SVP Global Summit 2019

In early May of this year, six SVP Portland Partners and three staff ventured up the I-5 corridor for the annual SVP Global Summit. Hosted in collaboration with SVP Vancouver, the 2019 Global Summit brought together Social Venture Partners board leaders, affiliate staff, philanthropists, and nonprofit partners from around the world.SVP Portland’s very own Larry Fox serves as Vice-Chair of SVP International’s Board of Directors, and he shared his reflection on the Summit in the letter below.

Friends,

I am fresh back from this year’s SVP International Summit in Vancouver BC - and it was a doozy!

The overall conference was nothing if not stirring. It was the introductory party for our new CEO Sudha Nandagopal who brought the house down with her speech heralding a new day for the network and declaring there is a revolution afoot in philanthropy and in SVPI. Prior to that, several inspirational speakers laid out the challenges to philanthropy as the sector is being urged aggressively to go beyond the traditional confines of charitable generosity to the greater demands of real change and real solutions.   

This was not a "sleepy time” conference. No softball issues or tepid challenges. It was blunt about the issues of social and racial justice we need to reckon with in order to be the change-makers we were meant to be. But equally, there was more excitement than I have ever witnessed to hit the issues head on and to pave the way for a global network to come alive.  

Portland showed up with nine representatives including Sarah Cohen-Doherty and Erin Stevanus who did a spectacular job weaving together human-centered design thinking and our community impact work. They got rave reviews and I confess that as I listened (again!) to our story, I swelled up with pride at what we have achieved over these years of hard work. We continue to inspire and model the way for the whole network.

We span many cultures, social contexts, and political persuasions and they all made themselves known. In this coming year, network leadership will take on the strategies to address, adapt to, and align around this diversity to enable the network to bring its greatest contribution to local affiliates and the world we collectively share. A new day indeed!

If anyone would like to learn more about all this, let me know. The discussion pairs very well with coffee.     

And thanks for all your support in making SVP Portland such a role model. Your local investment in making way more than just local impact.

Larry