Driving Communities Forward with Alethea Hannemann

What gets you up in the morning and what's a typical day in your role?

I love mornings! I typically wake up with a lot of good ideas to inform the rest of my day, but if not, my morning run in Prospect Park in Brooklyn will generate some more. Movement always helps me sort things out–I think of it as unspooling and refocusing my mind.?

The rest of my day is typically a lot of Zoom calls–with my team building board programs at major companies or for foundations, with those partners, or with my cofounder, Aaron Hurst, the founder of the Taproot Foundation (and my former boss!). I also spend a lot of time on thought leadership and content for the field. Tech board leadership and tech governance at the board level are relatively new concepts, in both the nonprofit and the corporate worlds. We’re trying to make it easy for nonprofit boards to take on what they need to in tech, and they need guidance that is clear, actionable, timely, and effective.??

If I’m lucky, though, I’ll have some in-person meetings or coffee or happy-hour meetups. I’m a member of some great formal and informal circles of philanthropic advisors (plug for P150!), nonprofit leaders (yay COOs for Good!), or social impact folk (shout-out to my Brooklyn walk buddies from organizations like IRC and Zoom!).?

The end of the day typically finds me cooking dinner with my two teen boys, winding down with yoga, or reading–I like novels, but I also have a huge stack of the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books. They cover a huge breadth of topics, and are different enough from my work oeuvre that I always pick up a new great read for my list, or some strange fact that will do me well at the dinner table that week. This week my favorites were a great article about how efficiency has replaced equality in US public policy, and a new (vexing!) book on free will (am I actually choosing to have this conversation with you?). And at the very least, the driest of the articles will help me settle down to sleep– there’s only so much I can read about crop circles or medieval icons!

Who inspires you?

All the people doing great work in and for the social sector every day! I’m fortunate enough in my work to meet new leaders across the philanthropy, nonprofit, and corporate worlds every day–people who believe in their missions and are determined to push them forward. I’m particularly inspired right now by those who are working to protect the vulnerable, or quality media that speaks the truth in a really tough environment, like Pro Publica or the Atlantic.??

For example, I’m on the board of Lemontree, a tech organization that makes it easy for people in need of food assistance to navigate the emergency food world. It’s incredibly difficult to find food resources that are open when you are not working or parenting, near your home or employer, and provide high-quality food with dignity. Lemontree makes it easier for thousands of people a day, nationwide. Kasumi Quinlan, the CEO, is focused on listening to her customers and providing excellent experiences in challenging times, but also on building good data sets that can help the whole food field improve. Leaders who can navigate the micro to the macro so skillfully are surprisingly rare!?

What do you wish people knew about your field?

The nonprofit sector is hugely varied, and therefore our work in it needs to be as well. Many organizations are fast-paced and innovative, yet I’ll still hear people saying, “but everything moves so slowly”, or “well, nonprofits don’t really know how to [insert something “business-focused” here]”. Not true. Watch Nexleaf Analytics figure out how to improve vaccine distribution for global healthcare, for example–that’s not slow!?

Other nonprofits do, in fact, move slowly in some cases, but they do it intentionally, to ensure they’re making the right decisions for the communities they serve. For example, I know a really amazing organization that runs the only completely secure period-tracking app in the world–ensuring women everywhere can make good choices for their bodies and access the reproductive healthcare they need. So many people have pushed this organization to a) implement AI and b) scale enormously quickly to grab market share. But creating the RIGHT app is so much more important, in this case, then creating the BIGGEST app. So while of course they plan to scale–it’s their mission to do so!--they aren’t doing so at massive speed, or at least not yet.??

I also wish more people knew how relevant their expertise or knowledge can be in a mission-driven organization–as long as you enter with curiosity and humility. It’s going to take a community to solve today’s problems, and we can only build that community one by one.?

What is your vision for the future of social impact?

My vision is a world where everyone is empowered to do their best work on behalf of the missions that matter most to them. They can connect easily; they have clear roles and responsibilities; they see the results and feel great about their contributions. Making this kind of engagement more widespread would completely transform society. The best board leaders I know–like Matt Holford at the Taproot Foundation, Anil Dash at Lower East Side Girls Club, Alvina Antar at BUILD, Erin Baudo Felter at Genysys Works–all say they live, learn, and work better because of what they do with these nonprofits. And there’s no doubt the organizations are more powerful and effective too. With this kind of cross-sector connection, we will be far more equipped to tackle the biggest challenges we’re seeing in the world today–and far happier for contributing to that progress together.??

How can we support your work?

Check out Board.Dev and sign up for our newsletter, or connect directly to me if you have questions! If you’re a corporate tech, talent, or social impact leader, I want to hear about how you’re deploying your talent in your community. If you’re a funder, know that this is the next wave of tech for good and strengthening nonprofits. If you’re a tech leader, we can talk about how board service might fit into your own philanthropic strategy. And if you’re a nonprofit leader, I’d love to help you engage the right people at the highest levels of strategy–your board–so you can have the resources you need to make big things happen.