PhilanTopic

No Second-Class Families

(Ben Jealous is president/CEO of the NAACP.)

African Americans have spent much of our history fighting for equal treatment. Just two generations ago, our parents and our grandparents were banned from eating at certain restaurants, attending certain schools, and working in certain professions.

So it's not difficult to empathize with the struggle of immigrants in our country. Like our ancestors who migrated from the former slave states of the Deep South, millions of undocumented immigrants move to the United States each year to find work and a decent education for their children. When they arrive, however, they are confronted with blatant discrimination, racial profiling, and hardly any legal recourse.

As people of color, we have a responsibility to stand up for social justice whenever it is violated. That is why the NAACP has joined other civil rights and human rights organizations, including the Rights Working Group and the Leadership Conference of Civil and Human Rights, to support comprehensive immigration reform.

Across the country, an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants live with permanent second-class status. Many immigrants come to the U.S. to find a better life but find themselves living in the shadows, in constant fear of arrest and deportation. This has a cost.

Undocumented workers are exploited on a regular basis. Many business owners pay low wages and provide dangerous working conditions for their undocumented workers, with little fear of retaliation. They know that their employees have too much at stake to risk contacting the proper authorities.

Undocumented immigrants are also targeted by police. Racial profiling has been legalized in states like Alabama and Arizona under the guise of immigration enforcement. Our national immigration laws, in conjunction with these state laws, encourage local police to stop people of color, whether they are undocumented or not.

Right now Congress is debating a comprehensive immigration bill that will offer a road map to citizenship and also deal directly with workplace discrimination and racial profiling. One proposed provision allows undocumented immigrants to have the full protection of American labor laws. Another provision explicitly prohibits racial profiling by Homeland Security agents -- which, if passed, would make it the first federal law to do so.

The bill in its draft form is not perfect. The racial profiling provision needs adjustments that are being debated at the time of this writing. The bill also contains provisions that would eliminate the diversity visa program -- which helps many African and Caribbean immigrants come to America -- and dramatically expand the guest worker program. The NAACP and our allies will continue to make our voice heard as Congress debates the bill.

In August 1963 a sea of diverse activists descended on the National Mall to demand social justice and an end to segregation. In April 2013 a similarly diverse assemblage of legal immigrants, undocumented immigrants, and activists of all backgrounds gathered at the Capitol to call for an end to second-class citizenship. Just as the March on Washington helped pressure Congress into passing the Civil Rights and Voting acts, this year we need to show Congress that Americans of all stripes care about progressive immigration reform.

As Dr. King said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. If we truly want to discharge the sins of our past, we must ensure there are no second-class families in America.

-- Ben Jealous

Dispatch From the Frontlines: Council on Foundations' 2013 Annual Conference

(Long-time PhilanTopic contributor Michael Seltzer is a trustee of EMpower-the Emerging Markets Foundation and a distinguished lecturer at the Baruch College School of Public Affairs of the City University of New York. He filed this report earlier today from Chicago, site of the Council on Foundation's 2013 annual conference.)

Each year, several thousand grantmakers from around the globe come together at the Council on Foundations' annual meeting to learn, discuss, and network. This week, more than 1,200 donors from 47 states and 17 countries have gathered here in Chicago. Reflective, perhaps, of a longer-term shift in wealth accumulation and the creation of new foundations, the states/regions with the greatest representation here are (host state) Illinois, California, New York, and Washington, D.C., while Canada, Brazil, Mexico, and Great Britain top the list of countries represented at the conference. Another indicator of the changing composition of the field is evident in the large number of new faces. Take it from this philanthropy veteran, a new generation of grantmakers has arrived.

Paul Ylvisaker, the late Ford Foundation officer and a mentor to many veteran foundation leaders, once described foundations as "the passing lane" on the highway to a better world. Entrance ramps to that highway were quite evident in the opening sessions of this week's gathering.

