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While working on my forthcoming book, Decolonizing Wealth (release date Oct. 16), I have been energized by the As the South Grows series. I write about communities that have been excluded from philanthropy like those featured in the reports.

Specifically, I write about communities of color, particularly in the South, from which I originate (Go Heels!).  

I’ve been inspired by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) and Grantmakers for Southern Progress (GSP), which have been working to drive more philanthropic resources to structural change in the South. 

According to As the South Grows, between 2011 and 2015, foundations nationwide invested only 56 cents per person in the South for every dollar per person invested nationally. This is unacceptable!

The newest report, So Grows the Nation, provides three steps grantmakers must take to change this inequality, the first of which is to reckon with shared history.

Good structural change grantmaking in the South requires an understanding of the complicated history of the region and well as the region’s role in our nation’s history – a history of colonization and slavery. A history that has excluded.

In Decolonizing Wealth, I write:

In their intoxicated rush to consolidate wealth, colonizers reduced the number of religions, languages, species, cultures, social systems, media channels, political systems, etc. On all scales, global to local, this homogenizing campaign – global bleaching, you could call it – made the world not just more bland and boring, but also less innovative and less resilient. Evolution and innovation arises from difference and variation, not from sameness. These are fundamental principles of life.

Yet there’s a silver lining. Those most excluded and exploited by today’s broken economy possess exactly the perspective and wisdom needed to fix it. Ironically, the separation paradigm that locked us out and made us Others actually cultivated our resilience strategies. To survive the trauma of exploitation, we always had to believe that the dominant worldview was only one option, even when it seemed ubiquitous and inevitable. This has made us masters of alternative possibilities.

For us to have carried inside ourselves the possibility or even hope of a different world is powerful all by itself.

As the South Grows reinforces the case to “understand the past in order to help shape the future, including especially the ways in which power has been distributed in our communities and the impact the distribution has had on people’s lives.”

Understanding and grappling with history is painful. For some, it’s like yanking off a Band-Aid. There may be moments of discomfort.

I invite you to sit with it, in the understanding that things have been just as uncomfortable, if not painful, for the excluded, for a very long time.

An essential step in the process of resisting the urge to exclude in our grantmaking is decolonizing our thinking. A good place to start is hearing out respectfully and with an open heart the painful stories of those who have been exploited and excluded.

Decolonization is about a mind shift. But first we need to recognize the pain caused by the accumulation of wealth and how it was made on the backs of Indigenous people, slaves and low-wage workers, most of them people of color – many in the South.

We need to acknowledge the trauma. We need to re-open those wounds and grieve them and apologize for them.

When considering additional investment in the South, particularly in communities of color, understand that making a few trendy grants is not enough. It is simply token diversity.

We must go beyond representation to sharing ownership of philanthropy’s power with communities in the South – and making a commitment for full, long-term inclusion of system-change work in the region in our portfolios.  

The work of GSP and NCRP, and the steps outlined in As the South Grows, give funders an opportunity to start walking our talk about diversity and equity, acknowledging that those most excluded and exploited by today’s broken economy possess exactly the perspective and wisdom needed to fix it.

We need to build new decision-making tables rather than setting one token place at the colonial tables as an afterthought.

Finally, we need to put our money where our values are and use money to heal where people are hurting and stop more hurt from happening.

This is not a silver bullet solution. There is no quick fix for the complexity of a history that has caused separation and excision. 

The healing path to full inclusion is a process with roles for everyone involved, whether they’re rich or poor, funder or recipient, victim or perpetrator.  For those of us from the South, we’ll be excluded no more.

An enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, Edgar Villanueva is the chair of the board of Native Americans in Philanthropy, a trustee of the Andrus Family Fund, and the vice president of programs and advocacy at the Schott Foundation for Public Education. Follow @VillanuevaEdgar and @DecolonizWealth on Twitter. Decolonizing Wealth is available for preorder here.

The investigations by Rep. Wright Patman, a populist Texas Democrat, resulted in major reforms of foundation law. It also spurred foundations eager to protect their reputations to fund the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, which exists to serve as a watchdog to philanthropies, a subject I’ve written about for four decades.

Read the entire story on Alternet.

Warning: This blog post contains and describes an image of a lynching that may be disturbing for some readers.

Editor’s Note: This blog post is the third in a series of guest features on NCRP’s exciting new resource, Power Moves: Your essential philanthropy assessment guide for equity and justice.

In 1884 and 1910, two lynchings took place in Dallas, Texas. The circumstances recorded for these heinous and violent acts are in keeping with many of those on record at the Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama.

