In mid-April, a police-reform task force appointed by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel delivered a handsome 183-page report, its cover adorned with photos of city residents and comforting words about “restoring trust.” Yet the words inside carried a stinging condemnation of systemic racism in the city’s law enforcement.
A similar message is routinely delivered on the streets of Chicago with more raw power and emotion. Since the November release of video footage showing a police officer shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, protests have closed highways, disrupted holiday shopping on the Magnificent Mile, and brought city meetings to a standstill.
Both these indictments of the Chicago police are the product, in part, of philanthropy. Foundations in the city stepped up to fund the mayor’s task force, with a MacArthur Foundation staffer joining the work. At the same time, various local and national grant makers and donor networks are backing many of the grass-roots activists organizing protests.
A similar, two-track philanthropic response is likely in the wake of the recent police shootings near St. Paul, Minn., and in Baton Rouge, La. In cities hit by such crises, one wing of philanthropy is often at the center of reform and policy efforts, while another is supporting activists applying pressure from outside the process.
The two sides don’t always work in isolation; some grant makers back both approaches. Still, there are tensions over strategy and tactics, and questions about philanthropy’s proper role in the push for change.
Funding Police Reform
In Chicago, several foundations got involved after the McDonald shooting. When Mr. Emanuel created a task force to make recommendations for police reform, five grant makers in the city agreed to fund it: the MacArthur, Joyce, Robert R. McCormick, and Polk Brothers Foundations and the Chicago Community Trust.
“The foundations said they wanted to provide the funding to the task force so that it could be as independent as possible,” says Maurice Classen, a MacArthur program officer. The grant makers, which collectively contributed about $500,000, wanted the panel to be “free to do its work driven only by what it thought was best,” he says.
Mr. Classen, a former Seattle-area prosecutor, joined the task force and led one of its five working groups. Though he says he did not act as a foundation representative, he brought to the table several years’ experience in MacArthur’s work on police reform, violence prevention, and mass incarceration.
Foundations in Cleveland have played a similar role in the wake of a sharply critical Justice Department review of city law-enforcement procedures and the fatal shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice. Ronn Richard, president of the Cleveland Foundation, was one of 11 civic and religious leaders, business executives, and academics named last year by city and federal authorities to select members of a court-ordered panel to design police reforms.
Grant makers are also in talks with the city about paying for parts of the reform, says Robert Eckardt, the Cleveland Foundation’s executive vice president. “We have tried to step up and be part of the solution.”
Backing Protests
If helping design police reform represents one philanthropic response to the shootings, activist movements that swelled following the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., offer another. Groups that emerged after Ferguson are mobilizing thousands of people for protests that develop with lightning speed and have dramatic impact. Their approach appeals to some grant makers.
“I’ve never seen the level of organizing and activism in Chicago in the 25 years that I’ve lived here,” says Alysia Tate, director of programs at the Chicago Foundation for Women, which is funding several activist groups.
Funders for Justice was launched during the Ferguson crisis to support this form of activism. Neighborhood Funders Group and the Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock — two organizations backing grass-roots social-justice efforts — joined with the Ford Foundation to start the network, which has grown to 300 members, according to organizers. They provide general and program support to grass-roots activists but also “rapid response” dollars that pay for protest essentials — food, unifying T-shirts, legal support, and bail money when demonstrators are jailed.
Funders for Justice members include the NoVo Foundation, the Open Society Foundations, and small alliances of high-wealth individual donors such as Solidaire, whose leaders include Leah Hunt-Hendrix, granddaughter of the oil and gas tycoon H.L. Hunt.
Ford was moved to act by the Ferguson shooting and what it saw as a highly militarized response to legitimate civil protests, says Eric Ward, a program officer at the foundation. Through Funders for Justice, Ford can strengthen smaller, more nimble grant makers and donor networks that can ramp up quickly to support fast-developing protests. “They provide an innovative approach in this moment where philanthropy is having to respond to new forms of organizing,” he says.
The 40-year-old MRG Foundation, which is focused on social and racial justice in Portland, Ore., recently began funding Don’t Shoot Portland, which has organized multiple protests over police shootings, at times closing roads and bridges.
“They’re bold, controversial, and political, but racism is controversial,” says Sharon Gary-Smith, the foundation’s executive director.
Philanthropy as Broker
Some foundations haven’t embraced the new activism so enthusiastically. “I think philanthropy on an issue like this needs to consistently stay kind of in the middle to some degree,” says Mr. Eckardt of the Cleveland Foundation.
He says the foundation is funding one church-led group that is mobilizing protests as well as proposing police reforms. “On the other hand, we have to work with the mayor and the city on an ongoing basis. It’s really just about being comfortable in the space you’re in,” he says.
Decisions about what groups to support and what strategies to pursue aren’t easy, says Terry Mazany, president of the Chicago Community Trust. He says the foundation is working with community groups and activists — including protest leaders — who are pushing the city to implement the recommendations of Chicago’s police-reform task force.
Activist pressure is needed because “the city has been slow and incomplete at implementation,” Mr. Mazany says. But the grant maker does not support organizations that reject the task-force plan outright, he adds. “It’s a delicate balance between supporting authentic community voices and supporting constructive solutions.”
If nothing else, the string of fatal police shootings nationwide — combined with the recent murders of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge — is testing foundations that believe grant makers should serve as impartial brokers between the community and city powers.
“A lot of people talk about neutrality as a strength of philanthropy,” says Aaron Dorfman, executive director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. “Neutrality isn’t really all that valuable. What’s valuable is when grant makers will use their reputational capital to stand up for the poor and oppressed.”
Says Mr. Mazany: “Philanthropy is not immune to the social change sweeping our country. The more traditional arms-length relationship that we’ve had as a funder is falling by the wayside. There is a call for us to be more directly engaged with those who are on the front lines of social change.”
