As foundations pour hundreds of millions of dollars into racial-justice efforts, some nonprofit leaders question whether that flood of cash will be put to good use.
Private foundations have committed about half a billion dollars to racial-justice programs since protests against systemic racism began in late May, and the announcements keep coming. Some are spending money for the first time on efforts to eradicate anti=Black racism..
Racial-justice advocates worry the money will be spent on superficial efforts by legacy foundations that don’t have a good understanding of the work that needs to be done. They also worry that grant makers will overlook the small, Black-led grassroots organizations that will be crucial for creating systemic change or that some foundations are merely rebranding their existing lines of grant making as racial-justice efforts.
Driving many of the new commitments is a desire to help Black-led movements that have historically been starved for cash. However, some conservative philanthropy watchdogs see the whole exercise as a naked power play to help left-leaning political groups gain clout rather than providing direct services to people in need.
The growing dollar figure is impressive, says Bomani Johnson, founder of Emergent Pathways, a nonprofit consulting group, but it pales in comparison with the historical problems surrounding race in America. He worries that foundations will believe they’ve cured the problem by signing checks, without using their influence and connections to help local, Black-led organizing groups.
“Institutional philanthropy likes to hide behind its money,” he says. “Any good funder will tell you we can’t fund our way out of this stuff. We know it’s not enough to make the changes that are necessary.”
Growing Commitments
One after another, major foundations and regional grant makers have announced multimillion-dollar commitments, anchored by the Open Society Foundations, which has pledged $220 million, and the Hewlett Foundation, which plans to make nearly $170 million in grants focused on racial justice over the next decade.
Others have followed. The Bonfils-Stanton Foundation, a relatively small supporter of the arts in Colorado, this week committed nearly a half million dollars. And the Community Foundation of Herkimer and Oneida Counties in New York announced a plan to spend $10 million in grant making.
Expect more announcements in the coming months. The Kellogg Foundation, which in June said it would increase its grant budget by $300 million over the next two years, plans to disclose in late August how it will use the additional funds. According to Rebecca Noricks, a spokeswoman for the foundation, the boosted payout will reflect the “same deep commitment and investment in racial equity efforts"from Kellogg, a longtime supporter of racial reconciliation and healing projects.
The Lilly Endowment will announce a “substantial” financial pledge for racial equity in the coming weeks, says communications director Judith Cebula. Lilly has already made a $500,000 grant to the Central Indiana Community Foundation to start the Central Indiana Racial Equity Fund.
“Lilly Endowment has long-standing relationships with several local and national African American organizations, and we are continuing to engage with many of them on how we can effectively help support their efforts to address racial injustice and build a more equitable, inclusive, and just society,” Cebula wrote in an email.
Some large foundations say they are looking into funding racial-justice efforts but haven’t acted yet. For instance, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, which mainly supports scientific research, conservation, patient care, and social programs in the San Francisco Bay area is “actively engaged in reviewing our work through a more deliberate equity lens to uncover areas for improvement and opportunities for greater impact,” according to Holly Potter, a foundation spokeswoman.
Existing Funding Streams
Other foundations have focused much of their efforts on responding to the pandemic rather than diving into new lines of racial-equity grant making. The Gates Foundation, the nation’s largest private philanthropy, has pledged ,more than $350 million to find treatments and a possible vaccine for Covid-19. Other grant programs at Gates, to reduce poverty and improve education — the bulk of its domestic grant making — are focused heavily on reducing disparities based on race, according to Amy Enright, a spokeswoman for the foundation.
“We recognize that systemic racism is an insidious barrier to a healthy, productive life,” she said in a statement, adding that the foundation is “discussing with our employees and our partners the best role for the foundation to play.”
Similarly, the Carnegie Corporation has not introduced a new racial-justice line of grant making. Over the past 20 years, the foundation has made grants totaling more than $1 billion to support education, voting rights, and immigrants.
“Social and racial justice are not possible without structural equality in our education, voting, and immigration systems,” says LaVerne Srinivasan, vice president for national programs at Carnegie. “These fundamental rights are central to the corporation’s mission.”
Panic Funding?
While racial-justice advocates worry about whether foundations will target the right groups for funding, some conservatives see darker motives behind the new grant-making efforts.
The rush to support racial-justice efforts is a sign of “panic funding” by large national grant makers that have come under attack from the left over the past years as elitist white-led organizations that horde the fortunes at their disposal, says Scott Walker, president of Capital Research Center, a conservative think tank.
To shield themselves from criticism, large foundations have acted like “lemmings” and rushed to support racial-justice efforts, Walker says, singling out the Hewlett Foundation, which he says has a history of supporting groups across the political spectrum.
