Racial justice - NCRP

Lent is one of my favorite times of the year. For many people, it’s about giving up something they like, but the purpose of going without is to give more to those in need. It is an opportunity to practice better philanthropy, or “love of humanity.”

As a Roman Catholic who has visited Paris many times, I was sad to learn that Notre Dame Cathedral was burning. But I became angry when I saw how quickly “lovers of humanity” mobilized money for rebuilding a building in contrast to the sluggish pace at which institutional philanthropy moves money to human beings.

While Notre Dame was on fire, Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem also experienced a fire. Last week, 3 Black Louisiana churches were set on fire in an alleged hate crime.

The fires in these holy spaces echo a Lenten refrain, when Jesus said, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”

Jesus’s comment was a scandal to his contemporaries. He was promising the rebuilding of people, community and relationship, not the rebuilding of a building. But his critics missed his point, like we are missing the call to action from these fires now.

The speed of the philanthropic response to support Notre Dame’s repair exposed the hypocrisy of a sector that too often claims an inability to move quickly. This incident shows that philanthropy has the resources and the ability to support urgent social justice and movement-building work, but chooses not to.

The destruction of Notre Dame, and any sacred site, is painful, because such places help us to remember people and events that inspire and motivate us to be our best selves. Notre Dame, which means “Our Lady,” invites us to reflect on the life of Mary, mother of Jesus.

I remember that Our Lady was a poor, young mother who was forced to immigrate to another country because of threat of state violence against her son.

I believe that she would be appalled at the number of poor, young mothers who flee violence with their children today and are met with hostility or apathy.

I remember that Our Lady watched her innocent son die at the hands of a mob and a corrupt government. She would weep at the numbers of people who are incarcerated and who die in our systems for crimes they didn’t commit.

Our Lady would be shocked that in 2016 more grant dollars were given to support leisure sports than to support the urgent work of the pro-immigrant and refugee movement.

And Our Lady would be ashamed that a combination of wealthy individuals, companies and foundations pledged more than $300 million within 24 hours to rebuild a symbol of her love, but foundations in the U.S. gave less than half of that in 2016 to support fighting for the people who most closely share her experiences.

Our Lady would be underwhelmed at the outcry of support for the idea of her and the lack of support for the reflection of her in other human beings.

So let’s stop missing the point, philanthropy. If donors and foundations can move this quickly to rebuild a damaged temple, then the broader philanthropic sector can certainly act more swiftly to support people in rebuilding the systems that have damaged their lives.

Start by learning what today’s immigrants and refugees need and how funders can take up the urgent opportunity to support them.

Jeanné L. Lewis Isler is the vice president and chief engagement office at NCRP. She is a lifelong practicing Catholic, loves grand old buildings, and knows that empowered people are the key to a better society.

Last week, we recapped many of NCRP’s activities and accomplishments from 2018. One thing we didn’t mention: In 2018, we added 96 posts to NCRP’s blog.

And, if you follow NCRP on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter, you’ve probably noticed that in late December we counted down our Top 10 most-viewed blog posts of the year.

If you missed any or all of those posts, here is the entire list of the 10 most-viewed posts of the year:

10. Building community power: A philanthropic strategy and an end goal by Caitlin Duffy

What does it mean for funders to build power?

As more and more grantmakers embark on or deepen journeys to embed values of equity, diversity and inclusion into their work, how can we incorporate a power-building frame to measure meaningful progress on equity?

9. Asking the right questions: How philanthropy can make a difference in challenging times by Aaron Dorfman

NCRP president and CEO Aaron Dorfman delivered the closing keynote at the Yale Philanthropy Conference on February 23, 2018:

“You are all here, we are all here, because we want to use our philanthropy to make the world a better place.

“If we’re going to be successful in doing that, we have got to ask ourselves the right questions. These are challenging times in which we live. By asking ourselves the right questions, the hard questions, we can make a real difference with our philanthropy on issues that truly matter. I’m going to put forward five questions today that I think will help us be effective in these challenging times.”

Students hold an events protesting police officers on their campus.

Photo courtesy of Funders’ Collaborative on Youth Organizing.

8. Beyond the walkout: A call to philanthropy to invest in youth-led social change by Mónica Córdova

We must invest in organized youth efforts to cultivate lasting change. To get to scale and sustain their work, they need the support of philanthropy. The moment is now. Resources must follow.

7. Anti-Semitism and Anti-Black racism both advance white supremacy by Jeanné Isler and Timi Gerson

Leverage your power to deepen your analysis and educate others about the connection between anti-Semitism and anti-Black racism.