On Saturday, at the annual gathering of the Association of Black Foundation Executives, Maya Wiley, founder and president of the Center for Social Inclusion, focused her remarks on the opportunities available to philanthropy to support solutions to the challenges facing the soon-to-be "majority minority" population in America: people of color. Wiley highlighted examples of grassroots leaders across the country who are working to implement innovative public policies in their communities, cities, and states -- and, through a combination of vision, effective community organizing, and thought leadership, are succeeding in mitigating the structural barriers that for too long have denied access to equal opportunity for people of color, women, and others.

The next day, at the opening plenary (which was moderated by Joyce Foundation president Ellen Alberding), "The Three Mayors” -- Michael Nutter of Philadelphia, Mitch Landrieu of New Orleans, and Rahm Emanuel of Chicago -- echoed Wiley’s message that social change is not only within our reach, it is happening under our noses. Each painfully recounted how alienated teenagers and young men today have turned to guns rather than yesterday's fistfights to settle their disputes, creating a "plague" of gun-related violence in our cities' African-American neighborhoods. But the three also outlined a number of strategies implemented by their respective administrations that, so far in 2013, have proven to be effective in reducing gun-related homicides and shootings.

While the mayors' remarks resonated with those in attendance, conference attendees will long remember the stirring musical performance turned in by the Soul Children of Chicago. The organization -- which uses music to motivate young people to have faith in themselves, each other, and God -- is just one example (albeit an especially inspiring one) of a grantmaker-supported organization that is actually helping African-American youth succeed in life.

Hope and inspiration. It's been a theme of the conference so far, and it reminds me of what philanthropy can accomplish when it seeks out and supports the "possibilists," a term popularized by UC-Berkeley professor John Powell. Indeed, one antidote to the disgust created by what passes for political discourse these days can be found in the uplifting stories told by changemakers on the ground who are crafting actual solutions to real problems and urging others to get involved. Because, as John Powell might say, if we stand together, we can accomplish pretty much anything.

-- Michael Seltzer

Weekend Link Roundup (March 30-31, 2013)

Our weekly roundup of new and noteworthy posts from and about the nonprofit sector....

Black Male Achievement

Here on PhilanTopic, the Open Society Foundation's Shawn Dove, whom we spoke with back in December, announces the launch of BMAfunders.org, a Web portal designed to "facilitate engagement, collaboration, and strategic decision making among funders, nonprofits, and policy makers working to promote positive outcomes for black men and boys in America."

Communications

In a guest post on Kivi Leroux Miller's Nonprofit Communications Blog, Jen Charney, communication manager at the Save the Redwoods League, explains how the organization redesigned its Web site to attract more "uniques" and increase online donations and e-mail subscribers.

Environment

Environmental "cause days" such as Earth Day are great, but what about the other 360+ days of the year, asks Geoff Livingston, author of Welcome to the Fifth Estate, in a recent post on his blog.  "If our culture intends to adapt to climate change," writes Livingston, "our efforts need to increase. First of all, let's not poo-poo the small acts taken. Instead, let's build upon them...."

Impact/Effectiveness

On the Skoll World Forum Up for Debate blog, Darin McKeever, deputy director of the Charitable Sector, Global Policy & Advocacy program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, asks the important question: "How might we accelerate [the] conversation about Big Data into one about Big Information, Big Knowledge, and Big Wisdom?"

Philanthropy

The excellent "forum" feature in the March/April issue of the Boston Review looks at the pros and cons of private philanthropy in America. With a lead essay by Stanford University professor Rob Reich, who argues that private foundations are plutocratic by nature, the package includes essays in response from Paul Brest, Rick Cohen, Pablo Eisenberg, Stanley N. Katz, Larry Kramer, Gara LaMarche, and Robert K. Ross, among others. Highly recommended.

Writing on her Philanthropy 2173 blog, Lucy Bernholz wonders whether proposals submitted to foundation-funded open challenges could serve a larger purpose. "For example, if you were trying to understand the 'state' of community information efforts, would the applications to the Knight News Challenge be a useful source of data in terms of understanding what people out in the world think is important," asks Bernholz. "Do you know anyone who has looked at them as such?"