Currently, you will not find a marker in the city that cites this history, though you can find an internet site called Dallas Untold that records the information through text and photographs. One photo in particular is haunting. In a crowd that surrounds a hanged man, Holland Allen Brooks, two white boys are looking directly at the camera.

I have thought a lot of that photograph since I returned from the museum and monument opening in April with my colleague Lauren Embrey, president of the Embrey Family Foundation.

Picture of a monument to the Dallas County lynchings of William Taylor and Holland Brooks, taken by Vicki Meek, an artist and long-time activist and civil rights organizer in Dallas.

Acts of racial terrorism like these against Black people have been created and sustained by white culture. Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice team have bravely offered us an invitation to reckon with our country’s sins, to face the shadow side of our historical and current demons of mass incarceration of brown and Black men and women, and to heal.

If we continue to be “blinded by our white” and don’t own what is happening now in the U.S., it will continue to fester. We have the power to do right.

I am a white woman working in a white, privileged family foundation. Though we have undertaken public leadership efforts and invested more than $2 million dollars to work on racial equity in Dallas, we know we still can push ourselves to go deeper.

We can examine what has worked and fallen short, and find new ways to offer transparency in our learning. For example, last year Lauren wrote, “We must change the narrative, the one learned as children, and the one that continues today. Each of us can be part of that solution, and it starts by understanding our biases and the words we use.”

As an overwhelmingly wealthy, white sector, I feel it is incumbent of every funder that has begun this work or is steeped in it, and even more importantly, is afraid of it, to make the pilgrimage to Montgomery, Alabama.

Here are some recommendations from our journey at the Embrey Family Foundation:

Picture of monuments to lynchings including those of Dallas County, taken by Vicki Meek, an artist and long-time activist and civil rights organizer in Dallas, Texas.

  • Don’t overplan. As stated in the NCRP Power Moves guide, this is adaptive leadership and movement building. If you try to roadmap it before you begin, you might never start.
  • Find ways to sit in your discomfort. Don’t expect to be thanked by communities of color. In some instances you might be discounted, outed or ignored for your efforts. Do it anyway. One simple action Gloria Steinem referenced at the opening of the museum and memorial in Montgomery was “If you are white and have power, listen twice as much as you talk.”
  • You will have dark nights of the soul – talk them out with other white colleagues and those that are on the same path. I did not weep at the monument. I felt I had to witness it, and intentionally sought to be present and take it in. When I got home the next day, I felt heartsick hearing the shower running. I was reliving the memory of what I perceived as the “veil of tears” wall in the monument, which is dedicated to the unnamed and unknown victims of lynching. I broke way down and let the tears flow.
  • Art can lead the way. Funding art as social justice has been our foundation’s way into difficult work over and over again. Find and support the artists in your community.
  • Get help. Find trusted resources that can guide and counsel. Many resources are listed on the Power Moves site, and the recent publication As the South Grows: So Grows the Nation outlines a sensible roadmap for entering into or enlarging our collective consciousness on engaging in equity work. This report reminded me of the museum’s archival documentation on the financial capitalization of enslavement in the South that has compounded wealth across the U.S. today.

We are sunsetting our foundation in 5-7 years, which shortens our threshold for grantmaking in Texas. It also gives us an opportunity for fresh insight on how best to give out our remaining years.

For this reason, we are participating NCRP’s new year-long advisory and peer-learning group for funders committed to working on Power Moves, an assessment guide for equity and justice. We look forward to sharing more about our journey.

In this work, you will have joy, you will feel love and you will be called to a higher ground of community – perhaps contributing to the beloved community many have waited generations to take their seat in. Even a small family foundation can make a difference. We invite you to join us.

Diane Hosey oversees philanthropic outreach for the Embrey Family Foundation based in Dallas. Follow @NCRP and @EmbreyFdn on Twitter, and join the conversation using #PowerMovesEquity.

Editor’s Note: Molly Schultz Hafid received the Neighborhood Funders Group Award for Excellence in Philanthropy during last week’s Raise Up Conference in St. Louis, Missouri. In her stirring acceptance speech, she talked about three “provocations” for funders to face Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s “fierce urgency of now” – trust, power and privilege. Below is an excerpt that highlights her reflections on power.

In a recent conversation with my daughter, she shared a fun fact from her day at school, which is that the triangle is the strongest geometric shape. At the risk of repeating unverified fake news from the 2nd grade set to all of my favorite people in philanthropy, I googled it and geometry.com confirms that “a triangular shape is the strongest one.” So, inspired by my daughter, I want to reflect on three sides of our work we need to face with what the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. called the fierce urgency of now:  trust, power, privilege.

