NEW ON THE JOB

Three decades ago, Terry Odendahl was in graduate school, studying cultural anthropology. “I had thought I would be going to exotic parts of the world, doing research, living among the native people, and learning about them,” she says.

Then she read an article, “Up the Anthropologist — Perspectives Gained From Studying Up,” by Laura Nader, which suggested the importance of studying the culture of the powerful and affluent. At the time, Ms. Odendahl says, the idea was controversial.

“That changed my focus: Why do we always study relatively marginalized groups without power? We should be ‘studying up,’ and that set me in a new direction,” says Ms. Odendahl, who turned to analyzing the giving patterns and behavior of wealthy people.

Now, after 30 years working as a scholar, critic, and leader in the nonprofit world, she has become the chief executive of the Global Greengrants Fund, a grant maker that supports the work of indigenous and grass-roots environmental activists worldwide.

The fund, in Boulder, Colo., makes small grants — typically between $500 and $5,000 — to groups working on environmental-justice projects in parts of the globe where even such small sums are often unavailable. In 2008 the fund allocated 730 grants totaling $4.3-million to groups that work in more than 90 countries.

Ms. Odendahl, 54, has been a grant maker for years, working with community, family, and women’s foundations — “virtually every area except corporate philanthropy,” she says. But she is perhaps best known as the executive director of the National Network of Grantmakers, an organization that represented liberal grant makers until economic woes caused it to close in 2007, and as a former chairwoman of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.

What makes Greengrants’s operations different from those of many other environmental grant makers, says Ms. Odendahl, is that “we give the decision-making power to the people closest to the work, who best understand their context and situation.” Greengrants relies on more than 120 experts around the world to volunteer as members of regional and global advisory boards. The volunteers identify exemplary organizations and projects.

Ms. Odendahl has been dividing her time between her current job as president of the New Mexico Association of Grantmakers, in Santa Fe, and her new position, which she will begin full time on June 1, making an annual salary of $120,000. Chet Tchozewski, who founded Global Greengrants in 1993 with the help of the Tides Foundation, in San Francisco, will remain on the board and move to the new position of president, where he will focus on fund raising and will report to Ms. Odendahl.

Says Catherine Porter, chairwoman of the fund’s Board of Directors: “Terry knows how to coordinate grantmaking strategies across a diversity of interests — something that Global Greengrants does across the globe. We want to maximize that impact.”

Ms. Odendahl has already been traveling to see the organization’s grants at work. In late March she went to Nicaragua, where she saw projects supported by Greengrants’s Central America regional council.

“Almost everything we do has some connection to water, because of the way water is affected by human behavior, and that leads into forestry, oil and gas development, indigenous rights, and other areas,” she says.

In an interview, Ms. Odendahl discussed her new job:

Why did you decide to take this position?

I’m an anthropologist by trade. When I started analyzing wealthy people, that’s what brought me into the field: learning what wealthy people were most proud of in their philanthropy and what they were most willing to talk about.

I’ve been in philanthropy for over 30 years, but I’ve also been a critic of philanthropy as it’s traditionally practiced. And for me, the Global Greengrants Fund’s grant-making model is the type I think philanthropy should move toward, should be the wave of the future, especially for groups that fund internationally.

We believe that the cost per grant is much less and more efficient than most, because of the fact that we have people on the ground all around the world who are checking out the groups and doing due diligence, and we’re not sending out program officers to do site visits.

And so now I’m combining the study of wealthy people and institutional philanthropy with my original anthropological roots and interests, along with working with indigenous people and having more of a global perspective.

I feel like my career is almost coming full circle in a fascinating way. I suspect — and hope — that this is the job I’ll retire from.

How will you assess the group’s success?

One measure would be that we built funds all around the world that have become self-sufficient.

Also, Global Greengrants started out primarily getting foundation grants, but we’ve increasingly been working on building our individual donors and spending more time in Europe. That’s our goal: to increase the number of donors outside the United States and the amount they give.

Has there been a common theme that runs throughout your career?

First of all, I grew up in the 60s. I’ve kept some closely held personal values, and I think that the personal is political. And while I didn’t plan it this way, it just turns out that looking at ways that philanthropy can fund social justice, can fund a more equitable world, has been the focus of my work.

I’ve been involved with nonprofit organizations since, as a young teenager, I was on the board of the Heartland Human Relations Association, a local civil-rights group in eastern San Diego County, around 1967. They were particularly looking for young board members, which is something I really advocate, because if you start and feel involved early, it’s something you take with you for the rest of your life.

How might the recession affect Greengrants’s budget?

Our 2009 budget is about $5-million, and our plan is to stay level, to pay out the same amount of grants that we did last year. Our hope is that we’ll be able to persuade donors that in a time of economic crisis, they can make small grants around the world that will have substantial impact. And so far, we haven’t seen a dip in donations.

At the National Network of Grantmakers, you led a campaign to persuade foundations to give more than the federally required 5 percent. What are your current thoughts on that issue?

I personally remain committed to increasing payout. It’s a more burning issue, given the economic downturn. Sometimes the opposite is happening; foundations are saying they can’t pay out as much, because there’s an almost sacred association between foundations and building their endowments. But I ardently believe that now is the time when foundations should be paying out more.