In 2006, the Council on Foundations reported revenues of $17.2 million. A decade later, in 2016, it reported revenues of $11.6 million. That’s a pretty brutal decline in fortune—especially when you consider that many thousands of new private foundations were created during this same period.
The foundation world has expanded, yet the top trade group representing foundations has contracted. What’s going on here?
Aaron Dorfman, president of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, said that the council had been bypassed in importance by a proliferation of regional groups and networks based on funding for particular issues or on identity. Rather than sticking close to policy issues that directly address foundations, such as tax policy, Dorfman suggested that the council ought to advocate for policies that directly affect the communities that foundations serve, even if it means alienating some members with different political views.
“Most of the intellectual vibrancy in the philanthropic sector comes from places other than the council,” he said. “I’m not at all sure that a big-tent, keep-everyone-happy approach will work.”
Editor’s note: This post is part of an ongoing series of posts featuring NCRP nonprofit members.
Seeing is believing – a nice proverb, but also an often unsaid maxim for philanthropic giving. After all, if a would-be funder can’t see a problem or isn’t aware of its impact, how can she be expected to buy into potential solutions?
So what’s a willing advocate to do when a community faces systemic adversity that could benefit from philanthropic investment, but is too new and too dispersed to speak at a volume funders can hear?
This is the predicamentAsian Pacific Community in Action(APCA) finds itself in. Founded in 2002, APCA seeks to foster greater health and empowerment for the two fastest growing populations in Arizona: Asian-Americans and Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders (AANHPI). It does so through a combination of services, advocacy and education.
APCA has enrolled community members in health insurance plans and educated them about preventative care. It has championed language access in the health insurance marketplace, resulting in some translations of various insurance notices. APCA staff and volunteers occupy key leadership positions in the governing councils of county health clinics and hospitals, city commissions and chambers of commerce.
Yet there is still a long way to go.
Nearly every one in 20 persons in Arizonais a member of an AANHPI community. But, because most of them arrived only in the 1990s or 2000s and settled into areas sequestered from the rest of the population, they remain invisible to the public eye.
There is no Chinatown or Little Korea to help center these disparate locations. Other standard community infrastructure, like legal and housing services, are not yet developed. The Arizona Department of Health doesn’t even collect Asian-American data, instead cramming it into an ill-defined “other” category.
The needs of a Chinese-American whose family has been here for four generations are plainly different than those of a recently arrived Myanmar refugee, but if the health department doesn’t disentangle the responses of the former from the latter, how are health care providers to know who needs what?
Problems like this pushed APCA to progress from a strictly outreach and health access portfolio to a broader emphasis on community organizing. APCA now registers people to vote and educates community members on how issues affect them, how a bill becomes law and how to connect with lawmakers to ensure they are meeting the AANHPI community’s needs.
In 2016, APCA launched the firstAsian-American Pacific Islander Advocacy Day. At the state capitol in Phoenix, about 20 community members were directly connected with their elected officials. The following year, the organization helped introduce a data disaggregation bill that would have collected and separated out Asian-American data. It wasn’t passed, but APCA did get a resolution read on the Senate floor, introducing the issue to many legislators for the first time.
APCA has committed to building out space for a coalition of community health workers, faith leaders and health professionals to work together around shared issues in the AANHPI community.
Take oral health, for instance. APCA has designed a community organizing and advocacy training program that brings in oral health providers serving communities of color to talk about social determinants in health and what’s happening in the state legislature around the issue.
APCA is not an organization that wants to exist in perpetuity. As more and more members of the AANHPI communities see the value in civic engagement and seize the collective power available to them, APCA would victoriously grow obsolete.
In the meantime, APCA could use some help. General operating support would jumpstart its efforts to connect with the growing number of AANHPI individuals in the state and help as it recruits leaders from each set of the 60-plus different languages and cultures therein to guide its approach until the communities united are ready to stand on their own.
Beyond funding general operation, there are specific programmatic areas awaiting support too. APCA would like to resurrect a dormant interpreter service to help its constituents navigate a language and culture in which they’re not yet proficient. Alternatively, the organization has collected a trove of data and stories from the Arizonan AANHPI communities; it could use additional funding to hire a staffer to sift through all of this information.
