I keep two Post-its on the wall behind my computer where I can see them while on Zoom calls. The first says WAIT, which stands for Why Am I Talking? The second (to which I often have to resort) says WAIST or Why Am I STILL Talking?
These reminders evoke a range of rationalizations. Sometimes I am talking because I am being a good meeting participant and going along with the icebreaker — talking about what brings me joy (sunsets, oceans, piña coladas …) or what movie star would play me in the story of my life (Katherine Hepburn, Kathryn Hahn). Sometimes I am talking because I am updating people on what I am working on or asking them about their work. But sometimes (too often) I am talking because I am bored or have a sarcastic aside I can’t keep to myself or am trying to keep someone else from talking or am enchanted by my own brilliant ideas.
My 17-year-old daughter walked through the dining room/my office while I was in a virtual meeting recently. I am sure I was lamenting the paradox of working in philanthropy — a system that I find to be deeply flawed as it perpetuates many of the systemic race, class, and power dynamics it seeks to address.
A series of dispatches on grant making in the coronavirus era by Lisa Pilar Cowan, vice president of the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation.
After the call, Tessa groaned. “Mom, every time I have walked by you in the last year and a half, you have been having the exact same conversation.”
Her comment sent me down a rabbit hole of looking through my calendar and recounting the many conversations I have had on that topic. Finally, it left me lying on the couch, staring at the ceiling and contemplating quitting my job.
As this long, short, impossible, fascinating, devastating, hopeful, violent year winds to an end, I am looking back at my own work. I am struck by the gap between what I said I would do and what I have done. This “Say-Do Gap” — the space between a person’s words and actions — is not unique to me or to foundations. But in philanthropy, which has so little external accountability, it bears extra scrutiny.
Actions Come Slowly
The pandemic impact and response, palpable change in the climate’s warming, and the public racial reckoning of the last two years have made it more clear to me than ever that we need to do things differently. It is not clear how to get from here to there. These overwhelming and terrifying conditions invite big responses, radical shifts, and sweeping statements. Foundations have been good at making the statements. The responses and shifts come more slowly.
And as my resident teen guru pointed out and my Post-it notes remind me, it is time for me to stop talking and put my hours and grant dollars toward changing behavior on the personal level, practices on the organizational level, and policy on the systemic level. Although I’m not certain how to do any of them, maybe it’s OK to start doing that without knowing for sure.
Making Commitments
Personally, I commit to putting my hours and dollars toward the fights of the moment. And making time to organize and invite people into climate work, antiracism work, pro-democracy work. And then to do the unglamorous part of letter writing, tabling, calling politicians, and showing up in the cold for rallies.
Professionally, I am committing to use my platform and connections to name inequities and challenge the status quo. That will require uncomfortable conversations with myself and others.
Organizationally, we must commit our foundation’s practices to the same kind of inquiries that we make of our grantee partners when holding them accountable. This includes trying to make transparent where our money comes from and where it goes. We can be clear with our grantee partners and potential partners about how and why we make decisions, and that requires some deciphering among ourselves. And because grant making is more of an art than a science, this turns out to be hard and muddy work, too.
For philanthropy at a systems level, it’s time to institutionalize some of the changes many foundations made during the pandemic — reducing the burden of application and reporting requirements, spending more of our endowments to get more dollars to working nonprofits, and finding and investing in the BIPOC-led organizations working on democracy, climate, and racial justice that we said we would fund.
And this is where we can identify the ultimate example of the Say-Do Gap. A report by the Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity, “Mismatched, Racial Equity and Racial Justice Grantmaking in 2020,” has a preliminary analysis of 2020 giving that tracked $3.4 billion in funding for racial-equity work and $1 billion funding for racial-justice work. While this number is likely to grow as more foundations report their 2020 grantmaking, it is a significantly lower figure than the $200 billion cited in a McKinsey & Company report, the $11.9 billion estimated in a Bridgespan/PolicyLink report, or the $12.6 billion in grants listed on Candid’s website as of December 1.
For me, “the saying” — participating in webinars and meetings of grant makers, posting on social media, writing essays for blogs, and engaging in the repetitive lamenting that my daughter overheard — was relatively easy. The doing is way harder — and slower — and less public — and a lot messier. A lot of it won’t work. But my plan for 2022 is to get to it. See you there?
