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Cracks on a sky blue background frequently used through NCRP's latest report on philanthropy's role in reparations for Black people.

CONTACT (S):  Russell Roybal rroybal@ncrp.org 
                           Elbert Garcia, egarcia@ncrp.org 

NCRP:  Philanthropy Must Play An Active Role in Reparations for Black People

Cracks in the Foundation: Philanthropy’s Role in Reparations for Black People in the DMV, the newest report from
the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, examines grantmakers’ role in repairing the harm
created by the wealth generated from the systemic exclusion and exploitation of Black people in the Washington, DC area. 

WASHINGTON, DC – At a time when so many are willing to give up any discussion of America’s past in exchange for a false semblance of civil discourse, a new report from the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy makes the case that foundations have an immediate opportunity and responsibility to address society’s past harm in order to help communities heal and thrive. 

Cracks in the Foundation: Philanthropy’s Role in Reparations for Black People in the DMV details how the disparities in areas like education, income, employment and housing for Black residents in the District of Columbia, southern Maryland, and northern Virginia areas (commonly known as the DMV) are not random or natural occurrences but are a string of conscious choices that repeatedly harmed communities.  

Cover of NCRPs report, Cracks in the Foundation: Philanthropy's Role in Reparations for Black People in the DMV
 Download the full report to read more

Using publicly available quantitative and qualitative research, the report details how the great wealth that later made philanthropy possible in the DC area came at the expense of the social stability and economic success of Black residents. The report examines these harmful actions in four distinct sectors: media, housing, employment, and healthcare. It also provides a framework for foundations to not only understand their past, but how they may start acknowledging and addressing these harms with community residents.

The report is available for download at ncrp.org/reparations 

“Despite individuals and some organizations being generally aware of the historical exploitation of Black people in this country, philanthropy has never really reckoned with how the ill-gotten gains from systemic discrimination and exclusion were the seed capital for so many modern grantmakers,” said Dara Cooper, a national strategic consultant and organizer. “This report helps us connect the voices of the past with the data of the present in order to give foundations little excuse to address and redress historical and ongoing exploitation of Black DMV residents and families.”

“We hope that foundations in the DC area will acknowledge these stories of harm and use the tools included in this report to establish and deepen connections with local groups and organizations and contribute financial resources and social capital for reparative action,” said NCRP President and CEO Aaron Dorfman. “These collective efforts are crucial for the immediate and long-term healing of impacted Black communities in the region.”

Regional funder if, A Foundation for Radical Possibility, is one of eight foundations included in the report  as illustrative of the role that the sector has historically played in the systemic limiting of opportunities of local Black residents. They provided the lion’s share of funding for the report soon after embarking on their own journey into the foundation’s wealth generation and past actions.

“This report illustrates if’s commitment to racial justice, which requires accountability for injustice, both past and present. We are holding ourselves accountable for the harm we have caused,” said if Co-CEOs, Hanh Le and Temi F. Bennett. “Addressing anti-Blackness is ground zero for racial justice in America. Given the backlash to the alleged “racial reckoning” of 2020, our sector is in fight or flight mode. if is fighting, always. We invite others to join us.” 

Although discussions about reparations for Black people have existed since the U.S. Civil War, the current movement for reparations has picked up steam in recent years with cities like Evanston, Ill. and states like California creating their own commissions and reports to help quantify the harm done and propose healing solutions. In philanthropy, recent articles by the BridgeSpan Group and Liberation Ventures and webinars by Justice Funders,  Philanthropy Northwest and Decolonizing Wealth  have made additional cases for reparations role in building a culture of repair and redress as foundations more deeply explore the impact of their initial seed capital.  

Local organizers, like DC Movement for Black Lives Policy Table Coordinator Christian Beauvoir, see foundations’ role in reparations both as natural moral and practical extensions of their charitable missions.  

“Every institution that claims to value Black people has a responsibility to make right every time that it has not,” said Beauvoir. “But reparations is more than just a legal framework for responding to harm. It says I see the violence that your ancestors endured when they deserved care, I see the discrimination they experienced when they deserved homes, schools, or doctors and because these histories still live in your DNA and in the institutions that surround you, I am committed to repairing what I have destroyed.” 

“Philanthropy’s history of wealth generation presents a unique opportunity and responsibility,” says report author and NCRP Research Manager for Special Projects Katherine Ponce. “We hope this report and its community-centered research framework persuades – and, if necessary, pressures — decision-makers to shifting social and economic resources back to those whose rights, livelihoods and safety have been unjustly stripped away through historical actions reflecting structural anti-Black racism.” 

