Leadership for This Moment: Member Lunch with GEO’s Marcus Walton

As the nonprofit and philanthropic landscapes continue to shift, philanthropic leaders are being called to navigate complex decisions, evolving expectations, and increasing pressure to ensure their structures and practices reflect their values.

During this discussion with Marcus Walton, President and CEO at Grantmakers in Effective Organizations (GEO), we will discuss how philanthropic governance and leadership can not only keep pace with change, but also enable funder to act as agile, values-driven partners to nonprofits and communities. GEO supports grantmakers in moving through disruption with clarity and integrity so that communities can experience more responsive, equitable, and reliable support.

Drawing from GEO’s report Toward Meaningful, Valuable, Equitable Governance, this session will explore how philanthropic governance can do more than keep pace with change—it can enable grantmakers to move forward as agile, courageous partners to nonprofits and communities. Together, participants will consider practical approaches to strengthening purpose, roles, relationships, and decision-making processes.

We will also explore how philanthropic infrastructure organizations like Catalyst and GEO can encourage expansive thinking and honest dialogue to activate your commitments and deepen alignment with values.

Target Audience

This program is designed for members of Catalyst. If you are interested in Catalyst membership, please contact Melissa Leon.

Catalyst is committed to making our events accessible to everyone. Please let us know how we can help you fully participate by contacting Maryan Osman. 

Speakers

Marcus Walton | President and CEO | Grantmakers for Effective Organizations

Marcus F. Walton joins GEO with over a decade of practice in both nonprofit management and the ontological learning model. He specializes in operationalizing conceptual frameworks; racial equity facilitation and training; leadership and management strategy; stakeholder engagement; program development and navigating philanthropy.

In his previous role as Director of Racial Equity Initiatives for Borealis Philanthropy, Marcus lead the Racial Equity Initiatives team and worked in partnership with 18 nationally-networked, philanthropy-serving grantee organizations to move past the “transactional” nature of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to a unified movement which prioritizes strategies that close gaps in access to opportunity, resources and well-being (across all categories of gender, identity, sexual orientation, class and ability).

Marcus received a Bachelor of Arts in History and Political Science from Bowling Green State University and has continued graduate studies in public administration at Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of Public Policy as well as Rutgers University’s School of Public Affairs and Administration.

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