78 foundations have invested $30 million, but hundreds haven’t yet engaged.

Funders and leading national activists recently gathered at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., for the Stand Up For the Count 2020 Census Summit to explore the challenges we face in ensuring an accurate count and to share solutions.

Kudos to the 78 foundations (listed below) that have already invested a collective $30 million in the national effort and the many other funders that are supporting state and local work.

I urge the rest of the nation’s foundations to get involved and put some money into this important initiative.

As Vanita Gupta of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights wrote in “Philanthropy and the 2020 census: A once-in-a-decade chance to get it right,” every issue that foundations care about is affected by the census – from education and health care to rural development and veterans’ services. Communities that have been historically marginalized are especially at risk of being under-counted.

Generally, I’ve been impressed with philanthropy’s engagement thus far with the 2020 census:

  • The field is well organized, and many funders started early. The Funders Census Initiative of the Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation and the United Philanthropy Forum has been leading outreach to funders and encouraging participation.
  • Some of the country’s top funders hosted activists and grantmakers during the Stand Up For The Count The co-hosts included Patrick McCarthy of The Annie E. Casey Foundation, Darren Walker of Ford Foundation, La June Montgomery Tabron of W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Gary Bass of The Bauman Foundation, Patrick Gaspard of Open Society Foundations and Barbara Picower of The JPB Foundation.
  • Antonia Hernández of the California Community Foundation along with Gary Bass, Barbara Picower and Darren Walker co-authored an op-ed that clearly and succinctly makes the case for why grantmakers should invest in the census. Their key message in Every Person Counts: Why the Census Must Be Rescued is: “All philanthropists have a stake in the census, no matter what they fund or where. It is incumbent upon us to do whatever we can to guarantee that it proceeds accurately, apolitically, ethically, and efficiently. And we are running out of time.”
  • There’s a great video available to help folks understand what’s at stake.

But census funders say they need an additional $35 million to support national efforts to reach hard-to-count populations and encourage them to participate, and for a Census Equity Fund that will provide grants to hard-to-count areas in states where there is limited philanthropy.

Even more funding is needed at the state and local levels. The goal is to make sure everyone gets counted.

Nonprofits will do media campaigns in multiple languages, along with door-to-door outreach and other high-touch engagement strategies.

As I reviewed the list of funders participating with this funder collaborative thus far, several large national foundations were conspicuously and disappointingly missing such as Bloomberg Philanthropies, The MacArthur Foundation, The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, Laura and John Arnold Foundation, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, Lumina Foundation, Walton Family Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation.

Also not on the list are large regional funders like Robert W. Woodruff Foundation, William Penn Foundation, McKnight Foundation, Houston Endowment, Daniels Fund, Duke Endowment, Richard King Mellon Foundation, The Brown Foundation and The Heinz Endowments.

Every single community foundation in the nation should also be a part of this effort, yet I only see a handful of them on the list.

Given the missions of these grantmakers, why aren’t they engaged? Word is that Houston Endowment, The Heinz Endowments and Schusterman Family Foundation are in discussions and will soon come on board, but what about the others?

I realize that it’s possible some of these funders are indeed doing census-related funding and they just haven’t connected yet with the national effort. I really hope that’s the case.

There is no more time to waste. Philanthropy can play a meaningful role in helping to ensure the 2020 census produces an accurate count. To succeed, foundations large and small need to get engaged now, before the end of the year.

If you’re considering being a part of this important effort, reach out directly to one of the leaders I mentioned above, or join a conference call to be hosted by Darren Walker and Gary Bass on Oct. 30, 2018, to learn how you can get involved.

Aaron Dorfman is president and CEO of NCRP. Follow @NCRP on Twitter.

