One morning last August I visited Williams College in Massachusetts to teach a workshop on “building a life in the arts” with a group of racially, geographically, and economically diverse young people working at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Later that night I attended a show at the theater, where I saw these idealistic apprentices taking tickets from, ushering, and selling merchandise to an overwhelmingly white audience—mostly over 60 and, judging by appearances, quite well-off. The social and cultural distance between the aspiring artists at Williamstown and their theater-going audience couldn’t have been more pronounced. This gulf is quite familiar to most producers and practitioners of the performing arts in America; it plays out nightly at regional theaters, ballets, symphonies, and operas across the country.
It is clear that our justice system is designed for control rather than healing. And with the alarming demographics of national incarceration rates, it’s also clear that it helps facilitate an economy of exclusion that considers many people of color to be unemployable and disposable.
As a global top-down investor, Zevin Asset Management approaches investing by looking at the big picture of what’s going on around the world. We can’t ignore how mass incarceration affects – and undermines – the financial health of our institutions by shutting people out of real economic opportunity and driving income inequality. Foundations committed to social justice are uniquely poised to address this social and economic issue both in their work, and in their investments.
For example, the widespread and often irrational use of criminal background checks in employment decisions fuels a vicious cycle that pushes many formerly incarcerated people back to prison. This is something that investors are starting to chime in on – educating companies about this issue and then urging them to take action. We recognize their legitimate concerns about the risk of hiring workers with criminal histories, but companies and the people who work there must understand their role in recidivism. Providing formerly incarcerated people with paths to employment is one way to break the cycle.
Ban the Box is a great example of reform to end discrimination in the workplace. The campaign has persuaded more than 100 cities across the country to pass legislation that removes criminal history checkboxes from job applications. However, private employers are largely exempt. To maximize the impact of improving the employment prospects of people with records, companies must instigate a more thoughtful review of their hiring processes. Concerned foundations should have their investment managers investigate where the companies they invest in stand on this issue.
Sadly, for-profit prisons have an interest in maintaining the status quo, not rehabilitating inmates, to drive more repeat business. The more people that are in prison, the more money they make. Other companies also benefit from our system of mass incarceration – banks and municipalities fund prison construction, some companies use prison labor to lower costs, and others like CenturyLink charge hugely inflated prices for inmates to keep in touch with their families. As noted in “Why We Must Divest from Mass Incarceration,” featured in the November 2015 issue of NCRP’s Responsive Philanthropy, there is a whole system that profits from incarceration – especially devastating to communities of color.
The American Friends Service Committee’s recent mapping of all of the main corporate players involved in the privatization of punishment, ranging from for-profit prisons to privatized services, can be used to put shareholder pressure on these companies, shaming them in the way that the climate change movement is starting to do with fossil fuel companies.
As investors, we should work to:
- Divest from companies that profit from mass incarceration.
- Understand the institutional racism in company practices.
- Engage companies on prison labor.
- Ask companies to thoughtfully review their criminal background check policies.
- Urge companies to pay a living wage.
- Urge companies to locate facilities in low-income communities and provide good jobs there.
- Consider social impact bonds that target recidivism.
- Support worker-owned cooperatives and other social enterprises that employ formerly incarcerated individuals.
On a practical level, foundations can:
- Talk with their investment managers about why these strategies are important and challenge them to think about these issues from a moral perspective.
- Update their investment policy statements to integrate how their investment managers should consider their mission.
- Communicate changes to their managers and let them know that they will be held accountable.
As investors but also as citizens, we need to educate those outside of our echo chamber, and act on issues of racial equity and economic justice. This last part is the most challenging as we need to build new economies and systems not yet in place. We must recognize that finance is fundamentally about serving society, and therefore, serving people – not the other way around. We all have a role to play to ensure that our society doesn’t lose sight of this.
Sonia Kowal is president of Zevin Asset Management, LLC. Follow @ZevinAssetMgmt on Twitter.
CC image by Jonathan McIntosh.
The James Irvine Foundation on Wednesday said it will wind down its three existing program areas so it can work exclusively on alleviating poverty.
Over the next five years, the San Francisco grant maker, which controls about $2 billion in assets, will wean grantees in its arts, democracy in California, and youth and education programs from its support.
