Funders Summit 2022: Key Lessons | Invest in Open Infrastructure | Jan 13, 2023

"...Throughout the event, we were very grateful to have Bianca Kramer, Katherine Skinner, and Elena Denaro acting as our “learning partners”. They observed and noted the dynamics and conversations as the event progressed. Below, we share our event reflections as an asynchronous discussion between Bianca, Katherine, and Emmy Tsang, IOI’s Engagement Lead. Bright spots -- There’s an appetite for new strategies for investing. Katherine: The positive tempo and tone and the deep participation by many of the attendees signal that there is a hunger for these discussions and that IOI is a team that can provide the grounding (research), the convening space, and the facilitation to help that process forward. The Summit provided building blocks for future conversations and actions. Katherine: This event helped establish shared knowledge and built some connections. It opened a vibrant space for discussion over what information, organized in what ways, might help to inform decision making around funding. Some sessions gave connection points between participants and interest in use cases. Can this initial energy be built upon so that it moves from passive interest to active opinions? What information and settings could enable this transition to happen, even for a handful of the participants? Tensions -- The need to define terms. Katherine: One of the consistent themes throughout the event was the marking of troublesome terms and ones that different participants may have been using differently from one another. Terms that arose included Open, Infrastructure, Governance, Community (along with Community-based, Community-led, Community-governed, and Community-owned), Data, Equitable, Diversity, Funders, Incentive. Values, Venture Capital, ROI, Transparency, Nonprofit/not-for-profit, Critical Infrastructure, etc. For the future, it might be helpful to pose the question “why do we need strong definitions in order to move forward and how do we build strong-enough definitions so that this isn’t a continued barrier?”. The sense of missing definitions stalls action – it also points to some sense of fear (of being misunderstood, of funding the wrong thing, of being led astray by data)...."