June 24, 2004

ALLIANCE CONFERENCE KEYNOTE SPOTLIGHT: Wendy Puriefoy

by Brigette Rouson


“To stop at competency, skill and confidence — is halfway down the road.  The other part of the road is democracy and community building.  Ultimately it’s about being able to create a just and sane world.”

— Wendy Puriefoy

 

puriefoyIn the 50th anniversary year of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, one of the premier advocates of equity in education is just as passionate as when she worked with Arthur Garrity to desegregate Boston’s public schools.  In her current roles, Wendy Puriefoy, who opens the Alliance annual conference on Thursday, August 12 as keynote speaker, is also a nonprofit executive, grantmaker, capacity builder—and ardent proponent of a nonprofit sector that generates “private effort for public good.”

 “It’s movement building...the work I’ve done all my life,” she says of her leadership.  As President of the Public Education Network (PEN), she brings experience not only in education but in philanthropy.  Puriefoy once served as number two executive of the Boston Foundation, chaired the board of the Ms. Foundation for Women, and now serves on the board of a 501(c)(4) started by the Ms. Foundation, The White House Project.  Also, Puriefoy has for years provided grants through PEN to local education funds (LEFs).  LEFs are coalitions of community-based organizations that promote equity in and for public schools.

Now she wants to sound a reminder that many of the most important changes in public policy, and some would say social practice, have come about largely through the efforts of nonprofits.  It is a lesson from Brown v. Board of Education—which as she points out became possible due to nonprofit institutions such as Howard University, the NAACP, foundations and individual donors, who supported or directly took on research, strategy formation, advocacy, mobilization, etc.  The landmark case and recurring efforts to achieve equity in education furnish a set of insights that enrich nonprofit capacity building, refocusing attention not only on responsibilities but on results.  She points out the danger of continuing to hold central the state of the economy and wealthy interests—rather than realizing equity.  “We’ve had so much dominance of the market in our lives that it’s become an internal standard.  The might of the market has replaced our values.”

Ruth McCambridge, Editor in Chief of The Nonprofit Quarterly and a colleague of Puriefoy’s from their days at the Boston Foundation, sees the upcoming keynote as both truth session and inspiration as she brings “her perspective of the historical impact of the nonprofit sector on some of the thorniest issues in this country—race, class, and gender.  She carves that fundamental reality into a charge for the future.”

Perhaps no one is more aware than PEN’s executive director of the soul-searching that will be required.  “As local education funds have done their work,” Puriefoy acknowledges, “people have often questioned what gives them the authority, the right, to do this work” calling attention to the need for policy change and resources to achieve equity.  “They have felt at some times a loss as to how to address the question.  Often, the question comes from the school system when advocates are pushing hard for change.”

Indeed, “the question of what their role is, and how they do it, is important for any nonprofit organization as they begin to challenge the systems and structures that affect the delivery of the thing that they’re trying to change,” says Puriefoy.  Mindful of that concern, she recalls bringing Alliance member Lester Salamon (Johns Hopkins University) to a conference “to help remind and reground and establish for the local education funds the fact that they are in communities, they’re made by communities, they work by and for communities,” and are guided by the community interests.  At the same time, they are affected by the identity or image nonprofits may have at a given time—accountability scandals or the fact that entities such as the New York Stock Exchange has tax-exempt status as a nonprofit.

The distinction to be made is whether organizations are genuinely seeking the common good. “That’s the foundation,” says Puriefoy. “Then the issues become 'what is it that nonprofit organizations should be paying attention to?'... So there are a set of questions that I would raise. Whose interests are being served by your work?  What are the ways in which you exercise compassion and empathy in your work?”  And she adds, “You have a particular project you may be working on, but what is the project’s participation in the role of the sector... ultimately helping more and more people and communities live and participate in a democratic society?”

Marie C. Wilson, President of The White House Project, which works toward women’s inclusion at the highest levels of public and corporate office, first met Puriefoy 20 years ago in the foundation community.  She considers herself fortunate that Puriefoy served a decade as chair of the board for the Ms. Foundation for Women, where Wilson has been president and is now passing the torch.

“What is so strong about her,” says Wilson, “is that she understands and trusts people that are working at a community level...at every level.  She also has information about foundation politics and [at the global level]. She has a huge picture of what’s important at the very top of governments and schools and the concerns of the world.”

This focus on change does not begin or end with the substance of issues or program areas;  it has as much to do with the way that nonprofits structure themselves, their organizational capacity, how they operate day to day, and their will to contribute to change efforts.  “One of the challenges in doing that is that, all along the way—from board to staff to project to how people understand their specific work in relation to the whole—it’s very hard to keep mindful of and be aligned and doing good work” for long-range, ambitious goals.  Funders, in particular, have a dilemma.  “Funders want projects to succeed.  How do you help projects succeed in the short term and advance the mission in the long term?”
 
As McCambridge explains, when Puriefoy enters into dialogue with others dedicated to strengthening nonprofits, “She talks about the women’s movement and the civil rights movement as having enormous impact, including economic impact, and that kind of tradition we need to reclaim.” 

Wilson sees an enormous opportunity in listening to Wendy Puriefoy.  “What I love about her is she trusts other people because she trusts herself.  She’s connected to her experience, her family, her community,” says Wilson.  “That’s what works to empower communities.  That’s what’s powerful about her.”

She adds, from her own experience: “One of the things that I’ll never forget is when we were working here at The White House Project on... bringing women’s leadership into every level, and Wendy was at the table.  She has always been about ‘Leadership for what?’ and she is not afraid to speak.  She kept coming back and saying ‘To what end? For what?’”

In the final analysis, Puriefoy urges the independent sector to be the “third eye”—a center of visionary thinking that addresses whether the government or business sector are held accountable when they have “gone too far, and justice can’t be served.”

 “For the past 13 years, we’ve been trying to work at this same thing—building the competency and capacity of these organizations to be able to work at issues of systemic school reform,” says Puriefoy.  For what?  Not just for students to be smarter, but to work in communities in ways that... serve as a clear mirror about the effectiveness of democracy... so that people know they’re participating in a democratic life.”

 

Join us for an inspiring keynote at the Alliance Annual Conference on Thursday evening "A Role Beyond Service," August 12 in Washington, DC, that will help reconnect our work to our broader mission of creating, as Wendy Puriefoy puts it, a “just and sane world.”  

 

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