As we embark on a new year (and new decade!) I’m offering up some thoughts on what I and really all of us at the Foundation have been thinking about and implementing in the past year.
What comes to my mind first is tough conversations about diversity, equity, and inclusion. This year, as most of our grantee partner organizations know well, we started asking for specific data on the demographic make-up of staff and board of each organization we support through our grant application.
As most of us are well aware, the nonprofit sector (including foundations) is largely made up of White employees and White board members. For example, most research consistently indicates that less than 20% of executive directors/CEOs of nonprofits are people of color. And a 2017 Board Source report found that people of color comprise just 16% of nonprofit board members, nearly identical to 1994 figures, even though they represent 39% of our country’s population.
Since the Foundation’s inception our board and staff have deeply believed that investing in historically divested communities is central to achieving our mission. We also believe that community voice and leadership matters greatly and this has organically translated to questions about decision-making and ultimately asking who is in leadership roles. Looking deeper at who is making decisions at the organizations we support has been a critical first step in our journey to more explicitly center our grantmaking on equity. We also believe grounding our discussions and learning in data will help us become clearer in our vision and values.
What we discovered when we started asking these specific questions was that our portfolio was somewhat representative of the sector as a whole in who is on their staff and board. Of our 2019 grantee partners, 54% of organizations have a majority of staff identifying as people of color and 36% of organizations have a majority of board members identifying as people of color. And we know the majority of the organizations we support are working with and in communities of color or on issues largely impacting communities of color.
This led to some difficult and uncomfortable conversations both with organizations and in our own staff and board meetings with many questions raised. Some of the questions raised internally were: Should we be asking these questions? Why are we asking this? Who should be leading organizations? What communities should be receiving grant dollars and does the leadership matter? What can or should we be doing with this information and what is our role as funders?
To be clear we do not have the answers, and as we start 2020, I am grateful to everyone who engaged with us in these conversations. We are learning so much from asking the questions and hearing your responses. Many of you leading organizations blew me away with your equity-centered thinking and willingness to engage in conversations about who is leading the work and why it matters.
I’d also challenge all of us in this sector to lean into the discomfort, and the awkwardness. We should be asking why, if we’re addressing issues largely impacting people of color, are we as a sector largely led by White people? Why do so few philanthropic dollars go to organizations truly led by, for, and with people of color? And what does this mean for the work and the impact we all want to have?
We’re not conditioned to easily have hard conversations. Trust me, as a privileged White person, and an introvert who was raised by very conflict-averse parents, it’s been a lifelong challenge to have hard conversations, particularly when it comes to race.
But uncomfortable conversations about race, power, and money are urgently important if we truly want to see change. Moving from conversation to action is even more important. If we’re not being brave, we won’t make progress.
So as we embark on a new decade I’m going to keep trying to have hard conversations and reflecting on my role in white supremacy and systemic racism.
If you’re looking for resources, here’s some resources to start with that our staff has engaged with or are planning to do this year:
- Read Decolonizing Wealth
- Read Emergent Strategy
- Participate in the National Day of Racial Healing on January 21, 2020
- Attend an Enrich Chicago/CROAR training: Understanding & Analyzing Systemic Racism
- Read White Fragility (if this is new to you, especially as a White person)
- Attend or host a Race2Dinner event (even more specifically, if you are a white woman)
I’d love to hear other ideas of ways to learn and actions to take. Please share them with us!