“It’s sad to see them bullied this way, and it’s sad to see them capitulate to pressures to conform,” he says.
Many grant makers see voter-mobilization drives, which are often targeted at boosting turnout among people of color, as part of a comprehensive strategy for improving racial equity. But to critics like Walker, those efforts are simply a ruse to collect tax-free money to support left-leaning politicians and progressive causes.
Shifting power is precisely the point, says Maria Nakae, senior engagement director of Justice Funders , a group that is pushing foundations to cede control over philanthropic dollars to grantees.
Too often, she says, foundations devise their own priorities without input from the people who are meant to benefit from grants. She worries about “movement capture,” the idea that foundations pay lip service to the goals of a social movement and then support a series of watered-down reforms that aren’t true to the aims of movement organizers.
Nakae is watchful of the precise language foundations use when describing their plans because, she says, racial equity, diversity, or inclusion can mean something much different than racial justice.
Support for racial justice, Nakae says, can include things like dumping investments in companies that run prisons or offer predatory loans. At its core, racial justice should support not just Black-led organizations but, more specifically, Black-led movement-organizing groups. Those groups, she says, work with a purity of purpose to “dismantle systems that are harming Black communities.”
She is skeptical about some of the recent grant-maker announcements. For instance, she says, it is too early to applaud Hewlett’s entry into racial-justice grant making, because the foundation didn’t offer many specifics.
“Good on them for doing what they haven’t done before,” she says. “But I don’t know what that means.”
In a blog post announcing the new program, Hewlett President Larry Kramer wrote that the foundation’s commitment was “tempered by humility” as it entered a new area of work. He said the foundation’s approach will evolve as it gains experience and insight from others.
(The Hewlett Foundation is a financial supporter of the Chronicle.)
Different Approaches
Otis Rolley, III, senior vice president at the Rockefeller Foundation, argues that there are many ways to address racism, including support of grassroots groups and larger organizations working to push policy at the national level.
Even before the nationwide protests, leaders at Rockefeller mulled how to devote more money to promote racial equity and considered new program areas, such as education and criminal justice.
Rockefeller announced in February a $65 million commitment to help low-wage workers run by the foundation’s economic opportunity program, which Rolley leads. The new grants were designed to push to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit and to ensure tax breaks given through the federal Opportunity Zone policy are steered to help businesses in areas that need investment.
As the coronavirus spread in March, hitting Black people disproportionately hard, Rolley and his colleagues had a “gut-level, emotional reaction” to the toll the pandemic was having, he says.
But the grant maker decided to “double down” on its current strategy, largely because it was confident that its data-reliant approach could chart progress, Rolley says. In April, before the uprisings erupted across the country, Rockefeller added $50 million in total to its economic opportunity, food and energy, and health programs.
In doing so, the foundation is putting money behind black-led organizations including the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, New Jersey Policy Perspective, and the Newark Alliance, which conduct research and strategic communications on community investment issues, as well as big national organizations.
The commitment isn’t explicitly focused on defeating anti-Black racism or supporting movement leaders who are rallying people behind them. But Rolley believes it will help more than 10 million low-wage workers, who are disproportionately Blacks and other people of color, and spur investment in neighborhoods and businesses inhabited and led by Black people.
“You cannot talk about racial justice without talking about economic justice,” he says.
The foundation is also in talks with the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University to assist Rockefeller over the next year as it delves into making changes internally to address racism and ensuring all of its grants have an anti-racist purpose. The key, Rolley says, is not to set up a free-standing grant program designed to end anti-Black racism in America but to infuse that approach throughout all of the foundation’s work.
Looking Inward
Along with the huge influx of dollars going to racial justice, it is critical that foundations take a deep look at their own culture, hiring, and decision-making process, says Storme Gray, executive director of Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy, a national network of philanthropy leaders.
In a 2017 survey by the group, the majority of respondents said their foundation was out of touch with the communities it serves. Less than half said the notion of equity was discussed at their foundation. Addressing those internal issues, Gray says, could ultimately impact how foundations steer their grants.
“The reality is we do not yet have a critical mass of foundations that consider themselves to be anti-racist institutions,” she says.
Gray is uncertain whether foundations will continue to make Black-led organizations and anti-racist grant making a priority. Many foundations are new to the issue, and in many cases they are being called upon to support smaller organizations with long-term grants, something Gray says will require a lot of trust and patience.
“Not everything is going to work out the way you initially thought,” she says. “My hope is that from those failed moments, philanthropy will be courageous enough to name them, explore them, and learn from them so they are not repeated. Let’s not let the shame of failures be a stopping point.”