As the nation reels in the aftermath of insurrectionist, racist attacks on the U.S. Capitol, I find myself reflecting on two things: These attacks were in direct response to record-breaking Black voter turnout, and they were a result of a colossal failure of leadership at all levels.
They came on the heels of a year when we saw the Covid-19 pandemic disproportionately affect people of color and the police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and far too many others. Philanthropy has wrestled with how best to advance equity, and foundation leaders must reckon with how they deal with race. Some of these conversations started quite a while ago when 60 foundation executives came together to chart a way forward by forming the
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As the nation reels in the aftermath of insurrectionist, racist attacks on the U.S. Capitol, I find myself reflecting on two things: These attacks were in direct response to record-breaking Black voter turnout, and they were a result of a colossal failure of leadership at all levels.
They came on the heels of a year when we saw the Covid-19 pandemic disproportionately affect people of color and the police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and far too many others. Philanthropy has wrestled with how best to advance equity, and foundation leaders must reckon with how they deal with race. Some of these conversations started quite a while ago when 60 foundation executives came together to chart a way forward by forming the Presidents’ Forum on Racial Equity in Philanthropy, and they continue to evolve in an accelerated fashion in response to current events.
Members of the forum, which my consulting firm has facilitated since it started, are far more diverse than philanthropy’s leadership, in which only one foundation CEO in 10 is a person of color. Still, the white male leaders participating in the Presidents’ Forum recognize that unless they act to put racial equity at the center of their own leadership and lives, change in philanthropy will come too slowly. Each knows that these times require them to take a hard look at their leadership and, most important, take action.
To help other white leaders understand what they can do, I talked in-depth to two foundation presidents engaged in the forum, John Palfrey of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and Larry Kramer, who leads the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Both emphasized that nothing is more important than listening and learning from people with different backgrounds and experiences.
Palfrey describes his approach as leading “from a middle posture.” For him, that means “listening carefully, deferring appropriately to Bipoc [Black, Indigenous, and people of color] leaders while also doing enough that you’re not simply just sitting back and letting other people do the work.” Finding the right balance, he says, is a challenge for leaders to do well.
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Kramer says he has pondered how to overcome his “own understanding and set of experiences” as a white man that are “part of the question and part of the problem.”
Listening carefully to people within his own organization — particularly those whose views on race, equity, and justice are informed by a long arc of activism — and admitting that he does not have all the answers has been key.
“There are things I understand, things I don’t, and — of course — things I think I understand but don’t,” Kramer says. “So I know that what I need to do is to be self-conscious, to listen hard, and to find ways to let others lead where their understanding is surely better. And also to remain open to feedback, because I will probably get things wrong.”
Going Big on Grants
Not surprisingly, a key way each leader is responding to the racial reckoning is by making new grant-making investments. Both MacArthur and Hewlett have supported the Democracy Frontlines Fund, which I advise, that has pooled money from multiple foundations to support Black movement building aimed at defunding the police and defending American democracy. The fund got started after the racial-justice protests spread nationwide to fill a void in the institutional knowledge needed to invest wisely in activism.
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“The events of last year spurred a broader awakening, especially for organizations like ours that have not directly been working on racial injustice,” Kramer says. “ And we should be a part of this struggle.”
Hewlett also made a $170 million commitment to racial-justice groups over the next decade, announcing its first round of grants in November. And MacArthur issued bonds so it could commit $125 million in new funding over the next three years to support the equitable recovery of nonprofit organizations confronting dual crises — a health pandemic and a pandemic of racism. MacArthur’sfirst round of grants addressed anti-Black racism, supported Native Americans impacted by Covid-19, strengthened voter education and mobilization, and worked to combat voter suppression.
Focused Action
At both Hewlett and MacArthur, the work to advance racial equity goes well beyond making grants, however. Kramer says that even though efforts to advance equity had been prominent at the foundation long before he took over, the murder of George Floyd rocked the institution back on its heels. “There was a strong sense that this generalized DEI work we’d been doing is not sufficient,” he says, “that this moment calls for focused action on racial injustice.”
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Likewise, Palfrey notes that significant change at MacArthur predated his appointment in 2019.
Still, he says, “having a running start at these reforms is a good thing, but it’s certainly not sufficient.” He says that he and the organization are looking at ways to do better and “to hold ourselves accountable to our own statements, as well as hold ourselves accountable to the communities that we are engaged with and perceive ourselves as serving.”
To advance that sense of accountability, both foundations are focusing on improving their practices.
Based on conversations with his staff, Kramer decided to create a new position titled “chief of equity and culture,” a role that will focus on both internal education and improvement and external work. Other foundations are taking similar steps.
Palfrey says his focus has been honing in on MacArthur’s definition of justice and becoming abundantly clear that it would put racial and ethnic justice at the center of its hiring (including pipeline creation), promotion, contracting, and data-gathering practices.
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Most important, Palfrey said, he and MacArthur are committed to a sustained focus and funding on racial equity and justice grant making. Late last year, MacArthur shared the results of ademographic survey of its U.S.-based grantees to better understand how its grant making and impact investments align with the foundation’s values. Among the initial next steps MacArthur committed to are supporting a more diverse set of organizations and continuing to measure and share progress — including how it defines “Bipoc-led and “Bipoc-serving” organizations.
“We are committed to a Bipoc-led reimaging of what is possible that prioritizes their vision and needs,” he says. “And I think that’s really where the conversation lasts for us now: How can we center racial equity as its own area of grant making in a way that is sustained, rather than just immediate? How can we use a racial-equity lens in our grant making?”
How White Leaders Can Get Started
The events of 2020 have laid bare the racist systems that still exist throughout American society, and the need for racial equality as a sustained and sustainable tenet of philanthropy’s very makeup has never been clearer. White leaders must not only recognize this, they must also understand that they can start wherever they are and begin making a difference.
“The problem of racial injustice is every bit as much a problem for white people as it is for Black people, for indigenous people, for people of any race; it’s a problem we should all care about and act on,” Kramer says. “Racial injustice hurts everyone, and we’re all responsible for fixing it.”
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Finding a solution may be a shared responsibility. Still, because of the prevalent systemic racism found in nearly every tenet of American life — including philanthropy — white men like Larry and John are in a position to effect change. For them to clearly recognize their role and take action for racial equity and justice is the imperative for our time.
(The Hewlett Foundation is a financial supporterof the Chronicle of Philanthropy, which Harris did not know when she chose to interview Larry Kramer.)
Keecha Harris is chief executive of a consulting firm that bears her name. She directs the Presidents’ Forum on Racial Equity in Philanthropy and is a member of the Democracy Frontlines Fund’s Brain Trust.