POWER

Molly Schultz Hafid with Dennis Quirin, Kevin Ryan and Garland Yates during last week’s Raise Up Conference in St. Louis, Missouri.

Molly Schultz Hafid with Dennis Quirin, president of NFG, Kevin Ryan, program officer at the Ford Foundation and Garland Yates, senior fellow and managing director of the Community Democracy Workshop, during last week’s Raise Up Conference in St. Louis, Missouri.

NCRP in their new Power Moves toolkit for advancing equity and justice shares a definition from Rashad Robinson of Color of Change. He says, “Power is the ability to change the rules.” When you all head home and start to think about trust and how to build it in to your work, I think a key step is recognizing and embracing the power you have to change the rules within your institutions.

Vanessa Daniels of the Groundswell Fund also recently offered thoughts on using our power by sharing an Alice Walker quote: “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”

To be honest, early in my career, I thought that real power was behind the doors of private suites at meetings and conferences like this where small groups sat around and made deals. I thought the key to being influential and powerful was to get invited into the rooms. After making it into a lot of these rooms, I started to feel like all we were really doing is remaking our own elites. Small groups of people with money deciding who should get it.

Regardless of where you came from before philanthropy, how big your endowment or portfolio is, and how challenging your internal institutional culture might be, we each have power.

For some of us, it is comes from our clarity of purpose built on a life of experience. For others of us, it is something we are made aware of quickly upon arrival in philanthropy. And still others of us really prefer not to think about it at all because we think it is a bad thing. We might find it deeply uncomfortable at first but eventually – after a few nice dinners, cushy conferences and quickly returned phone calls – our sense eventually becomes dulled.

However our power remains, and we do things like ask for feedback and take time to listen, while knowing deep down that we don’t really agree and are just being polite; say yes and no all day; draw the lines around our program areas; frame our strategies to our boards; decide which calls to return and which meetings to take; decide who to invite to a meeting and how to design the agenda; determine the acceptable outcomes to merit continued support; decide who on our teams has the freedom to speak for themselves and who has to get permission.

My next provocation is to think about how we can build more distributed networks of mutually accountable leadership instead of controlled campaigns of influence and alignment.  In other words – leadership development and organizing.

Vanessa also reminded us that the “boldest organizing – from janitors, to farmworkers, to foundation program staff – often happens from the ground up, not the top down. And that “Any system or institution run by human beings can be organized. There is absolutely nothing exceptional about philanthropy in this regard.”

Regardless of how we feel about it we are in powerful positions, and those of us who shy away from it end up ineffective at best, and destructive at worst. In our isolated and unaccountable sector – the only ballast against abuse of power is collective and community accountability.

Being recognized this evening at NFG is an incredible honor and while we enjoy this reception, just a few miles from Ferguson, it is also a humbling reminder of MLK’s charge to us that “We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is’ such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.”

Editor’s note: Read Molly’s inspiring speech in its entirety, including her reflections on truth and privilege.

Molly Schultz Hafid is associate director at TCC Group. She is also a member of NCRP’s board of directors. Follow @Brooklynmolly, @TCCGROUP and @ncrp on Twitter. Join the conversation on building, sharing and wielding power in philanthropy using #PowerMovesEquity.

Foundations in the United States should step up their support for innovative and effective social change networks in the South, which offers fertile soil for developing solutions to national problems, a report from the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy and Grantmakers for Southern Progress finds.

The fifth in a series, the report, As the South Grows: So Grows the Nation (32 pages, PDF), found that, between 2011 and 2015, U.S. foundations invested 56 cents per capita in Southern states for every dollar per capita invested nationally, while grantmaking in support of structural change work only amounted to 11 cents per capita in the region. The report further notes that the typical grantmaking process tends to put Southern social change organizations at a disadvantage. Because the South has often been the proving ground for the nation’s most regressive public policies and rhetoric, the report suggests that by not investing in structural change work in the region, the philanthropic sector is putting marginalized people across the country in harm’s way.

Read the entire article in Philanthropy News Digest.

Between 2011 and 2015, foundations invested 56 cents in the South – per person – for every $1 they invested per person nationally. 

In the two plus years NCRP and GSP have embarked on As the South Grows, we’ve met countless people across the South who have dedicated their lives to deep, lasting change. These courageous leaders confront hard truths, build power strategically, and make sure no one gets left behind.

Despite proven leadership, Southern communities of color, immigrants, LGBTQ people, women and girls, justice-involved people, and low-income folks cannot count on the philanthropic sector’s support.