 

Kudos to these foundations that have invested in the census

Access Strategies Fund

Albuquerque Community Foundation

Annenberg Foundation

Annie E. Casey Foundation, The

Anonymous

Barr Foundation

Bauman Foundation, The

Berger Action Fund

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Blandin Foundation

Blue Shield of California Foundation

Boston Foundation, The

Bush Foundation

Butler Family Fund

California Community Foundation

California Endowment, The

Carnegie Corporation

Charles Stewart Mott Foundation

Chicago Community Trust, The

Claneil Foundation, The

Con Alma Health Foundation

Conrad N. Hilton Foundation

David & Lucile Packard Foundation, The

Democracy Fund

East Bay Community Foundation

First Five LA

Ford Foundation

Four Freedoms Fund

Fund for New Jersey, The

Gold Bay Foundation

Grove Foundation, The

Haynes Foundation

Heising-Simons Foundation

Hyams Foundation, The

Irving Harris Foundation

James Irvine Foundation, The

Joyce Foundation, The

JPB Foundation, The

Klarman Family Foundation, The

Knight Foundation

Kresge Foundation, The

Latino Community Foundation

Maddox Foundation

Marguerite Casey Foundation

McCune Charitable Foundation

Meyer Foundation

Miami Foundation, The

Miller Foundation

New York Community Trust, The

Open Society Foundations

Philadelphia Foundation, The

Pittsburgh Foundation, The

Polk Bros. Foundation

Present Progressive Fund

Rhode Island Foundation

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Rockefeller Brothers Fund

Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors

Roth Family Foundations

S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation

Samuel S. Fels Fund

San Francisco Foundation, The

Santa Fe Community Foundation

Sapelo Foundation, The

Silicon Valley Community Foundation

Solidarity Giving

State Farm

Streisand Foundation

Sunlight Giving

Taos Community Foundation

Thornburg Foundation

Unbound Philanthropy

W.K. Kellogg Foundation

Wallace H. Coulter Foundation

Weingart Foundation

Wellspring Philanthropic Fund

William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

WKF Giving Fund

Between 2011 and 2015, foundations invested 56 cents in the South – per person – for every $1 they invested per person nationally. 

In the two plus years NCRP and GSP have embarked on As the South Grows, we’ve met countless people across the South who have dedicated their lives to deep, lasting change. These courageous leaders confront hard truths, build power strategically, and make sure no one gets left behind.

Despite proven leadership, Southern communities of color, immigrants, LGBTQ people, women and girls, justice-involved people, and low-income folks cannot count on the philanthropic sector’s support.

This doesn’t have to be the case. There’s a different path foundations can take: one that will require honesty, and open-ness, and a willingness to question assumptions. It’s one that will be incredibly rewarding, not only for Southern communities, but for the nation.

So Grows the Nation, the fifth and final capstone report in the As the South Grows series, offers that path, with concrete tips for foundation practice, funding comparisons for every Southern state, and tools for foundations to examine the untapped power they have to create change.

Whether you’re a national funder looking to deepen your investment, or a Southern foundation ready to tackle injustice at its roots, this report is for you. We believe, as we note in the report, that “the soil for growing exciting solutions to national problems is deep and fertile in the South; the seeds are present, and foundation staff haven’t turned on the water. It’s time to open the spigot.”

For As the South Grows, So Grows the Nation.  

Ben Barge is senior associate for learning and engagement and Ryan Schlegel is director of research at NCRP. Follow @NCRP on Twitter.

Photo by praline3001. Used under Creative Commons license.

An expert in Latino politics and policy issues, Angelo was featured in various media outlets such as The Nation, CNN and CNN en Español, National Public Radio and many others.

He was the founder of the National Institute for Latino Policy.

Angelo Falcón during the National Hispanic Media Coalition's 3rd Annual New York Impact Awards. Photo courtesy of NHMC.

Angelo Falcón during the National Hispanic Media Coalition’s 3rd Annual New York Impact Awards. Photo courtesy of NHMC.

Angelo served on numerous boards, including the National Hispanic Media Coalition and the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda. He served on NCRP’s board of directors from 1996 to 2006.

We will remember Angelo for his steadfast leadership, passion and drive for equity and justice. In a 2001 profile in The New York Times, Angelo described himself as a “guerilla researcher.” “I’m always busting chops,” he said.

We invite those of you who were touched by Angelo’s to share your memories of him below.

In a May 7 op-ed in USA Today, Dr. Richard Besser, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), publicly acknowledged changes to the foundation’s annual Sports Award. This annual competitive award is intended to recognize “sports teams, athletes and community-based organizations that use sports to catalyze and sustain changes to make communities healthier places to live, learn, work and play.”

Besser said the foundation would no longer consider award applications from sports teams that denigrate American Indian people. He humbly noted that the foundation – whose mission targets health equity – never considered “the fact that the team names, mascots and misappropriation and mocking of sacred symbols like headdresses do real damage to the health of people across the country.”

