Ellen Alberding is president and CEO of the Joyce Foundation, the Chicago-based grantmaker that distributes $50 million annually and has assets totaling $1 billion. Under Alberding’s leadership, the foundation, which is active in fields like education, gun violence prevention and journalism, rolled out a five-year grantmaking strategy last year that includes new approaches to its longtime commitment to racial equity, increased social impact investing, and a streamlined application process for small and mid-sized nonprofits.
Alberding is one of the founders of the Partnership for Safe and Peaceful Communities, a funder collaborative investing in community-based strategies to reduce gun violence in Chicago. She also serves on the Loyola University Board of Trustees, as well as the Chicago Public Education Fund’s board of directors, and is a founding board member of Advance Illinois, which advocates for public education reform.
I recently caught up with Alberding to discuss her career trajectory, why she’s optimistic about the state of philanthropy, and the ubiquitous phenomenon of cats drifting into Zoom calls.
What made you decide you wanted to work in the nonprofit sector?
I grew up outside of New York City in Nyack, and I came from a family that was deeply engaged in community activities. My father was on the school board. My mother volunteered in a lot of different places. Both of my parents were very involved with an organization out of New York City run by a woman named Dorothy Day. So it was part of what shaped my being from a very young age. I had a corporate job for a couple of years and just realized that that sort of environment was not as satisfying as working more in the nonprofit sector.
Who are your biggest influences?
I would point to three people. One is Craig Kennedy, who was the president of the Joyce Foundation when I joined. He was an extremely smart leader and was generous in supporting my growth.
I came into the foundation in a sort of an odd way. Craig asked me to run the arts and culture portfolio and I had an MBA and a degree in finance. He allowed me to shadow him in working on the investment portfolio, and that led to a tremendous amount of learning and engagement in the investment side of the foundation.
I’ve been fortunate to have two board chairs who were amazing. One was the board chair for 25 years, Jack Anderson, and he was an influence on me, in part because he almost never spoke in board meetings, and then when he had something to say, the room would just go silent.
He had great judgment and allowed the foundation to take on a very high risk tolerance in the issues and strategies that we took on—as long as we had a clear sense of where we were going and what the potential was for success. That, I think, is really important in philanthropy, but it was also a big influence on me because I realized that because the Joyce Foundation exists in perpetuity, having that infinite time horizon allows you to think big about ideas while making sure that you’re hitting targets along the way.
And then my current board chair, José B. Alvarez, is, similarly, a very sophisticated manager. He sits on a lot of corporate boards and comes out of the business community, and he has a keen understanding of the most productive relationship that a board chair and a CEO can have.
What are some of the biggest challenges that you’re currently facing in your role?
The other day, I was talking to the former president of a large foundation and I was sharing how I often get ideas by engaging with other people in a room. Someone expresses a problem and I think, “Oh, I think we could help with that,” and those sorts of interactions just aren’t happening because of COVID.
It’s hard to adjust to the lack of random interactions that often lead to great ideas and projects. That’s a loss that we’ve had over the last couple of years, and I can’t wait to get back into those sorts of interactions.
That’s the one area where Zoom simply can’t capture the serendipity of talking with colleagues in an elevator or the office pantry, much less a conference.
If you’re in the policy environment that we’re in, a lot of your ability to move issues is based on relationships, and sometimes, those relationships are new and they need to be nurtured. So it’s definitely the “standing around the coffee urn” kinds of conversations, but it’s also being in a room with people where you’re hearing their challenges, and they may not really know what philanthropy can do for them, and you can bring the two things together.
But I would like to add something on a positive note. I’ve been amazed at how forward-thinking our staff has been in launching new projects. Their energy hasn’t slowed down, even though their cats are always walking in front of Zoom calls and distracting everybody. [Author’s note: Two weeks ago, I sat in on an IP Zoom call in which a colleague’s cat made an appearance.]
If you could give advice to your younger self, what would it be?
I would say life is a bit of a random walk, and that the accumulation of experiences is what makes you a good leader. Sometimes, you have a great job and a great boss, and you feel like you’re learning everything you can possibly learn. But other times, you might be in a different position, where you don’t feel as supported or the organization isn’t well-managed.
In my view, I’ve learned as much from those experiences as I have from positive ones. You can learn how to be and how to be good in a good environment, but you can also learn how not to be in a more challenging environment. You put all that together, and hopefully, it adds up to being a pretty good leader.
What is it about the state of philanthropy that makes you optimistic?
One thing that I’m optimistic about is that I see a lot of leaders in philanthropy being more collaborative and really focusing on impact. And I don’t mean an excessive focus on evaluation, but thinking about, how do we actually make change? How do we get things done? How do we use research and evaluation to direct our investments?
As for the collaboration side of things, we’re a regional foundation. We know Chicago really, really well. But we also focus on cities like Minneapolis or states like Michigan, where we are not intimately part of the fabric of those places, and having a strong relationship with other funders on the ground helps us make better investments. I think that sort of sharing is more and more common, so I feel really good about that. I’m also optimistic about the focus of supporting diverse leadership in our foundations. It’s a very important and very productive development.
What was the last great book you read?
I really enjoy reading books by women and those that explore the role of women in history. So I’ll give two examples.
One is Isabel Wilkerson’s “The Warmth of Other Suns.” It’s a brilliant book that was so far ahead of its time, and it’s really important grounding for all of the conversations that have been going on and will continue to go on about race. I know she’s written “Caste” more recently, but I always go back to the stories in “The Warmth of Other Suns.”
During COVID, I went through a period of reading Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë—the early women novelists. Of course, I had read them years ago, but while reading “Jane Eyre” in particular, I realized that Charlotte Brontë was thinking way ahead of her time by creating this strong feminist character over a hundred years ago, much like Isabel Wilkerson was thinking way ahead of her time.
Any parting thoughts?
I believe it’s incredibly important to have an open door to the folks who are trying to navigate the foundation world. We try to be transparent about what we’re interested in and to learn from leaders in the fields that we fund. I don’t think we’re always perfect, but I do encourage people who want to know more to be in touch and ask for an explanation. And I hope that people will get a satisfactory response, because it’s really important to have that conversation.