Every city has just six artists. Or six community leaders. Or six innovators. I’m kidding … maybe your city has seven. I make this joke because in just about every community I visit, there are about six people that show up on everyone’s list for funding, for recognition, for recommendation. These six artists, leaders and innovators are almost always doing really amazing work, work that is powerful, important and in need of support. They’re at the top of everyone’s list for a reason – but they can’t do everything.
Effective place-based change needs to be rooted in broad and diverse citizen power. Every community needs a steady supply of leaders, artists and innovators with the capacity, agency and skills to have a positive impact – not just a chosen few. To contribute to long-term impact and equity, we need to look beyond, or behind, the usual suspects and leaders. Nonprofits and foundations need to work in a hyper-local way to help build and recognize leadership that is truly from and of the communities we hope to serve. But how should we go about this?
In our work at Springboard for the Arts, we are obsessed with systems and mechanisms that support power and agency of local creative leaders. Our goal is to foster direct relationships and capacity in the communities where we work, and we measure success by the degree to which those relationships can continue without us. (If you want to see more of what our place-based work looks like, this video documentary and toolkit are good examples.)
Here are five lessons we have learned about what works, and what doesn’t, to build leadership and relationship capacity in our communities:
- Support lots of little projects.
Paradoxically, when it comes to place-based grantmaking, it seems to be harder for many organizations to make small investments, particularly in individuals or small, informal groups. But if you’re trying to encourage new leadership in a community, then there need to be on-ramp experiences that introduce people to each other and provide opportunities for them test out new skills and build relationships. Supporting a lot of small projects instead of (or in addition to) one large project helps build a diversity of expression and strategies. It also takes the pressure off any one group or person to speak for the entire community. You never know what great idea or person will show up at your party if you send out a lot of invitations. Supporting many small projects also provides the opportunity for grantees and grantmakers to learn from each other as they see these small experiments play out.
- Keep it low-risk.
Another benefit of small project support is that the stakes for each individual project are not so high that they become a barrier to experimentation or new thinking. Often organizations skip this important seed planting, watering and cultivating step and jump directly to trying out large-scale solutions before the community has the necessary relationships, trust and social capital in place to make them work. This is like asking someone to marry you before you go on any dates. Starting with multiple small bets also means that not every project needs to be 100 percent successful or high profile. Keeping projects modest in scale and commitment invites more people to the table to try their hand at helping their neighborhood. If you expect people and organizations to collaborate, it’s critical to provide support for trials so that people can learn how to work together and build relationships organically.
- Provide simple mechanisms.
Make it easy for people to work together with simple and clear entry points and as few rules and restrictions as possible. If your foundation’s systems are built for very large investments or a high degree of oversight, you may want to work with a trusted intermediary or partner who can administer small, simple investments and ideally provide technical support. Linking training with project support to allow people to try out the skills they’re learning can be an effective combination.
- Pay attention to language.
What you call the project or capacity-building support matters. Sometimes designating it as “support” instead of a grant, mini-grant or funding helps attract a broader diversity of people, some of whom might be intimidated by or uninterested in a traditional grant program. It also helps create a non-competitive culture for the program. On the other hand, for some communities, being awarded a “grant” carries a certain cachet that can help validate their work and leverage additional support. Although it seems small, it is important to be intentional about the language you use and keep your stakeholders in mind.
- Evaluate the relationship, not just the project!
This is probably the most important lesson we have learned. An investment in leadership or capacity building is an investment in relationships and process. If you choose to support small projects, the emphasis should be on the quality of the relationships that are formed, not the outcome of the project. For example, if you support artists to design projects with small neighborhood businesses, success means that the relationship continues and grows beyond the project, not only that the mural that is painted.
These five lessons are strategies that have worked well for us, enabling us to reach new leaders that have surprised us (and sometimes themselves) with incredible creativity, wisdom and passion for helping their communities grow and thrive. We’ve also learned that every situation is different. So while not all of these lessons will apply to your community, I do hope they will spark some new thinking to help you tap into and support the most important asset that exists in every place: the people who live in, work in and love that place.
For more information about place-based philanthropy, check out the NCRP webinar I recently participated in: “PIMBY: Philanthropy in my Backyard.”
Laura Zabel is executive director of Springboard for the Arts. Follow @laurazabel on Twitter and join the #PIMBY conversation.