Among numerous efforts, First Nations Development Institute and various partners are involved in a “Supporting Community Intellectuals in Native Communities” project. Included in the photo are Shelly Fryant, Rene Dubay and Michael Munson of Salish Kootenai College, Carnell Chosa and Regis Pecos of the Leadership Institute at Santa Fe Indian School, and Darren Kipp of The Piegan Institute. From First Nations are Michael Roberts, Raymond Foxworth, Catherine Bryan and Marsha Whiting. Photo by First Nations Development Institute.

Among numerous efforts, First Nations Development Institute and various partners are involved in a “Supporting Community Intellectuals in Native Communities” project. Included in the photo are Shelly Fryant, Rene Dubay and Michael Munson of Salish Kootenai College, Carnell Chosa and Regis Pecos of the Leadership Institute at Santa Fe Indian School, and Darren Kipp of The Piegan Institute. From First Nations are Michael Roberts, Raymond Foxworth, Catherine Bryan and Marsha Whiting. Photo by First Nations Development Institute.

This remarkable admission and the change in policy serve as a clear example of how Native American communities and their allies can influence philanthropy to change practices that may (unknowingly) harm Native people and communities. Besser and RWJF should be applauded for their willingness to listen to Native communities and act on their feedback and concerns to make change. Notwithstanding, we need to understand that this recent admission, while laudable, illustrates a symptom of a larger illness in philanthropy: patchy bids and willful reluctance to learn more about Native communities, their issues and community-led solutions.

What’s in a Name?

Besser’s op-ed came after months of organizing by Native American organizations and tribes, including the National Congress of American Indians, Center for Native American Youth, First Nations Development Institute, the Oneida Nation of New York, and with the support of other partners like Dr. Howard Stevenson, director of RWJF’s Forward Promise National Program Office at the University of Pennsylvania, Kathy Ko Chin, president and chief executive officer of the Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum, and many others.

These groups authored letters and attended learning sessions that helped compel RWJF to stop allowing sports teams that use racist stereotypes to apply for RWJF’s prestigious award.

Research has documented that mascots depicting Native Americans are harmful to Native people, especially children. Imagine being largely invisible in all forms of media and popular culture except for those instances in which you are depicted in stereotypical, comical or historical imagery. This is the reality for Native American children.

Research has found that this leads to all sorts of negative outcomes, including damaged self-esteem and identity, and overall diminished well-being. This growing body of research has also documented that these limited and racist representations of Native people curtail self-understanding and how Native youth see themselves fitting into contemporary society.

Similarly, scholars have found that the use of Native American mascots exacerbates cross-community conflict, creates limited understanding of Native people by the larger society and also creates hostile spaces of learning for Native children. Even professional associations like the American Psychological Association have publicly objected to the use of Native mascots for the reasons cited above (and they did this in 2005). 

Proponents of Native American mascots have cited public opinion polls showing support for their continued use, including purported surveys of Native Americans themselves. But these surveys were created in a feeble attempt to justify the continued use of these racist images, and to lamely try to refute the scientific research that demonstrates the detrimental effects these mascots have on Native children.

Ultimately, however, these efforts in no way contradict or negate the scholarly research noted above.

Understanding a Larger Illness

A recent nationally-representative survey launched under the Reclaiming Native Truth project, which is co-led by First Nations Development Institute and Echo Hawk Consulting, found that most Americans rank themselves high on their own individual familiarity of Native American history and culture, yet a majority of Americans cannot correctly answer basic true-or-false questions about Native American people.

Similarly, while most Americans professed generalized support that more should be done to help Native Americans, when it came to talking about specific kinds of support, including banning the use of Native American mascots, support significantly declined. In fact, only 39 percent of Americans said they would support such a ban.

Moreover, our survey data revealed that a majority of Americans still see Native people in stereotypical ways, including seeing them as more spiritual and closer to nature, while also holding other negative stereotypes. This includes a majority thinking that Native people get access to government benefits such as free education, or other “Indian Money” that is not available to other U.S. citizens. Alarmingly, more than half of Americans hold these opinions. These are, of course, just not true.

But it is not just the broader public that has limited (or completely wrong) knowledge about Native people and communities. In an ongoing research project funded by the Fund for Shared Insight, First Nations is working to understand how philanthropy perceives Native people and communities.

