A Silicon Valley Funder Rethinks the Power It Holds

For Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund (SV2), reimagining what it means to be a “community of values-aligned donors” meant rethinking where power lives — and who holds it. In this short film, the SV2 board chair, staff, and community board members describe how the organization has invited nonprofit leaders onto its board and made space for new voices to influence its decision making.

The video follows Linda Prieto, who brought her lived experience as the daughter of undocumented immigrants and her work leading an immigrant-serving organization that was an SV2 grantee to her role as one of SV2’s first community board members. Previously, SV2’s governing board had been comprised only of donors who fund the organization. Prieto has subsequently transitioned to a senior staff role at the organization.

Zelicia Rodriguez-Deams, the former associate director of an SV2 grantee, serves on SV2’s board, shares that what motivated her to join was the board’s commitment to “be open to new ideas and new conversations about stories, testimony, real-life experience, lived experience.” That openness, says Rodriguez-Deams, “has helped us to connect the conversations we’re having at the boardroom level to the impact that we’re trying to make.”

Also highlighted in the video is a time when SV2, based on the suggestion of Rolland Janairo, a community board member who leads a youth-serving nonprofit, invited local high school students to share what equity in education looks like from their perspective. Says Janairo: “It was a phenomenal demonstration from start to end of why community voice matters at the board level, and then how it trickles down to incorporating community voice in decision making.”

Watch the video for more: