The following academics, community organizers and other leaders served on the report’s Advisory Committee:

Nicole Carty, Executive Director, Get Free
Justin Hansford, African American Redress Network
Linda Mann, African American Redress Network
Robin Lenhardt, Racial Justice Institute
Dara Cooper, Activist/Organizer
Mariana Barros-Titus, Public Historian and Co-Founder of the Black Broad Branch Project
Sarah Shoenfeld, Mapping Segregation in Washington DC
Claire Dunning, PhD, University of Maryland, College Park
Kimi Mojica, Justice Funders
Dana Kawaoka-Chen, Justice Funder
Jennie Goldfarb, Liberation Ventures
Erika Totten, Healer/Activist/Facilitator
Makia Green, Black Liberation Organizer
Rosemary Ndubuizu, PhD, Volunteer Community Organizer, ONE DC (Organizing Neighborhood Equity)
M Adams, Community Organizer
Christian Beauvoir, Policy & Reparations Organizer
Ja’Loni Owens, Reparations Coordinator

We hope to foster further examination and discussion that spark meaningful dialogue and create an opportunity for local foundations to acknowledge and act on past harms to Black communities. By engaging in this process, foundations can establish connections with local groups and organizations, as well as contribute financial resources and social capital for reparative action. These collective efforts are crucial for the immediate and long-term healing of impacted Black communities in the region.

To this end, NCRP researchers and our diverse advisory group of local academics and community leaders offer a 5-point action plan of recommendations for philanthropic institutions looking to reckon with their role in harm done to Black communities.

Encouragingly, early data shows that since 2020, foundation leadership has tuned in to issues of racial justice, and specifically Black liberation, more than ever before. The movement-building by Black community leadership before, during and after high profile police murders like those of Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd persuaded and pressured philanthropy into expanding its social and financial support of solutions to address these longstanding issues.   

However, increased funding to Black communities and racial justice work – while critical – is not the same as reckoning with harm done to specific Black people through the wealth origins of an individual institution. In fact, despite the sector’s increased promises in 2020, messages of solidarity have dwindled, and Black communities are still underfunded. That is why several Black-led organizations and their allies pushed for funder accountability for past harm and redress for the current inequitable grantmaking structures many funders continue to protect and preserve.

This report is also part of a broader national conversation around reparations for Black people and the ways that different institutions – governmental, academic, philanthropic – can reckon with and repair the historical and ongoing impact of systemic and structural racism on Black communities.  

General Justification for Additional
Grantmaking specifically to Black Communities: Grantmaking for Black people and communities is NOT synonymous with reparations. Carrying out consequential reparative actions requires foundations to undertake a comprehensive approach to repair that goes far beyond meeting funding requests. They must also focus on addressing the structural barriers to equity and opportunity that their wealth generation and management had a role in creating or perpetuating. That means not only shifting resources away from ever-growing endowments built on historical harm, but also engaging in the 5-step action plan laid out in this report and making bold investments in infrastructure and services that do the deep work of healing, repairing and restoring Black communities.

Quantifying Current/Ongoing Harm from Foundation Practices: Before foundations can consider responsible redress that does not create harmful repetition, there should be a long-term impact study and a critical reorganization of institutional policies. Harm being done to Black people in the current practices of a foundation’s policies is harm worthy of analysis, but that analysis is outside the scope of this project.

Resources and recommendations of where to begin around institutional practices and polices are included in the report’s final section, A 5-Point Plan for Action: How Foundations Can Embark on their Reparations Journey.

NCRP uses reckoning at various points to illustrate the urgency we hope foundations will take to repair the communities harmed by the wealth that created their endowments.

It is our hope that the philanthropic sector will embrace a process of redress for their own institutional history and to embrace the national movement for reparations for American descendants of enslavement.

We use the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA) definition to define reparations: a process of repairing, healing, and restoring a people injured because of their group identity and in violation of their fundamental human rights by governments, corporations, institutions and families.

Definitions:

• Reckoning: learning and deeply understanding the what, how, and why of actions and systems that have contributed to harm.
• Redress: Acts of restitution, financial compensation, and rehabilitation; proactive steps taken to embed racial justice into systems
• Reparations: A process of repairing, healing and restoring a people injured because of their group identity and in violation of their fundamental human rights by governments, corporations, institutions and families. Those groups that have been injured have the right to obtain from the government, corporation, institution or family responsible for the injuries that which they need to repair and heal themselves. In addition to being a demand for justice, it is a principle of international human rights law. (N’COBRA definition)

The ultimate passage of federal legislation for reparations is the north star for movements for the liberation for Black people in this country. However, as advocacy and organizing toward this long-term goal continue, there is both opportunity and historical precedent for municipal governments, universities and other institutions to reckon with and make restitution for past harm and its continuing impact on Black communities.

This report works to ensure that the philanthropic sector is part of the solution. Many in the sector may be aware of stories of Black exploitation and dispossession that run alongside, and sometimes intersect with, philanthropic origin stories. Yet, philanthropy has never reckoned on a systematic basis with the ill-gotten gains that were the seed capital for so many modern grantmakers.

Philanthropic institutions, often seen as moral leaders in public spaces, must lead here and take responsibility for the harm done to Black people in the service of wealth creation that seeded their foundations. Charitable endowments specifically have corporate and institutional ties to unjust gains. Philanthropy has a civic, economic and moral obligation to rebalance those resources in order to create a more inclusive and equitable future.

Cracks in the Foundation: Reckoning with Philanthropy’s Role in Reparations for Black People in the DMV, is the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy’s contribution to the necessary and profound process of racial accountability, repair, and healing in our country. It is part of a national conversation that has been happening for more than 150 years and has recently gained momentum through local efforts such as the Reparations Committee in Evanston, Illinois and the Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans in California.