Data collected thus far (which will be detailed in a forthcoming report) highlight that philanthropy does not have much knowledge of or connections to Native people or communities. Moreover, the data highlight that many of the stereotypes the general public hold about Native people are also held by individuals who work in philanthropy.

This should not be terribly surprising given that the inputs of knowledge about Native Americans at all levels (including media, school systems, etc.) fail Native American people and communities.

Though the lack of knowledge and connection to Native people is not surprising, what has surprised us in both of these projects is that individuals are fairly open in discussing their racist, discriminatory and/or uninformed opinions of Native people (things that would not generally be tolerated when it comes to other marginalized groups).

This suggests that people are so far removed from understanding Native people, and Native people are so invisible (or irrelevant) in the lives of most Americans, we have generally become desensitized to understanding Native people and communities in contemporary society.

Moving Forward

In Besser’s op-ed, he pondered how a philanthropic institution that is focused on health equity could get something so wrong. “It’s worth asking ourselves what else we as a society are missing,” he noted.

This, indeed, is a fundamental question we must ask ourselves. And a corollary to this is the following: How is it that in 2018, we are still complacent in subjecting Native people to deliberate mistruths and falsehoods and rendering them invisible in American society, including in philanthropy? How is it that now, when information is more readily available than at any other time in history, we continue to be content in our ignorance of Native people and communities?

While we are only beginning to unpack the mistruths and falsehoods that individuals have about Native people, invisibility of Native Americans in philanthropy is rampant. Not only is it reflected in the declining levels of annual investment going to Native communities, but it shows in the lack of representation of Native people in the philanthropic sector and the dismissal of Native people and communities in philanthropic reports often relegating them to an asterisk that often notes “not enough data” (to matter).

How do we begin to change? Naturally, this is the quintessential question and a much larger topic than this article can address. Widely-discussed practices by diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) authors and scholars – including increasing diversity among staff and boards, being willing and open to listen and learn from the communities served by foundations, and being deliberate about including DEI frameworks in organizational mission and giving policies – all serve as a starting point for change. But these practices alone will not move us beyond willful ignorance or ambivalence when it comes to Native people.

Nevertheless, this RWJF incident does provide a bright spot highlighting the power of how communities can organize across communities of color to push for change. As NCRP and others have documented, developing tools and methods to hold philanthropy accountable has been difficult.

But this single instance demonstrates that organizing and mobilizing multiple communities can be a mechanism to leverage relationships to push for change. Would RWJF have changed its practice if only Indian Country mobilized around this issue? We do not know, but we do know that leveraging other communities to support Native children did provide a broader base to effect change.  

It is my hope that Besser’s op-ed serves as a call to action to philanthropy and other sectors of society to learn more about Native people and communities. First Nations has released recommended reading lists, other Native organizations have released fact sheets, and these are all at the tip of our Googling fingertips.

Moreover, there are more Native American nonprofits than at any other point in history, and these organizations can serve as resources of knowledge if people are willing to ask, listen and learn. 

Raymond Foxworth serves as vice president of grantmaking, development and communications at First Nations Development Institute, a Native American-controlled national intermediary that supports Native American communities in reclaiming direct control of their assets. He is a citizen of the Navajo Nation and his family is from Tuba City, Arizona.

Image by Fibonacci Blue. Used under Creative Commons license.

Editor’s note: This post is part of an ongoing series of posts featuring NCRP nonprofit members.

Seeing is believing­ – a nice proverb, but also an often unsaid maxim for philanthropic giving. After all, if a would-be funder can’t see a problem or isn’t aware of its impact, how can she be expected to buy into potential solutions?

So what’s a willing advocate to do when a community faces systemic adversity that could benefit from philanthropic investment, but is too new and too dispersed to speak at a volume funders can hear?

This is the predicament Asian Pacific Community in Action (APCA) finds itself in. Founded in 2002, APCA seeks to foster greater health and empowerment for the two fastest growing populations in Arizona: Asian-Americans and Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders (AANHPI). It does so through a combination of services, advocacy and education.

APCA has enrolled community members in health insurance plans and educated them about preventative care. It has championed language access in the health insurance marketplace, resulting in some translations of various insurance notices. APCA staff and volunteers occupy key leadership positions in the governing councils of county health clinics and hospitals, city commissions and chambers of commerce.

Yet there is still a long way to go.

