4 Questions to sit with as you learn to let communities lead

Editor’s note: The following is a Power Moves toolkit Power in Practice example.

As Inside Philanthropy reported in 2017, funders are developing more responsive grantmaking and other tools to support social movements. Shorter application forms and less cumbersome reporting requirements mean a larger “net grant” for these organizations.

Rapid response funds are becoming more common, including pooled funds across funders and/or individual donors. Some practices developed to respond to social movements should be adopted by funders year-round to best support all their grantees.

One foundation that has adapted its grantmaking processes is the Brooklyn Community Foundation, as part of its embrace of a racial justice lens and power-building goals.

The mission of Brooklyn Community Foundation, which made $5.5 million in grants in 2017, is to “spark lasting social change, mobilizing people, capital and expertise for a fair and just Brooklyn.”

“When I started here, I wanted to draw upon my experience as a grantmaker and institute best practices from the field. In the Invest in Youth portfolio, we created a grantmaking model that provides our Invest in Youth grantees with a year of general operating support as we learn about their work, and then move to a three-year commitment of general operating support to provide them with flexible dollars they can count on for multiple years,” said Kaberi Banerjee Murthy, vice president of programs, in an interview with NCRP.

“After the 2016 election, we created a $2 million Immigrant Rights Fund with a 4-year commitment to safeguard our immigrant communities. We were able launch our Immediate Response grants quickly, moving dollars out the door a week after Trump was elected and then again a week after the first executive orders.” 

Knowing it wanted to be flexible enough to support both proactive and reactive work, it also provide longer-term Sustained Response grants as well as one-week turnaround Action Fund grants specifically to support civil resistance activities.

“We wanted to move beyond normative ways of making decisions, doing things like valuing oral as well as written contributions, and ensuring our efforts maximize our net grants by reducing burdens on grantees, so we invited requests for conversations instead of requests for proposals.” 

Of the foundation’s 8 portfolios, half are constituent-led grantmaking programs, which allow them “to share power and decision-making with those most knowledgeable given their lived experience.”

Lisa Ranghelli is senior director of assessment and special projects at NCRP and primary author of Power Moves: Your essential philanthropy assessment guide for equity and justice. Follow @NCRP and @lisa_rang on Twitter, and join the conversation using #PowerMovesEquity!

This post is part of a series of case examples on building, sharing and wielding power for NCRP’s Power Moves toolkit. 

Editor’s note: This is part 2 of a 2-part reflection on the 1st year of NCRP’s Power Moves toolkit. Read part 1 here.

In part 1 of our reflection of the 1st year of Power Moves, we discussed our first 2 lessons: 1. Interest in the guide is a blessing and a challenge; and 2. High-touch engagement is key in motivating use of the guide.

In part 2, we’re taking a look a lessons 3 and 4, and discussing the next steps for Power Moves:

3. The biggest obstacle to using Power Moves is lack of staff capacity and resources.

Not surprisingly, many who would like to use the guide have not yet been able to, for reasons cited in the chart (respondents were asked to check all that apply; “too little time” and “competing/too many resources” were recategorized from “other” responses).

Insufficient resources or staff capacity was the biggest barrier, followed by feeling overwhelmed or unsure where to begin. One respondent captured many of the sentiments expressed in the data on obstacles,

“I appreciate the approach of ‘toolifying’ resources, but will confess I’m a bit overwhelmed by the amount of documents, components. Frankly, we’re moving quickly on a lot of fronts and I want to find the time to sit down and think about how our team could carve out time to engage with the resources, and how to do that in the most time efficient way.”

NCRP experienced a steady demand for referrals to consultants that can help funders address diversity, equity and inclusion issues, whether through Power Moves or otherwise.

Survey responses and 1-on-1 outreach also confirmed that many foundation professionals struggle with getting buy-in from trustees or senior staff leadership — who demographically are most often white and wealthy — to address race, privilege and power issues within their institution. As one respondent wrote,

“[It’s] very hard to confront structural racism in a ‘do-gooder’ organization staffed by a lot of highly privileged people who have no idea that they have this level of entitlement and can’t just overcome it without seeing things through a new lens, as well as giving up power.”

