PACE’s Future: Our 2023–2025 Strategic Direction

In 2020, PACE released a strategic plan and stepped into its new chapter as a philanthropic laboratory. At the time, we had no idea how important learning and experimentation would be–both for democracy and the events that would unfold. We spent the last three years leaning into this identity: what it means to be a philanthropic laboratory (a collective space for philanthropy where learning is participatory and actionable), what PACE’s philanthropic laboratory would focus on, and what learning and racial equity look like in our philanthropic laboratory. In this context, we accomplished quite a bit; for example:

• We organized rapid response efforts in the face of multiple crises and leaned heavily into civic imagination in 2020;
• We led key conversations about bridging and polarization and deepened our commitment to racial equity in 2021;
• And we explored America’s perceptions of civic language and crossed the threshold of granting $1 million to faith-inspired organizations and leaders making a positive impact on democracy in 2022.

This strategic vision was anticipated to guide PACE from 2020–2022. Now, in 2023 and after several strong years of strategic experimentation, learning, and collaboration (as well as operational growth), we have decided to extend our strategy through at least 2025. We are not embarking on a new plan, but we are reaffirming and deepening PACE’s strategic direction as a philanthropic laboratory, and we are focusing and sharpening it in a few ways.

Here is a high-level look:

PACE’s mission, vision, and strategic objectives remain unchanged. We still believe our work is to serve as a philanthropic laboratory for funders seeking to maximize their individual and collective impact on democracy and civic life in America, and we will continue to do that through learning, experimenting, collaborating, and modeling vibrant civic space.

We are sharpening our principles–that is, the beliefs and values that animate how we work towards our mission. Specifically, we are being more explicit that our approach to responsible philanthropy includes how we relate to non-funding institutions (such as striving to not be extractive in our learning) and we are evolving our principle of “diversity” to be a principle of “voice and representation” (which includes being more clear about the types of representation we are cognizant of in our work).

We are getting clearer about audiences– we understand that while our primary work is meant to support democracy and civic engagement funders (including our membership), we also recognize our work has application beyond philanthropy to the broader civic field, including nonprofits, communities, researchers, and others.

We are putting more structure around the phases or “life cycles” of our experiments:

• PACE Learning Labs: early-stage, topic-specific communities dedicated to deep learning on particular issues, which may also provide on-ramps to collective experiments. (Think: a dialed-up Civic Learning Funders Affinity Group; other topics to be announced soon)
• Active Experiments: discrete efforts by a group of funders actively collaborating on a topic of interest with a stated hypothesis or learning inquiry leading the effort. (Think: Faith In/And Democracy and Social Cohesion Philanthropy)
• Late-Stage Experiments: ways PACE will continue to promote and leverage the contributions that came out of its experiments, identify spaces for continued investment, and support others in the field who are advancing the topic.

We are making an effort to move beyond discussion to advise on implementation of learnings. PACE Members relayed to us how important the learning, reflection, and discussion space has been to their work, but how they are also in need of tangible guidance. Moving forward, PACE will aim to not just share what we learned and why it matters, but also what funders might consider doing differently as a result.

So what does all of this mean you can expect to see from PACE in 2023 and beyond? We will continue to invest in relationship infrastructure within and across our network, and explore opportunities for thought leadership. Additionally and specifically:

• We anticipate launching Learning Labs for funders interested in civic education and national service. (Let us know if you are interested in joining one or both of these Learning Labs!)
• We will continue to steward the work of Social Cohesion Philanthropy and the Civic Language Perceptions Project.
• We will get even more intentional about sharing our learnings from the Faith In/And Democracy initiative as we evolve it from an Active Experiment to a Late-Stage Experiment.
• We will develop a scenario-planning series on the future of American democracy, which we see as a way to help the civic philanthropy field prepare for a number of potential realities that could lie ahead for our country.
• We will do our due diligence and explore other topics of interest that are starting to percolate to see where they may take us (e.g. Democracy + The Future of Tech, Effective Governance, etc).
• We will grow our team to support these efforts.

We want to reiterate that this articulation of PACE’s next chapter is largely a reaffirmation of the strategy and programming you have grown familiar with over the last three years (and that you have helped build and strengthen through your engagement and involvement). We hope these “tweaks” open up even more possibilities for PACE’s impact–with funders and on American democracy.

Yours in service,

Kristen Cambell, PACE CEO

Jonathan Gruber, PACE Board Chair and Strategy Lead, Building at Einhorn Collaborative

If you have any questions or feedback on PACE’s strategic direction, or if you would like to discuss any points outlined above, we invite you to share that with us by emailing Kristen[at]PACEfunders[dot]org.