The Asian-American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities in Arizona are no longer hidden. Their individual experiences may vary, but their expertise in their communities does not. Funding in the long-run should capitalize on this insider knowledge and let it guide future research and community action. In the end, seeing isn’t just believing; it’s doing.
Troy Price is NCRP’s membership and fundraising intern. Follow@NCRPon Twitter.
Aaron Dorfman — president and CEO of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a left-leaning watchdog group — sees Michael Bloomberg as the Arnolds’ closest cousin. They both worship data. They both tend to weave together political and philanthropic spending. And, Dorfman said, “both of them sometimes annoy people on both the left and the right.”
Adelina Nicholls, co-founder and executive director of Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR) described the challenges of her work in theAs the South Grows: Bearing FruitNCRP report with a simple yet illustrative quote:
“I am the one keeping the books, moving around money and paying the bills. I am the only one writing the grants, and I am the one leading our community organizing.”
In spite of the financial limitations with which her organization has had to operate in the past almost two decades, the accomplishments of GLAHR speak of an effective organization staffed mostly by volunteers and cemented in the community.
Adelina’s case is not unique; in fact, it is the reality for a myriad of small Latino serving nonprofit organizations working in partnership with thousands of Latinx families, students and entrepreneurs across Georgia.
These organizations, Latino-led and largely underfunded and unknown to funders and decision-makers, are, in our opinion, the key to building a more equitable future for Georgia. This is why:
According to the University of Georgia’s Carl Vinson Institute of Government, one in five Georgians will be Latino in 2030. With significant geographic dispersion and significant limitations in transportation, immigration and language, it is only through a network of agencies that already have built trust and respect in our families, that we are able to have the wide and deep reach needed to bridge the gap between opportunity and talent for our hard-working, entrepreneurial and resilient community.
Since the early ‘90s, when Georgia experienced for the first time (since the African slave trade closed down) a large-scale influx of “non-traditional” population – in this case Latinos, coming to build the city for the Olympics – the Hispanic community has evolved significantly, yet funding models have not.
What made sense 30 years ago, which was to fund a few national or well-known organizations and expect them to deliver basic services to Spanish-speaking, mostly young males working in construction, following apyramidal modelthat funds organizations at the top (more visible and larger) expecting benefits and funding to reach the middle and base of the pyramid (the communities) does not work today.
Today, the community has evolved and diversified. We are 10 percent of the state population, and mostly young families. While most Latinx adults are still first generation immigrants, 87 percent of all Latinos under 18 are American citizens. Latinas in Georgia are one of the fastest segments opening businesses in the country and very civically engaged,dominating voter participation rates with 73 percent of us casting ballots in 2016(according to the report issued by Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, 2016: The Latino Electorate in Georgia Continues to Grow and Vote).
Many challenges remain. Unlike other states with a more mature Latino community, we do not have “barrios” where generations of Latinos have traditionally lived, grown and develop influence and iconic institutions and leaders. Our realities as recent immigrants and new Americans are translated into barriers for self-sufficiency and efficiencies, even more clear when we, Latinos, lead our own institutions.
A new funding model needs to take place to meet the needs of this new community.
This new funding model, an inverted pyramid, funding a network of organizations, versus one or two, needs to use a deliberate equity lens and criteria to assessing capacity that is sensitive to the realities of our community.
While perfect English, minimum budgets and complex strategic plans are often appropriate standards and blanket criteria for mainstream organizations, they do not serve a community that has been historically underfunded, many times ignored and at best tokenized.
These standards limit well-meaning organizations by overlooking the very attributes and capacities that make Latino-led and majority Latino-serving grassroots organizations uniquely qualified to serve our own community:
Our immigrant competencies
Our shared experiences
Our language and cultural sensitivities and capabilities
The trust, respect and love we have with the families we serve
The only way to build a sustainable ecosystem of competent Latino-serving organizations is to invest in local and community-centered leadership.
