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The Collaboration Conference 2015

November 16–17, 2015

Houston, Texas

Partner Event: Breakfast Roundtable - Risk in Philanthropy: Survey Results

Monday, November 16, 2015 at 8:00 AM–9:00 AM CST
Imperial Ballroom (Third Level)
Description

Too often, a project developed with best practices for community collaboration collapses when unforeseen circumstances throw a wrench into the works. The reason? None of the participating parties have a Plan B, especially if the Plan B requires extra money.

 

Open Road makes grants to non-profits whose projects need fast contingency funds to keep a program operating; our expertise is in how projects are funded, not for what purpose. We recently completed a 400 participant survey of Funders and Grantees that focused on contingency funding in the philanthropic sector.

 

We all recognize that problems will crop up; and our survey data shows that unexpected problems affect about 1 in 5 of non-profit projects, resulting in projects that are delayed, terminated, and reduced in scope. Our data further demonstrate that the donor community and the non-profit community have very different perceptions of risk and capacity to address it. 

 

The data point to many areas in which donors and non-profits could improve practices to ensure social impact is not endangered by unanticipated events. When risk is neither acknowledged nor managed, impact is put in jeopardy.

 

Join us to learn and discuss the results of the survey and how we can better collaborate for impact.

Primary Points Of Contact

Session Designers

Speakers

[photo]
Maya Winkelstein, Open Road Alliance
Biography

Maya Winkelstein is Executive Director of Open Road Alliance. Winkelstein’s involvement with Open Road Alliance dates to its inception in 2012. As an Associate Director with the philanthropic consultancy williamsworks, she worked with philanthropist Laurie Michaels to establish Open Road as a new strategic initiative to fill market demand in the non-profit sector for fast, flexible contingency funding. In 2014, Winkelstein was seconded to Open Road Alliance full-time to help incubate and scale the initiative. In 2015 she was named Open Road’s first Executive Director.

During her tenure at williamsworks, Winkelstein also worked with a range of clients to develop and implement new philanthropic initiatives, including Eastern Congo Initiative, Nike Foundation, PATH, Tostan and TOMS Shoes.

Prior to williamsworks, Winkelstein served the NGO and government sectors focusing on program development, fundraising strategy, and corporate partnerships. Former affiliations include The Corporate Council on Africa, International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), and the Institute of National Strategic Studies (INSS) at National Defense University (NDU). She also worked as a Political Risk Consultant for the London-based consulting firm, Exclusive Analysis Ltd.

Winkelstein holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Michigan, and an MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics. She also earned a Diplôme Internationale from the Political Sciences Institute, Sciences-Po, in Paris, France.

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