On the positive side, more than a quarter of respondents said they encountered no obstacles. At least 29 respondents expressed their intent to use the guide in 2019.

Despite the proliferation of many sector tools, less than 4% listed competing resources or lack of relevance as a reason they had not used it.

To get past feeling overwhelmed, digging into 1 section of the guide has been a productive approach for many users.

The Sharing Power section has consistently garnered the most interest across survey respondents and participants in webinars and in-person presentations, followed by Building Power and then Wielding Power.

Beyond the 3 dimensions of power, the Readiness Assessment and Glossary of Terms have been the most useful parts of the guide to inform thinking and practice.

4. Despite the obstacles, funders are finding creative ways to use the guide, and some are already making changes as a result.

Early evidence indicates that the guide is helping funders, and to a lesser extent philanthropy-serving organizations and consultants, have fruitful conversations that are leading to greater internal alignment, and advances in thinking and action, related to power and equity.

Among survey respondents who took action individually or institutionally, they most frequently used the guide to spur discussions.

Steps taken with Power Moves

Institutional actions

Individual actions

Power Moves has helped staff or boards get on the same page about what they really mean when they talk about equity and power:

“Discussed with my [foundation] board. … My board was appreciative of defining how we do use power in our current strategies, and why we need to garner more to address inequities.”  

“[W]ith members who come from a range of frameworks and comfort levels with power, it has been a challenge for us as staff to help move the needle collectively. So we used the document as the backbone of our strategic plan and reworded some concepts to make them easier to translate to our membership.”

 “For us, it was a really good teambuilding opportunity to use words we don’t typically use. I wanted it to inform the power-structures in grantmaking and, I’m happy to say it did spark some important conversations about NOT dictating how nonprofits should do their work with our funding.”

Beyond conversations, a handful of funders have changed funding guidelines or application forms, or shifted grantmaking priorities and strategies as a result of using the guide.

In some cases, consultants have been able to use Power Moves with clients, such as this survey respondent: “Two funders have taken it up as a part of their orientation to staff and board and incorporated it into their thinking and planning.”  

Yet many consultants have been challenged with how to integrate it into existing client contracts and relationships, especially when internal diversity, equity and inclusion processes are already underway at a foundation, or the grantmaker has not invited the consultant’s help to explicitly delve into power and privilege.

Very few grantmakers appear to be undertaking a full self-assessment to inform action, and those who are are primarily members of our peer learning group for funders.

A key component of Power Moves is for grantmakers to solicit honest external feedback, yet only 11 survey respondents said they had “used the external questions to get feedback from stakeholders on one or more dimensions of power.”

The risk for others is that they will rely only on self-reflection without gaining candid outside perspectives, especially from their grant partners and intended beneficiaries.

This approach would just reinforce the echo chamber or isolation bubble that already exists in philanthropy — the exact opposite of Power Moves’ intent.

Next Steps for Power Moves

1. As we approach the end of our 12-month peer learning groups, we will gain feedback from participants and assess the value and impact of this type of high-touch contact, relative to other forms of close interaction, to inform our engagement plans for fall 2019 and beyond.

2. We will incentivize more funders to solicit feedback. For the peer groups we created a set of SurveyMonkey templates that funders and their consultants can use to gain internal and external perspectives on how they are doing on each dimension of power, which we will make available more broadly soon.

3. Grantmakers are clamoring for stories from their peers who have deeply explored power and equity issues and transformed their culture, grantmaking and/or operations. We will explore sector partnerships to help tell these stories in ways that motivate action and foster accountability, whether through use of Power Moves or other resources. Ultimately we want more grantmakers to grapple with power so they can effectively advance equity and justice, regardless of what tools they use to get there.

Stay tuned for more learning, reflection and strategy updates on Power Moves in the coming months!

Editor’s note: This is part 1 of a 2-part reflection on the 1st year of NCRP’s Power Moves toolkit. Read part 2 here.