Yes, investments in large and national organizations with local chapters are still important, but it is equally important to support the existing infrastructure of organizations already influencing and doing the heavy lifting through deep community connections across counties and regions in the state.
This inverse pyramidal funding model is a model that we see replicated in politics, where mayors are leading change in their cities (versus Washington leading from the top down) and also in efforts to bridge the digital divide (from internet cafes and hubs, to mass access via subsidized digital products and technology). The model is key to ensuring economic opportunity, building capacity and supporting effective action and power building in our community.
Our network, 22 members strong, is a testament of the willingness of our Latino-led and majority Latino-serving organizations in Georgia to work together towards a better future for all. Because yes, we are stronger together and we, Latinx, help Georgia grow.
Gilda (Gigi) Pedraza is the executive director of Latino Community Fund (LCF Georgia). Follow @GigiPedrazaM and @LatinoConnectGA on Twitter.
California and the American South have much in common. They’re both economic powerhouses. They’re both engines of culture, literature and film. And they’re both dynamos of resistance, from the mayor of Oakland’s recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid warning, to today’s Southern youth pioneering movements like their forebears did half a century ago.
Yet philanthropy has built few bridges between these two regions. This gulf constrains our country’s progress. That’s why, as part of ourAs the South Growsinitiative, NCRP,Grantmakers for Southern Progress(GSP) andSolutions Projecthosted two “South Meets West” funder briefings last month in California.
The first event took place with Northern California Grantmakers in San Francisco at the James Irvine Foundation.
The second took place in downtown Los Angeles.
California-based community foundations, private foundations, rapid response funds and individual donors met with Southern foundations, nonprofit leaders and community organizers from across the South.
Tyler Nickerson kicked things off by sharing why, as a progressive funder, Solutions Project believes in funding the grassroots in both regions.
NCRP Vice President and Chief Engagement Officer Jeanné Isler and GSP Co-Chair and Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation Program Director Lavastian Glenn shared highlights from NCRP and GSP’sAs the South Growsseries.
Southern leaders shared how the road to national progress runs through the South. They included Stephanie Guilloud from Project South in Atlanta, Dr. Jennie Stephens from the Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation in South Carolina and Peter Hille from the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development in Kentucky (all NCRP nonprofit members).
We strategized together and told stories together.
We even went to happy hour together.
People left with commitments to move money, make phone calls and visit the South in person.
And we left inspired with what can happen when the South and California partner together.
These events were a first step. True change in the philanthropic relationship between the South and California will take long-term relationships, as well as a willingness to risk our comfort with the status quo. Here at NCRP, we’re excited to roll up our sleeves.
To learn how you can get involved with NCRP, GSP andAs the South Grows, contact Ben Barge at bbarge@ncrp.org and Tamieka Mosley at tmosley@southerneducation.org.
Ben Barge is senior associate for learning and engagement at NCRP. Follow@NCRPon Twitter.
As the South Grows, a collaborative project from the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) and Grantmakers for Southern Progress (GSP), highlights successful methods and warns of the failures of philanthropic activities in the South. The project involved interviewing more than 90 community nonprofit leaders to find the challenges, opportunities, and assets in the South. The project finds that while the region is rich in culture and leadership, it remains overlooked by funders, despite opportunities to help in several ways.
“It seems that all roads in the South lead to Atlanta,” begins a new report by Ryan Schlegel and Stephanie Peng of theNational Committee for Responsive Philanthropy(NCRP). Titled “Bearing Fruit,” the report notes that while Atlanta within the South has often painted itself with a progressive veneer, “Atlanta’s growth and its forward-looking political climate have left many communities, especially low-income communities and communities of color, behind.” Schlegel and Peng profiles the efforts of three community organizations, a local funding intermediary, and two national funders that are aiming to change that.
The report forms the fourth in NCRP’sAs the South Growsseries, which is being co-produced by NCRP and Grantmakers for Southern Progress. The series is ultimately expected to consist of five reports. NPQ covered the series’ first report, as well as itsmost recent report(which focused on environmental justice), and cosponsored awebinarwith NCRP last month. The first three reports in the series mainly focused on rural communities. But this one focuses instead on Atlanta, the nation’sninth-largest metropolitan regionand the Deep South’s largest urban center.