Nearly every one in 20 persons in Arizona is a member of an AANHPI community. But, because most of them arrived only in the 1990s or 2000s and settled into areas sequestered from the rest of the population, they remain invisible to the public eye.

There is no Chinatown or Little Korea to help center these disparate locations. Other standard community infrastructure, like legal and housing services, are not yet developed. The Arizona Department of Health doesn’t even collect Asian-American data, instead cramming it into an ill-defined “other” category.

The needs of a Chinese-American whose family has been here for four generations are plainly different than those of a recently arrived Myanmar refugee, but if the health department doesn’t disentangle the responses of the former from the latter, how are health care providers to know who needs what?

Problems like this pushed APCA to progress from a strictly outreach and health access portfolio to a broader emphasis on community organizing. APCA now registers people to vote and educates community members on how issues affect them, how a bill becomes law and how to connect with lawmakers to ensure they are meeting the AANHPI community’s needs.

In 2016, APCA launched the first Asian-American Pacific Islander Advocacy Day. At the state capitol in Phoenix, about 20 community members were directly connected with their elected officials. The following year, the organization helped introduce a data disaggregation bill that would have collected and separated out Asian-American data. It wasn’t passed, but APCA did get a resolution read on the Senate floor, introducing the issue to many legislators for the first time.

APCA has committed to building out space for a coalition of community health workers, faith leaders and health professionals to work together around shared issues in the AANHPI community.

Take oral health, for instance. APCA has designed a community organizing and advocacy training program that brings in oral health providers serving communities of color to talk about social determinants in health and what’s happening in the state legislature around the issue.

APCA is not an organization that wants to exist in perpetuity. As more and more members of the AANHPI communities see the value in civic engagement and seize the collective power available to them, APCA would victoriously grow obsolete.

In the meantime, APCA could use some help. General operating support would jumpstart its efforts to connect with the growing number of AANHPI individuals in the state and help as it recruits leaders from each set of the 60-plus different languages and cultures therein to guide its approach until the communities united are ready to stand on their own.

Beyond funding general operation, there are specific programmatic areas awaiting support too. APCA would like to resurrect a dormant interpreter service to help its constituents navigate a language and culture in which they’re not yet proficient. Alternatively, the organization has collected a trove of data and stories from the Arizonan AANHPI communities; it could use additional funding to hire a staffer to sift through all of this information.

The Asian-American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities in Arizona are no longer hidden. Their individual experiences may vary, but their expertise in their communities does not. Funding in the long-run should capitalize on this insider knowledge and let it guide future research and community action. In the end, seeing isn’t just believing; it’s doing.

Troy Price is NCRP’s membership and fundraising intern. Follow @NCRP on Twitter.

Image by Rob Young. Used under Creative Commons license.

Atlanta is the philanthropic center of the South, and is known as a city of prosperity and inclusiveness. Unfortunately, that reputation is not the reality for all residents of the Metro Atlanta region, as many of the city’s underserved citizens have been pushed to the margins in the name of progress.

Fortunately, there is a huge opportunity for foundations and wealthy donors to step in and support those communities. Currently, most of the city’s philanthropy supports direct service work. Just 2 percent of funding goes to the power-building strategies that would enable grassroots organizations to advocate for themselves. And, only 20 percent of Atlanta’s philanthropic dollars go to low- and middle-income communities, people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ people and other underserved communities.

NCRP’s newest report, “As the South Grows: Bearing Fruit,” provides a blueprint for how foundations and wealthy donors can respond to the “historic dearth” of philanthropic investment for these strategies and communities in the “city too busy to hate.”

Learn about:

“As the South Grows: Bearing Fruit” is the fourth report in the five-part As the South Grows series. The final report will be released in May.

We hope “As the South Grows” inspires you to look at the South as an important opportunity for deeper engagement, investment and partnerships.

Aaron Dorfman is president and CEO of NCRP. Follow @NCRP on Twitter.

The last few years have been complicated and challenging ones for the country. The three and a half years since the Ferguson Uprising have brought a renewed national focus on the depth, breadth and cost of pervasive structural racism, as well as a resurgent white supremacist political movement whose chief proponent holds our nation’s highest office.

A reinvigorated national movement for racial justice has gained steam, and other broad-based movements for gender, economic, climate and immigrant justice are successfully moving their agenda into the mainstream of progressive politics.

