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Philanthropy is splintered along many of the same lines as America, divisions that limit how it advances the common good.
That was a central theme of a gathering here of some 500 grant-making professionals who weighed their contribution to extreme polarization and how they might find common ground even with those who seem like enemies. The four-day event — the first time that the Council on Foundations has devoted its annual meeting to a single topic, according to officials — represents a moment of introspection for a field buffeted by and worried about the country’s divides.
Some foundations are funding extensive programs to strengthen democracy, build civic strength, and create welcoming communities, but conference leaders and speakers urged attendees to look inward as well.
“When we are so divided, we can’t work together on basic things that make communities better,” Kathleen Enright, CEO of the Council on Foundations, said in an interview. “Some of the same forces that are making it hard for folks in communities to work together are affecting philanthropy. Folks are separated into silos and prone to groupthink. There’s more inclination to dehumanize folks you strongly disagree with.”
In a plenary talk, journalist Mónica Guzmán cautioned that grant makers rob the causes they care about of money, energy, and power when they declare potential coalition partners as off limits. “If you have made walls in your mind about who you can work with and who you can’t, inquire into those walls,” she said. “I have seen walls being put up, and I have wondered what calcified assumptions keep those walls strong.”
Attendees included many grant makers investing in efforts to strengthen democracy and bring people together across divides but also community foundations and others curious about how to invite a broader mix of people and organizations into campaigns for education, the environment, health, and more.
Katie Robinson, director of Mosaic, an environmental grant maker, spoke of efforts to tap seemingly “unlikely allies,” like nurses, veterans, and faith groups. “I’m here because Mosaic is focused on finding the relationship and tools that advocates need to build a bigger and more influential environmental movement. And to get there requires the hard work of building bridges across differences.”
While rarely mentioned from the main stage of the conference, the backdrop for the gathering includes the ongoing campus unrest and the volatile presidential campaign. Speakers focused more on what they described as a long-term disintegration of civility and community. “We’ve become sadder and meaner,” said New York Times columnist David Brooks, who followed Robinson in the plenary.
‘People Love Underdogs’
The conference represents the latest effort by the council to encourage members to find common ground from which they can build broader, more diverse coalitions. It plans to build its annual meeting around the topic every two years. “We think that this needs to be a foundational skill, a foundational approach for philanthropy going forward,” Enright said.
Last year, the council started a months-long training program for cohorts of 60 or so grant-making professionals to learn and practice skills to bridge differences. The conference program itself was anchored by workshops and expert talks designed to introduce individuals to a range of approaches to what’s known as “bridge building.”
“That’s what the science says: If you want to do bridging, you have to start with yourself,” Tracy Cutler, executive vice president of the Lancaster County Community Foundation in Pennsylvania, said in an interview. Cutler was a member of last year’s cohort.
Paul Bachleitner, communications director for the Northwest Area Foundation, said there’s a need for bridging work among the generally progressive allies of the grant maker’s work to advance racial, social, and economic justice. “If people have one disagreement on an issue, all of a sudden it’s: “Do I really want to work with you?’” Bachleitner says.
Previous Council on Foundations programs have touched on polarization and the country’s divides, but this represented the first event solely focused on the issues and how individuals can manage them. “Before we were talking about the work,” said Allison Ralph, a consultant working with donors on bridging. “Now it feels like we’re doing the work.”
Sessions focused on how to break through stereotypes and explore the roots and context of opposing viewpoints; how to manage conflict; and the science behind bridging.
Brooks drew from his book How to Know a Person to describe fundamentals of conversations that allow people to tell their stories and feel respected. Social entrepreneur Trabian Shorters, founder and CEO of BMe Community, discussed how foundations and nonprofits often define and talk about the people they serve only through their challenges, ignoring their assets and aspirations.
That “deficit framing,” he said, sows distrust among those who rely on philanthropy and turns off a significant block of potential supporters — Republicans and Democrats alike — who research suggests share goals like addressing racial wrongs. Missions and communications framed around the goal of helping individuals fight forces beyond their control to achieve their dreams will draw support from Americans of all political stripes, said Shorters, who is chairman of the board of the nonprofit that publishes the Chronicle. “People love underdogs.”
Critics have questioned whether philanthropy is too progressive in its outlook and too elitist in its mindset to bring Americans together. “What philanthropy can do to reduce ‘toxic polarization’ is by no means obvious,” wrote Leslie Lenkowsky, a professor emeritus of public affairs and philanthropic studies at Indiana University, in an essay for the Chronicle.
Conference attendees also wrestled with concerns that bridge-building conflicts with equity efforts, particularly the drive for racial equity that has been a priority for some grant makers since the 2020 murder of George Floyd.
In a recent Chronicle forum with the Urban Institute, Lori Villarosa, executive director of the Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity, said that philanthropy’s push for pluralism as a means to achieve goals doesn’t reach the extremists who are creating polarization. Yet it signals to those on the left fighting for racial and social justice that they should moderate their ambitions and tactics. The message for them, she says, is: “Don’t be so radical. Don’t make the other side so uncomfortable.”
At a discussion of equity and bridging at the council meeting, speakers argued that there are misconceptions about bridging. It is not about building consensus or giving up closely held values. Rather, it’s engagement with others to better understand their views, humanize opponents, and discover if there is common ground hidden by one-dimensional caricatures.
“You don’t actually have to agree on very much to bridge,” said Joshua Clark, senior social scientist with the Othering and Belonging Institute. “Bridging is not about meeting in the middle; it’s about expanding to the edges, expanding our sense of ‘we’ further and further outward.”
There are nonnegotiables, said Eric Ward, a longtime civil-rights strategist and executive vice president with Race Forward, a racial-justice group. “We can’t bridge without also addressing inequality.” Bridging, he says, can advance equity because of the universality of the idea that people should live free of bigotry.
“It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about a 63-year-old white male veteran living in rural Iowa or a 16-year-old trans Latina working in a store in Portland,” Ward said. “Both of them have the fundamental right to opportunity and the fundamental right not to live in a society that seeks to ‘other’ them.”
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