December Partner of the Month: Susan Crown Exchange

Positive Coaching Alliance sat down with senior leadership from the Susan Crown Exchange, including Chairman and Founder Susan Crown, Kevin Connors, Managing Director, and Haviland Rummel, Executive Director.

Susan Crown Exchange’s Philanthropic Philosophy

PCA:  Can you tell us about the philanthropic philosophy of the Susan Crown Exchange?

Susan:  We began 14 years ago with an extraordinary Board of Directors and a blank slate trying to surface the most important issues of the day. We landed on how to help youth thrive in a rapidly changing world that’s become more digitized, virtual, but also globally connected. That was our objective, to help kids grow up in this new environment. 

We call ourselves an “Exchange” instead of a Foundation because we really wanted to do two things: glean all the expertise in the field by working with frontline providers and second, we wanted to address the normal power dynamics between foundations and grantees. We often find that the people who are working on the front lines are trying to please the foundations or say what they believe the foundations want to hear. Instead, we found the very best providers, knowing that they could teach us a great deal.

We start by identifying a problem or “challenge” in our areas of focus. Specifically, we try to find areas with untapped potential, really high-leverage approaches that are not yet mainstream. We position it as a question that we want to answer or a set of problems that we want to resolve. Then, we will support a cohort of organizations for typically 2-3 years and foster a learning community in the process. So, the Exchange Model is a way of bringing together the top frontline providers, researchers, social scientists, or other foundations so we can learn together and get closer to the answers. We use this Challenge Model, which Haviland developed, to bring groups together to focus on solving a certain problem or becoming smarter on an issue over a period of time. 

Haviland: We developed this Challenge Model mainly because we saw experts on the ground who were already excelling at the work that we were trying to surface or ideas that we were trying to solve for and share. The goal is really to learn from the experts who are doing this work and then share our learnings widely. We found that this cross-sector approach of combining researchers, scholars, and folks that are on the ground has been most effective in adding to the field and adding to the research base but also enacting change for the young people that we are serving.  

Susan: Imagine if you are diagnosed with a disease, say cancer. You want a multi-disciplinary group – if you get the primary doctor, the oncologist, the radiologist, the researcher, and the patient advocate all in the room together – they are much brighter together than they are apart.  That is the model we are using. People use the word “collective” in “collective philanthropy” in different ways, and it has taken on different meanings. For us, it is getting the smartest people in the room and creating a culture where they are not competitors but instead colleagues and making it very clear that the problem is bigger than any one of us alone, and that the best way to get toward solutions is by capitalizing on all the knowledge.

Youth Sports and the Million Coaches Challenge

PCA: What brought you to the youth sports space, and how did you decide to make this commitment to the Million Coaches Challenge?

Susan: We have been extremely interested in the topic of how to help youth thrive in this new world that changes at warp speed. That, coupled with COVID and the lack of social interaction against the heightened incidence of mental health challenges. 

We learned that there are 40 million kids who participate in sports daily and that there are 6 million adults – most of whom are volunteers, who work with them. We felt that this was a prime opportunity to help kids learn. First, to have kids develop meaningful relationships with inspiring adults or role models. And second, to focus on life skills like teamwork, resilience, problem-solving, and emotional regulation. Every sport is not just about winning. It was really Kevin who pushed us in this direction about what was known about coaching, sports, kids, and developmental skills that were learned, conveyed, or practiced through sports. And we realized that almost very little was known about this. But intuitively, we knew that it was the perfect palette from which to start painting. 

PCA: Building on that, how would you talk about this work to someone who might be in a different focus area (say, philanthropy focused on education), which is focused of course, on youth outcomes and improving the next generation, but maybe hasn’t thought about the sports lens?

Kevin: We didn’t start out in the sports space – we’re relatively new to this sector. Just in the last 5 to 6 years did we really start playing deeply in it. What we are committed to throughout all of our grantmaking is identifying the most promising but often still underutilized strategies, where you can really drive these outcomes, like young people developing key skills and mindsets, and youth sports are just that. 

Susan said 40 million young people are playing sports every year, and there are more kids involved in youth sports than any other activity outside of the K-12 school day. And so as a philanthropic community, as a youth-serving community, and as you take heed of the Surgeon General’s recent advisories around the youth mental health crisis and the crisis around isolation and social connection, we’re in desperate need of creative ways to reach millions of young people. Youth sports are really primed for that. We understood that there are really strong organizations out there (like Positive Coaching Alliance and others whom we are supporting) but that there was so much they could do collectively to help the whole field move forward. Part of our job now is to go and talk with other foundations and talk about our journey on learning about social-emotional learning (SEL) in the afterschool space and youth sports because it is a really high-leverage opportunity to support the same outcomes that we’re all collectively working towards, whether it’s through the K-12 school day, after school environment, or the digital environment, youth sports are this really promising avenue to do it. I saw it firsthand as a coach and as a teacher; teaching my same kids out on the baseball diamond was a little different than teaching them inside of my English classes, right? I can meet them halfway there. I could really foster a lot of the same outcomes I was striving for. Youth sports are really primed to achieve that kind of purpose. 