I have been encouraged by the reaction of many philanthropic institutions – both foundations and the organizations, such as the one I lead, that monitor and support them. It’s clear our diverse sector mostly agrees that systemic racial bias and inequity are the challenges of our time, challenges that philanthropy must wrestle with just as the country does. Many in the sector now agree that sitting on the sidelines during this national reckoning is not a viable option.

So I was pleased to read from my colleague Kathleen Enright, CEO of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO), that in October 2017 GEO’s board adopted a new position on the centrality of racial equity to their organization’s mission.

“In the years ahead,” Kathleen wrote, “we are committed to supporting racial equity in philanthropy in ways that are aligned with the GEO community’s identity, [and] we are committed to helping develop a new concept of effectiveness … that integrates racial equity.”

I think it’s a good and healthy development for our sector that GEO has entered this space. For too long, effectiveness has been divorced from justice and equity.

NCRP agrees with GEO that “sound management” and “strong governance” – two key facets of its definition of organizational effectiveness – are fundamentally subjective, and therefore vulnerable to implicit bias. We also agree that executing programming well is only a public good if those programs are not based in what Kathleen called “false narratives” about the root causes of injustice.

We agree that these factors are undoubtedly at play in a nonprofit and philanthropic sector where whiteness – and white-dominated definitions of what effectiveness looks like – have always been the driving force behind the movement to identify and invest in effective organizations.

I am grateful to hear GEO name these contradictions and challenges in its work. They are the same contradictions and challenges that NCRP, also a white-led organization seeking to influence the philanthropic sector, has been wrestling with for decades.

During that time we’ve learned that the philanthropic sector’s understanding of effectiveness will never be complete or just without true responsiveness to communities harmed by inequity. Such responsiveness demands we examine our own privilege and how it distorts our understanding of effectiveness and impact.

Our research on grantmaking in the Southeast, the site of some of the most stubborn racial disparities in the country, confirms one of Kathleen’s observations: “[N]onprofits deemed ‘effective’ are often those most skilled at navigating the thicket of hurdles, requirements, and processes put in place by philanthropy,” and this dynamic converges with philanthropy’s white-dominant culture to disadvantage organizations led by and serving communities of color.

As we noted a year ago in As the South Grows: On Fertile Soil, “when funders expect a college degree or a polished grant proposal to justify an investment, they exclude organizations in need of philanthropic resources that are led by people who are most capable of organizing their communities. Funders often misconstrue signs of privilege for signs of capacity.”

“In New Orleans at the Unity Summit,” Kathleen wrote, “amazing and effective leaders who have been working for racial equity for many years – often at considerable personal risk and sacrifice – told us from the podium that they are not getting the support they need from philanthropy.”

NCRP has been documenting this woeful underinvestment for decades, helping under-resourced communities speak truth to power, and we’ve concluded that to truly advance equity, philanthropy needs to share its power with community leadership, especially leadership from communities of color.

Funders must embrace an ideal of responsiveness that cedes the power to define what is effective and what impact looks like, and shares the power to determine who is worthy of foundation investment with those communities directly affected by the challenges we confront. We must acknowledge that to continue to define effectiveness within the white-dominated halls of philanthropy is to perpetuate the racial injustice we deplore.

This aspirational responsiveness, which is difficult to achieve because philanthropy holds more power and privilege, has been and will continue to be at the center of NCRP’s work to change the sector. I cannot say that it comes easily to us: We operate in a space of contradictions – very much a creature of the sector we hope to hold accountable to people with whom we don’t always share lived experiences.

But the aspiration is at the heart of all our work. It drives our Philamplify initiative, whose objective has been to elevate grantee feedback as a tool for greater justice and equity in the field. It drives our As the South Grows campaign, which spotlights Southern grassroots leadership and challenges grantmakers to shift their understanding of Southern capacity and potential for progress.

I hope that a radically responsive perspective on grantmaking will also find its way into GEO’s push to implement racial equity values in its work. I’m optimistic it will, given GEO’s boldness in striking out into this new and challenging territory, Kathleen’s leadership and the strength of GEO’s board of directors (two of whose members also serve on NCRP’s board).

If, however, the GEO community doubles down on a definition of effectiveness that centers foundation voices and foundation perspective on the public good, they will have missed the mark.

I welcome GEO to a movement within philanthropy that has many visionary leaders. You are not in this alone.

