“Philanthropy is a strange place.”
Se-ah-dom Edmo says this as a newcomer to the ranks of grant makers. Traditional grant making, she says, doles out inherited white wealth by the thimble with little, if any, directed to dismantle systems underlying an unjust society. “Name a social ill that’s been solved through philanthropy,” she says. “I can’t think of one. We need to do things differently.”
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Edmo became executive director of the legendarily progressive Seeding Justice in Portland, Ore., three years ago — a selection celebrated as a step to diversify the predominantly white ranks of foundation executives. An American Indian (Shoshone-Bannock, Nez Perce, and Yakama tribal affiliations) she has experienced the very societal problems she aims to solve. She grew up in poverty — “I paid for lunch at school with different color tickets,” she says — and had a father who struggled with addiction.
Edmo also has credentials as an organizer that are rare in philanthropy’s C-suite. “There hasn’t been a progressive cause that I’ve met that I haven’t wanted to work on,” she says. “Tribal sovereignty, reproductive health and justice, freedom to marry — you name it, I’ve worked on it.” She’s best known for leading a campaign that persuaded Oregon to ban the use of Native American mascots in its schools. “I love conflict, and I love really hard and challenging things.”
Seeding Justice was christened as the McKenzie River Gathering in 1976, when Charles Gray and Leslie Brockelbank, husband and wife advocates for peace and racial justice, gathered activists on the banks of the McKenzie River to decide collectively how best to use money that Brockelbank had inherited. Votes cast that day to distribute those dollars have led to a half-century of grant making in which grassroots leaders and activists decided where to allocate resources to attack root causes of inequality.
Edmo proudly continues that tradition but says she wants the group to be even bolder. Earlier this year, it changed its name to Seeding Justice to directly reflect its work and less its roots in the white wealth that is the basis of much philanthropy.
Recently, the organization deepened its support of Native Americans in Oregon. It signed its second-ever agreement to create a fund with a sovereign tribal nation, the Klamath Tribes, to support efforts to restore endangered fish populations in the upper Klamath Lake, rebuild riparian areas, and help the tribes defend their ownership of water rights. In 2019, it built a similar fund to support the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs as it moved to repair water infrastructure and gain access to clean water. Both tribes control how dollars are distributed.
The organization now raises more than $3 million each year, up from $500,000 or so just a few years ago. This year, Seeding Justice launched a giving vehicle that Edmo intends to be an alternative to donor-advised funds, which she calls unethical because donors retain control of their donation even after it’s been made. Nearly $1 million has been raised through the group’s Donor-in-Movement Funds, which pay out every year — half to organizations selected by Seeding Justice’s activist-led grant-making committee and most of the remainder to donor-selected groups that align with the organization’s values. Edmo expects contributions to the funds will top $10 million in the next two years.
“Status quo philanthropy,” as she calls it, should pay attention.
