Centering Equity In Crises
Diversity Equity and Inclusion was having a moment. It seemed like every company and organization was saying all the right things and backing up its lofty words with resources. Some were even hiring chief diversity officers to double down on their promises (how that’s played out is a different post for a different time).
And then the pandemic hit.
Overnight, the work just stopped. Trainings got canceled. Contracts dried up. Action plans got put on hold. As important as the DEI work is, we in the field heard again and again, now just isn’t the time.
For the record, those of us who live and breathe this work have always considered DEI training, action planning and theorizing the bootcamp not the battle. The training, whether it was understanding privilege, undoing racism or recognizing unconscious bias, was always only to get minds right and bodies ready for when it counted. We practitioners were always crystal clear about our role and responsibility: to prepare organizations and their people to survive in a new world. We never claimed to know what that new world would look like but we knew that it was coming and that it would demand a new set of social and structural arrangements between and among people and organizations. And we always knew that the people best situated to guide these efforts for us all were the ones who had been historically denied access and opportunity inside the old paradigm.
It was in that spirit that I started seeking out the voices of Black/POC nonprofit leaders. At the beginning of April, I began interviewing leaders within and beyond my network. I started with a single, simple question in mind: how were they centering equity in their leadership amid the challenges wrought by COVID 19? The conversations have since evolved to encompass their work with their boards, donors, and programs, but that equity has remained at the core.
I began the project with a sense that the priorities and practices that these diverse leaders were establishing presented crucial insights into the future of leadership and organizational modeling. After just one month, I am certain that philanthropy must listen to, learn from and follow the direction of Black/POC leaders if it hopes to serve the communities of color that are suffering disproportionately from the COVID fallout. Notice I didn’t say just fund them. That is important. But it is equally, if not more important, that the grantee is able to a) access the resources it needs to fulfill its mission and b) is trusted to use those resources in an evolving environment.
On Friday we released the first episode of our podcast series based on these interviews. As it happened, that same day the New York Times published a piece about a new Echoing Green/Bridgespan study purportedly revealing the racial divide in who does and who does not get funded by philanthropy. The report, based on the experiences of Echoing Green applicants and grantees, identified three barriers standing in the way of Black/POC leaders:
establishing connections to funding organizations (relationships)
building rapport with funders (trust)
creating the measurement reports and statistics that funders seek (impact)
Quite frankly, this is basic. Now, I acknowledge I have not read the study in its entirety. (It’s not available on the Echoing Green or Bridgespan website.) But from I gathered, it failed to offer any new insights. Anyone even remotely connected to the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors is well aware that racial barriers are alive and well today.
What strikes me is that we still seem to rely on studies to tell us what we in the field already know and could easily tell the New York Times or any other publication.
Notably, back in November, the same NYT published a piece by Vanessa Daniel, executive director of Groundswell, a foundation for and by women of color, about the very same access gap. In her piece, Daniel defined the the problem not as one of “barriers” but of being “shut out of funding”.
These are two very different propositions. The former frames the issue as a problem that is merely a function of established norms and preferences. We give to those who look like us and with whom we share common experiences. This is the “racism without racists” approach. It gives the impression that if only black and brown folks could get into the room, rub the right elbows and pay for some good data, they would be ok.
The latter frames the issue as a problem of values. A still very white led philanthropic sector imposes its will and worldview on the social sector. It assumes and presumes that thought leaders trained at elite institutions have the best solution for intractable social problems. According Daniel, grassroots Black/POC led nonprofits are not shut out simply because they don’t have access. They are shut out because:
they may not conform to a worldview that prizes scale as the ultimate indicator of impact
they face a presumption of unreliability rooted in deeply held biases against people of color;
the issues facing communities of color are intersectional and therefore more complex than single issue funder priorities;
philanthropy believes policy change comes from white papers and expensive PR strategies rather than collective, community led action;
bias, implicit or otherwise, tilts its gaze toward experts over lived experience.
Everything we thought we understood is being upended and reimagined right now. In this moment, philanthropy has an opportunity to shift its gaze and adopt new paradigms. In the same way essential workers are challenging corporations to establish social and economic dignity as the baseline, leaders of color are challenging philanthropy to respect and resource their work to advance our collective future.
So far, my interviews have revealed promising signs. Foundations are loosening restrictions, releasing funds and providing emergency funding. But we all know this is just the beginning and there are also concerning signs. Foundations are still holding back funds or taking a wait and see approach. We will need philanthropy to continue reimagining its role in and relationship to communities of color, and to fundamentally determine the purpose for which it exists.
In the meantime, I will be sharing some of the leadership insights that I am gleaning from my interviews with leaders of color over the coming weeks. We will take a dive into their emergent priorities, new policies and practices, pressing concerns and fears, and finish with the opportunities they are seeing on the horizon.
I look forward to sharing these exciting insights in the coming weeks