The Need to Acknowledge and Address Past Harm Directly 

Past research by NCRP and others have noted philanthropy’s general underfunding of Black communities and Black-led institutions and non-profits. Yet increased funding to Black communities and racial justice work – while critical – is not the same as reckoning with harm done to specific Black people through the wealth origins of an individual institution.   

Cracks in the Foundation looks to catalyze that process by (re)centering the conversation on those most impacted and harmed back by the wealth that was directly and indirectly generated through systemic racism and discrimination.  

“By compiling, contextualizing and publishing biographical and other historical information about the origins of philanthropic wealth, the stories of harm experienced by Black people become unavoidable and, more importantly, actionable – especially for funders with a commitment to racial equity or racial justice,” writes Ponce. “Research that connects and centers stories of local Black communities can generate energy, opportunities, and concrete actions for foundations to engage in reparations and healing efforts. This report is both an invitation and a roadmap for local foundations – studied and otherwise – to do exactly that.”  

DC native and NCRP Board Chair Dr. Dwayne Proctor sees the report as a crucial tool for funders to both address past harms and create a more equitable future for everyone.  
 
“This report speaks to generations of history of Black people in the region and the throughlines to their oppression. I am encouraged to read a report that not only tells these stories but applies them to new and tested frameworks,” said Dr. Proctor, who also services as the President and CEO of the Missouri Foundation for Health. “If readers can connect the overlaps between the social determinants of health and the necessary healing of Black families today – real and transformative conversations about repair can begin.” 

Local Feedback and Input 

Ponce and NCRP researchers consulted with local academics, community leaders and oral history experts like the DC History Center. In cases where researchers could connect sufficient public evidence to a specific foundation, NCRP offered those foundations an opportunity to respond and identify current levels of related funding.  

For previous Horning Family Foundation Board Member Andy Horning, conversations into the past are both personal and professional as the family foundation wades through a year of reflection and paused operations. As place-based foundation whose grantmaking is explicitly dedicated to centering Black people and Black communities in Washington, DC, he understands that there is no way around the vulnerability that comes with facing and doing something about the past.  

“For white people, undoing racism and understanding white supremacy is a critical first step when they engage in philanthropy.  It isn’t easy work,” says Horning. “Expect a direct challenge to who you are and have seen yourself to be.  It requires incredible courage to step forward into the discomfort AND deep self-compassion when it inevitably becomes difficult. Its a reckoning, a grappling with the hard new reality of understanding ourselves and the world white supremacy has created.” 

Dorfman acknowledges that the report will be uncomfortable even to the most progressive leaders and board members.  

“We understand that for many organizations, this report will be personal. Founder legacies are complicated and this kind of reckoning process forces everyone connected to a foundation to be vulnerable,” says Dorfman. “But we also hope that foundations both mentioned and unmentioned will seize the chance to not only to exercise responsibility, but to also provide courage to those in their sector who may want to act, but do not know where to start.” 

Although the report’s immediate focus is the Washington, DC area, the report’s methodology and recommendations can also serve as a model for funders and organizers in other cities and regions. The framework, community-centered process, and suggested actions also have potential applications not just for philanthropy, but for any institution in the public or private sector grappling with these uncomfortable, but necessary questions. 

“This research stands on the shoulders of the generations of advocates that have been dreaming and implementing interventions in philanthropy that disrupt and transform the status quo,” says Jennie Goldfarb, Director of Operations & Strategic Engagement at Liberation Ventures. “Right now, foundations have a chance to model holistic repair. This report is the first step and I’m so proud of everyone involved in bringing this across the finish line. My hope is it fuels a movement of funders committed to truth telling and being in right relationship with each other and the organizations they fund.” 

ABOUT NCRP 

The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) has served as philanthropy’s critical friend and independent watchdog since 1976. We work with foundations, non-profits, social justice movements and other leaders to ensure that the sector is transparent with, and accountable to, those with the least wealth, power and opportunity in American society. 

Our storytelling, advocacy, and research efforts, in partnership with grantees, help funders fulfill their moral and practical duty to build, share, and wield economic resources and power to serve public purposes in pursuit of justice. 

Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, the Movement for Black Lives helped catalyze a historic national racial reckoning in almost every sector and institution in the United States. Of course, structural racism did not first harm or impact Black Americans in 2020. Police violence is a leading cause of death for young men in this country – killing about 1 in every 1,000 Black men. A report from the Washington Post found that although Black women account for 13 %of women in the U.S., they make up 20 percent of the women fatally shot by the police and 28 %of unarmed killings. However, on-the-ground organizing and extensive mainstream media coverage that year of nationwide protests led to individuals, social media, and institutions pouring new attention and resources into the movements that Black activists have been leading for generations.

