The coronavirus public-health and economic crisis has quickly turned into an existential threat for many charitable organizations. The nonprofit world that emerges may be unrecognizable, and community- centered groups that serve people of color are especially at risk. The sad history of social progress and retreat in the United States is that inequalities going into crises lead to greater suffering among those who have been left out. And recovery efforts worsen inequality as organizations that serve people most in need cannot gain access to their fair share of support.
Just as people of color are dying of Covid-19 at higher rates than white people because of systemic racism, not genetics, nonprofits led by and serving people of color face the most challenges because grant makers and policy makers have built a system that is often unresponsive and distrustful of them.
From our work in communities across the country, we see how grassroots nonprofits are the most effective in solving challenges that affect the people in their neighborhoods. Those groups understand the aspirations of those around them, and that knowledge can and should inform effective philanthropic strategies. Any vision for how we rebuild the nonprofit world that abandons community-centered groups as collateral damage in our recovery efforts will entrench the inequities that make our progress so fleeting in the first place.
Many nonprofit leaders I have spoken with in recent weeks are haunted not only by the real threat to their own organization’s survival but also by a foreboding sense that this crisis and its inequitable response will wipe out a decade of gains:
- A community health center leader whose organization provided a range of services — from health care to mental health, a safe space for exercise, and nutrition counseling — that were closing the racial gap in life expectancy sees black patients and their family members sick and dying as the virus exploits and exacerbates structural inequities.
- A principal who built a school to ensure students’ family income does not predict academic success faces the reality that home-based learning will reassert inequity and worries the debilitating summer-learning gap will reappear without in-person programs.
- A founder of a job-placement organization that was helping people find stable jobs as a path out of homelessness is watching with despair as jobs disappear.
- A community lender dedicated to closing the racial wealth gap by helping black-owned businesses expand confronts the reality that those businesses are especially vulnerable now as they went into this crisis with relatively fewer reserves and more reliance on the halted service economy.
Foundations and policy makers need to upend the systems and practices that keep community-centered organizations like the ones these leaders run vulnerable. If we do not, this will not be the last external crisis that bankrupts too many of these organizations, provokes an often-futile scramble by donors to save them as government responses pass them over, and leaves communities to suffer as progress made between crises gets wiped out.
The forces that put this cycle of crisis and inequity into motion are bigger than any one organization or part of society can defeat alone. But philanthropy can play an important part in preventing this crisis from entrenching further inequity. This last month has shown us what is possible when grant makers, nonprofits, and communities work together with a unified sense of purpose and urgency. It is not too late to advance equity and recognize that there is no true economic or social recovery without it.
What can foundations and other big donors do now to blunt the damage of this crisis and set us up to weather the next inevitable crisis with less deep and lasting damage?
Lock in gains.
First, set your newfound urgency and flexibility as standard operating procedure, not a concession to crisis. My organization worked with the Ford Foundation as part of the NYC Covid-19 Response and Impact Fund to launch a $29 million loan fund to support New York nonprofits in nine days. If you had asked either of us in mid-March how long that would take, we would have answered in months, not days. Imagine what else we could all accomplish together if we hold each other accountable to this pace of impact.
Take stock of how you have built trust with your grantees in this crisis, liberated staff to focus on what motivates them most, and enabled more effective work on the ground that can respond nimbly to community need. Recognize how much more effective you could be in supporting solutions to so many other lingering crises were you to continue to operate with trust and respect.
Recognize who is doing the work.
Then, recognize the deeper changes that have opened up between foundations and grantees. By all means, let’s celebrate grant makers that have shifted their practices. But let’s not tell only one side of this story. This is not just about what grant makers have done out of their own benevolence. It’s about how organizations are using this more flexible financial support to save lives now and advocate for structural changes like living wages, protection for frontline workers, and extended health care coverage. Foundations are stepping up, but they depend on the leadership of community-centered organizations to make a difference.
Build new systems to promote community resilience.
What would it take to ensure that these organizations have the strength to lead through the next crisis? To be resilient, organizations need reserves that give them control of their own destiny when inevitable external shocks occur. Grant makers must pay organizations to build these reserves as a crucial part of covering their full cost, not restricting funding to only paying for the marginal cost of direct program delivery. And grant makers need to recognize that color-blind funding policies often unintentionally make it harder for organizations led by and serving people of color to access funding in the first place and to take advantage of funder offers of flexibility.
Beyond the individual organization, resilience requires new ways of channeling resources across the nonprofit world. It is sadly inevitable that major federal funding, like the $59 billion Paycheck Protection Program, is flowing first to large and well-connected companies. It is maddening to learn about the grassroots organization fighting evictions in public housing that cannot meet next month’s payroll, exactly the situation the program was supposed to address, but whose bank would not process its request. And it is heartbreaking to see the existential struggle now facing so many nonprofits without the privilege to have entered this crisis with operating reserves, the ability to raise emergency funding from well-heeled donors, and connections with institutional philanthropy to help them survive.
Grant makers can join with community activists and progressive policy makers to bolster organizations that can channel resources to communities that lack access to existing recovery funds, such as cooperative-banking and community-finance institutions. And together we can build political power behind these channels so that, next time, government and investors can use them to ensure that a fair share of response and recovery resources flow easily to the organizations that serve people who need them most.
For many marginalized people, crisis is ever-present and opportunities for philanthropists acting with urgency abound. We now know that what seems impossible is not. What seems inevitable is not either. Community organizations serving people of color are vital, and they hold unique expertise, relationships, and experience. We must set them up with the resources, power, and access to thrive so they can help sustain progress in this recovery and through the next crisis when it comes.