GiveWell's Holden Karnofsky explains why his organization recommends so few charities, and the concept behind the GiveWell approach. "We recommend few charities by design, because we see ourselves as a 'finder of great giving opportunities’ rather than a 'charity evaluator,'" writes Karnofsky. "In other words, we're not seeking to classify large numbers of charities as 'good' or 'bad'; our mission is solely to identify, and thoroughly investigate, the best."

Social Justice

On the Huffington Post, Janell Ross discusses findings from The American Non-Dilemma: Racial Inequality Without Racism, a new book written by Rutgers University professor Nancy DiTomaso and published by the Russell Sage Foundation. Based on DiTomaso's research, writes Ross, the book argues that

most white Americans engage, at least a few times per year, in...activities that foster inequality. While they may not deliberately discriminate against black and other non-white job seekers, they take actions that make it more likely that white people will be employed -- without thinking that what they're doing amounts to discrimination....

Social Media

Nonprofits using video to engage their supporters should focus on telling stories about people, not programs, ListenIn Pictures co-founder Annie Escobar argues in a guest post on the Getting Attention blog. "The best use of video is not to inform and educate," writes Escobar. "It's to make your audience feel something and through that emotional response, create a connection to your work."

That's it for now. What did we miss? Drop us a line at rnm@foundationcenter.org. And have a good week!

-- The Editors

A New Way to Sustain the Campaign: Foundation Center and Open Society Foundations Launch BMAFunders.org

(Shawn Dove is the campaign manager for the Open Society Foundations' Campaign for Black Male Achievement. The original version of this post appears on Philanthropy New York's Smart Assets blog.)

This June will mark the five-year anniversary of the creation of the Open Society Foundations' Campaign for Black Male Achievement, which was launched in 2008 to address the economic, political, social, and educational exclusion of black men and boys from American society. When I consider the upcoming five-year milestone I can't help but think that the campaign was originally slated to be just a three-year "initiative." But thanks to the determined and focused work of our partners in philanthropy, government, the not-for-profit community, and the private sector, our board extended the campaign's term limit and provided CBMA staff with much-needed breathing room, increased funding, and an opportunity to exhibit bold leadership on behalf of the emerging field of black male achievement.

During the past five years, the work of the campaign, along with the efforts of an evolving group of philanthropic partners and leaders from the policy, advocacy, practitioner, and research sectors, has expanded on the earlier work of funders like the Ford Foundation and the 21st Century Foundation to tackle a seemingly intractable problem. It has been fueled by a broad and diverse sector of organizations that combine a direct services and policy change approach. From the time we launched the CBMA, my daily mantra has been "sustain the campaign" in the belief that the philanthropic sector could not remedy a generational problem facing black men and boys with a short-term grant-cycle mindset.

In partnership with the Foundation Center, we have launched the Web portal BMAfunders.org to facilitate engagement, collaboration, and strategic decision making among funders, nonprofits, and policy makers working to promote positive outcomes for black men and boys in America. It could very well be the pivotal investment that enables this work to gain the sustained philanthropic commitment necessary to overcome the structural and systemic barriers that prevent too many black men and boys from realizing their full potential.

The portal will be the go-to source for data and information related to black male achievement, serving as a resource not only to funders, including affinity groups like the Association of Black Foundation Executives and Grantmakers For Children Youth & Families, but also to nonprofits, policy makers, business leaders, and anyone else interested in the field.

Features of the portal include an interactive mapping tool with funding data, a timeline of philanthropic milestones in the field, a toolkit for assessing project outcomes, a comprehensive collection of research reports, descriptive case studies of work on the ground, and multimedia content. Currently on the site are highlights of the recent Black Male Re-Imagined II, a collaborative effort by the Ford, Knight, and Open Society Foundations to examine strategies for shifting perceptions of black men and boys in America.

BMAfunders.org builds on the groundbreaking 2012 report Where Do We Go From Here? Philanthropic Support for Black Men and Boys, which examines foundation funding flows in support of black men and boys and highlights innovative philanthropic initiatives. The report highlights the deepening funding commitments of foundations such as Knight, Skillman, Robert Wood Johnson, Mitchell Kapor, and the California and Heinz Endowments in the field of black male achievement. The portal also complements the field-building efforts of the Leadership and Sustainability Institute for Black Male Achievement, which seeks to strengthen the infrastructure and sustainability of the growing field of black male achievement.