This doesn’t have to be the case. There’s a different path foundations can take: one that will require honesty, and open-ness, and a willingness to question assumptions. It’s one that will be incredibly rewarding, not only for Southern communities, but for the nation.

So Grows the Nation, the fifth and final capstone report in the As the South Grows series, offers that path, with concrete tips for foundation practice, funding comparisons for every Southern state, and tools for foundations to examine the untapped power they have to create change.

Whether you’re a national funder looking to deepen your investment, or a Southern foundation ready to tackle injustice at its roots, this report is for you. We believe, as we note in the report, that “the soil for growing exciting solutions to national problems is deep and fertile in the South; the seeds are present, and foundation staff haven’t turned on the water. It’s time to open the spigot.”

For As the South Grows, So Grows the Nation.  

Ben Barge is senior associate for learning and engagement and Ryan Schlegel is director of research at NCRP. Follow @NCRP on Twitter.

Photo by praline3001. Used under Creative Commons license.

For Immediate Release

New report: Philanthropy must invest in the South to have a true national impact

NCRP offers eight actions funders can take to jump-start their philanthropy in the South

Washington, D.C. (6/13/2018) – Grantmakers and donors across the country are looking for ways to improve opportunities, outcomes and wellbeing of communities of color, the poor, LGBTQIA people, the disabled and others in the margins. There’s a region that provides inspiration and a place to start meaningful philanthropic giving with national impact.

The American South has leaders and grassroots organizations that know how to fight regressive and divisive policies and practices that are marginalizing communities in the region and beyond. And yet, grantmakers have invested only 56 cents per person in the South for every $1 nationally.

“As the South Grows: So Grows the Nation,” a new report from the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP; www.ncrp.org) and Grantmakers for Southern Progress (GSP; http://www.nfg.org/as_the_south_grows) highlights why it’s important for funders – from within and outside the region – to begin or increase giving in the South and how they can do so in ways that produce lasting, positive impact in the South and nationally.

How should Southern grantmaking work?

NCRP’s researchers spent two years examining philanthropy in the South and concluded that the grantmaking process used by funders typically puts Southern organizations at a disadvantage. Foundations and other donors who want to support real change in the South must fundamentally change the way they make decisions regarding who receives a grant, what activities to support and how.

According to Ryan Schlegel and Stephanie Peng, authors of “So Grows the Nation,” grantmakers must do the following to achieve this fundamental change:

  • Reckon with shared history.
  • Weigh the stakes of the status quo and risk its privilege.
  • Recognize and honor Southern capacity.

They provide practical tips for funders on how to operationalize these three steps.

Re-establishing trust

Foundation staff and trustees – both national and those from the South – have a history of failing to trust Southern grassroots leadership. This is especially true when the leaders are women – particularly Black women – people of color, poor people, LGBTQ people and immigrants.

Meanwhile, Southern grassroots leaders often do not trust funders even when their intentions are pure.

“Some have been burned by foundation staff who promise the world and do not deliver; some have been frustrated for too long by foundation staff’s inability to work effectively in the region,” according to Schlegel and Peng. “Broken relationships and mistrust are left in the wake of decades of philanthropic misadventures.”

To repair these broken relationships, grantmakers need to find out what’s broken, center relationship-building in their grantmaking strategies, and shift power and resources to Southern leadership.

And by repairing these relationships, foundations and nonprofits from across the country can learn from a Southern ecosystem where it is the norm is to organize marginalized people across gender, class, race and other identities.

What can grantmakers do now?

While repairing relationships may take some time, there are still steps grantmakers and other donors can take to jump-start high-impact Southern grantmaking.

Schlegel and Peng lay out eight actions funders can do right now, including investing in grassroots civic engagement infrastructure, taking more risk and hiring Southerners.

“As the South Grows: So Grows the Nation” offers practical tips and resources that will help grantmakers and donors to have positive lasting impact on issues and communities they care about. The report, as well as the first four in the series, “On Fertile Soil,” “Strong Roots,” “Weathering the Storm” and “Bearing Fruit,” is available for free on www.ncrp.org.

About NCRP

The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy amplifies the voice of nonprofits and the communities they serve in the philanthropic sector. Through research and advocacy, it works to ensure that grantmakers and donors contribute to the creation of a fair, just and equitable world.

About GSP

Grantmakers for Southern Progress is a network of southern and national funders who are committed to fostering thriving communities in the American South, characterized in part by racial and gender equity.

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Media Contacts:

Peter Haldis: (202) 328-9351 or phaldis@ncrp.org

Foundation boards are some of the least diverse spaces in our nation. Overwhelmingly white and older, most trustees don’t reflect demographically the communities they serve.

