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Those types of internal and external policies and practices will be the core focus of the first round of grants from the Racial Equity in Philanthropy Fund. The $14 million in initial grants will support that work over three years across 19 philanthropy-serving organizations, including the Association of Black Foundation Executives, BoardSource, Community Foundations Leading Change, CHANGE Philanthropy, Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy, Equity in the Center, Exponent Philanthropy, Foundation Center, Funders for LGBTQ Issues, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, GuideStar, Hispanics in Philanthropy, United Philanthropy Forum, Native Americans in Philanthropy, Nonprofit Quarterly, National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, PEAK Philanthropy, Philanthropy Initiative for Racial Equity and the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service Center on Community Philanthropy.

Read the entire article in Inside Philanthropy.

But are cities best served by having parks and other amenities initiated and subsidized by powerful billionaires? To Aaron Dorfman, president of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a Washington-based watchdog group, “private citizens getting to decide which ‘common good’ ideas get funded is a worrisome trend.”

“They are stepping into the holes because of government underfunding,” he said.

Read the entire article in The New York Times.

Recent headlines have been filled with stories of families that are separated at the border and asylum-seekers who are treated like criminals.

For weeks, organizations have been in rapid-response mode, sending people to the border to capture real stories, provide legal counsel and rally in support of the countless lives that hang in an uncertain balance.

Our movement’s leaders are tired, but more committed than ever.

This moment has been critical for the public to understand the plight of immigrant families who come here seeking nothing more than safety, hoping the American dream is still alive.

The national attention has opened people’s eyes and stirred new empathy. However, for those of us who have been working in this space for years, none of this is new.

The current administration’s “zero tolerance” policy gave rise to a level of cruelty that we hoped was just a painful part of our history that we had learned from.

The truth is anti-immigrant sentiment did not begin with Trump. All he has done is fan the flames and exploit an existing undercurrent of fear and blame that has long percolated below our country’s surface.

Some argue that the solution to all of this is simply to elect new leaders, or perhaps to pass new policies.

Traditionally, in our movement, these strategies are what we look to for a long-term fix. But, in this moment of reckoning, it’s time for us to fully embrace that they haven’t led to the transformative shifts that we’ve needed.

So here we are.

The world is looking to the southern border, watching children abducted from their parents.

Everybody is rushing to take action. Everybody is scrambling in this urgent moment to stop the bleeding and make sure that we end the practice of family separation and child detention.

With the eyes of the world focused on immigrants, these media moments are critical. They are the moments that make people care.

But the truth is: We cannot subsist in perpetuity under a rapid response mindset. There has to be a larger aim.

When we scramble to stop the bleeding, it has to be with the knowing that there is something more coming: a real cure; a healing that will make it so that we will not have to keep scrambling forever.

At Define American, we believe that cure is to fundamentally improve our cultural attitudes towards the movement of human beings from one place to another.

We do this by harnessing the power of stories and embedding those narratives strategically into forms of media, primarily news and entertainment media.

A recent poll found that the TV news station someone watches is a stronger predictor of their feelings about immigrants than their partisan political affiliation.

Entertainment media is a largely untapped resource that has the power to touch millions of hearts and minds through a single television show or film.

Entertainment and pop culture often create the lens through which we see the world. We unconsciously watch the ways that people act or treat others, and they provide us with a social script for how we engage with people around us.

A 2016 study published by Josh Katz of the New York Times suggested:

“If you had to guess how strongly a place supported Donald J. Trump in the election, would you rather know how popular ‘Duck Dynasty’ is there, or how George W. Bush did there in 2000? It turns out the relationship with the TV show is stronger. That’s how closely connected politics and culture can be.”

This is what the anti-immigrant establishment has understood for so long: Shifting the culture through media is the key to changing our policies and our identity as Americans.

For decades, they have embedded a toxic and dehumanizing narrative about immigrants into our culture, because they know we can only treat people inhumanely if we don’t recognize them as fully human – as fully American.

We need funders who support immigrant freedom to understand this, too; we cannot improve the politics of immigration until we improve the cultural lens through which immigrants are seen.

Some funders see culture change as something they can invest in “eventually” once the urgent moments have passed. But the urgent moments will keep coming over and over again if we don’t start to invest in a real, transformative shift now.

As a leader of an organization that has been working to improve the cultural conversation about immigrants since 2011, I can tell you that this work is hard, and it takes a lot of time and resources, but it is critical to our movement’s ultimate success.

