Who Holds Philanthropy Accountable for Racial Justice? (Dispatches)

Illustration by Maria Mattola

Editor's Note: This is Lisa’s sixth piece in a Chronicle of Philanthropy series that originally focused on grantmaking in the coronavirus era. Recent pieces, including this one, explore philanthropy's role in dismantling a system of racial injustice. You may view the original piece here.

On the Friday evening of the first week of racial-justice protests, I saw a meme on Facebook — an image of a white woman slumped in her chair with a glass of red wine. The caption read, “A week of racism is so exhausting.” I grimaced uncomfortably (though to be clear, I was drinking a beer at the time, not a glass of wine).

Though I have made working toward justice and equity a priority in my grant-making career, it has always been easy for me to take weekends and vacations off from the fight. Although I sing along to Sweet Honey in the Rock singing Ella J. Baker’s words “we who believe in freedom cannot rest,” I have very much been able to rest. My white skin and financial comfort afforded me that privilege, which so many of my Black colleagues, friends, and neighbors do not have.

Now the weight and sorrow of racism has come to rest in my bones in a way it never had before, and it’s clear that all of us in philanthropy, especially those of us who are white, need to do all we can to make change every minute of the day.

I thought hard about that as I listened last week to an amazing webinar with some of the leaders of the Movement for Black Lives, organized by several progressive philanthropic donor networks.

From the very beginning, the grant makers who were facilitating were clear that they were not there to convince us of the value of the work — which should be obvious in this moment. Rather, they were providing us with context and understanding of the work on the ground. They also laid out the role for donors. They called for grant makers to “liberate dollars” for the work, rather than moving money from existing commitments to the Movement for Black Lives.

It was a clear and compelling mandate. It short-circuited the notion that grant makers could sit in that familiar place of judging the work of the grantees and, instead, laid out a mandate: Be part of the movement and moment. Fund the movement “like we wanted it to win.”

Real-Time Check-Ins

They also did something else new to me on grant-maker calls — they are holding us accountable. We were asked to take a survey during the Zoom meeting and told someone would be calling us to follow up. Each of the 672 people on the call (as well as the 300 people who registered but could not join) will receive a call from one of their peers. That’s quick and real-time accountability unlike I’ve seen before in a donor conversation.

Many of my conversations recently have come back to how little accountability there is in philanthropy. I remember during my first year in my foundation job, I kept looking over my shoulder in bewilderment, wondering who was coming in to oversee, to ask us if we were hitting our goals, or whether what we were doing made any sense at all. Our board was there, in the distance, but no other oversight body or clients or constituents or community of peers.

We evaluated our grant making, but if the evaluation was bad — it didn’t really matter. We could finesse it for a board report or chalk it up to “lessons learned.” As long as we keep distributing the minimum 5 percent of assets required by law, we can do whatever we want. Even last week, when one of our signature programs has gotten increasingly complicated and the value of our work to the participants has been called into question, I knew that even if we had screwed it up, even if we had entirely failed at our goals, our very existence would not be questioned.

Sticking to My Goals

I am full of good intentions these days, but I want to be held accountable. When the mayor of Washington had “Black Lives Matter” painted in big yellow letters on the street leading up to the White House, the New York City curfew was lifted, and our mayor made some vague promise about reallocating the police budget, I felt like I could go back to resting, at least a little bit.

But this is the wrong time to take my foot off the gas. It is hard, hard work to keep focus on the personal, organizational, and systemic levels of racism. And I don’t always know how to do it, and I don’t like to work that hard. At the end of a meeting last week, a colleague and I emailed each other our goals for the week in the hope that it would help us stick to them. We will see — I had not achieved any of them by day’s end Friday.

I am committing to working with others at foundations to increase the dollars we give to organizations advancing equity and social justice, to increase our board and staff diversity, and to be deliberate about funding organizations that are led by people of color. I am asking everyone I know to ask me how this is going. It will help me stay accountable.

More important than who will hold me accountable is who will hold philanthropy accountable. Many of us have signed a pledge, converted project funds to general operating, and published statements supporting Black Lives Matter. I am encouraged that more of us are joining the movement to increase the share of assets we distribute beyond the minimum 5 percent and to rethink how we are investing our endowments. I hope that all of us in philanthropy can learn to hold each other accountable for changing the inequitable systems and structures choking our country. We need to make sure that we are funding like we want to win.

Lisa Pilar Cowan is vice president of the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation. This is the fifth article in her series on grant making in the coronavirus era.