Chanda Smith Baker leads the largest community foundation in Minnesota — nearly $2 billion in charitable assets, more than 9,000 grants a year — and she came to the role with a career's worth of hard-won wisdom about how change actually happens. Her answer, again and again: not by rushing.
In this conversation, host Elizabeth Kitzenberg talks with Chanda about the discipline of protecting time to think, what it means to lead a team through crisis without becoming reactive, and why the most important proof of impact is one you may never live to see.
In this episode:
- Why "urgency without being hurried" is the hardest and most necessary skill in the sector
- Protecting space to think — "balcony time," marking the calendar, refusing to let the day-to-day swallow the vision
- Leading a team through crisis while staying strategic instead of emotional and reactive
- Why she wants grantees to tell her what *isn't* working — and how she built the trust to hear it
- Rethinking proof of impact as generational: "Did I support the conditions that outlast me?"
- Staying proximate and staying curious as a leadership posture
- Why philanthropy has to know where it holds authority — and where it doesn't
A conversation about steadiness, humility, and leading for a future you won't be around to see.
🎙️ Proof of Impact is a production of Gleam Tower Media, recorded at Picnic Linden Hills in southwest Minneapolis.
📬 Connect with Elizabeth Kitzenberg on LinkedIn, or learn more about nonprofit consulting at thekitzenberggroup.com.