Rev. Ryan M. Eller is executive director of Define American. Follow @EllerRyan and @DefineAmerican on Twitter.

Photo by C Slack. Used under Creative Commons license.

We don’t know whether our charitable efforts are effective

And that’s a big problem, considering Americans gave some $410 billion to good causes in 2017. But without a more organized effort to measure the impacts of this work, and to focus efforts more on underserved communities, it’s hard to prove that philanthropy is anything more than self-serving. Click through for a fascinating interview with Aaron Dorfman, the president and CEO of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, which does research to make sure that interventions actually help the people they attempt to serve. “In our last analysis, 90% of the 1,000 biggest foundations in the country direct less than half of their dollars to benefit underserved communities. It’s shocking,” he says. “People will sometimes be upset by our work, but we’re trying to move philanthropy forward.”

Read the entire article in Fortune.

A recent post from the #DisruptPhilanthropyNOW! campaign shared an all-too-familiar story: A large national foundation abruptly ceased funding a local organization.

In this case, the large national foundation is W.K. Kellogg (WKKF) and the local organization is the Center for Diversity and Innovation (CDI), which works to improve racial equity in Battle Creek, Michigan.

According to CDI, it had no say when WKKF cut off its funding and folded its work into an unrelated program; in so doing, the foundation perpetuated a pattern of poor communication and failed to prepare CDI for a healthy transition.

WKKF’s response did not acknowledge its role in letting the relationship fall apart. CDI’s options for holding its funder accountable were limited.

Stories like this are why NCRP created our new Power Moves toolkit. The toolkit offers nonprofits a new, pointed way of encouraging funders to reflect on their power and privilege.

Power Moves pushes foundations to think about how they build, share and wield power in the pursuit of equity and justice.

This means being explicit about advancing systemic equity for marginalized communities by giving them the resources to be their own agents of change.

It means organizing peers in philanthropy and other sectors to bring visibility to grantees’ concerns. And, with particular relevance to CDI, it means being responsive and transparent in communicating with current and prospective grantees.

We’ve seen significant interest in Power Moves from national, regional and community-based nonprofits.

In the first six weeks of the toolkit’s release, nearly a quarter of downloads were from individuals representing nonprofits.

Beyond the Power Moves toolkit itself, there are several other options available to nonprofits seeking to give honest feedback on specific funders:

  • NCRP’s Power Moves team has compiled a library of resources for foundations interested in reexamining their relationship with power. The library includes some familiar NCRP content, like our As the South Grows and Leveraging Limited Dollars reports, and incisive commentary from the likes of john a. powell and Vu Le. These and the rest of the library’s 70-odd list of resources can be valuable conversation starters for nonprofits with their funders.
  • Another option is GrantAdvisor. Like a Yelp for nonprofits and philanthropy, GrantAdvisor collects reviews and comments on grantseekers’ experience working with specific funders. Feedback is anonymous and doesn’t go live until at least five nonprofits familiar with the funder have posted reviews. This platform gives nonprofits a forum to express how a funder is affecting their field not just as a grantmaker, but as a leader and influencer.
  • Some funders may use a survey for their grantees, like the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s Grantee and Applicant Perception Reports. Several foundations have shared their survey results with the public, including the Barr Foundation, California Wellness Foundation and Democracy Fund, among others. Ask your funders if they’ve gone through this process and have compiled reflections and next steps that they can share.
  • If you work for a nonprofit but are uncomfortable having these conversations with a foundation directly, and potentially know one who could really benefit from a power and equity analysis, reach out to NCRP! Contact Janay Richmond at jrichmond@ncrp.org or (202) 387-9177 x20.

NCRP recognizes there is a tremendous hunger among nonprofits for an avenue to drive funders toward more equitable grantmaking. In addition to the resources listed above, our nonprofit membership program is a great way to help shape the conversation around moving more resources to social justice work. Interested organizations are encouraged to reach out to Janay for more details. 

Troy Price is membership and fundraising intern at NCRP. Follow @NCRP on Twitter, and join the conversation using #PowerMovesEquity.

Download your free copy of Power Moves: My essential philanthropy assessment guide for equity and justice now.

“Those salaries (at FFTC and Duke Endowment) are not out of line with what other similarly sized organizations pay all across the country,” said Aaron Dorfman, CEO of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a group that monitors charitable foundations. “That doesn’t mean it’s right. But it is what everyone else is doing.”

While more pay and more benefits are the trend, Dorfman says that’s partly because nonprofit organizations use data from comparable groups to determine executive compensation — creating a cycle of higher pay and more benefits.

