NCRP’s recent report Families Funding Change: How Social Justice Giving Honors Our Roots and Strengthens Communities highlights the important legacy of family foundations supporting social justice – as well as the relatively scant family philanthropy support for social justice work today. The report rightly points out that the perception that social justice philanthropy is a “political third rail” is the greatest barrier that keeps family foundations from engaging in it. I have heard dozens of family foundation trustees say that, while they personally are interested in increasing their family foundation’s social justice support, they “can’t go there” with the family board. It’s too “political” and “divisive.” They’d “be opening a can of worms.”
As a trustee of a family foundation that exclusively funds social justice – and where our all-family board’s politics span the spectrum – I find this particular line of reasoning puzzling. At Hill-Snowdon Foundation, we have found common ground in shared values that are fundamentally democratic (little d) in nature, and largely apolitical. We believe that we are stewards of a public trust which should be used to reduce, not reinforce, income inequality. We believe that people most affected by broken systems should have an integral role in figuring out how to improve them. We believe that growing inequity is not in anyone’s long-term best interest.
But the most powerful value that unified our board around social justice philanthropy was a shared desire for impact. After years of making grants to direct service organizations, schools, medical organizations, etc., we couldn’t point to much progress. It felt like we were putting Band Aids on wounds that kept getting bigger. Our limited resources may never eradicate the need for the bandages, but they might be able to help staunch the blood flow. And indeed, nearly two decades after our shift to social justice philanthropy, we have contributed to significant improvements for marginalized communities, including gains in living wage campaigns, quality affordable housing, policies that protect undocumented workers from unfair treatment and successful alternatives to punitive school discipline policies that push students into the prison system.
We can see the footprint of our grantees in many of the major policy changes that positively impact low-income families and communities across the country. As a family board, we’ve become more invested and engaged as we witness these tangible outcomes and celebrate them together.
To be clear: we didn’t go into this intending to be “social justice philanthropists.” And if we’d just been talking in generalities about “social justice” and “systems change,” we probably wouldn’t have made much headway. We had to see the work on the ground. We went on site visits all over the country and talked to nonprofit and community leaders. We made grants to a range of different types of organizations. And we saw that the groups that were more effective – making lasting change for the most people – had a few things in common:
- They worked in marginalized communities.
- They put members of those communities front-and-center in leadership and decision-making.
- They relied on those members to identify the problems and solutions.
- They tackled structural or systemic problems that were limiting opportunity for hundreds, thousands, even millions of people.
We’re inspired and honored to see firsthand the improvements this type of support has resulted in for individuals, families and communities. Rather than being divisive, this experience has been unifying for us as a family. It has allowed us to push ourselves and grow together in ways that we simply could not have without addressing social and economic inequity. Supporting social justice has both made our foundation stronger and strengthened the foundation of our family.
Ashley Snowdon Blanchard is vice president of the board of Hill-Snowdon Foundation. She is also associate director of philanthropy at TCC Group.
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