NCRP president and CEO Aaron Dorfman delivered the closing keynote at the Yale Philanthropy Conference on February 23, 2018. Brief excerpts from his remarks are below. Text of the full speech can be foundhere.The slides are availablehere.
You are all here, we are all here, because we want to use our philanthropy to make the world a better place.
If we’re going to be successful in doing that, we have got to ask ourselves the right questions. These are challenging times in which we live. By asking ourselves the right questions, the hard questions, we can make a real difference with our philanthropy on issues that truly matter. I’m going to put forward five questions today that I think will help us be effective in these challenging times.
1. Are we dreaming big enough?
In his famous speech at the March on Washington, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. did not come forward and say, “I have a realistic plan with measurable outcomes and clear benchmarks.” No! He shared his dream.
The truth is: There are no limits to what philanthropy can accomplish in this world if we dream big and take risks.
“That’s ridiculous,” some of you may be thinking right now. “Philanthropic dollars are a drop in the bucket. The best we can hope to do is to fund effective programs and improve as many lives as we can.”
Let me tell you, that kind of small-ball thinking is horsepucky, and we need to abandon it if we want to truly transform and improve our nation and the world.
2. Are we doing enough to intentionally benefit and empower vulnerable and marginalized communities?
There is a moral reason to ask yourself this question and also a pragmatic one.
The moral argument is pretty obvious. Those who are fortunate have an obligation to give back, to help those who are not as fortunate. Every faith tradition has some version of this principle.
The pragmatic argument is that it works. With most ambitious philanthropic visions, you won’t be able to succeed in accomplishing your goals if you don’t intentionally benefit and empower underserved communities.
Prosperity Now President Andrea Levere and NCRP President and CEO Aaron Dorfman at Yale Philanthropy Conference 2018.
3. Is our privilege making us overly cautious?
Being privileged isn’t always an advantage in philanthropy. Your privilege can create blind spots, make you unnecessarily cautious and make it harder for you to achieve your goals.
Implicit bias, born of privilege, might make you not hire the best program officer. It might make you miss out on someone who would be a great new board member for your foundation. It might make you invest in the “proven, reliable” organization rather than in the smaller group led by people of color that you decide “doesn’t have the capacity” to do the work.
We see this all the time in our research at NCRP. Foundations aren’t investing the South, or in rural communities, or in communities of color, because they don’t think there is capacity there. But the truth is, there is a ton of capacity – but nonprofit capacity looks different in the South than it does here in the Acela corridor. Our privilege and our bias don’t let us see the full potential.
The good news is you can learn to compensate for your blind spots. Some of the most effective foundations do it successfully.
4. Are we giving in ways that promote the health, growth and effectiveness of our grantee partners and those they serve?
There are two essential things your grantees must have if they are going to maximize their effectiveness and impact. They have got to have sufficient unrestricted revenue, and they have to have long-term commitments.
Unrestricted general operating support allows grantees the flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances, or to invest in their own capacity.
Multi-year funding allows them to plan and to attract the best staff.
5. Are we wielding our power and all the tools at our disposal to build the world we envision?
Good philanthropy is about more than making grants. You must wield your power, too.
Yes, philanthropic funding is critically important to organizations. Yes, bold grants can catalyze transformative change. But, too many funders rely only on their grants to achieve impact, missing the opportunity to leverage the other tools at their disposal to advance their mission, values and goals.
Nonfinancial capital represents institutional and individual power that can be effectively used to influence others in order to achieve equitable, long-term change. Yet the idea of wielding power and influence can be difficult for foundations that pride themselves on being a “neutral convener.” Having a point of view that is well grounded and has moral integrity will enhance your institution’s credibility rather than tarnish it.
There are many ways foundations can exercise public leadership and wield their power responsibly and effectively.
Conclusion
These are urgent times we’re living in. It’s not hyperbole to say the future of our democracy and the planet are at stake. There is no time to waste.