Ultimately, all of us in the sector must move beyond a closed loop of redefining organizational effectiveness within a white-dominant framework. Until grantmakers cede the power to define what works to those for whom we work, racial equity grantmaking will remain beyond our reach.

Aaron Dorfman is president and CEO of NCRP. Follow @NCRP on Twitter.

National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty logoEditor’s note: This post is part of an ongoing series of posts featuring NCRP nonprofit members.

“The American people, fully informed as to the purposes of the death penalty and its liabilities, would in my view reject it as morally unacceptable.” The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (NCADP) has taken Justice Thurgood Marshall’s words as gospel, and is now in its 41st year of transforming his insight into action.

As it turns out, he was largely correct in his assessment: When Americans are fully informed of the death penalty’s shortcomings, they roundly reject its implementation. However, the trouble lies in actually informing the public.

NCADP serves as a resource for 100 grassroots organizations seeking abolition at the state and municipal levels. The coalition has earned several victories over the past decade, but scarce funding to build out the infrastructure of NCADP has kept progress slower than an otherwise healthier funding stream would have allowed.

Philanthropy must invest in the basic infrastructure necessary for organizations like NCADP to be successful in informing and persuading the public about the injustice of many of our social institutions and systems, and it must commit to doing so over the long term.

It’s worth reviewing why the death penalty should be discarded:

  • For every 11 people sentenced to death since 1973, 10 have been executed and one has later been exonerated. This is an egregious error rate for something so consequential. To borrow Equal Justice Initiative Executive Director Bryan Stevenson’s analogy, we would never fly on airplanes if one crashed for every 11 that took off.
  • Capital punishment is more expensive than alternative sentences. One study found that first-degree murder cases in Oklahoma for which the death penalty was pursued cost 3.2 times as much as those that did not. California has spent $4 billion on the death penalty since 1978. This money could instead be funneled to victims’ services for anything ranging from grief counseling to funeral costs to paid work leave for court hearings. Additional support would go a long way, as victims’ families lament the painful, lengthy appeals process that forces them to relive their nightmare over and over.
  • The death penalty has no deterrent effect on murder rates in the United States.

These realities are not exempt from the persistent racial bias that has long marred our entire criminal justice system, including its most severe consequence. While people of color account for roughly half of all homicide victims, the death penalty is most frequently used when the victim is white. Since 1976, 288 black defendants have been put to death for killing white victims, but only 20 white defendants have been executed for murdering black victims. Plainly stated, capital punishment treats certain victims as better and certain defendants as worse based on the color of their skin.

One has to ask how such a flawed, costly and biased process remains on the books in 31 states. The standard for capturing the public’s attention is high, and the death penalty appears to affect only a small number of people – even though its impact is much broader. It would take a steady, strategic communication plan to convince the unaffected.

Sparse infrastructure funding has made executing such a plan difficult for NCADP, though not for of a lack of vision on the coalition’s part. Executive Director Diann Rust-Tierney would use a boost to general operations funding to hire a communications director to ferry NCADP’s message from frontline activists to the public writ large. The new hire could amplify the futile role capital punishment plays in preventing violent crime through concerted messaging on social and traditional media, appeals to national partners for access to their networks, conference calls, letters to the editor and engagement with grassroots organizations.

But NCADP continues to push forward, with or without ideal funding. In 2014, the coalition launched the 90 million strong campaign to empower individual activists with the tools and resources necessary to erase the death penalty.

A recent partnership with Lush Cosmetics has signed up more than 22,000 people to receive information and training to advocate against the death penalty and for policies that keep communities safe. NCADP also advised Lush on what national, state and local level organizations to whom it should direct its “Charity Pot” funds.

NCADP’s dogged pursuit of a more humane criminal justice system should hearten observers in the philanthropic community. But is it right that an organization with such an undeniably consequential mission should have to thrift its way through this fight?

The question isn’t whether the death penalty will be struck down, but when. Every day it remains on the books, capital punishment jeopardizes the lives of the potentially innocent and unjustly sentenced, while undercutting our commitment to a more fair and humane society for all. Is philanthropy willing to propel the movement across the finish line, or just watch as NCADP sweats out the final laps? For some, time is running out.

Troy Price is NCRP’s membership and fundraising intern. Follow @NCRP on Twitter.

Image by Andrew Petro, used under Creative Commons license.