The portal magnifies the words of Open Society Foundations founder George Soros, who in the afterword of Where Do We Go From Here? states how he hopes the report (and the ensuing launch of BMAFunders.org) "will motivate other philanthropists and foundations to invest in efforts to improve achievement by African American boys and men....[T]his is a generational problem. It demands a long-term commitment."

-- Shawn Dove

Homeownership and the Racial Wealth Gap

I'm 29 and still hopeful I'll be a homeowner one day. Both my parents have owned their homes for years, and it has always been clear to me that the financial and social benefits of owning a home outweigh the benefits of paying less in rent and using the extra income for other things. Even though I know, as an African-American woman with some serious student debt living in one of the most expensive cities in the world, that the odds are stacked against me, I've started taking some steps to make homeownership a possibility in the not-too-distant future.

So you can understand my unease after reading the following in a new study from the Institute on Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis University about the growing wealth gap in the United States:

While homeownership has played a critical role in the development of wealth for communities of color in this country, the return on investment is far greater for white households, significantly contributing to the expanding racial wealth gap shown in [the figure below]. The paradox is that even as homeownership has been the main avenue to building wealth for African-Americans, it has also increased the wealth disparity between whites and blacks....

As the report, The Roots of the Widening Racial Wealth Gap: Explaining the Black-White Economic Divide (8 pages, PDF), notes, homes are the largest investment most American families make, and they are by far the biggest item in a family's "wealth portfolio." For African Americans, home equity represents 53 percent of household wealth, while for whites, who typically have a more diversified wealth portfolio, it accounts for just 39 percent. "Yet, for many years," the report's authors write, "redlining, discriminatory mortgage-lending practices, lack of access to credit, and lower incomes have blocked the homeownership path for African Americans while creating and reinforcing communities segregated by race. African Americans, therefore, are more recent homeowners and more likely to have high-risk mortgages, [making them] more vulnerable to foreclosure and volatile housing prices."

Home ownership is just one of five factors the report's authors identified as contributing to the racial wealth gap in the U.S. -- which, as the figure below shows, has tripled over the past twenty-five years, from $85,000 in 1984 to $236,500 in 2009. Other factors include family income, employment stability, education level, and family financial support and inheritance.

To help all Americans build wealth, the report's authors recommend that the public sector implement a number of broad policy and institutional changes, including:

• taking steps to ensure mortgage and lending policies and fair-housing policies are enforced and strengthened so that the legacy of residential segregation in the United States ceases to be a source of greater wealth opportunities for white homeowners than for African Americans;
• adopting proven policies at the national, state, and local levels to help all Americans access stable employment opportunities and retirement benefits;
• investing in affordable high-quality childcare and early childhood development programs to ensure that every child is healthy and prepared for school;
• supporting policies that help more students from low- and moderate-income families and families of color attend college and graduate;
• supporting policies that do not leave students drowning in debt or left with no option but to drop out of school because they can no longer afford the enormous price tag; and
• eliminating the preferential tax treatment for large estates.

After reading the report, I could't help but wonder what the philanthropic sector, which has grown in size as inequality in America has widened, is doing to address the growing racial wealth gap in the country? And what more can or should it be doing to expand wealth opportunities for all Americans?

What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

-- Regina Mahone

Weekend Link Roundup (March 2-3, 2013)

Our weekly roundup of new and noteworthy posts from and about the nonprofit sector....

African Americans

Washington Post reporter Vanessa Small recaps a recent networking and panel discussion devoted to "young black philanthropy" hosted by boutique marketing firm Friends of Ebonie at National Council of Negro Women headquarters in Washington, D.C. "At one point, the conversation turned to whether wealthy African Americans are doing enough to give back," writes Small, "and by the end of the night, a consensus developed that all African Americans need to do more to hold one another accountable for how they give their time and money."

