Let’s Start with Chairs
2022 marks the Graves Foundation’s eighth year as a foundation – no longer ‘new new’, but in philanthropic terms, maybe ‘middle new’. Middle new seems like a good time to start a blog, having learned just enough to have a perspective and to know we still have a lot to learn, so here we go!
This blog will highlight stories we tell ourselves at the Graves Foundation that we wish everyone could hear. Sometimes those stories are embarrassing, but we’ll still tell them hoping to make a larger point about what it’s like to be a part of an organization whose primary goal is to run out of money.
To start, I am posting two stories: one is announcement about our work…and the other is an embarrassing story about chairs. First up, the chair story!
By chairs, I mean literal chairs (not sure what a figurative chair would be…). Before early February 2017, I had spent little to no time thinking about chairs. I’m the type of person who feels physically comfortable in any chair. When the foundation first launched in 2014, I purchased a circular table, bookshelf, desk, and a set of four chairs for our 400 square foot temporary office space in Minneapolis’ North Loop neighborhood.
The chairs were a beautiful Scandinavian modern design with blonde wood, no padding, easily stackable. I walked into a furniture store, thought ‘Those look nice. Works for me!’, put them in my trunk, and that was that. I pictured myself sitting down at that circular table, with 1-3 guests from a non-profit, excitedly saying, “Thanks for your great work. Here’s a grant check!” Everyone smiles, shakes hands, then I go back to responding to email. That’s what a foundation does, right? I had no idea, and it would be at least a month before I would meet another leader of a family foundation.
But that was late August 2014, and this is an embarrassing story about chairs set in February 2017 – the month before the grand opening of our permanent space in the Midtown Exchange building in South Minneapolis. Between those dates, chairs taught me an important lesson about philanthropy.
I had not thought much about chairs, but I had thought a lot about community. My first years in philanthropy were a thrilling introduction to amazing, impactful community leaders leading amazing, impactful community organizations in and around Minneapolis. Anything was possible; these people proved it. They envisioned brave new realities for our city and were taking risks to get there.
They inspired me to think maybe anything was possible for me too. So I developed a plan to expand our foundation and pitched it to my parents (aka my board). We would hire staff and move into a highly visible space within one of the most successful public-private partnerships in the history of Minneapolis - a place that embodies the diversity and vitality our community has to offer. We would have 900 sf of community space that any pro-social organization could use, and 900 sf for office space. “Great!” they said. “Sign the lease and get going on the build out!”
Fantastic, except…I had never been an employer or a signer of commercial leases, and I certainly had never been an interior designer for 1,800 sf of very visible space. I started working with a design consultant, who was incredibly helpful, but here’s the lesson for philanthropy: having ideas (with or without consultants) and being able to pay for them is not enough. Because at the end of the day, ideas need to land in reality. For our office, they needed to land in the physical forms of artwork, tables, couches, and chairs – that someone (not you) will sit in. Finding the right chairs for those sitters is a process that involves risk and willingness to learn. Finding working solutions to social challenges requires the same things.
The day after the build out was completed and the owner handed me the keys, I brought a folding table from my garage into the empty office. The only chairs I had at that point were those beautiful blonde wood Scandinavian chairs, which I quickly learned were incredibly uncomfortable to everyone besides me. I purchased new chairs that were so flimsy they literally broke down as people sat in them. I got more chairs and those made a terrible scratching noise on our unfinished concrete floors. For all my efforts, I still hadn’t found the right chairs.
But we had a big opening event planned, and no time to replace the chairs. All our grantees were invited to come check out our new space. Oh, how unready I felt. At lunch with my wife and mother-in-law at Midtown Global Market before the event, I fought back tears, as I thought to myself ‘I am a grown-up adult. I have started an organization, become expert at so many things, and have come so far. Why am I being defeated by chairs?!’
You know what, the opening party was ok. I had a nice suit on and pretended not to hear the terrible scratching noises. Only one chair collapsed that day (and the sitter took it in stride)! The food was good. I made an ok speech. People clapped. I learned three things: 1) Stepping into the uncharted territory of a vision is a risk. 2) Risks are scary because you’ll have to try something new, even with the best intentions and efforts, and it may not work. 3) And risks are often the only way to learn what you need to know to make something work in the long run.
It took four iterations and lots of feedback to get to the right chairs, to learn what kind of chair would work for the wide variety of people taking a seat in our space.
I am incredibly fortunate to have the job, the relationships, the life that I have. And it would be soooo easy to coast, to keep distance from where our money lands, to stay the status-quo course, to never try and never fail, to not care about the experience of the people sitting in my foundation’s chairs. But (whether it be in finding comfortable (to other people) chairs or the more serious work of supporting people and organizations towards a better world for young people in Minneapolis) committing to trying, failing, listening, learning, and eventually (hopefully) succeeding, I’ve found, is worth the risk.