posted on: Wednesday, September 09, 2009

by Niki Jagpal

On September 3rd, the Woods Fund of Chicago sent out an announcement to its listserv stating that this grantmaker is choosing to employ a racial equity lens in its funding. As the announcement states, “This addition comes after significant analysis, discourse and consideration on both an internal and external basis. It is informed by many sources, including foundation colleagues, grantee partners, the Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity, the Racial Justice Funder’s Roundtable, and the grantmaker’s guide by GrantCraft entitled 'Grantmaking with a Racial Equity Lens.'”

The announcement also includes the foundation’s new racial equity principle, which states that “The Woods Fund of Chicago believes that structural racism is a root cause of many challenges facing less-advantaged communities and people and serves as a significant barrier to enabling work and eradicating poverty. The Woods Fund encourages and supports organizations, initiatives, and policy efforts that lead to eliminating structural racism. Success in this area will be evident when there is equal distribution of privileges and burdens among all races and ethnic groups, and when a person’s race or ethnicity does not determine his or her life outcomes. … Woods Fund is committed to raising awareness in the philanthropic community to support this work.”

I’m delighted to learn that the Woods Fund will use a racial equity lens in its grantmaking. Already an exemplary grantmaker in many ways, I drew on the Woods Fund's work when writing Criteria for Philanthropy at Its Best: Benchmarks to Assess and Enhance Grantmaker Impact. At the time of that writing, I noted how Deborah Harrington, president of the Woods Fund, identified the problem with implicit versus explicit articulation of racial justice language. I quoted Harrington before the Fund embraced explicitly a racial equity lens in making our case for more foundations to consider doing so. In her words: “[racial justice is] implicit in our guidelines and mission statement, [however] the lens is poverty, not race, and by addressing poverty, we are generally looking at people of color but not saying it directly.”

I also noted the contributions of organizations mentioned in the recent announcement in making the case for why racial equity offers the potential to transform philanthropy, including foundations and civic sector nonprofits. Organizations such as the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity under the leadership of dr. john a. powell, the Center for Social Inclusion, the Applied Research Center and the Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity are currently engaged in critical work that emphasizes the importance of explicit racial language and identifying the intersections of race, place and opportunity among other issues. The groups are working toward what many call “catalytic” or “transformative” change. And grantmakers like the Woods Fund, Funders for Lesbian and Gay Issues and many more are including explicitly racial equity lenses in their grantmaking that supports some of these groups.

It’s about acknowledging the legacy of our past in influencing access to life opportunities for communities and individuals. As the Woods Fund’s recent announcement makes clear, trying to solve these problems by using proxy terms instead of confronting directly our root problems or trying to solve problems with a “top down approach” that doesn’t respond to the real needs of communities is like trying to put out a wildfire with a hose. That’s where the importance of community organizing comes in, an area where the Woods Fund has, and continues to, lead by example.

Finally, using a racial equity lens will, I hope, make the Woods Fund’s multi-issue work even more impactful. We can’t solve problems in isolation by focusing on one issue at a time, nor can our community work in silos. It’s only by building our alliances and support for each other that we can truly hope to make a difference. As dr. powell once said to me, “Small problems hurt us by enticing us to see things as separate, while big problems are more likely to be seen relationally. … It is important for foundations and communities not only to do multi-issue work, but to see issues in relationship.” [Note: he’s way more articulate than I and we’re fortunate to have him as a member of our research advisory committee.] The Woods Fund has been exemplary in this aspect, already funding community organizing and participatory public policy, and importantly, the crossover of the two issues. That’s just what dr. powell’s talking about – seeing issues in relationship to each other. I’d say that’s the essence of strategic philanthropy – a holistic approach to problem-solving that produces real benefits for all of us. There are great stories of the widespread benefits from policy engagement of disenfranchised populations through nonprofit groups on a range of issues such as health care, living wages and civil rights from a series of reports we’re producing in our Grantmaking for Community Impact Project.

A big h/t to the Woods Fund and Deborah Harrington for their decision to include a racial equity lens in their grantmaking. I share Harrington and the Fund’s hope that “by incorporating a racial equity lens into our guidelines and criteria, in some small way we can begin to model and promote racial equity practices within our own foundation and the greater philanthropic community.”

I definitely think they can promote racial equity practices in the broader philanthropic community – what about you?

Niki Jagpal is research and policy director at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP).

posted on: Wednesday, June 24, 2009

by Niki Jagpal

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) dubbed this year’s International Refugee Day “Real People, Real Needs” to highlight the negative consequences of threatened cutbacks in foreign aid on the 42 million displaced persons around the globe. The UNHCR noted that “a shortage or lack of the essentials of life—clean water, food, sanitation, shelter, health care and protection from violence and abuse—means that every day can be a struggle just to survive.”

According to a comprehensive assessment of refugees and other marginalized groups that UNHCR serves, 30 percent of this group’s basic needs, a third of them in services, remained unmet. “Improvements in nutrition and water supplies, access to primary health care, strengthened child protection programmes, better protection for women from sexual violence and abuse, and improvements in living conditions and sanitation facilities are just some of the needs that are not being met worldwide.”

Queen Noor of Jordan explained in an op-ed on Huffington Post the importance of identifying explicitly the positive outcomes of intentionally targeting refugees and displaced persons in grantmaking, noting the vast number of such people in her country because of the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East for the last 35 years. She stated:

“Yet, I have also seen that refugees are a tremendous inspiration. Supporting these vulnerable people not only reduces their suffering, but also brings peace to troubled regions. Despite the pain and trauma they have experienced, refugees and displaced people hold on to the hope that they can someday return home and rebuild their lives. Like all of us, they want to be able to contribute to society, earn incomes, and send their children to school. An investment in refugees is an investment in whole communities and a clear way to promote peace and prosperity.”

Noor’s statement speaks directly to the high “return on investment” of using an approach called “targeted universalism,” a means for broad society-wide advancement by accounting for the needs of those groups most disadvantaged by our institutions and structures and discussed in length in Criteria for Philanthropy at Its Best (pdf). Refugees/immigrants were one of the 11 special communities we included in defining broadly “marginalized groups” based on Foundation Center data, where giving intended to benefit both groups is counted under one category. This suggests that giving explicitly to improve refugees’ life conditions could be lower of if the two groups were separated out.

Still, our analysis of disaggregated data on philanthropy intended to benefit these two groups in the years before the global economic crisis set in fully found disappointingly low-levels of giving. The range of the top five funders for this special population group showed great variation, 12.9-40.3 percent (Please see p. 114 of the Criteria Data Appendix [pdf]).

Our analysis is especially disturbing given the dire need, the unbelievable number of displaced persons around the world, and the resounding impact on every aspect of life in the developing world.

The 2007 growth rates among countries in the African continent were finally showing signs of improvements after years of stagnation. If foreign aid is indeed scaled back, economic gains will more than likely revert to the pre-2007 levels, undoing the positive impact of foreign direct investments and aid in the continent (please see the World Bank’s 2007 Africa development indicators for additional information and links to various other country statistics).

The UNHCR called on the global community to do more for refugees this year, reminding us that “basic needs that must be met so they have a chance to rebuild their lives.”

The important questions for international donors are: Will this crisis lead more donors committed to helping displaced persons to consider “targeted universalism” as a way to augment the impact of their contributions? Do you think that we in the U.S. all have a stake on peace and protection of human rights in Sudan, Rwanda and other places in the world?

What do you think? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Niki Jagpal is research & policy director at NCRP, and primary author of Criteria for Philanthropy at Its Best: Benchmarks to Assess and Enhance Grantmaker Impact.