As many of you know, Prop 47 was a referendum passed by Californians in 2014 that reclassified nonviolent crimes once considered felonies into misdemeanors. Since the 1980’s the state of California constructed 22 new prisons and just one university. Prop 47 was an effort to address their rapidly expanding prison system and to reallocate the savings to “school truancy and dropout prevention, mental health and substance abuse treatment, and victim services.” The intent was to provide offenders with the type of action that would prevent them from committing these acts again in the future, in hopes that early intervention might stop others from going down this road at all.
The California Association of Nonprofits and California Philanthropy (Northern California Grantmakers, San Diego Grantmakers and Southern California Grantmakers) hosted “Prop 47: Look Back. Look Forward,” a webinar discussing how the citizens of California addressed their overzealous criminal justice system, the progress that has been made since that historic decision and the major work that lies ahead. According to the presenters, since Prop 47, there have been 43,000 fewer felony convictions each year and 18,000 fewer people incarcerated, saving the state $73 million. Prop 47 also gives a path, open until November 2017, for Californians to petition to have their criminal records changed, and more than 160,000 Californians have petitioned so far. As funders and community leaders race to think of smart ways to engage the millions of others qualified to reap the benefits of this life-altering referendum before the deadline hits, I found myself having a “look back, look forward” moment of my own.
Last year at the 2015 NCRP Impact Awards, Prop 47 was on our minds as we recognized Open Society Foundations for their work helping to fund Vote Safe, the organization that directed the campaign for the referendum. As I look forward to the 2016 NCRP Impact Awards on May 3rd, I wonder what progressive victories we’ll be able to celebrate then. Nominations close tomorrow, so now is the time to submit up to 10 foundations that demonstrate exemplary grantmaking, leadership and commitment to diversity, inclusion and equity.
The year 2015 was full of triumphs and admirable hard fought losses, so as you spend the first few weeks of the New Year reflecting on the gift of life and our loved ones and the progress that we’ve made as a progressive community, please also think of the foundation partners whose presence has helped to make that progress possible. Nominate now!
And please save the date for the 2016 NCRP Impact Awards reception, to be held on the evening of Tuesday, May 3, 2016 during the Grantmakers for Effective Organizations’ Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Janay Richmond is a field associate at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP). Follow @NCRP and @JanayRichmond1 on Twitter and join the #2016NCRPImpactAwards conversation!
I learned how to drive in D.C., one of the most congested areas in the country. Like most 15-year-olds, I was excited to get behind the wheel, but I remember how nervous I was when I drove onto Interstate 495 – the infamous Beltway – for the first time. Every time I merged, my driving instructor said in a quiet, even voice, “Find your roadway.” At first I didn’t know what he meant, but over time this lesson has served me well while driving, and in life. He was reminding me that I don’t have to rush to join the flow of traffic. In fact, if I don’t take a second and orient myself on the onramp, I might never make it four lanes over to the fast lane.
I heard his voice today as I reflected on the rising cries for justice that are growing around the country. Those of us who seek justice and who want to support it feel a sense of urgency to act boldly and swiftly to thwart injustice. And rightfully so. The sound of Chicagoans calling for their mayor to accept accountability and resign is drowned by the din of vitriolic hate that mainstream presidential candidates are directing toward Muslim-Americans. The December trial of a serial rapist former police officer who preyed on Black women at the margins of society was overshadowed by constant media coverage of the two shooters in California. Those of us who want justice see where we need to go, and we want to jump from the onramp to the fast lane as quickly as possible.
But, as in driving, there is risk when we don’t take the time to find our roadway, especially as more and more organizations get on the road to justice. Recently, I talked to the president of a foundation that focuses on local issues who expressed frustration that some well-intentioned philanthropic organizations made harmful missteps in their attempts to support movements. Instead of supporting movement leaders, their actions discouraged new partnerships from forming.
As he shared his experience, and his disappointment, he revealed the missed opportunities when we don’t take the time to find our roadway. An organization or foundation that is well-oriented with a movement will understand its own capacity, resources and strengths. This allows those of us who work at these organizations and foundations to make promises we can keep. The first step in engaging in any movement is understanding the current progress of the movement, talking to the people most directly affected by the problems it seeks to address, and asking them what is needed to move forward. Whatever we offer to do to help, we must be informed by the people who suffer most from injustice, follow through on our promises to them, and ensure that our work translates into a real impact for them. Finally, we need to be careful about the fine line between leveraging our social capital to recruit others and claiming leadership or responsibility for things we haven’t done.
