Mar 11, 2011
2011 Summit for Leaders Recap
This year’s Summit for Leaders was a success! On Tuesday March 8th we welcomed over 100 foundation and nonprofit executives to Washington for our second annual public policy conference. This was a 30-percent increase in attendees over 2010, nearly half of whom were first-time attendees.
The Summit panels were well-received. We were joined in the morning by four senior Congressional staffers who shared their unique perspectives on Congress’s legislative agenda for 2011. While the conversation was largely dominated by spending issues, one theme rang clear: educating staff is paramount. As one senior Congressional staffer remarked, “The independent sector is the venture capitalists of public policy now. [Nonprofits] need to educate the freshmen offices on how you create jobs and how your grants create jobs.”
Following the Congressional panel, we held a two-part panel on advocacy. During the first part a tax expert highlighted the do’s and don’ts of advocacy. The second part was devotd to a discussion among a diverse group of panelists, which included foundations and charities from different philosophical perspectives, about how they each used advocacy as a means to advance their organization’s mission. The panelists discussed their own experiences with advocacy—at the local, national and global levels—and then fielded questions from the audience on the most effective ways to advocate.
The Summit concluded with a reception to honor Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), the Republican leader of the Senate Finance Committee. During his speech, Senator Hatch remarked that charitable giving is a vital part of the American economy, and how he will use his role on the Finance Committee to protect incentives to give.