Things that are keeping us up at night…

In a recent panel our CEO shared with other local funders at the Inland Empire Community Foundation’s Policy and Philanthropy Summit, Damien was asked to reflect on what “is keeping he and the Parkview Legacy Foundation Board up at night” at this moment and here’s a summary of his response:

Considering the immensely disturbing impacts of Federal Policy and Budget decisions, and in light of the fact that we are approaching the launch of our Grants Program, we are deeply wrestling with how to both show up as this particular moment demands while also remaining the best stewards possible of the resources we have dedicated to bringing about the lasting long-term and systems level changes that are needed in each of our focus areas. Parkview Legacy Foundation set out at its founding to focus its resources on root level, needle moving, work in order to help increase the probability of well-being for EVERYONE in our region and decrease if not eliminate the needs for urgent services to maintain whole and healthy lives. Unfortunately, we are forced in this moment into “protect mode” as we seek to protect our most vulnerable residents, and essential institutions from harm rather than continue with a more proactive approach focused on building the future we all need. This is quite the departure from the progress we were making before January of 2025. So the question we continue to ask ourselves is how to stay focused on “building” as much as possible while showing up for those who are now in harms way and ensuring that we maintain as much of the probability we were building as we can. With limited resources, we have to make choices between what to spend them on.

On a similar note, we remain intent on creating a region in which it is more probable than not for individuals and families from all backgrounds and experiences to thrive – and its important to recognize that thriving involves more than the absence of suffering or struggling. It’s troublesome to us that so much of what we do in the social sector seems content to ensure that our region’s residents can move out of suffering and beyond struggling, but often stops there – in which people are really “just getting by” and still at risk of returning to more vulnerable states of well-being.

To us, just getting by is not enough!

Just having a good job is not enough.

Just not being sick is not enough.

Just having a roof over one’s head is not enough.

We prefer a world in which more and more of us are reaching points in every aspect of our lives where our needs are not just met, but we are able to proactively build greater well-being, wealth, generational sustainability, belonging, and civic muscle. This better captures what it means to thrive to us and this should be our Northstar. This all said, we’re in a moment that “just getting by” might just have to be good enough for the time being. We don’t like this, and we’re trying to figure out how to be both realistic and idealistic in our actions and pursuits.

Finally – though it might seem disconnected from our focus areas, we feel that our country’s polarized environment is one that is an underlying inhibitor to progress in these and other areas – it’s keeping us from discovering and moving forward solutions that create a better world. If it our country and people were only polarized regarding ideologies, that would be bad enough; though, if this were the case, we’d at least have a chance at having real (non-rhetorical) conversations and debates about those ideologies. Unfortunately, research is increasingly showing that we have more “perceived polarization” than we do “ideological polarization” – across the entire political spectrum we all think that we are more different and think more differently than we actually do – and this is keeping us from having intellectually honest conversations, finding common ground, and creating solutions to the things that concern all of us most. Furthermore, and perhaps most concerning, this perception of polarization is fostering “affective polarization” and lending toward increased distrust and even hatred of one another across political differences. This is something we feel needs to be addressed head on to have any chance of moving the needle in our areas of focus. We are actively engaging in every opportunity possible to do so.