Foundations with control over millions of dollars in grant-making budgets should cede power to the people and nonprofits they seek to support if they are serious about pushing for racial equity, a group of leaders from the Ford, James Irvine, and other big foundations wrote in an open letter to philanthropy on Wednesday.
The letter pushed for more foundations to practice “trust-based philanthropy,” in which they reduce many of the application and reporting burdens normally placed on grantees, and “participatory grant making,” in which grantees and people who benefit from foundation grants devise grant-making strategies in collaboration with foundation leaders.
The letter comes less than a month after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling told colleges they could not continue to use race-conscious policies to make admission decisions. The foundation officials, who belong to the Race and Equity in Philanthropy Group, a network of 13 grant makers, say they are concerned racial-equity strategies used by foundations are under siege, and they want to take steps to demonstrate that these approaches are legal and essential.
The Supreme Court ruling and recent efforts to squash diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at the state level reflect the country’s history of racial injustice, the letter says.
“Without grappling with this history and recognizing the need to include communities that have been historically exploited in decision making, it is difficult for foundations to meet their commitments to advancing racial equity and social justice,” the letter says. “In today’s environment, we are seeing an attempt at a chilling effect when it comes to discussions about racism and the nation’s history.”
Shared Ideas and Experiences
The Racial Equity in Philanthropy Group, a network of 13 foundations, was formed in 2006 to share ideas and experiences about racial-equity work.
The letter’s authors, who included people from the California Wellness, Ford, James Irvine, and San Francisco foundations and the East Bay Community Foundation are part of the network’s power-sharing task force. Other members of the network include the Annie E. Casey, W.K. Kellogg, and Lumina foundations and the Walton Family Foundation. (The Walton foundation is a financial supporter of the Chronicle.)
Accompanying the letter is a series of examples of participatory grant making and trust-based philanthropy, including efforts by the Red Umbrella Fund, which is led by and dedicated to helping sex workers, and the Pittsburgh Foundation’s Social Justice Fund, which was designed by foundation staff and movement leaders in Pittsburgh.
The two practices have become more popular in the past three years, since the start of the Covid pandemic and the calls for racial justice that intensified following the murder of George Floyd by police.
In 2021, for instance, the Participatory Grantmaking Community, a network of people and institutions that promote power sharing in philanthropy, had 300 members. Now it has 1,400, according to Sarina Dayal, who works on global partnerships at Candid, an organization that collects data on nonprofits and foundations, and is a founding member of the grant maker group.
New Urgency
Foundations should listen to and develop relationships with grantees, says Joanne Florino, a fellow at the Philanthropy Roundtable, a conservative donor and foundation organization. And, she adds, grant makers should work to reduce the paperwork that grantees have to complete when getting a grant.
But grantees shouldn’t simply treat foundation endowments “like an ATM” by expecting endless flows of cash, she says. Ultimately, foundation boards have a fiduciary responsibility that cannot be fully shared with grantees. Florino said foundations can help promote diversity and move more money to benefit people of color by directing grants to organizations with new leaders, and those that are suffering from staff burnout, without explicitly referring to race.
“The rhetoric that’s been in play around trust-based philanthropy and now participatory grant making is intentionally provocative about redistributing power and racial equity when the reality is these are just sound grant making practices that we’ve talked about for a long, long time,” she says.
The work of the Racial Equity in Philanthropy Group’s power-sharing task force has been going on for more than a year but has taken on a new urgency in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling, said David Maurrasse, founder and president of Marga Inc., which houses the Racial Equity in Philanthropy Group.
In addition to Maurrasse’s group, other philanthropy organizations, including ABFE, formerly known as the Association of Black Foundation Executives, the Council on Foundations, Independent Sector, and the United Philanthropy Forum, have spent the weeks following the the Supreme Court decision trying to develop a response out of concern that the admissions case will spill over and place philanthropic racial-justice work in jeopardy.
A big part of the response, Maurrasse says, should be to increase the educational resources available to foundations committed to racial equity, that employ practices such as trust-based philanthropy and participatory grant making.
“We need to get a substantial cross-section of foundations to buy into this work so that is built to last and can weather a CEO transition,” he says. “That way work can persist even though there may be changes and shifts in whether society considers it palatable.”