Instead of excluding groups who are mostly values aligned, but may be ignorant about this connection, make space to wrestle with hard history towards joint action. It is our hope that with these terrible massacres, we are motivated to search our blind spots and expose them to the light.

6. Leading by example: Addressing racial equity through incremental change by Nathan Boon

To “lead by example” is a fundamental principle within philanthropy. However, the power dynamic inherent to the funder-grantee relationship can sometimes lead to a lack of self-reflection or self-discipline among funders. A funder wishing to advance a best practice may require the practice from its grantees but forgo the difficult work of implementing the practice for itself.

5. Why examining power and privilege is critical to shifting culture in philanthropy by Lisa Ranghelli

What does power have to do with equity? How can grantmakers better leverage power to help drive lasting, positive change in our communities?

As the philanthropic sector’s interest in racial equity has grown, there has been limited explicit discussion of the role of power and privilege, which funders must grapple with to truly change inequitable systems.

4. Why we need to #DisruptPhilanthropyNOW by Lisa Ranghelli

At NCRP, we joke that we’ve been biting the hand that feeds us for more than 40 years. Yet racial and social justice organizations remain reluctant to apply the same tactics they use with public officials and corporate titans to philanthropy.

Within Our Lifetime (WOL) and Old Money New System Community of Practice (OMNS) are trying to change that with their bold new campaign, #DisruptPhilanthropyNOW.

3. Announcing Power Moves for consultants! by Caitlin Duffy

In philanthropy, everyone knows that foundation leaders and staff have power. But consultants are another group that can have an outsized impact – often unseen, behind closed doors. In advising grantmaker clients, the best and most influential consultants bring to bear deep expertise and rich experience as community change agents, nonprofit leaders or foundation staff to help funders hone organizational strategies, culture, practices and more.

2. A humbling (foundation) admission about Indian mascots … and a glimmer of hope for the future by Raymond Foxworth

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.”

1. Corporate donations to public schools are a poor substitute for government funding by Nick Faber

Four years ago, the Saint Paul Federation of Teachers (SPFT), along with parents and community members, committed ourselves to ensuring that students in Saint Paul, particularly students of color, receive a quality education.

While we’ve made great strides to improve public education in Saint Paul, there is much more that still needs to be done. Class sizes are still too big; there are not enough nurses, counselors or social workers; and we need to include more schools in programs that have proven effective in disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline, such as restorative practices and teacher home visits.

Peter Haldis is NCRP’s communications manager. Follow @NCRP on Twitter.

Images by Fibonacci Blue, Pedro Ribeiro Simões and Governor Tom Wolf. 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 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.

A graduate student interviewing me for a paper recently asked “How could we force foundations to transform their internal culture and open wider conversations about equity to as many stakeholders as possible?” I told her we can’t force foundations to do anything, unless or until the entire nonprofit sector calls a general strike.

If all 501c3 organizations refused to take money from institutions whose only obligation is to pay out 5 percent of assets per year toward charitable causes, presumably they would be compelled to come to the bargaining table.

I’ve harbored such fantasies during my 10 years at NCRP. But since I’m a pragmatist, I’ve also tried to create safer spaces for nonprofits to challenge dysfunctional foundation practices, as have others in the sector.

Inside Philanthropy’s platform to rate foundation staffers fell flat. So did our Philamplify web forum to encourage debate and discussion about the foundations we assessed. Now GrantAdvisor is showing promise with its feedback interface. All of these platforms offer the cloak of anonymity.

Especially for those who straddle the worlds of social justice and philanthropy, a perennial question is, “How can we encourage social change leaders to speak truth to power directly to foundations?” Pablo Eisenberg modeled this at the Center for Community Change for decades, telling off his funders with ease and confidence. And the organization thrived.

At NCRP, which Eisenberg helped found, we joke that we’ve been biting the hand that feeds us for more than 40 years. Yet racial and social justice organizations remain reluctant to apply the same tactics they use with public officials and corporate titans to philanthropy.

Within Our Lifetime (WOL) and Old Money New System Community of Practice (OMNS) are trying to change that with their bold new campaign, #DisruptPhilanthropyNOW. Fed up with foundations that espouse racial equity goals and values and then treat racial justice groups shabbily, WOL and OMNS are calling on racial justice and movement building organizations to tell their stories publicly, and to hold funders that don’t walk their talk accountable for their actions. WOL is using a blog series to tell its own story and model the accountability process it has gone through with a specific funder.

