It seems that every week, sometimes every day, we are faced with wrenching news of suffering — school shootings, children being torn from their parents at our borders, the death of another unarmed black person by a police officer.
Amid these headline-generating stories are the day-to-day challenges communities face, including a rise in addiction and suicides, greater poverty and persistent homelessness, growing infant and maternal mortality rates among black women and babies, and violence against transgender individuals.
Whether these conditions get news attention or not, it is clear that the status quo is not serving all Americans well, especially people of color, immigrants, women and children, LGBTQ individuals, and people with disabilities.
Many of those people face tough choices every day affecting their physical safety, sense of well-being and ability to have a secure home, healthy children, and a life free from violence and discrimination.
Philanthropy is often focused on helping these very people — or influencing the policies that lead to such difficult choices. But few grant makers are taking the same level of risk some Americans take every day — and moving away from business as usual so they can make a real difference.
The reluctance to take risks comes from many directions. Among the players and their rationales:
Boards. Trustees see themselves as stewards of precious and finite monetary resources, resources that usually are being held in perpetuity, whether or not that is the most strategic way to achieve progress toward equity. They are usually reluctant to do anything that may jeopardize those assets. The financial and legal advisers to foundations are also generally a cautious bunch and will often deter foundation leaders from approaches like mission investing or raising the annual payout rate or even more flexible grant guidelines and due-diligence processes.
Chief executives. Foundation leaders often fear harm to their own reputation and that of their institutions, in addition to other concerns. No one wants to see their credibility damaged or their respected name tarnished. Foundation CEOs may fear what will happen if they challenge their boards to have tough conversations about strategy and even about their own composition. They may fear what will happen if they ask grantees for honest feedback or invite community input — thereby raising expectations for mutual accountability that they aren’t ready to meet.
Associations. Fear of taking risks extends beyond individual foundations. Organizations like the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, where I work, provide important research and advocacy to improve philanthropy, but we must often weigh the risk of bringing up potentially “controversial” issues that could alienate members or allies.
All of these concerns are real and legitimate. Yet they must be weighed against the risks marginalized communities face every day just trying to get by, and the risks they face when they try to speak truth to power — whether to policy makers or to foundations.
And the fear of taking risks must be weighed against the risk of inaction and of failing to meet our philanthropic missions.
Risk Redefined
Grant makers can come to terms with these fears by first looking at their role in society.
After all, foundations hold a privileged place in the social order.
Yet privileged people and institutions, including in philanthropy, often don’t want to explicitly acknowledge their own power or the role of power in perpetuating or challenging inequities.
In contrast, communities of color, people living in poverty, and others fighting injustice are taking much greater risks. It may seem like they have a lot less to lose in terms of wealth and status, but in fact there is much more at stake for people who are marginalized.
Foundations can change the equation by unleashing the power of people to organize and advance the goals that matter to them.
Grant makers would be most effective in that quest by funding bottom-up, systemic solutions. They could win the trust of nonprofits by asking people affected by a problem to help decide where the money should go. Foundations could also take advantage of their credibility, connections, and wealth to amplify people power and use their own bully pulpit and reputation to challenge inequities.
Setting an Example
A growing number of grant makers are doing just that. For example:
- The Divest/Invest movement to encourage endowments to shed stocks in companies that damage the environment is gaining momentum, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund voted to completely divest from fossil fuels, the very source of its original wealth. President Stephen Heintz helped the fund come to this decision by engaging the board in discussions about what it means to take risks.
- Foundation CEOs are increasingly using their bully pulpit to speak up about racism and xenophobia — and challenging their peers to do so — including Vanessa Daniel of the Groundswell Fund, Pamela Shifman of the Novo Foundation, and Grant Oliphant of the Heinz Endowments.
- Efforts to shift the balance of power between foundations and grantees include the growing participatory grant-making movement, the Whitman Institute’s trust-based philanthropy approach, and the book Unicorns Unite. Actions that build strong relationships with grant recipients include unrestricted multiyear funding, transparent and responsive communication, streamlined paperwork and soliciting, and acting on feedback. The Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, Peery Foundation, and Headwaters Foundation have adopted many of these practices to build trust and are vocal evangelizers of their approaches.
- More grant makers that focus on a specific region, such as the Brooklyn Community Foundation, Consumer Health Foundation, Deaconess Foundation, and Hyams Foundation, are doubling down on building power among grassroots groups and promoting leadership development, not waiting until the next social uprising comes to their doorstep in response to a community crisis.
Taking stock of how well they use their position of power will provide an important reality check for many foundations that may be difficult to accept. It requires openness, humility, compassion, and effective methods of gaining honest feedback from staff, grantees, peers, and those who haven’t traditionally been heard.
As foundations undertake this work, they should set goals and benchmarks for moving further to build, share, and wield power and allocate the required resources to make headway. Change won’t happen unless all of us change and respect the people whose lives we all want to improve for the better.
Lisa Ranghelli is senior director of foundation assessment and special projects at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, which recently released a tool kit called “Power Moves: Your Essential Philanthropy Assessment Guide for Equity and Justice.”