NCRP is currently engaged in our own strategic planning process, and as we move forward with it, I’m thankful for the insight from my friend at the foundation. NCRP, like other organizations in philanthropy, wants to continue in its journey to increase social justice. It’s exciting that the highway that will take us there is getting a little more crowded, but this makes it more imperative that we all remember to take a moment find our roadway. We need to know ourselves, give clear signals and pace ourselves as we move over the fast lane so we don’t damage others on the road.
Of all the lessons I learned from my driving instructor, this is the one I remember the most; decades later I still hear his voice from time to time. The problems we face require a sense of urgency, but the good thing about the Beltway is that the traffic never stops moving. We all want to get to a place of justice, and we’ll get there together if we keep these lessons in mind.
Tell NCRP – when you reach out to movement leaders, what do they say they need from philanthropy the most?
Jeanné Isler is field director at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP). Follow @NCRP and @j_lachapel on Twitter.
Fifty years ago, President Lyndon Johnson, despite strong misgivings, quietly signed into law the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), giving citizens the right to access government data. Since then, more than 100 countries — Burkina Faso was the latest — have passed open government laws, often called”sunshine” laws.
Many foundations promote open government. FreedomInfo.org, the leading global network of freedom of information advocates, is supported by, among others, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The Open Society Institute and the Ford Foundation.
In The Self-Help Myth: How Philanthropy Fails to Alleviate Poverty, Erica Kohl-Arenas’ first book, The New School professor is bent on busting some fondly held philanthropic beliefs. Thoroughly researched, beautifully written and convincingly argued, The Self-Help Myth explains how philanthropy, by its inherent nature, often fails in its attempts to reduce inequity and poverty.
The setting is California’s Great Central Valley, a region Kohl-Arenas knows well. The wealthiest food production area in the history of the world, the Central Valley is also home to some of the poorest people in America, many of whom are immigrant farm workers.
Historically under-resourced by philanthropy, the Central Valley has seen at least three major periods of sustained foundation investment since the 1960s. Kohl-Arenas offers case studies of each, demonstrating how well-intentioned grant programs, unwilling to address the structural issues behind poverty, have diluted, diverted and co-opted farmworker community efforts that challenge the California farming economy’s status quo.
The thrust of the book’s argument is sadly not new: private foundation funding has little appetite for taking on the American economic system that created the “capital surplus” that allows for philanthropy’s pool of wealth.
Kohl-Arenas makes her greatest contribution by showing that philanthropic influence is rarely heavy-handed, top-down or hegemonic. Rather, it is more often a set of complex negotiations, full of nuance, within contextual constraints on both the philanthropic and community sides of the table.
By means of literature review, extensive archival analysis, participant observation and scores of interviews, Kohl-Arenas describes in fascinating detail how this complex foundation/community dance has played out over five decades of work and millions of dollars of investment in the Central Valley.
During the ’60s and ’70s, the evolving conversation between the Field Foundation and Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Worker (UFW) movement helped to steer the latter away from “mutual assistance,” “all-volunteer,” “dues paying,” “self-sustaining” organizing, and toward the creation and maintenance of a bevy of 501(c)(3) service organizations. In the ’90s, the Stewart Kinney Foundation’s Immigrant Participation Collaborative[i] “launched two successful campaigns and several productive projects,” but ultimately demonstrated the difficulty of building lasting “strategic coalitions” from “monetarily-driven partnerships.” In the early 2000s, the Western Foundation’s Farm Worker Community Building Initiative, guided by a “double-bottom line,” “win-win,” “philanthrocapitalism” approach that sought to engage both farmers and farm worker organizations, diverted attention from “action organizing” to “leadership training,” and never did manage to bring farmers to the table.
Kohl-Arenas organizes her analysis under the umbrella of “civic participation,” and its many possible interpretations inside and outside foundation offices. Is “civic participation” a guise through which canny, progressive program officers sell hard-action community organizing to conservative, confrontation-shy board members of their foundations? Is it a hegemonic means by which the wealthy place the burden of changing their life conditions on the backs of the poor, while ignoring any challenge to the economic structures that have entrapped them in poverty?