At NCRP, we know that it feels very risky to give critical feedback to a funder. Every Philamplify assessment we produced contained critiques, but I took strength from the fact that the critiques were grounded in the experience and wisdom of nonprofit and community leaders, and even peer funders. So we did not take lightly the decision to join WOL’s and OMNS’ invitation for courageous and collective action, to urge social movement groups to speak their truth.

When readers hear about the types of practices that earned WOL’s need to say “Enough!” they may say, “These are typical bad behaviors that funders engage in with all their grantees. So how is this about racial equity?” My response would be: That’s what disparate impact is about. A (bad) practice that is applied universally affects white groups differently than people of color groups.

People of color-led racial justice groups already garner meager philanthropic resources for their work. They already face many challenges that white-led organizations working on other issues don’t face. People of color-led organizations, especially those fighting for justice, are already viewed as being more radical and having less capacity than nonprofits that look and act like the dominant white culture.

So, foundations that espouse racial justice values should be working and investing to ensure people of color-led groups thrive and grow. And the beauty of targeted universalism is this: If funders improve their practices and behaviors so that people of color-led racial justice organizations specifically can fully advance their missions, those improved practices will benefit all their grantees.

If you represent a racial justice or movement organization, consider sharing your own story of inequitable philanthropic practices.

We should all be rooting for WOL’s and OMNS’ #DisruptPhilanthropyNOW campaign to succeed. Because a world in which nonprofits are able to achieve equitable philanthropic practices and funder accountability to communities of color will be a world in which we will be that much closer to achieving equity and justice for all.

Lisa Ranghelli is senior director of assessment and special projects at NCRP.

Are the teachings of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the great civil rights leader whose birthday we celebrate today, relevant in the current political climate? Absolutely.

Last week, a prominent liberal opinion columnist for The Washington Post, Dana Milbank, criticized United We Dream, the nonprofit group organizing undocumented young people to fight for their rights and for full citizenship. Milbank wrote that he was sympathetic to the group’s demands, but he claimed their attacks on Democrats were “counterproductive” and he suggested they should stop “training their fire on those who support them” and instead go after Republicans. His critique reminded me of the white preachers of Birmingham who were critical of the tactics being used by Dr. King and others in the Civil Rights Movement.

I’m sure that some in philanthropy privately share Milbank’s critique of the dreamers and their campaign, or are similarly critical of other groups that push in ways that make people uncomfortable. I don’t tend to see foundation leaders arguing publicly that activists should be patient and wait, or that they shouldn’t use controversial tactics. But the truth is, foundation leaders speak more with their dollars than they do with their words and their dollars say they aren’t comfortable funding groups that employ aggressive tactics.

NCRP analysis of available Foundation Center data shows that between 2006 and 2016, just 9 percent of total foundation grantmaking intended to benefit communities of color, poor people, immigrants, incarcerated people, LGBTQ people and people with disabilities was for policy change, advocacy and systems reform work. The rest, we can reasonably conclude, was for work more “acceptable” to foundations like direct services.

In the same decade, just 0.8 percent of all grantmaking for community and economic development was for strategies specifically designed to build power, like organized labor, tenant organizing and community organizing more generally. In the same decade, foundations directed 16 times as much funding to business and industry.

This reticence of philanthropy to fund movements and direct action isn’t new, of course. Just a handful of foundations played any kind of meaningful role funding the Civil Rights Movement, as we documented a few years ago in Freedom Funders.

Milbank’s critique and a clear-headed recognition that philanthropy hasn’t embraced groups that make elites uncomfortable suggest that now would be a good time for everyone in philanthropy to re-read Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. In that letter, Dr. King responded to intense criticism from liberal white preachers who claimed they supported the goals of the Civil Rights Movement but not its confrontational tactics. Here are excerpts of what Dr. King wrote in response to those white preachers:

My Dear Fellow Clergymen:

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

…

You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.

…

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

…

Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.”

…

There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

Am I saying that grantmakers should never question the strategic and tactical choices of grantees? Of course not. But Dr. King’s letter reminds us that we in philanthropy must never write off potential grantees as naïve or politically unsophisticated because of the tactics they have chosen. If we want to win, if we want to be effective, we must stop reflexively and perpetually deciding to fund groups that “know how the system works” instead of choosing to fund grassroots organizations led by people of color that employ tactics that make us uncomfortable – tactics that challenge that system directly and sometimes confrontationally.

