Lessons Learned Funding Internationally: How a Local Foundation Achieved a Global Reach
The publication below is an original opinion piece by Steve Nichols from the Chino Cienega Foundation located in Palm Springs, California. The thoughts and opinions expressed in this article belong to our guest contributor. If you would like to contribute an opinion piece to share with our network, please email eddy@socalgrantmakers.org.
Growing up in Palm Springs, California, it seemed unlikely that my life would include a trajectory bringing me back to my hometown to establish a grantmaking foundation with both an international and local focus. A visit with a friend in Berlin in 1960 as a Palm Springs High School sophomore opened my eyes to the world beyond California, where World War II was a recent memory and recovery was far from complete. Witnessing the still-evident remnants of war, I imagined a career that would include organizations working on conflict avoidance and reconciliation. Several months later, my generation was inspired by President Kennedy’s appeal to ask what we could do for our country — and, by extension, in my mind — the world.
Working in Vietnam: A More Complex Perspective
During college, I sought courses and travel that furthered my international perspective and deepened my abhorrence of war. Like many Americans, I was disheartened by the expanding U.S. war in Vietnam, my opposition to which was informed by courses in Southeast Asian history at Stanford. It was clear we had blundered into a colonial war that France had already lost. As graduation approached, and still Inspired by JFK’s oratory, I was offered Peace Corps assignments in Gabon and India. But despite (or really because of) my views on the war in Vietnam, I wanted to work there and learn first-hand the impact of my country’s involvement. So when I learned of International Voluntary Services (IVS), which operated development projects in Vietnam under a contract with USAID, I applied and accepted a two-year teaching position in a Vietnamese high school.
Flying into Saigon in 1967, I was impressed by the sheer breadth of the Mekong River Delta. Also visible from the air were the more troubling sights of bomb craters and other effects of war, leading me to wonder how post-war recovery might even be imaginable when these physical scars certainly reflected deeper wounds affecting the populace. I taught at a high school near an R&R center where U.S. soldiers could find refuge for a week and unwind. The attendant prostitution, alcohol, and drugs took their toll on the local social fabric, an often-forgotten effect of the war. The American provincial advisor told me he could not get funding to address the exploding problem of sexually transmitted diseases due to adamant Congressional opposition, which insisted that “clean-cut American soldiers don’t do that sort of thing.” Hence, one of the many impacts of war was punted to the post-war recovery era. Our Foundation would later address other longer-term war impacts.
Returning to the U.S. in 1968 after my 24-month IVS commitment in Vietnam was cut short by a draft notice, I worked with organizations like IVS (on whose Board I later served) engaged with peace and development issues. My wife, Sally Benson, a fellow IVS volunteer, also connected with groups doing peace education and conflict avoidance work related to SE Asia. Our organizations typically sat on the grant-seeking side of the table in their dealings with foundations, and we sought a way to move to the grantmaking side to support work we felt strongly about.
Lessons Learned: Funding Internationally
That opportunity arrived in 2000 when my father agreed that his estate should be the basis for a grantmaking foundation. Three years later, I established the Chino Cienega Foundation (named for a canyon with special meaning to my family) in Palm Springs.
In 2004, we made our first grant for work in Vietnam to promote the preservation of texts written in the ancient (and then little-known) Nôm script, a project started by an ex-IVS volunteer and his Vietnamese colleagues. We continued funding the project as it collaborated with the National Library of Vietnam to digitize Nôm texts and preserve the fragile originals. The project succeeded, as Vietnamese universities have now established Nôm Studies departments that carry on the work. Thus, an essential aspect of Vietnamese intellectual culture, nearly lost during the war, was preserved for later generations.
Staying Engaged With Difficult Issues
We also immediately began making grants for war remediation, which led to the formation of the War Legacies Project to address Agent Orange and other war-related issues that continue to afflict Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Similarly, we have provided consistent funding to Protect Renew in Quang Tri Province, Vietnam, for the removal of mines and unexploded ordnance and land-mine risk education. The project has proven itself and is preparing to expand into other provinces.
A key lesson for grantmakers from this work is that the ongoing effects of war persist far beyond the end of the shooting. The war in Vietnam ended in 1975, yet the impacts of Agent Orange, unexploded ordnance, and other war-induced consequences are still felt today. Thus, foundations and other funders must stay engaged with war remediation work in Southeast Asia. And, alas, similar engagement is and will be needed in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world. Truly sustainable development programs, a primary focus of most internationally-oriented grantmakers, cannot be fully and effectively implemented in countries still struggling with significant persistent effects of war.
The Patience to Provide Funding Support Over the Long Term
One notably successful project that harkens back to that first glimpse of the Mekong River in 1967 got its start at a Washington D.C. lunch meeting in 2006 with a researcher at the Stimson Center, who had also first seen the River in the 1960s and had become concerned about the threats posed to Lower Mekong River flows by China’s construction of upstream dams. He needed funding to address the issue, but the Stimson Center lacked the budget. That afternoon, we convened a Foundation Board meeting and approved a $20,000 seed grant to Stimson for the initial feasibility study.
With continued support over the years from us and other funders, the project has recently produced a freely accessible online tool, the Mekong Dam Monitor, where stakeholders (farmers, fisheries, etc.) can find River flows and projected changes in flow from dam operations. This data has been immensely valuable to local communities seeking to avoid the worst consequences of varying River flows caused by dams. We did not anticipate that the development of the Monitor would require 15 years starting from that 2006 meeting and our first grant: a valuable lesson that successful outcomes often need sustained, unwavering funding, even when the results may initially seem uncertain.
Opportunities for Funders in SCG’s Network
In 2015, the Foundation was invited to join SCG and specifically to join its International Working Group and discuss our work in that broader arena. Our experience demonstrates how SCG grantmakers can become involved internationally. Our Foundation’s experiences recounted above are excellent examples of how nimble grantmaking from a small California foundation can have outsized effects elsewhere. There are many such opportunities for grantmakers in Southern California who want to expand their reach and scope, and we’re happy to offer our participation in international grantmaking as an inducement. For example, we are members of an affiliation of funders focused on environmental and species diversity NGOs working in the Mekong River region, and we’d be happy to introduce California grantmakers to the group.
Today, I am pleased to have completed my round-trip trajectory back to Palm Springs! Our Foundation is celebrating its 20th year in 2023, and we are proud to have already exceeded $5.5 million in grants made. We are excited to share more about upcoming work in the coming months. In the meantime. we invite any SCG member interested in international grantmaking to reach out to me directly at steve@chinofound.org.