Civic participation is this and more, as Kohl-Arenas enables us to understand. As she says in her conclusion:
“[Traditional philanthropy] tells people how to help themselves in order to change their purportedly bad behaviors, neutralize conflict and maintain systems of power. [Radical action] calls for people to analyze their own relationship to power in order to transform it. Most often we are caught somewhere in between.”
Kohl-Arenas also writes about South Florida’s Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a farmworker group that provides an ideal model for philanthropy-supported organizing. CIW is known for authentic ownership by its farmworker members, as well as for its politically savvy strategies to transform power relationships. Kohl-Arenas mentions support given to CIW by the Kellogg Foundation, and we readers eagerly wish to know more about the ongoing relationship between CIW and its funders. Perhaps this will be her next book.
In her research and teaching on philanthropy and participatory community engagement, Professor Kohl-Arenas describes herself as working in the space “between scholarship and practice.” At a time when prominent foundations like the Ford Foundation are refocusing their work “to disrupt the drivers of inequality,” the field needs many more such scholar practitioners. Let’s encourage the strategic planners at all foundations interested in promoting equality and ending poverty to read Kohl-Arenas’ important book.
Craig McGarvey previously served as a foundation program officer, and worked in California’s Central Valley with Erica Kohl-Arenas.
[i] Names have been disguised under ethnographic protocol.
NCRP is currently seeking nominations for the 2016 NCRP Impact Awards, the most prestigious recognition for high-impact philanthropy. Now in its fourth year, the awards celebrate U.S. foundations that attack the root causes of social problems, empower underserved communities and demonstrate public leadership.
Nominate now!
Awards will be given in four categories:
- Large Private Foundation
- Small/Midsize Foundation
- Corporate Foundation
- Grantmaking Public Charity
The awardees and their powerful work will be celebrated at a reception on Tuesday, May 3rd during the Grantmakers for Effective Organizations’ Conference in Minneapolis. For a look at our past NCRP Impact Awards, check out the video from last year’s reception below.
Nominations are open to all and must be submitted by January 22, 2016. Nominees should be grantmaking organizations and not individual donors. If you have any questions about the nominations process, contact Janay Richmond at awards@ncrp.org.
Criteria for selection includes the following:
Exemplary Grantmaking
The foundation allocates a relatively high percentage of annual discretionary giving to social justice, marginalized communities, general operating support and multi-year grants. Its grantees have a visible effect on promoting systems change and empowering underserved communities.
Leadership in Philanthropy
Foundation executives publicly demonstrate a commitment to systems change strategies such as public speaking or writing about funding social change strategies and marginalized groups, serving on committees or other initiatives that promote social justice and signing on to Philanthropy’s Promise.
Diversity, Inclusion and Equity
The foundation shows a demonstrated commitment to diversity, inclusion and equity, especially along lines of race and gender, in foundation staff and trustees.
Yna Moore is communications director at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP). Follow @NCRP on Twitter.
National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy Issues Call for Nominations
Washington D.C. (1/12/16) – The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) is seeking nominations for the 2016 NCRP Impact Awards. Now in its fourth year, the awards celebrate U.S. foundations that attack the root causes of social problems, empower underserved communities and demonstrate public leadership. The awardees will be celebrated at a reception on Tuesday, May 3, during the Grantmakers for Effective Organizations’ Conference in Minneapolis.
The awards will honor grantmakers practicing high-impact philanthropy in four categories: Large Private Foundation, Small/Midsize Foundation, Corporate Foundation and Grantmaking Public Charity. Nominations are open to all and winners will be selected based on exemplary grantmaking, leadership in philanthropy and a commitment to diversity, inclusion and equity.
All are encouraged to participate by nominating up to 10 foundations and sharing why you have selected your choices by January 22. Additional information about the NCRP Impact Awards and nomination forms are available on NCRP’s website.
Last year’s NCRP Impact Awardees included Blue Shield of California Foundation, Brooklyn Community Foundation, Needmor Fund, New York Foundation and Open Society Foundations. Watch a short video recapping the 2015 NCRP Impact Awards reception.
The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy in Washington, D.C., is a national watchdog, research and advocacy organization that promotes philanthropy that serves the public good, is responsive to people and communities with the least wealth and opportunity, and is held accountable to the highest standards of integrity and openness. Visit www.ncrp.org.
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For media inquiries, please contact Alison Howard at ahoward[at]ncrp.org or call (202) 387-9177 x33.