What other teachings of Dr. King do you think are relevant for philanthropy today? Please share in the comments.

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

[Disclosure: Cristina Jiménez, executive director and co-founder of United We Dream, serves on the NCRP board of directors. Full board list here.]

If you follow NCRP on Facebook and Twitter (and, if you don’t, now is a great time to start), you probably noticed that we’ve been counting down our top 10 blog posts of 2017. These posts have touched on some of the prominent events of the year, such as President Trump’s executive orders on immigrants and refugees, the recent special election in Alabama and the terrorist attack at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

But NCRP readers’ interests go beyond how philanthropy should respond to current events. Other popular topics included whether foundations should put local residents in charge of grantmaking, how foundations can more creatively support frontline advocacy and organizing, and the role philanthropy plays in liberating boys and men of color.

Below is a recap of the 10 most popular posts on NCRP’s blog in 2017:

10. Philanthropy, we have nothing to lose but our chains by Jeanné Isler

In this piece, published in November, Isler, NCRP’s vice president and chief engagement officer, discussed Executives’ Alliance for Boys and Men of Color’s convening of foundation CEOs and other stakeholders “to explore the idea that boys and men of color (BMOC) are the architects of their own liberation.” The post provides seven calls-to-action for philanthropy.

9. Philanthropy: Silence is not an acceptable response to Trump’s orders on immigrants and refugees by Ben Barge

In this post from February, Barge, NCRP senior associate for learning and engagement, calls on funders to take a stand against Trump’s executive orders regarding immigrants and refugees. “We believe we’re stronger when we put love before fear and when philanthropy devotes its resources to make that vision a reality,” Barge wrote. “This is also personal for us. These orders target our families, our friends, our board members, our colleagues and our next door neighbors.”

8. Community-led grantmaking: Collective wisdom for social change by Caitlin Duffy

In September, Duffy, NCRP senior associate for learning and engagement, authored this post summarizing Pass the Reins: Shifting Decision-Making Power in Philanthropy, a webinar NCRP co-hosted with Indie Philanthropy Initiative, Grassroots Grantmakers and GrantCraft, a service of Foundation Center.

7. The 2017 NCRP Impact Awards winners are… by Jeanné Isler

For its fifth anniversary, NCRP revamped our annual Impact Awards with four new categories:

The “Mover and Shaker” Award for bold peer organizing
The “Smashing Silos” Award for intersectional grantmaking
The “Changing Course” Award for incorporating feedback
The “Get Up, Stand Up” Award for rapid-response grantmaking

Find out who took home the awards at our September ceremony.

6. Creatively funding social movements by Caitlin Duffy

NCRP’s webinars proved popular in 2017, and at this February event, we tried to answer: How can philanthropy creatively fund social movements?

Read the post for seven suggestions of how to creatively resource activism.

Photo courtesy of the Brooklyn Community Foundation.

5. What happens when a foundation puts residents in charge of local grantmaking? by Liane Stegmaier

This post by Stegmaier, vice president of communications and strategy at former NCRP Impact Award winner Brooklyn Community Foundation, explains why community voices and impacted communities are “central to our approach.”

4. Finally, a foundation-commissioned study that actually helps its grantees by Aaron Dorfman

When a foundation commissions a study, its grantees are usually filled with dread. “You have to say yes and agree to participate, of course, or risk alienating that funder,” NCRP President and CEO Dorfman wrote. “But most of the time, if we’re being honest, the study that was commissioned has little or no relevance to how you do your work.”

Learn why a field scan commissioned by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation is an exception that turned out to be tremendously helpful to NCRP.

Alan Rabinowitz

3. Remembering Alan Rabinowitz

NCRP was saddened to learn about the November passing of our former board member and social change philanthropy pioneer Alan Rabinowitz. Friends and colleagues left their thoughts and memories of Alan in the comments.

LaTosha Brown and Shun Sheffield on election day in Alabama. Used with permission of LaTosha Brown.

2. Grassroots organizations in Alabama saved the day despite lack of foundation support by Ryan Schlegel

The last blog post we published in 2017 turned out to be one of the most widely read of the year. Schlegel, NCRP’s senior research and policy associate, explained how grassroots organizations led by Black women worked to overcome Alabama’s voting barriers in the recent special election for U.S. senator despite a lack of foundation funding for their work.

1. Wealthy donors and grantmakers: You can no longer hide behind neutrality after the terrorist attack in Charlottesville by Aaron Dorfman

After the deadly violence at an August white nationalist demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia, Dorfman called on philanthropy to respond decisively.