In the 13 months since NCRP released Power Moves, more than 2,500 individuals have interacted with the project.

Sector interest in Power Moves has exceeded NCRP’s expectations, signaling a strong desire for equity-oriented resources that explore power.

Grantmakers have found myriad entry points and ways to use the guide to support their work, although few have undertaken a full self-assessment.

Lack of capacity, time and resources is the biggest barrier to using the guide. Yet a number of funders have already begun incorporating insights from Power Moves into their grantmaking and operations.

The guide helps grantmakers solicit feedback from stakeholders and take stock of how well they build, share and wield power in their quest to address fundamental inequities in our society.

In early 2019, NCRP sought feedback from our own stakeholders about their experience with Power Moves, providing a window into how they are using the guide to inform next steps for the project.

In the spirit of transparency and open learning that we ask foundations to model, we decided to share some lessons at the 1-year mark:

1. Interest in the guide is a blessing and a challenge.

When NCRP released Power Moves, we used a “form wall” that required individuals downloading the guide to share basic contact information.

We worried that the form wall would deter some people from downloading the document, and about 7.5% of those who clicked on the “download” link chose not to follow through.

The number of people interested in Power Moves far exceeded our goals and expectations.

• More than 2,000 people downloaded the guide in the first 8 months, and more than half of those downloads were in the first 5 weeks.
• Many different types of stakeholders downloaded Power Moves, including philanthropy-serving organizations (PSOs), nonprofits and consultants, but our primary audience was funders, so we were heartened that 855 individuals from 523 grantmakers of all different sizes and types downloaded Power Moves between May and December 2018.

The form wall proved to be tremendously useful, enabling us to see who was most interested in the guide and to follow up with them … in theory.

In practice, we were bowled over by the high level of response to the guide, and it took us a while to organize and analyze the data and prioritize institutions for follow-up. We also needed to beef up internal capacity to respond.

2. High-touch engagement is key in motivating use of the guide.

While the high number of downloads was exciting, we know full well that many excellent tools and resources end up forgotten on the metaphorical book shelf.

We anticipated this and implemented a set of pre- and post-release activities to spread the word and motivate funders and consultants to explore and use the guide.

These included an advisory committee and reviewers of the draft guide, 4-part webinar series, in-person presentations and dine-arounds at conferences, and a new foray into peer learning.

We piloted two advisory and peer learning groups, one for grantmakers and one for consultants to grantmakers. To address the team’s capacity needs mentioned above, we hired a consultant to help manage the peer-learning groups.

To find out how well these myriad strategies were working, and how individuals were using Power Moves, we sent a survey to everyone who downloaded the guide and/or otherwise interacted with the project. We received 323 responses, a response rate of about 14%.

Our data affirmed that high-touch interaction mattered. Respondents who experienced some sort of deeper engagement with NCRP –  through 1-on-1 outreach, advisory committee or peer group participation, being a webinar presenter, etc. – were twice as likely to report reading the full guide, using it and sharing it with peers than respondents overall.

Check out part 2 for the 3rd and 4th lessons from Power Moves‘ first year and our next steps!

Lisa Ranghelli is senior director of assessment and special projects at NCRP and primary author of Power Moves: Your essential philanthropy assessment guide for equity and justice. Follow @NCRP and @lisa_rang on Twitter, and join the conversation using #PowerMovesEquity!

In the past 10 years, philanthropy has become increasingly comfortable with conversations about advancing equity.

But NCRP CEO Aaron Dorfman rightfully notes that grant dollars and better grantmaking practices haven’t kept pace with rhetoric.

The idea of equity – when one can no longer predict an advantage or disadvantage based on race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation or ability – is not hard to grasp. But practicing equity requires a commitment to tempering power with accountability.

When I was trained as a community organizer, I learned that our empowerment depended on relationships of mutual accountability and trust.

We expected each person and organization in our membership to give their word and to keep it – the same standards to which we held policymakers and government officials – regardless of position, age or organization size.