We must never forget that there is no limit to what we can accomplish with good philanthropy.
And it’s going to take every one of us in this room doing our part to ensure that philanthropy plays a meaningful role in building a more fair, just and democratic society.
Aaron Dorfman is president and CEO of NCRP. Follow@NCRPon Twitter.
Photos courtesy of the Yale School of Management.
In late 2007, I was a youth organizer at theSouthWest Organizing Projectin Albuquerque, New Mexico, sitting in the third row of a cold school board room anxiously awaiting my turn to speak. A few years earlier, we blocked efforts to allow school police to carry guns in schools. But in the wake of a deadly shooting on the campus of Virginia Tech just a few months earlier, the odds that we could stop a similar effort seemed stacked against us.
We did everything right, the right power mapping, the right messaging and the right messengers: students, parents and teachers. We packed the house to make sure board members understood that guns in schools might feel like the easy, quick fix, but they pose a threat to low-income students of color who need schools to be safe havens rather than places where they were increasingly in danger of being swept into a pipeline to prison.
As I watched the disengaged Albuquerque Public School Board members not even look up from their computers as students, teachers and parents passionately spoke about their concerns, I knew we were about to lose. Several of the school board members had just been elected on a platform that promised solutions other than guns on our campuses and yet they flipped their votes without batting an eye.
The pressure of the moment, post tragic school shooting, was too much to overcome. The votes came down against us. We never even had a chance. That evening as I watched the news coverage sitting next to the young people who led the campaign, my heart broke and tears ran down my face as I heard hopelessness in their voices, asking me what else they could have done. I vowed to never let young people feel so disempowered.
Ten years later, here we are again. This time a tragic event in Parkland, Florida, has led to young people capturing the heart of the nation. Their demand that the violence end has placed a national debate about gun control front and center, while young organizers fear many of the solutions offered will only further racist policies that militarize their schools and criminalize communities of color.
For generations, youth of color have sparked movements igniting a fight for safe, healthy and just schools and communities. Often they’ve waged long-term campaigns against great odds as they watch their schools become more like prisons than environments that foster growth and learning.
As the current debate swirls around arming teachers, more armed school resource officers and more cops policing schools and communities, young organizers like those at thePower U Center for Social ChangeandDream Defendersin Florida are seizing the moment. They’re meeting with Parkland students and building intersectional alliances and visionary solutions that transcend the false, quick fix of more guns.
Youth-led organizations across the country are demanding to be heard and student leaders from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are inspired, working toward a platform that is shared across race, class, gender and geography.
It is philanthropy’s turn to grab hold of the opportunity before us and advance the movement for a multiracial, cross-class alliance of young people standing up to demand a society free from all forms of violence.The Funders’ Collaborative on Youth Organizingcalls on funders and donors to step up and into the moment. The kind of movement and leadership from young people needed now will not happen without sustained resources.
Let us not be here again in another 10 years, fighting the same bad policies and saying never again. Those of us in philanthropy must take seriously the role we have been given and find the resources to support the movement in front of us so young organizers can focus on the paramount task of transforming society.
To that end, the Funders’ Collaborative on Youth Organizing has launchedThe Youth for Safety and Justice Fundto help support young people of color taking action. The focus is on efforts that employ a racial justice lens and connect gun violence to other forms of systemic injustice.
Youth of color have long called to be taken seriously in social change efforts and, if the last two weeks have taught us anything, it is that young people have the strategic ability to build lasting power and create solutions that ensure safety for all.
As students walk out tomorrow we cannot let them walk alone and allow this to only be one moment. We must invest in organized youth efforts to cultivate lasting change. To get to scale and sustain their work, they need the support of philanthropy. The moment is now. Resources must follow.
Mónica Córdova is deputy director of the Funders’ Collaborative on Youth Organizing. For more information on how to get involved or give to The Youth for Safety and Justice Fund, contact her at monica@fcyo.org. Follow @THE_FCYO on Twitter.
Photo courtesy of Funders’ Collaborative on Youth Organizing.