[Music] today today marks my 10th Liberty Forum I'm so happy to be here over the course of that near decade on Atlas Network's Grant team I have seen a lot and learned a lot as you can imagine more than 5,000 Grant applications over a thousand award applications hundreds of business plans our team at Atlas Network in that same time frame onboarded over 4 UND new organizations into our partner Network all of this means that I have had the Good Fortune to witness countless initiatives all the way from the just an idea stage to the results
it has been a huge privilege and honestly just really cool y'all are pretty cool to build relationships with people like all of you the free Society Advocates that I admire so much all over the globe these organizations your organizations have forever changed how I see the world you have also made me curious curious about social change curious about what it looks like when we really give our ideas their best chance to improve our communities in particular I'm interested in figuring out those organizations that seem to continuously raise the bar for the rest of us those
ones you know them consistently deliver meaningful impact year after year after year all while also having some admirable Financial stability and reputational stability they exist in every region of the world Africa the Americas Europe Asia and I really really want to know what it is they're doing differently so instead of investing cloning these folks that seem to have it all figured out I beg the more budget friendly option of just paying attention paying attention and looking closer at these bar Setters making notes about what I observe and looking back into our data and historical files
I've been asking more questions lots more questions and doing a lot of listening so from the themes that I've picked up so far what's my theory it's a simple one highly impactful organizations take the themselves seriously I believe this is the best way to describe what often makes the difference between a typical think tank in our Network and the ones that consistently raise that bar I've noticed that they take themselves seriously enough to operate in a few important ways we're going to talk about that now first they think big even when looking back at these
organizations when they were young cash strapped startups it's clear that they took inspiration from the big goals instead of the easy scores with goals like ending extreme poverty in their country ending it or solving their nation's labor shortage they believe in their vision and they believe in their team's capacity when I asked one high achieving grantee what made them continue striving despite the very real risk of political violence their founder responded to me really dismissively actually saying if we don't who will and kind of waved me away continuing on about their big plans instead of
setting goals around their limitations they take the risk of naming truly ambitious goals saying them out loud to funders and supporters trusting that if it doesn't go as planned their team will adjust and they'll probably achieve big things anyway second second these organizations take themselves seriously enough to see opportunities as roadblocks while I was attending an event run by one of these great organizations the CEO pointed a few new donors out to me I've been meaning to tell you he said I am so glad Atlas Network required us to get a funding match for this
most recent program it forced us to put in the work and now we have five new major local donors and I think they're going to stick around for the long term it has been so good for [Applause] us sometime later I was chatting at another conference with one of our Network's most impressive think tanks two-time Templeton Freedom Award winner three-time nominee I think you know the one as we talked this colleague mentioned a proposal they' made to another grantmaking Foundation the proposal had come back with a lot of questions and a lot of followup I
was expecting a sigh of frustration but in instead she remarked upon how helpful it was those questions made me consider things I hadn't before and actually in thinking about them our team ended up revising our plan and I think we're better set up to succeed now after this I began sifting through my notes and emails over the last three year few years and I was really struck by the consistency with which high performers sort of take this approach when it came to news that other organizations might find disappointing instead of being discouraged or telling us
why maybe we made a mistake they learned they appreciated the input and they moved forward next these organizations take themselves seriously and they actually believe they are making a difference for real people they believe it not only that but they invest in telling that story to do it they work hard to build ties with the real people that are benefiting their work work a few weeks ago I received a couple of selfies from a grante that was visiting the rural communities where they had successfully Advanced Women's land titling rights along with the Selfies they sent
a wonderful update about a woman who had certified their land through their efforts with the title she was able to mortgage that land start a business and finally in October send her children back to school my observations suggest that organizations investing in identifying these stories generate impressive momentum they're better positioned to attract resources and Partnerships at times though I do get this sense of trepidation from some of our partners when we talk about kind of connecting to the human impact almost a who do we think we are to make these claims kind of a vibe
in looking at the thousands of projects that we've supported in the time I've been at Alice Network I'll pause it that if we are doing the hard work and it is hard work to choose priorities that matter There is almost always a persuasive case to be made that real people benefit in meaningful ways so if you're interested in exploring more about how your or might do more of this you should definitely check out the really interesting Workshop Workshop style session that will be led by Matt Warner uh atas Network president tomorrow afternoon on this exact
topic little plug there finally and this is the big one these organizations take themselves seriously enough to honor their mission statements they aren't organizations that look to donors for priority setting and they don't spread themselves thin they are principle constrained and strategy focused with so many public policy problems in the world it's unsurprising when think tanks try to address everything that they think is important the ones that manage to set the bar though these are the ones that often identify priorities for which they have the skills connections and opportunities to actually be influential they limit
their strategies to those only those and they don't raise or spend resources except in service of them I'll give you an example one successful partner in Africa consistently declines over and over to act as the local partner of grantmaking organizations like usaid and others they declined this potentially very substantial funding knowing that it would be a distraction from their priorities knowing that it could potentially harm their mission and its credibility in the long run that organization is still able ble to raise more than half of its money locally and in a recent discussion among European
think tanks about building resiliency one that was peppered with laments and complaints about how hard it is to fund raise in Europe I heard a leader of one of our most high achieving think tanks descent from the group she said if we want to build resiliency we have to sell our mission we have to stop bouncing from Project to project to project highly successful think tanks recognize this and I think you know that they take seriously that the responsibility of what to spend time on lies with them and only them they have the courage to
and confidence to stick with their mission so as I continue this work to better support our grantees toward ever Greater Heights I'm optimistic that more Atlas Network Partners will decide that they themselves are the real deal that they are the professionals with the solutions that the world needs professionals that will choose to focus their efforts connect with their communities press forward with optimism and boldly sell their Visions for the future thank [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you
