EVENT IN BRIEF
In September 2024, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Nellie Mae Education Foundation, New Pluralists, NBC Comcast Foundation, New Commonwealth Fund, Best Buy, Prudential and other funders along with the heads of the McKnight Foundation and Blue Meridian Partners, partnered with BMe Community to convene 166 of their peer funders and communications firms at the Next Narrative Summit. There they learned how to use Asset-Framing and other practices like targeted universalism and solutions journalism to “raise billions and assist millions by denigrating no one.”
Summiteers included 127 executives from 123 organizations that control over $200 billion in assets, grant over $10.1 billion annually, and create the narratives that shape society’s perceptions of who is entitled to Live Own Vote and Excel in America and abroad.
HIGHLIGHTS
How We Invest Billions For Equity and You Could Too
Tonya Allen
President
McKnight Foundation
Have a compelling vision that is solution based that can get you to some level of scale [...]. Start where you are, start where your vision is, make it compelling, and enlist as many people who have the same vision as you and make sure it's not about you [...]. I need you to fund this vision because we all can do this work together.
100%
Found that the plenary session gave them information or ideas that they can use to increase their impact.
Restoring Rights and Cleaning the Slate: Leaders Turning Pain Into Purpose
100%
Found value in the plenary session, with 77% describing it as transformational and 14% considering it very important to the field.
Desmond Meade
President
Florida Restoration Rights Coalition
You don't have to be a billionaire, you don't have to be a politician to have an impact in your community, your state, or even the world. If that guy who was addicted to crack cocaine and homeless and in and out of prison and jail, could be one of the 100 most influential people in the world, then what does that say about me [...]? We could shed all of those negative stereotypes. We could set all those things that try to make us think that we're less than or we're limited in what we can do.
The Next Narrative For Health Equity
The margin of error is high for philanthropy because we can take risks that our other partners don't afford to take. We're meant to create space, to grow and develop. But if it's not consequential, and we don't think it's going to be consequential, why do it?
Allyn Brooks-LaSure
Vice President, Communications
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
This is the third time I’ve participated in an asset-framing training and it was still as relevant and informative as the first time. I’m walking away with greater clarity on how to use asset-framing more strategically in service to our mission.
WALLACE FOUNDATION
Kudos to Prudential for doing the work to reveal how racial equity awareness building can lead to a double bottom line competitive advantage.
LIVING CITIES
The Q&A segment of the session was phenomenal. The audience was so thoughtful and so engaged. The conversation around the power of a new plurality along with the importance of eradicating the zero sum were very impactful.
ACT
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