This work commanded philanthropy’s attention in new ways. We know now that in 2020, the 50 biggest public companies in America collectively committed at least $49 billion dollars. Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott alone is known to have donated at least $567 million to racial equity organizations. According to Candid’s [1] latest data, community foundations themselves granted $125 million to Black communities in 2020.

While all these financial contributions were a significant increase from previous years, this increased funding in many instances was short-term and not multi-year. The additional money in many cases has barely moved the needle for infrastructural and programmatic success for an already underfunded community that depends on foundation-based funding to survive an ever-politically unsure climate.

This is not a new conclusion and not a new ask from communities. Countless other reports have noted how if foundations are not targeting funding to specific BIPoC communities with racial equity expertise, then they are not doing enough to address the underlying conditions of structural racial injustice or inequity. As we have written often, past NCRP research and the lived experiences of a host of partners find that funders who specifically named these communities in their giving strategy were more likely to make progress against their equity goals and to hold themselves accountable.

NCRP has always sought to provide both grant makers and nonprofits with the kind of practical data and analysis that helps bridge the gap between funders’ best intentions and the reality of where their dollars go. That is why we published Black Funding Denied (BFD) at the end of the summer of 2020. Using grant and Census data, the research brief sought to report out the amount of grantmaking that some of the top community foundations were making to explicitly benefit Black people. The 25 foundations that we looked at not only represented a cross-section of some of the country’s largest community foundations, but also foundations in communities where NCRP has Black-led nonprofit allies.

More than two years later, how did our resource brief and subsequent engagement impact the conversation? What role did the community foundations we looked at play in growing philanthropic resources for Black communities?

Here’s what we found.

A Closer Look at Community Foundations Response After BFD’s Release

From Candid data as of January 19th, 2023, we know community foundations increased their annual giving for Black communities from $78 million in 2019 to $125 million in 2020. However, this $125 million was still only 2.1% of overall giving from community foundations. Comparatively, funding for Black communities specifically represented 12% of all charitable giving and 5.4% of independent foundation giving in 2020 [2].

From Candid’s initial 2020 grants data, the 25 community foundations originally studied in Black Funding Denied only contributed, in the aggregate, 2.4% of their overall grantmaking to Black communities. However, this was more than double the 1% we found these community foundations contributed to Black communities in our original research which focused on 2016-2018. In fact, in 2021, 18 of the 25 named community foundations established new grants, funds, and initiatives explicitly for funding Black communities. NCRP will work with its members and other leaders from impacted communities to keep tracking community foundation support for Black communities to observe whether any increased scrutiny on the giving of the 25 foundations named in our August 2020 research changed in the following years.

We tracked community foundations that used data on racial disparities, program officers that were motivated by Black Funding Denied, and even worked with organizations to develop new commitments in their grantmaking to Black-led leadership serving Black populations. While it’s too soon to tell the full impact of any new funding, we do know that one-time initiatives responding to the 2020 uprisings won’t be enough. A Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) report from 2022 showed that only 27% of foundations CEP studied are now providing more multi-year unrestricted support compared to pre-pandemic giving levels, despite pledges in the pandemic to create a new normal.

COMMUNITY FOUNDATIONS SHOULD BE LEADERS

NCRP still believes in the values we encouraged the sector to embrace in our landmark 2009 publication, Criteria for Philanthropy at its Best: the most effective grantmaking comes when funders give intentionally and deeply to build power in marginalized communities. Past NCRP research shows that foundations that invest in building power in marginalized communities see tremendous structural progress toward equity goals.

The importance of this intentionality for impactful grantmaking was also a theme in Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity’s Mismatched report. “Predominantly white organizations are often happy to use movement language to walk through foundation doors opened by Black, Brown, and Indigenous activists,”: wrote authors Malkia Devich Cyril, Lyle Matthew Kan, Ben Francisco Maulbeck, and Lori Villarosa. “…this kind of funding can cast leaders and organizations of color in the role of contractors helping white organizations fulfill grant requirements, rather than as grantees receiving resources for their own strategies.” NCRP has heard this anecdotally from our Black-led nonprofit member organizations and partners.

After we released Black Funding Denied, we were told by many community foundations that we should only examine their discretionary giving, rather than a larger set of assets that included their donor advised giving. We understand that it’s more than just optics. Donors can play a decisive role in where their dollars flow, even when foundations have legal control over grantmaking. We also recognize that donor education is deep, often slow work that can take time to reflect in funding decisions.