“The lesson in Charlottesville is clear: The nation’s philanthropic sector must deploy all the resources at its disposal to counter the rising tide of neo-Nazism and white nationalist violence,” Dorfman wrote. “That means deploying a foundation’s public leadership role, its convening power, its invested assets and its grantmaking dollars to protect threatened communities – and to do so on those communities’ terms.”

Peter Haldis is NCRP’s senior associate for communications. Follow @NCRP on Twitter.

We’re excited to announce that yesterday Reverend Starsky Wilson, president and CEO of Deaconess Foundation in St. Louis, Missouri, was elected unanimously as the new chair of NCRP’s board, succeeding Sherece West-Scantlebury. Sherece, who leads Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, served as NCRP’s board chair for the past four years.

“The work of NCRP is needed now more than ever. Reverend Wilson’s leadership and commitment to social justice will enhance NCRP’s efforts to ensure our nation’s social movements are getting the philanthropic dollars they need to succeed.”

– Sherece West-Scantlebury, President and CEO, Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation

“I am humbled to be asked to lead NCRP’s board at this important time. Philanthropy has an important role to play in helping our nation confront racial injustice and economic inequality. I am excited to work with such a remarkable group of nonprofit and foundation leaders committed to ensuring that philanthropy lives up to its highest aspirations – as transformational agents of just, equitable social change.”

– Reverend Starsky Wilson, President and CEO, Deaconess Foundation

We’re also thrilled to share that five foundation leaders will be joining NCRP’s dynamic and diverse board:

Sharon Alpert, President and CEO, Nathan Cummings Foundation
Jocelyn Sargent, Executive Director, Hyams Foundation
Joseph Scantlebury, Vice President for Program and Strategy (Places), W.K. Kellogg Foundation
Pamela Shifman, Executive Director, NoVo Foundation
Lateefah Simon, President, Akonadi Foundation

Under Sherece’s leadership, NCRP crafted a bold strategic framework that advocates for the kind of philanthropy that prioritizes and empowers underserved and marginalized communities, and seeks to solve long-term inequities and injustice. We pushed foundations to be more transparent, open and inclusive of stakeholder feedback in strategies and processes. We highlighted the untapped potential and capacity for meaningful philanthropic impact in the South. We examined the latest social justice giving trends among the country’s largest foundations.

New Leadership

In addition to Sherece terming of after nine years on NCRP’s board, other board members have stepped down due to term limits or other factors, including: Bill Bynum, CEO of HOPE Credit Union; Trista Harris, president of Minnesota Council on Foundations; Priscilla Hung, deputy director of Move to End Violence; and Gara LaMarche, president of the Democracy Alliance.

The board also elected other new officers, including: Daniel Lee, executive director of the Levi Strauss Foundation, as the new vice-chair; and Cristina Jiménez, executive director and co-founder of United We Dream, as the new secretary. Vivek Malhotra continues as treasurer and Cynthia Renfro, principal of Civic Consulting, was re-elected as at-large delegate to the executive committee.

“Everyone at NCRP is extremely grateful to Sherece, Bill, Trista, Priscilla and Gara for sharing their time, passion and wisdom. They each helped make NCRP a stronger and better organization, and we will miss them.

“I am excited to work with the incoming new board members. These are people I’ve long admired for their leadership and commitment to high-impact, responsive philanthropy. Fresh perspectives like theirs will bring a lot to the organization.”

– Aaron Dorfman, President and CEO, NCRP

Meet our board members!
View the complete list of NCRP’s board of directors.

“This here: It cannot be work. It is community. It is remembering. It is the reminder that we deserve better.”

– Mwende “FreeQuency” Katwiwa,
Activist, Poet and Performer

There were many goosebump-inducing moments at last night’s 2017 NCRP Impact Awards. Hearing Mwende say the words quoted above was one of them.

The entire night was about being inspired by the amazing work of the 2017 awardees and their grantees working the frontlines to make our country better for all, especially the underserved and marginalized.

And it was about you and me, too – an opportunity to celebrate as a community the kind of impact we all want to see on the issues and communities we care about by being thoughtful, strategic and grounded in what is just, equitable and sustainable.

Congratulations to the 2017 NCRP Impact Awardees: Foundation for Louisiana, Groundswell Fund, Meyer Memorial Trust and Solutions Project!

Photos, tweets and a special message …

Here are the first batch of photos from last night on our Facebook page … View, tag and share!

We’ll add to the album in the days ahead.

