President’s Letter
“We are all faced with a series of
great opportunities—brilliantly
disguised as insoluble problems.”
JOHN GARDNER
Imagination is a powerful force. The human capacity to look at a problem, and imagine a way to solve it, lies at the heart of the progress and innovation for which our nation is so justly proud.
At the moment our country, and the Midwest in particular, face a host of challenges, many of which are rooted in the most serious economic downturn since World War II. Devastated communities, historically high unemployment rates, declining incomes, and spiraling foreclosures are painful reminders of these challenges. Under such circumstances, it would be easy to be pessimistic about our ongoing efforts to close the black-white achievement gap in our schools, reduce gun violence, save the environment, and retrain and find jobs for displaced workers. After all, one might ask, how can we hope to make progress on these and other tough issues when the deck seems stacked against us?
But there are good reasons for optimism. For example, Washington has become more open to new ideas and strategies; the national leaders are reaching out aggressively to the nation’s sprawling nonprofit sector for policy expertise and proposed solutions. At the state level too, governors and legislatures are turning increasingly to foundation-supported policy research and development groups in their efforts to balance budgets without further burdening those most in need of state services. In short, the idea that failure is not an option is very much alive, and that’s good news.
The convergence of an economic crisis, new leadership, and growing public support for change has opened up fresh opportunities to deal with much of the country’s unfinished business. That’s why the Joyce Foundation continues to make long term investments in a wide range of people and organizations who are in the business of imagining and testing new and sometimes unconventional policy approaches to challenges in the areas of public education, workforce development, environmental protection, public safety, government accountability, and the arts. In investment terms, our support for these groups can be thought of as patient capital, which means taking the long view, encouraging experimentation, challenging prevailing orthodoxies, and understanding and moving beyond unavoidable setbacks. Instead of expecting or demanding immediate and uniformly positive returns on our investments, the Foundation’s strategy typically involves long term support necessary for developing promising ideas, critically evaluating the results, and energetically promoting those that have the greatest potential for success and replication.
In 2008, some of those long term commitments began to pay off. After a 15 year effort to protect water in the Great Lakes from being sold or diverted to other regions, a Compact governing water withdrawals was ratified by all eight Great Lakes state legislatures and two Canadian provinces; was passed by both houses of the U.S. Congress; and was signed into law by President George W. Bush. And after five years of developing the case, access to high quality teachers for low-income children has become a central theme among education reform leaders, unions, and state and federal policy makers who seek to reduce the appalling achievement gap between white and minority students. Similarly, our focus on adult workers—ensuring they are better prepared for jobs in the new economy and improving community colleges and other programs meant to support them—has become top of mind because of the economy. Our grantees’ innovative thinking and their patient and often painstaking work to move these ideas through complex state bureaucracies that are often resistant to change, are gaining traction and meeting with success.
Today’s economic crisis may be the immediate impetus for change. But the fact that potential solutions are available to address some of the very tough problems, with research to back them up, is due to the insight, energy, and persistence of individuals and groups who saw those problems coming in the first place and responded with imagination and creativity. Foundations like Joyce, and our many good partners in philanthropy, can continue to provide the long term backing necessary to bring the best of society’s new thinking to bear on the challenges before us.
Now is the time to actively promote implementation of the best ideas, with active attention to evaluating what works and what does not, to help shape the nation’s future well-being.
Ellen S. Alberding, President
July 2009