On one of the last days of Black History Month, a post on the Case Foundation blog celebrated the charity of African Americans:

Giving back and helping others is the fundamental premise of philanthropy and this premise has been a central tenet of African American culture. The distinguished researcher Mary Winters notes in her study on Endowment Building in the African American Community that perhaps out of survival, "Black Americans have been compelled to share and give back from the moment they arrived on the shores of this country. When they have money to give, they give; when there was no money to give, a generous heart, a strong back or a keen mind. As a value, 'giving back' is firmly rooted in black history." Research funded by the Kellogg Foundation supports this belief. The report, Cultures of Giving: Energizing and Expanding Philanthropy by and for Communities of Color, shows that African Americans give 25 percent more of their income [annually] than white Americans. These findings go to show just how deep the spirit of giving runs within the black community....

Communications/Marketing

On her Non-Profit Marketing blog, Katya Andresen shares some highlights from a post by Steve Daigneault at M+R Research Labs about what the Obama reelection campaign got right -- and not so right -- in terms of its digital outreach efforts.

Impact/Effectiveness

In a guest post on the GuideStar blog, Social Solutions co-founder and vice president Adrian Bordone discusses the importance of measuring outcomes, as opposed to outputs, when it comes to social change work.

Meanwhile, over at Social Fish, Jamie Nutter, vice president of organizational effectiveness at Management Solutions, argues that actionable data is better than big data -- and learning trumps both.

Looking for some inexpensive (as in free) productivity apps? Google apps -- Gmail, Calendar, Drive, and others -- are now available free of charge to any nonprofit that has joined the Google for Nonprofits program. Not a member? To learn more, click here.

Leadership

On the Harvard Business Review blog, John McKinley writes that when it comes to identifying leaders who can effect lasting social change, what matters most is resilience. According to McKinley, who manages the Acumen Fund's Global Fellows Program, the three key characteristics of resilient leaders are:

1. Grit: Short-term focus on tasks at hand, a willingness to slog through broken systems with limited resources, and pragmatic problem-solving skills.
2. Courage: Action in the face of fear and embracing the unknown.
3. Commitment: Long-term optimism and focus on big-picture goals.

What's more, says McKinley, "resilience can be trained." At Acumen, he writes, "we focus on building not only the fellows' financial and operational skills, but also what we call "moral imagination," which requires balancing opposing values -- humility and audacity -- to see the world as it is and to imagine the world for what it could be.

Philanthropy

In the latest installment of her Making Change podcast, Hildy Gottlieb, author of The Pollyanna Principles, chats with Foundation Center president Brad Smith about why foundations should pay attention to radical thinkers and six factors that are driving social change globally.

On the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy’s Keeping a Close Eye blog, Niki Jagpal and Kevin Laskowski remind us that foundations have been supporting social justice movements for decades. "The Ford Foundation, for example, was a critical source of funding for groups such as the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)," they write. And as the social justice movement presses on, "philanthropy has a special opportunity to strengthen American democracy. All of us in the third sector, especially leaders and supporters of nonprofits on the frontlines of fighting injustice, can keep this momentum going by being effective advocates for social justice giving."

The first issue of Philanthropy Impact magazine, a UK-based quarterly that aims "to make sense of and inspire philanthropy in a domestic and international context," is available has a free download (8 pages, PDF). The issue, which was guest edited by Philanthrocapitalism co-author Michael Green, includes articles on the urgent need for better data to understand and strengthen giving, why narratives matter in philanthropy, and why impact assessment tells us little about whether charities are effective and deserve our support.

Social Change

And on the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog, Kristen Grimm, president of Spitfire Strategies, a PR firm that works exclusively with foundations and nonprofits, identifies seven common blind spots that sneak into change strategies and a four-step process for identifying and eliminating them -- before they sabotage even the most worthy campaigns.

That's it for now. What did we miss? Drop us a line at rnm@foundationcenter.org. And have a good week!