Thanks to all who shared and celebrated our awardees on social media over the past few weeks. Here are some tweets from last night.

Lastly, actor-activist Mark Ruffalo, who co-founded Solutions Project, had a special message for attendees. In a recorded video message, he said:

“The idea of a philanthropy that is immediate, responsive and ends up doing the most amount of good in the quickest amount of time seems like a reasonable thing to want but really radical at its core. … I really appreciate you giving us the award and shining the spotlight on the good work that we’ve been able to accomplish. … We’ve all seen the results of it. It’s profound. It honors our most precious commodity … human life.”

Mark Ruffalo, actor, activist and co-founder of Solutions Project, offers a brief message about the organization’s “Get Up, Stand Up” award.

From warm to hot

I’m still feeling fired up and inspired by the awards, but we didn’t gather only to celebrate. All of us need to add fuel to this fire through transformational grantmaking and practices.

THREE WAYS TO TURN YOUR INSPIRATION INTO ACTION

Congratulations to the 2017 NCRP Impact Awardees Foundation for Louisiana, Groundswell Fund, Meyer Memorial Trust and Solutions Project!

And thanks to all of you for helping us recognize and inspire high-impact philanthropy.

Social justice work is tiring, painful and unpopular, but there is nothing that is more important to me than this work. I am grateful that it is so integral to our foundation’s mission.

Consumer Health Foundation, as one of our board members puts it, has run into burning buildings when others were running out. So, it was an honor to receive a 2016 NCRP Impact Award, knowing that we were joining 17 other courageous peer foundations who have prioritized smart philanthropy practices such as targeted grantmaking and supporting advocacy and community organizing.

Since winning the award, we continued to demand bolder grantmaking and leadership of ourselves on racial equity, especially given our current moment. We revisited our grantmaking protocols and developed a new practice to ensure that our investments are truly impacting communities of color.

For the first time in our history, we are requiring that potential grantee partners use a racial equity impact assessment tool when applying for a grant. Although we are mindful of the burden that learning how to use a new tool places on our partners, we are committed to supporting the field of advocates who have asked for assistance in operationalizing racial equity. We believe that engaging in racial equity impact assessment is a first step.

According to Race Forward, a Racial Equity Impact Assessment (REIA) is a systematic examination of how different racial and ethnic groups will likely be affected by a proposed action or decision. REIAs are used to minimize unanticipated adverse consequences in a variety of contexts, including the analysis of proposed policies, institutional practices, programs, plans and budgetary decisions. The REIA can be a vital tool for preventing institutional racism and for identifying new options to remedy long-standing inequities.

In partnership with Western States Center and borrowing from existing tools, we have developed an REIA tool that asks questions such as:

Are people of color disproportionately and adversely impacted by this issue, policy, regulation, program, practice or budget? If yes, in what way and why?
Are stakeholders from different racial/ethnic groups – especially those most adversely impacted, leading the development of proposals to address the issue, policy, regulation, practice, program or budget? If not, who is missing? If yes, in what way? If not, why not and how can they become engaged?
Do the stakeholders know the systems of power that must be interrupted in order to gain racial equity? If no, what would be needed to make that possible?
If there is a policy, regulation, practice, program or budget under consideration to address an issue, does it address the root causes of racial inequities and racialized outcomes? If not, how could it address the root causes?
If there is a policy, regulation, practice, program or budget under consideration, can you anticipate adverse impacts of unintended consequences?

It is no longer enough to say that our organizations are impacting communities of color because of the issues that we work on or where we are located. To reduce inequities, we must do more. We must analyze the way history informs current conditions faced by communities of color in order to determine the right interventions.

We must disaggregate data by race/ethnicity to identify groups and places where our interventions will have the most impact. We must be in partnership with communities so that those most impacted are leading the development of solutions. And we must work with our elected officials and agency leaders to educate them about the solutions that they can formulate into policies, programs and systems changes to advance racial equity.

For some, thinking in this way has been difficult. For others, it is very natural to consider their work through a racial equity lens. We recognize the continuum, and we are balancing the need to take leadership in this way while providing capacity building for advocates who are expressing commitment to racial equity.

We will share lessons with the field after our first full year of implementation, and we hope other funders will join us in having more intentional conversations with our grantee partners about how their work advances racial equity.

Yanique Redwood is president and CEO of the Consumer Health Foundation. Follow @chfprez on Twitter.

The Notre Dame fire has a lesson for philanthropy

Photos, tweets and a special message …

From warm to hot