Lois Greco, senior vice president and evaluation officer at the Wells Fargo Regional Foundation, is co-presenting the Upswell workshop, “Learning to Let Your Community Lead.” She believes it’s important to allow people to be comfortable being authentic. She also shares her thoughts on the sector’s approach to solving problems, and how to make it more effective.

Q:  If you could instantly become an expert in something, what would that be, and why?

LG: I would become an expert in helping people in communities be able to communicate by really giving grace, and being grateful for our neighbors. What a better place it would be if we could be our authentic selves, if we could trust that our message would be received in the spirit that it is intended, and if people would be welcomed and appreciated.

Q: If you could change the outcome of one world event, what would that be, and why?

LG: There’ve been so many tragic events. I could go back philosophically and say, “Adam and Eve – don’t eat it!” Because that’s the human story of the fall. And whether you believe it figuratively or literally, the world has chosen to go against good sometimes, right? We introduced evil into the world, and that story is the representation of that event.

Q: What’s the one thing that would help you do your job better?

LG: I think having more collaborative funding partners that understood the importance of long-term funding. The problems we are working with in our society are easy to identify – it’s easy to say poverty is bad. But to find and help implement the solutions to move the needle, we need to change and think differently about how we fund solutions. And I would love more funder partners to be much more about collaboration. This is where trust, gratitude, and grace are definitely needed, as well as thinking differently about how we structure our funding, our sources of capital.

Q: What does it mean to live a good life?

LG: Borrowing from the Book of Micah – seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. I think if you can do that, you’re encompassing what it means to live a good life.

Q: What one thing would you change about the sector right now, if you could?

LG: Again, I would change how we think about solving problems. We think in one-year terms, in general, one-year programs from a funding perspective. I think we think about how to provide programs, as opposed to how to solve problems. And that’s not to say we don’t need services. People absolutely need services. But we also need to provide capital in a way that gets at the root of why they need services, and that needs long-term funding.

Learning to Let Your Community Lead is happening Wednesday, November 13 from 3 – 5:30pm