Yet to limit a community foundation’s responsibility to their community to a tiny fraction of the dollars that pass through their doors is short-sighted, and a missed opportunity.

We continue to stand with our local and national partners in believing that community foundation leaders have an obligation to proactively break down barriers between donors and underinvested communities and set racial justice as the cornerstone of their vision. This dedication to serving their full community is what should set community foundations apart.

Some funders, like Brooklyn Community Foundation, are beginning to do just that. Months after the release of BFD, the community foundation announced a historic commitment to give “at least 30 percent of all grants to “explicitly benefit Black communities,” with priority given to Black-led groups focused on systemic change. The commitment was unprecedented among community foundations because it was a long-term, rather than a temporary, grant announcement. It promised to set giving rates that matched community demographics as a floor, not a ceiling. The pledge also covered both discretionary AND donor-advised funds, recognizing the responsibility community foundations have in setting values for their donor community.

Perhaps most importantly, it included transparency, with an invitation for the community to hold the foundation accountable to this vision.

THE BIGGER LESSON GOING FORWARD

As NCRP’s Movement Research Manager Stephanie Peng has written, “data can be an important tool to get us the better world we are all striving to make by having it as an active tool that movements can use to hold foundations accountable to their commitments to equity and justice.” The value in organizing data around us is that it helps clarify how investing in the communities most impacted by structural barriers provides them – and all of us – the resources and power to succeed and thrive. While philanthropy is not always comfortable when data highlights underfunding for communities, we’ve seen that pointing out vast disparities trigger funders into action. 

Transparency is key to philanthropy being able to be honest with itself and communities about the true impact of their grantmaking. Many community foundations were unaware of how their publicly available data reflected – or didn’t reflect – the numerical representation of their mission and values. While some foundations may not have the immediate infrastructure needed to support such data analysis, the resources on how to make grant data a priority is out there.

While we saw positive outcomes from individual funders willing to devote new attention to the way they share data about their giving following BFD, we also hope to see this same type of self-reflection and improvement from the field at large on how we as a sector tend to unfairly measure the success of new funds. Black communities have and will organize for systematic structural change far beyond 2020, and their leadership deserves the sector’s trust and patience through a long-term commitment of resources.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE

Based on feedback from NCRP’s Black-led members, our experience in dialogue with community foundations about their giving to Black communities, and findings from previous NCRP research, here are the areas where NCRP sees the most opportunity for progress:

    1. Deeper Relationship Building – First and foremost, establishing relationships and trust with Black leaders in funders’ communities will help funders center the needs of those impacted the most by past and current racist systems of discrimination and exploitation. These relationships will help funders develop strategies on how to effectively support some of the most complex problems existing within their communities.

    1. Sustained Financial Commitment – Preliminary 2020 Candid data showed that funding specifically to Black communities from community foundations from 78 million in 2019 to 125 million in 2020. While this is an exciting start, it will quickly be a thing of the past if foundations do not address how they were practicing grantmaking before 2020. Foundations should consider their internal practices, grantmaking metrics, and overall racial equity goals to ensure there is a constant flow of resources to intended communities. Funders have broken trust with communities through one-time “fad funding” before; now is not the time to repeat that mistake.

    1. Shifting Power – Community foundation leaders are not solely responsible for all of their foundation’s grantmaking, but they do have the power to influence all of it. Leaders should consider how they are wielding that power in their communities and being an active voice advocating for and with Black community members.

    1. Data Transparency – Ensure the sector has the most accurate and reliable data, by reporting timely information to Candid. Foundations who report that their grantmaking data are modeling transparency and how to hold themselves, and the sector at large, accountable.

Remember that targeting resources for Black communities specifically is not the same thing as funding racial justice work, which addresses the root causes of racial inequity. And increased funding to Black communities alone won’t be enough to repair past harm done to Black communities. Funding healing requires a separate, specific, and targeted response beyond investing in Black communities, but targeting philanthropic resources there is a great place to start.

ENDNOTES

1 Foundation Maps | Candid. (November 3, 2022). Foundation Maps.
https://maps.foundationcenter.org/home.php

2 Ibid

Katherine Ponce is NCRP’s Senior Research Associate for Special Projects. Special thanks to NCRP’s Ryan Schlegel, Stephanie Peng, and Spencer Ozer for their work on the original research that formed the basis of 2020’s Black Funding Denied.”