Many foundation staff are clear that they are accountable to their trustees or donors, and they are clear that those who receive grants are accountable to the foundation for the use of the money. 

But what kind of commitments do you make as a funder to grantee partners beyond the grant? Do you invite your grantee partners to hold you accountable to your commitments to them?

Without mutual commitments and mutual accountability, no institution can advance equity.

My organizer training also helped me get comfortable with power. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Power, properly understood, is the ability to achieve purpose.”

On those first days of training, we learned that power isn’t bad, but it can be used for a bad purpose.

Yet very few of us could honestly say we wanted to be powerful, nor did we understand how to build power. Power comes from organized money or organized people, and philanthropy has both.

During our Philamplify assessments, NCRP found that foundations’ conversations about advancing equity seldom include an explicit acknowledgement and understanding of funders’ power.

We responded with the Power Moves initiative, centering power in our analysis of how philanthropy can advance equity, because any institution that commits to advancing equity requires an understanding of the source and amount of its own power.

Funders and donors have at least an implicit understanding of power. When a funder talks about weighing so-called risk, the ability to spend in perpetuity or to grow its donor base – these conversations carry an understanding that financial capital affects a funder’s “ability to achieve purpose.”

Some foundations think that their asset size stunts their power, but power is relative – what seems like a little bit of money or a few people in one context can be massive for exploited and marginalized communities.

We who want to advance equity need power because it will not happen otherwise. Inequity is not an unintended consequence of well-intentioned people – it is the result of deliberate choices made decades and hundreds of years ago that determined that some people were expendable to benefit a few.  

Powerful people backed by powerful institutions make similar choices today to the detriment of equity for all.

Power requires accountability to advance equity

Frederick Douglass said:

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

Our society is in a time of “words and blows.” But our sector often forgets – or doesn’t realize – that philanthropy, too is powerful.

As Lord Acton said, “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” He was speaking about monarchies and empires, governments without systems of accountability.

Like monarchies, philanthropy holds power in a context in which there are very few measures of accountability. Yet, accountability and power work together to advance social transformation. Relationships of mutual accountability focus power to create a more equitable society.

So philanthropy must choose whether to take the path of equity or the path of tyranny. Funders can invite feedback and accountability, to test and check their power, and ensure that we use it for the “love of mankind.”

If we refuse, we risk becoming the tyrants and courting the resistance that Douglass warned about.

Review the 3 dimensions of power in Power Moves and commit to use the questions in the guide to build stronger systems of accountability that will make your grantmaking a force for equity.

Jeanné L. Lewis Isler is the vice president and chief engagement officer at NCRP. This post is adapted from her remarks at the Connecticut Council for Philanthropy 2019 Annual Conference. Her work is motivated by a vision of the day when most of the people most of the time are empowered.

I try not to be cynical, but over the last 2 years “equity” has become a bumper sticker – an appendage that organizations slap on their requests for proposals, brochures and websites to communicate that they are about the work of eliminating racial disparities.

These organizations have the right language to talk about their pursuits related to diversity, equity and inclusion, yet their language is often incongruent with their actions. It’s ignorance at best and calculated scheming at worst.

Equity as a concept has gained momentum for foundations due in large part to organizations like NCRP and Edgar Villanueva emphasizing the fractures, power imbalances and displacement of communities in decision-making, and asking whether there is another way.

In Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance, Villanueva writes:

“Colonial, white supremacist organizational practices seem inevitable…and they still govern the great majority of our institutions, but they were design choices. This means that other choices are available, even when they seem far-fetched. We know what organizations look like, feel like, and function like when they are inspired by the colonizers’ principles of separation, competition and exploitation. How would they be different if they were based on principles like integration and interdependence, reciprocity and relationship?”

Villanueva’s question got me thinking: Which design choices could foundations implement to disrupt their current realities of control and command that perpetuate a scarcity mindset versus one of abundance?

NCRP’s Power Moves assessment guide is instructive in answering this question and provides a road map.

The tool explicitly calls out power dynamics and offers examples of foundations that have re-assessed their relationships with grantees from an equity lens and reconsidered resource distribution.