In the last few years, however, there has been a lot of conversation in philanthropy about the need for grantmakers to learn from the perspectives of those they purport to serve. However, although listening to those you serve is important, it is not enough. It’s time for funders to take the next step and begin to actually share power with lower-income communities, communities of color, people with disabilities and others who have been systemically marginalized in our society.

Read the entire article in The NonProfit Times.

What does power have to do with equity? How can grantmakers better leverage power to help drive lasting, positive change in our communities?

As the philanthropic sector’s interest in racial equity has grown, there has been limited explicit discussion of the role of power and privilege, which funders must grapple with to truly change inequitable systems.

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

The presentation, “Make Your Power Move: Tools for your foundation’s equity journey,” cosponsored by Neighborhood Funders Group (NFG) and PEAK Grantmaking, featured three philanthropic pioneers’ insights on power, privilege and risk.

Why focus on power?

Hanh Le, executive director of the Weissberg Foundation, noted that funders are “swimming in power,” yet it is often viewed negatively because it has been used to perpetuate and perpetrate inequity. She cited Citizen University founder Eric Liu, who has argued that power self-justifies, power compounds, and power is infinite, which means it can be created, thus adding to the imperative for grantmakers to come to terms with their own power, address systemic power and help create community power.

https://twitter.com/peakgrantmaking/status/1001901646073487362

Gita Gulati-Partee reflected on her experience consulting extensively on equity issues as founder and principal of OpenSource Leadership Strategies. Her clients often express a dissatisfaction with the progress they are making towards equity and a curiosity about why, which leads them to an examination of power. She cautioned that many practitioners want “checklists”– tools that they can easily use without doing deeper work. Yet issues of equity and power are quite complex, requiring a fundamental examination of how we think and do philanthropy, and a willingness to engage in critical self-reflection, planning and action. She recommended Power Moves because it eschews simplistic checklists in favor of tools for deeper exploration.

(For definitions of key concepts, see the Power Moves glossary.)

How can funders lay the groundwork for self-reflection on power?

Marcelo Bonta, principal at The Raben Group, believes funders need to acknowledge the elitist culture in philanthropy and check their privilege, while striving for a more inclusive philanthropic culture. Those doing the hard work of self-reflection and culture change need to “connect head and heart,” embracing qualities of emotional intelligence such as empathy, compassion, humility and curiosity.

Gulati-Partee encouraged potential Power Moves users to embrace “adaptive change,” which looks beyond technical approaches to making change, to an examination of one’s own beliefs and habits and an honest assessment of risk in the context of institutional white privilege.

What are some ways to get started with Power Moves?

All three speakers are planning to apply and adapt the toolkit in their own work in the coming months, and they shared their ideas for digging in.

Le stressed the importance of gaining the buy-in of your foundation’s board. She plans to share the webinar recording with all of Weissberg’s trustees and will devote time at their next board meeting to develop a shared understanding of the Power Moves framework.

Bonta encouraged those in foundations that may not have executive power to build small groups of change agents or “early adopters” that can reflect and experiment in one program area or part of the foundation, begin to make changes within their sphere of influence, and gradually influence other parts of the institution.

Gulati-Partee noted that a funder can “turn off strategy but not culture.” Yet the two are inseparable, as she noted: “The hip bone is connected to the thigh bone.” That may seem scary, but it can actually be quite liberating to take a break from strategy and just reflect on culture – ultimately creating the conditions to unlock new strategies.

What supports would help you embark on the Power Moves journey?

Toward the end of the webinar, NCRP invited participants to answer a poll question about potential ways we could support them in using the self-assessment guide. Many were interested in being part of a peer learning group in the future. NCRP is hosting two groups this year – one for funders and one for consultants – and all three webinar’s featured speakers are participating. Attendees also wanted to connect with a peer who is further along on the journey.

Take action!

Here’s how you can start exploring the role of power in advancing equity and justice:

1. Download the Power Moves guide and executive summary, review the materials, then watch the webinar recording.

2. Interested in brainstorming with NCRP’s team on how to get started with Power Moves? Contact the Power Moves team at powermoves@ncrp.org.

Lisa Ranghelli is senior director of assessment and special projects at NCRP and primary author of Power Moves. Follow @NCRP and @lisa_rang on Twitter, and join the conversation using #PowerMovesEquity!

Timi Gerson, strategic advocacy and communications consultant at Gerson Strategies, is the new vice president and chief content officer at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. She will oversee the committee’s philanthropy research, assessment efforts, and public-policy campaigns.

Read the entire article in The Chronicle of Philanthropy (paywall).