
CEO of the Kataly Foundation and Managing Director of the Restorative Economies Fund
Nwamaka is the CEO of the Kataly Foundation and Managing Director of the Restorative Economies Fund. In her roles, Nwamaka collaborates with the Kataly team to lead the foundation’s day to day operations, while holding the community-centered strategy and vision for the Fund.

With a background in community organizing, electoral campaigns, policy and advocacy work on racial, social and environmental justice issues, Nwamaka is deeply committed to supporting projects that build resilient, healthy and self-determined communities rooted in shared prosperity.

Prior to joining the Kataly Team, Nwamaka built an independent consulting practice guided by her framework on Restorative Economics. As a consultant, she provided technical assistance and strategic guidance to community owned and governed community wealth building initiatives like Restore Oakland, Black Land & Power and others. Her work with these community driven projects led her to providing trainings and advisory services to donors, foundations and impact investment firms including institutions like The San Francisco Foundation and RSF Social Finance. Nwamaka has served as a fellow for the Center for Economic Democracy and the Movement Strategy Center. She proudly serves on the board of Restore Oakland, Inc. and Next River.

To relax and unwind, Nwamaka enjoys spending quiet time in her backyard savoring sips of bourbon.

Rajiv Khanna
Vice President, Center for Transforming Philanthropy
A native of Bombay, Rajiv is excited to lead a new initiative at Thousand Currents called the Center for Transforming Philanthropy, which will undertake research, knowledge production, and donor education and advocacy to shift the philanthropic sector towards solidarity and social justice practices. Rajiv is a recovering academic, who was professionally trained as a historian of international relations with expertise in Modern Europe, South Asia, and the Cold War. In addition to designing and teaching college courses, he has led the Indian Diaspora Oral History Project, a community-centered project focused on South Asian immigrants in Silicon Valley at San Jose State University. Rajiv has a BA in English and History from Newman University, and a Master’s in History from The Ohio State University. He currently serves on the Board of the EDGE Funders Group. A cricket fanatic, Rajiv is a published poet and writer who enjoys cooking, the outdoors, the ocean, reading, and traveling.

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Missed the Session? Resources Here!

Resources shared:

• Philanthropy & Power, SSIR supplement 
• The Decolonizing Child and Youth Philanthropy Framework

Organizations lifted up:

• CS Fund 
• Democracy Frontlines Fund 
• Marguerite Casey Foundation
• Divest-Invest program at Wallace Global Fund

Quotes offered:

Power without love is reckless and abusive. Love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

“I don’t believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person. I have a lot to learn from other people.” ~ Eduardo Galeano