We see this report as part of our mission to ensure that philanthropy is more accountable, transparent and responsive to the needs of communities with the least wealth, opportunity and power. To ensure we had all the necessary perspectives, expertise and knowledge to do this work justice, NCRP worked with an advisory committee made up of DMV community-based organizers, nonprofits, and academic experts, as well as national reparations movement leaders. Their energy, insight, and expertise on the historical harms that have had the greatest impact on D.C.’s Black community over the two-year research period have been essential to the report’s publication.

In our ten-year strategic framework, NCRP outlines our intentional connection to movements that are important drivers of progress and social change in our country, including racial justice movements. As an organization, we have long been vocal about the need for funders to move resources and shift power dynamics to be allies and accomplices to these movements. This report is a continuation of that ongoing work and commitment.

The movement for reparations has a long history of collective organizing to achieve healing and repair. That history includes actions during Reconstruction, the 20th century Civil Rights Movement and today’s movement for Black liberation. “Queen Mother” Audley Moore launched the Committee for Reparations for Descendants of U.S. Slaves and twice (in 1957 and 1959) appealed to the UN for reparations for African Americans. In 1969, James Forman, a leader in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), released the Black Manifesto on behalf of the National Black Economic Development Conference, calling for $500,000,000 in reparations from white churches and synagogues. And in 1989, N’COBRA was founded as the organization assisting Democratic Rep. John Conyers of Michigan in introducing HR 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparations Proposals for African Americans Act.

This report works to ensure that the philanthropic sector is part of the solution for supporting the demands made by the movement for reparations.

A key factor for the creation of this report was the presence and collaboration of local philanthropic leadership.  We hope that funders fearful of embarking on this journey of redress with their community and Board look at the example set by fellow grantmaker if, A Foundation for Radical Possibility. 

Founded in 1997 as the Consumer Health Foundation, if, A Foundation for Radical Possibility, renamed itself in 2021 to reflect its evolution from a grantmaker focused on health equity to an organization that works to achieve racial justice by centering Black people and people of the global majority. In 3 short years, they have embraced their organizational responsibility to make amends through both the public acknowledgement of the institution’s role in harming local Black communities and an equally public commitment that this is just the beginning of what is needed to make amends. It’s an active journey that includes, among other things, funding – and participating in – work like this report to catalyze these conversations in the sector. 

Although our immediate focus is the DMV, the methodology and recommendations of the report can serve as a model for funders and activists in other cities and regions. In addition, we believe this research methodology has potential applications not just for philanthropy, but for those grappling with these questions in the public and private sectors as well.   

In this critical time of national reflection on and reckoning with centuries of racial oppression, philanthropy across the country, not just in the DMV, must actively engage in the conversation and respond with urgency, specificity and targeted action. The report is aimed at supporting this objective. By understanding the historical context and with a steadfast commitment to immediate action, movement organizers, community members and philanthropic leaders can collaborate to bring about sustainable and transformative change that is essential for justice in our communities.   

The sample of foundations in this report do not represent the only connections between harm to Black people and modern philanthropy. This is not a full accounting of all damage done to these communities through philanthropic wealth generation in our region, nor of the intertwined role the private sector and local and federal government played in those harms. 

What this report offers is a responsible way to enter this uncomfortable conversation, based on our hypothesis: If  historical information about the origins of philanthropic wealth are organized in one public place for funders and communities alike to see, the connections between the philanthropic sector and the exploitation of Black people will become unavoidable and, more importantly, actionable – especially for funders who have expressed a commitment to racial equity or racial justice. 

The wealth origins of foundations included in this report are representative of political practices and industry-wide trends that occurred nationwide. While no one foundation – or any institution – can heal or repair all the harm done by industry-wide practices or societal norms, each foundation has the responsibility of being accountable for their specific actions and collectively, philanthropy has a responsibility to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Our goal in telling these stories is to provide all foundations with a path toward addressing these issues and recentering the historical record of those who have been harmed. By demonstrating a process in which a foundation’s origin is studied, put into context, and connected to modern racial inequity, we aim to make it easier for more funders to envision how they can work to repair the communities harmed by the wealth that created their endowments. 

Movement leaders and scholars have argued for reparations with the primary goal of eliminating the U.S. racial wealth gap. To explore the extent of harm from philanthropic wealth that has contributed to this gap, researchers laid our historical findings against The Social Determinants of Health, originally popularized by the World Bank and used by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Healthy People 2030 campaign. This set of questions and criteria provided an evaluative framework linking present disparities to historical acts as well as important guidance vis-a-vis the scope of harm to Black people that should be considered by philanthropy in general and these 8 foundations in particular.  These figures are only a baseline. However, they do offer a starting point for action and additional research questions for a more complete quantitative economic evaluation. 

When NCRP started its research project two years ago, we considered more than 2,000 local funders as potential case study subjects. Our initial research considered various foundation types, sizes, institutional lifespans and origins. Many potential subjects were disqualified because their wealth wasn’t generated in the DMV or because there is not enough publicly available information about their origins.  

In the end, we choose eight foundations whose wealth origin stories were illustrative of philanthropy’s role in the systemic harm of Black communities in the Washington DC area. To their credit, the eight studied funders have made their histories transparent enough for researchers to explore. 

The foundations included in this report are not the only institutions responsible for past harm. The case studies are not punitive judgements, but educational guides for an accountability and healing journey, presented in the spirit of making difficult conversations easier to engage in and organize around.