Read the entire article in The Charlotte Observer.

What does it mean for funders to build power?

As more and more grantmakers embark on or deepen journeys to embed values of equity, diversity and inclusion into their work, how can we incorporate a power-building frame to measure meaningful progress on equity?

In July, NCRP hosted the second in a series of webinars on NCRP’s exciting new toolkit, Power Moves: Your essential philanthropy assessment guide for equity and justice.

The toolkit has been incredibly well-received, with more than 1,600 downloads since its release in early May and nearly 300 registrants for each of the first two webinars!

Foundations of all types and sizes, sector consultants, philanthropy serving organizations and nonprofits alike are eager for a deeper dive into the “how” of funder assessment on power.

The presentation, “Grantmaking at the Grassroots: Building power for equitable systems change,” cosponsored by the Funders Committee for Civic Participation (FCCP), featured four sector leaders’ insights on examining how well funders build power in philanthropy:

  • Daniel Lee, executive director of the Levi Strauss Foundation and a distinguished member of NCRP’s board of directors.
  • Alejandra L. Ibañez, lead program officer at Woods Fund Chicago and a member of the inaugural Power Moves advisory and peer learning group for funders.
  • Rhiannon Rossi, program officer with the Women’s Foundation of California and a member of the inaugural Power Moves advisory and peer learning group for funders.
  • Elizabeth Tan, founder and principal of E-Tan Consulting and a member of the inaugural Power Moves advisory and peer learning group for consultants.

Before digging into the discussion, we set the stage with what NCRP and our Philamplify project’s research have found about funders who successfully make grants that build power and advance equity for marginalized communities.

The philanthropic best practices outlined in the build power section of Power Moves and highlighted in the webinar are:

  • Support systemic change by funding civic engagement, advocacy and community organizing among marginalized communities.
  • Be explicit about advancing systemic equity for specific marginalized communities in goals, strategies and operations.
  • Fund under-resourced communities to build power and be their own agents of change.
  • Fund cross-cutting approaches because building power may not fit neatly into narrowly defined issue areas.
  • Fund for the long-term while also being responsive to emerging or urgent opportunities.

While the Power Moves framework on power is timely and unique, conversations about using philanthropic resources to build power in communities are certainly not new.

The guide builds on extensive work by NCRP, CHANGE Philanthropy partners such as the Neighborhood Funders Group (NFG), grantmakers such as the The California Endowment and other sector organizations such as FCCP, Justice Funders and the Black Social Change Funders Network.

During the webinar, our speakers highlighted the range of practices, policies and institutional cultures that influence how we approach power building in philanthropy as both a strategy and an end goal.

They provided tangible examples of entry points for reflection, what it looks like in practice and what success can entail, including:

  • Investing in racial equity trainings for board, staff and grant partners, such as those offered by ABFE, and as much as possible, gaining institution-wide commitment.
  • Fostering internal discussion to address any discomfort with risk and with making long-term, patient investments in power building.

  • Examining how oppression shows up internally in decision-making, organizational culture and staff structure.
  • Creating “safe spaces” to share learning with peers, including how to weave power building throughout grantmaking, investments and procurement.

  • Supporting capacity building, leadership development and technical assistance for grant partners, e.g. on how to form policy solutions and advocate for policy change, in addition to resourcing their “power to stay with the process.”

To learn more, watch the recording above and download the toolkit! For a broader overview of Power Moves and how to dig into self-assessment, check out the recap from our first webinar.

Follow ongoing conversations on social media using #PowerMovesEquity, and add your voice by sharing what power building means in your work.

Our team stands ready to support you on your learning journey. Contact us at powermoves@ncrp.org to get started!

Caitlin Duffy is senior associate for learning and engagement at NCRP. Follow @NCRP and @DuffyInDC on Twitter.

Market forces drive efficiency and innovation in the private sector. What ensures that philanthropy is helping the people who need it most? Researchers and watchdog groups are pushing for evidence-based practices. Aaron Dorfman of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy argues that foundations need to re-think their strategies and tactics.

Read the entire interview in Yale Insights.

If nothing changes—that is, if “business as usual” persists and philanthropy continues to underinvest in the South and, even when it does provide grants, does so in a way that often undermines local capacity—we would be foolish to expect better results.

This is the wake-up call that Schlegel and Peng have issued. Philanthropy would be wise to heed it.

Read the entire article in Nonprofit Quarterly.