Escape the green silo

Photo credit: Corey Coyle –  Farm in Windsor with Four Silos

In academia people love to talk about silos as a way that people limit themselves. I’ve seen the term thrown around for political ideologies, research paradigms, and most pertinently to me today, social groups. My time at the Nelson Institute has taught me how important it is to escape these silos, and mix different ideology’s and innovations to break through old ways of thought. My project, at its heart, is an attempt to bridge new generations to the outdoors.

It has been quite an experience to be doing research out of my silo. As a biologist and environmental activist, I have had my views for years on what progress in the conservation world meant. It was mostly related to the preservation of land, and the inherent and useful value that protected areas can sustain. I’ve volunteering in Seattle to oppose tree extraction in the Canadian Boral in my twenties. I’ve fought invasive species until I was bleeding and tired. This is all pushing back at the issues of my day when I found them.

What a joy to instead build alliances. My leadership project at the Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin (NRF) has shaken out some amazing ideas to improve how we to go about grantmaking in the context of diversity, equity and inclusion in a small community like Madison. It has been a challenging and humbling experience…I am not a trained sociologist.

Many of the best ideas and critiques seem so obvious once you hear them! My favorite so far is to have a “Translate this page” button on the NRF homepage (wisconservatin.org). This idea was relayed from two AmeriCorps interns, not Spanish speakers themselves, from their Latina director. As an English speaker, a language barrier for this important initial access point did not cross my mind. I will certainly be including the translation option as a recommendation in my final report on potential modifications to NRF outreach efforts.

I’ve also heard repeatedly that staff and board of NRF, in a homogeneously educated professional silo, access the outdoors in a profoundly different way than our Ho Chunk, Latino, African American and Hmong neighbors. As I discussed our field trip system with an executive director, she was adamant that we consider a different model if we want to engage under served communities as leaders. We ask our trip leaders, who are mostly conservation professionals or retired land stewards, to volunteer their time, though they are often being paid from their day job or are happily pensioned. This is a very privileged way to find leaders. If NRF wants to find trip leaders to build connections in under served communities, it should find ways to pay a good wage for that trip leader to do so. This opens these communities to conservation by taking their elders and leaders seriously in a fiscal way. While this would require a shift in how NRF ran a few of its trips, it could be worth it to foster diversity.

With grants, it really is all about the money. The most salient point that I got from other community foundations was that NRF grants are too small in their current amount. $500 to $1000 would be considered below the radar of the most effective groups currently serving people of color in Madison. I will be recommending that we increase our grants in amount and duration to allow sustained support, while decreasing the number of grants distributed. At the $1000 and below level, it is hard to justify staff time to obtain and report on the grant, as this expense alone will eat up most of the effective ability of the donation. Increasing the grant size to at least $2000, perhaps $1000 for two years, puts the grant in a new category of importance for sustaining the mission of other local organizations. This corresponds to less NRF staff spent for grant transactions and monitoring. This would likely increase the number of grant applications, and would put more emphasis on the grant committee to find high quality, well written grant proposals.

And the we come to the elephant in the room. How do you get a under served or English as a second langue citizen of Wisconsin to apply for a grant? Will these grant applications seem acceptable in the green professional silo? I am in the process of reviewing applications for some of our grants at work this week. Punctuation and grammar are still the ruler of the fillable sheet. I am considering recommending an option to self-identify as a non-native English speaker. Should NRF make a special program to specifically target under served communities?

Finding ways to interface with these communities takes time and innovation. I’m happy to go back to listen further, in person this time,  with the women who suggested the translation button. It took personal connections in the community to arrange the first meeting, and the follow up will be enlightening.

I do not claim to have all the answers, and so I am gratified when my project sparks further discussion. It is my hope that the resonance of my project builds lasting relationships between people in local Madison organizations, and a lasting improvement in how NRF grantmaking moves out of its green silo.