|
|
|
 |
Summer 2006
Commentary
RE-AMP Learning Community: Thinking, Acting Regionally
in Conceiving a Clean Energy System
by Becky Erdahl
Sometimes, it seems that the issues with the largest potential impact on Minnesota's quality of life are a lot bigger than Minnesota.
In an effort to think globally and act, if not locally, then regionally, several Minnesota foundations — including Bush Foundation, Carolyn Foundation, The McKnight Foundation and Northwest Area Foundation — are participating in RE-AMP, a learning community convened two years ago with the support of the Garfield Foundation. RE-AMP comprises foundations and NGOs from the upper Midwest states of Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa, as well as North and South Dakota.
Over a focused two-year period, the diverse group worked together to form three interlocking strategies to influence the shift toward a clean, efficient, secure energy system in the region. Constructing this energy system could revitalize the region's economy, take advantage of our natural endowment of renewable energy resources like wind and bio-mass, and cut our global warming pollution by 80 percent.
We are a diverse group. There are eight foundations of various sizes with endowments ranging from $38 million to over $1.5 billion. At the outset, the funders were informed that the project was not intended to result in pooled funding or joint grantmaking. The hope was to provide a common strategic and analytical framework that generates potential projects to take back to our organizations for consideration. We also hoped that the strength of our framework would become a platform from which to attract other funders to our projects.
RE-AMP also includes 35 NGOs committed to distinct and different approaches to the opportunities and problems associated with catalyzing the transition to a clean energy system. Some participants are purely interested in reducing global warming pollution. Others see clean energy production as a way of revitalizing local economies. Still others are concerned with creating a sustainable energy policy — moving toward greater reliance on safe, clean and renewable sources and away from fossil fuel and nuclear power.
RE-AMP's approach to collective learning centered on "systems thinking," a method for mapping the dynamics of complex problems developed 40 years ago by Jay Forrester at MIT. Systems thinking is able to accommodate a high level of detail within a wide-angle lens and helps identify critical leverage points in complex systems. It is based on the idea that the behavior of all systems follows certain common principles and interdependencies that go far beyond our normal ways of thinking or talking about cause and effect. Universities, particularly MIT and Dartmouth, have trained several generations of systems analysts, and various computer programs and other analytical tools support these processes. Systems thinking has been popularized by Peter Senge and other experts in organizational thinking.
As a group, our learning community devised interlocking and counterbalancing strategies:
Increase Energy Efficiency
Clean up Coal
Increase New Clean Energy
As we work with these strategies, it is increasingly clear that all three are critical to our ambitious but necessary goal, but not all had been on the philanthropic radar screen before RE-AMP. For example, there are 75 existing coal-fired plants (contributing as much global warming pollution as 45 million cars) and 24 new "dirty" coal plants on the drawing board in the RE-AMP Midwest region, yet a "Clean up Coal" strategy has never been a funding priority.
Now, as we move forward to fund projects that relate to each of these strategies, the challenge is to keep the learning dynamic alive and to maintain our systems perspective. We are exploring virtual strategies for alignment and communication that will help make that information flow seamlessly. We also want to share both our process and our projects with other funders both to widen the RE-AMP circle and to replicate this collaborative model for other complex problems.
 |
|
Becky Erdahl is the executive director of the Carolyn Foundation.
|
More
Information from the
Summer 2006 Edition of Giving Forum
|
Thank you to the sponsors of this issue of Giving Forum:
|
| $5,000 Sponsor |
 |
| $5,000 Sponsor |
 |
| $1,000 Supporter |
West Central Initiative |
|
© Copyright 2006 Minnesota Council on
Foundations
Reproduction in any form without the written permission of the publisher
is prohibited.
|
|