Editor’s Note: This post is co-published as part of the #DisruptPhilanthropyNow campaign, being organized by The Within Our Lifetime (WOL) Network. Racial justice leaders and movement organizers are encouraged to submit their stories about racially inequitable practices in philanthropy and/or their ideas  on how to transform how resources are distributed here.

In April 2018 NCRP joined a new campaign to rally movement leaders to hold funders accountable who espouse racial equity values but whose actions harm communities, especially Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC). The campaign has relaunched this summer and issued a new call for stories of funder hypocrisy:

#DisruptPhilanthropyNOW! is a loving invitation to our colleagues, friends, and comrades in the racial justice movement to say “enough!” We need to speak the truth about the impact of the current grantmaking system. We can no longer protect our own resources by being silent when we know one of our funder’s unjust practices has devastating effects on other organizations or in the communities where we work… We need to stand in solidarity. We must disrupt inequitable practices and radically transform the philanthropic sector, so we collectively end racism within our lifetime.

When the campaign first started, I wrote about #DisruptPhilanthropyNOW! in the context of NCRP’s own efforts to help nonprofits speak truth to power, and I acknowledged that this remained a challenge, because of ongoing fear of reprisals.

Fast forward, and the sector landscape seems very different today. Racial equity was already becoming a more central focus in philanthropic discourse, as evidenced by the popularity of our 2018 Power Moves guide. In 2020, COVID-19 and the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and so many others by police caused upheavals nationally and shook nonprofits and philanthropy. The differential racial impact of the pandemic magnified longstanding health disparities, and the murders starkly amplified the systemic racism of state sanctioned violence. As a result of these twin crises, hundreds of foundations pledged to ease their grant requirements or made funding commitments to benefit Black communities.

While more foundations are talking the talk on racial equity and trust-based philanthropy than three years ago, how many are thoughtfully walking the walk? Evidence suggests for many foundations that made pledges last year, those changes are temporary. According to the Center for Effective Philanthropy, “most foundations do not plan to undertake these new practices in the future to the degree they are doing so now,” and funders have generally not shown an interest in providing more multiyear general support or diversifying their mostly white boards. And a joint report from PolicyLink and Bridgespan found that only $1.5 billion of the $11.9 billion in 2020 racial equity funding pledges can be tracked to recipient organizations.

Are funders more receptive to critique from their grant partners and the communities they serve when racial equity efforts fall short? Many grantmakers have embarked on this journey with openness and humility, inviting feedback and sharing their missteps and lessons learned. Yet too often, funders still take a defensive posture. When NCRP released publicly-available data on funding for the explicit benefit of Black communities among 25 community foundations, at the request of our nonprofit members, the knee-jerk response from many was to critique the numbers, without providing similar grant-level data of their own. Nor did many wish to admit that even with more accurate data, there is still a wide chasm between funding levels for Black communities and what those communities need and deserve to thrive (or even in proportion with their population size).

This type of defensive stance can inhibit dialogue and make some community leaders skittish about speaking. Thankfully,  we are beginning to see some funders responding with humility and openness and even more BIPOC leaders successfully calling funders to account In May 2020, Black artists publicly criticized the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta for perennially funding almost exclusively white-led arts organizations. After much organizing by local community leaders, the foundation took the critique seriously, met with the arts groups to study the problem, and hosted a town hall. It then changed its eligibility criteria and application process and prioritized Black-led organizations for the next round of grants, in which 85% of arts funding went to Black groups.

Meanwhile, in Washington State, a group of BIPOC executive directors issued a call to action to grantmakers to increase their payout, provide multiyear general support, and invest in BIPOC organizations and their systems-change efforts in response to the pandemic. At least 8 foundations have signed the pledge.

It’s past time for movement leaders and funders to engage in honest conversations. The danger of philanthropic complacency and a return to business as usual is ever present. Even grantmakers with the best intentions and equity commitments will make mistakes and need to hear from their constituents. And if those dialogues don’t go anywhere, then a public accountability action may be the best next step. We’ve seen how it can result in meaningful action.

NCRP didn’t join #DisruptPhilanthropyNOW! just to be a signatory; we are an ally to movements and to our nonprofit members. If justice organizations and other nonprofits want help understanding philanthropy or speaking out about harmful funder practices, please reach out to NCRP and #DisruptPhilanthropyNOW!

We also stand with funders who build, share and wield power with racial justice movements. We encourage these leaders to share their stories of philanthropic hypocrisy to hold up a mirror and promote accountability in the sector.

Lisa Ranghelli is NCRP’s Senior Director for Evaluation and Learning.

Top photo credit: Julian Wan on Unsplash