Susan: The other thing I suggest to other funders is to think about investing in these areas. We have a higher risk profile than most foundations, and that’s a part of our identity. A lot of foundations are fearful of focusing on digital well-being or the SEL world or the sports world because there’s no clear pathway to a successful outcome. We have tried to define what a successful outcome looks like and what an unsuccessful outcome looks like, but it takes the assumption of risk and the willingness to try a portfolio of approaches, knowing that some are going to work and some are not going to work. 

Kevin: We invest so much in teacher professional development and learning and building a culture of really positive schools. We know how important those adults are in leading to academic and social-emotional outcomes. There are very similar roles in the youth sports space. We know that coaches, like teachers, have an outsized impact. There is enough research now to really demonstrate the impact a coach has even when they’re only coaching a young person for one season. Coaches are a tangible place to start and the most central factor in whether a young person has a quality experience, and in turn, is gleaning all the benefits they can. So, coaches for us, when we talk about calculated risk, was very much a place that said, ‘Hey, there is evidence here that a well-trained coach actually delivers the outcomes we all believe. How can we make that more of the norm? How can we create a culture around coaching where they are valued, see themselves as part of the solution, and are supported by the broader system?’ And that’s of course, what drove us to the Million Coaches Challenge.

PCA: How is the Challenge going? Have there been any big wins or any surprises? And, any areas you feel have been a challenge, or you have to break through or still need to figure it out?

Susan: The big wins are the number of people who now want to join the movement and a lot of the big wins will come next year because a lot of the programming and training has been in mindful development with the MCC cohort, and a lot of it will be deployed next year and then measured. But I would say–even having that portfolio of training that is suited to fit a coach who can only do a one-hour online course, to another coach who wants to do a six-week course–just raising the key issues and having them front and center, giving them tools, whether it was tear-off sheets on a clipboard or evaluations–those didn’t exist before. Those are huge wins for us. And raising the profile of the issue that the school day isn’t over when kids leave class. They usually change into their workout gear, and many of the same teachers, parents, or volunteers continue the school day.

Haviland: Another big win that needs to be more elevated is the connections and partnerships that have happened within the group and in a field that is very fragmented. It’s been exciting to see some of the partners come together around issues like coaching girls and women. There are also examples like PCA and the Center for Healing and Justice through Sport coming together around the 25×25 Coaches Challenge in California. Those are some exciting advances that happened within the cohort. 

Susan: The thing that’s always most surprising to me (and I’ve been doing this a long time) is when you find the best organization in any field and we ask them, “What do you think? What do you know? How can we learn from you?” The big surprise is the answer is always, “One, we didn’t think you knew we were here. Two, why would a foundation ever want to learn from an actual practicing organization?” It’s shocking to them because they’re so used to playing the game. 

Kevin: I don’t know if I would term it as a surprise, but one of our aspirations for all the Challenge cohorts is that the community does come together and that there is some sort of collective output. You never are quite sure what that’s going to look like or if the conditions will evolve in a way where there are true trusting relationships across the cohort, but we’ve certainly seen that in the Million Coaches Challenge cohort. What began as ten partners and is now 16 is a group that is acting more like a coalition than just a set of partners who are part of a funding initiative. In some ways, it feels rare and is an opportunity to really capitalize on, and given who’s part of this community–PCA, CHJ,S and the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC)–it feels like there is so much potential to reach others and as Susan said, we know the community is so much larger than just the 16 organizations who are currently formally part of it. That’s part of our mission for the next year, to think about how we continue to grow and expand and embrace others because it’s an environment where it will take all of us. 

Social Emotional Learning Component

PCA: Can you tell us more about the Social Emotional Learning Component of your work?

Susan: SEL has taken on all sorts of political meanings. So, I think we’re using whatever language–youth development, youth thriving, etc. I’ve never met a corporate leader, nonprofit leader, or a political leader who hasn’t participated in sport and learned the skills derived from sport–which have to do with working as a team, being playful, allowing for failure, and practice and retrying. These are life skills that help a person in their professional life, family life, social life, and community. And so, sports is just a great platform for teaching all of those skills, and it dovetails so logically with every other effort that we’ve made. Because we’re trying to develop capable people who can navigate this environment.

Haviland: At the center of social-emotional learning are relationships and connection, and research supports that adults significantly influence the social and emotional development of young people, and obviously, coaches are meant to be a trusted adult. Kids often trust their coaches more than their own parents or their teachers. So, the role of a coach in developing a young person’s sense of connection and belonging is so significant in terms of the potential of SEL outcomes. We also see this growing body of research that demonstrates the connection between SEL and youth sports environments. So, we hope to add to that growing body of research and then also think about what it really looks like in practice to train coaches.

PCA is thrilled to work with the Susan Crown Exchange and the organizations of the Million Coaches Challenge, all committed to equipping a generation of coaches with the knowledge and tools to help young people thrive on and off the playing field. If your organization wants to help support training coaches, please reach out to PCA.