The funders held up as examples in Power Moves have wrestled with the discomfort inherent in the re-examination of how they’ve used their power and privilege in relation to marginalized communities.

As noted in Power Moves,

“Foundations are unique entities that enjoy privilege in numerous ways, starting with their tax-exempt wealth. Beyond compliance with IRS rules, they experience very little public oversight and are not accountable to any other constituency. The people who run foundations enjoy privilege, too. A large proportion of trustees and CEOs are white and therefore enjoy personal and positional privilege on top of institutional privilege. Whether they are aware of it or not, they likely reflect and reinforce the dominant white culture.”

Power Moves outlines 3 areas where foundations can stretch and move closer to being woke:

1. Building power: Supporting systemic change by funding civic engagement, advocacy and community organizing among marginalized communities.

2. Sharing power: Nurturing transparent, trusting relationships and co-creating strategies with stakeholders.

3. Wielding power: Exercising public leadership beyond grantmaking to create equitable, catalytic change.

Recognizing power dynamics and committing to cede power requires stamina and a dismissal of the Burger King syndrome where foundations presume it’s their way right away.

For foundations to cast a vision that is inclusive and centers equity will likely result in tension and moments of white fragility, discomfort and defensiveness on the part of a white person when confronted by information about racial inequality and injustice, for those involved.

And that’s OK. We grow in moments that stretch us – and can begin to move forward. Villanueva outlines a path toward creating a more equitable future, and 1 step in the healing process is an apology:

“Apologizing requires that white people of wealth snap out of their paralyzing white fragility and guilt, and just step up. It requires that people of color and Indigenous people dismantle their internalized oppression and admit that they too were infected by the colonizer virus. Basically, it requires everyone to grow up and take responsibility for their actions, in order to move forward.”

For foundations, this is a moment of reckoning: A moment to disrupt centuries of inequity and power imbalance by relinquishing the reins.

This is an opportunity to interrogate assumptions and question the structures that undergird grantmaking, board membership, decision-making processes and community engagement practices.

By expanding the circle of human concern, a concept developed by john a. powell from the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, foundations can begin a sea change that wakes them up to a new dawn.

Makiyah Moody is a senior consultant with La Piana Consulting. Follow @LaPianaConsult and @Makmoody on Twitter.

Photo by Motor Verso. Used under Creative Commons license.

Editor’s note: The following is a Power Moves toolkit Power in Practice example.

“In many cases, Knight is the first funder of that particular project or initiative. Catalyzing a lot of experimentation and change … My perspective is that they are willing to fund things that are new and innovative and unproven and that have huge potential. … There is a lot greater opportunity for impact if you are willing to fund innovation.” – Stakeholder of Knight Foundation

Our Philamplify assessment of the Knight Foundation noted that its commitment to innovation was key to its impact in the journalism industry. Stakeholders praised Knight’s comfort with risk-taking and willingness to experiment as a refreshing change from the cautious nature of many large philanthropies.

This drive for innovation has led to positive outcomes such as helping journalism transition to digital platforms, increasing the capacity of libraries to be community information and digital access hubs and opening up grantmaking to a broader set of individuals and organizations through its various challenge grant programs and prototype fund. The Knight challenges invite ideas from anyone, and applicants initially provide merely a brief project description. Only finalists have to submit a full proposal.

Continuing to demonstrate its nimbleness, in September 2017, Knight announced a new $2.5 million journalism fund to improve trust in news, in response to the rising spread of misinformation on the Internet. This initiative built on prior grants made through the Knight Prototype Fund to improve the flow of accurate information, a collaborative project with the Democracy Fund and Rita Allen Foundation.

Lisa Ranghelli is senior director of assessment and special projects at NCRP and primary author of Power Moves: Your essential philanthropy assessment guide for equity and justice. Follow @NCRP and @lisa_rang on Twitter, and join the conversation using #PowerMovesEquity!

This post is part of a series of case examples on building, sharing and wielding power for NCRP’s Power Moves toolkit.