-- The Editors

5 Questions for…Cheryl Dorsey, President, Echoing Green

Social innovation and entrepreneurship are two of the most powerful tools available to those committed to black male achievement. So argued Cheryl Dorsey, president of Echoing Green, a global social venture fund based in New York City, at the Innovation and Impact Forum hosted by the Open Society Foundations' Campaign for Black Male Achievement last October. In part, added Dorsey, that's because they have captured the attention of, and increasingly are being driven by, a millennial generation interested in a networked, technology-enabled model of social change.

In 2012, Echoing Green partnered with OSF to launch the Black Male Achievement Fellowships and announced the first cohort of BMA fellows in June. Earlier this month, the organization announced the 2013 semi-finalists for both the Echoing Green and Black Male Achievement Fellowships.

Recently, PND spoke with Dorsey about the BMA fellowship program, her own experience as a social entrepreneur, and the role of public policy in the field of black male achievement.

Philanthropy News Digest: What did you think of President Obama's State of the Union Address?

Cheryl Dorsey: I think the president's address presented a call for effective collaboration to solve crucial problems in our country. Many people make it their life's work to try to solve tough problems, from engineers working to create microchips that are smaller but carry more information to community bankers seeking to provide greater access to capital and teachers seeking to help more children in the classroom move ahead. President Obama's State of the Union address was a call for those who are on this path of enterprise, service, and innovation to work together.

These are the principles at the heart of the work of our fellows, who strive every day to solve some of the challenges and problems the president laid out in his speech. When the president talks about reducing the cost of solar energy, I think about 2012 Black Male Achievement Fellow Donnel Baird, who is doing important work to make clean energy accessible to all communities, especially low-income communities. When the president talks about expanding service opportunities for young people, I think about Echoing Green alums like Wendy Kopp, Alan Khazei, and Michael Brown, visionary leaders of the national service movement. The State of the Union address made me think about how Echoing Green can continue to support our fellows who are out there on the front lines in communities across the country and around the world.

PND: Last June, you announced the first cohort of Black Male Achievement Fellows. What were your hopes for the initiative? And have you been pleased with the response?

CD: Echoing Green was incredibly honored when we were approached by Shawn Dove and Rashid Shabazz, who head up the Open Society Foundations' Campaign for Black Male Achievement. After many in-depth conversations, it became increasingly clear that our twenty-five-year record of accomplishment in terms of identifying and supporting top early-stage, next-generation social innovators was a terrific complement to the campaign's comprehensive approach to the issue.

While you might say the campaign tapped Echoing Green because of our "process expertise" in social innovation and social angel investing, we were also very much aligned intellectually and emotionally with the goals of the campaign. Quite a few of our global network of five-hundred-plus social entrepreneurs over the years had worked on issues related to black male achievement, so the opportunity to bring into the social innovation pipeline a new generation of talent committed to these issues was appealing.

Needless to say, we are simply thrilled with the early response to the program. In the first two fellowship application cycles alone, we received nine hundred and fifty applications on average from across the country. For a newly minted fellowship program without any accumulated brand equity, that's quite something. And we think the response underscores the important and useful synergy between two social movements -- the deep intensity and focus of those working in the area of black male achievement married with the growing interest in and energy of the global youth social entrepreneurship movement.

PND: Did your own experience as a recipient of an Echoing Green Fellowship shape your vision for the BMA Fellowship initiative?

CD: Very much so! Receiving an Echoing Green Fellowship in 1992 to help start the Family Van, a community-based mobile health unit focused on the issue of black infant mortality in inner-city Boston, quite simply changed my life. The investment by Echoing Green in the Campaign for Black Male Achievement is not simply about funding; it's much more about opening up fledging social entrepreneurs to a network of peers, experienced mentors, and advisors who are deeply committed to the professional and personal growth of social change agents. Echoing Green recognized that we could bring our highly engaged network to bear on the Black Male Achievement Fellowship and leverage all the forms of capital -- social, financial, et cetera -- residing in the network for those committed to issues of black male achievement.

My colleague Decker Ngongang, who runs the Black Male Achievement Fellowship program for Echoing Green, recently wrote a blog post highlighting a few of our BMA Fellows. I think the post does a nice job of illustrating the kind of knowledge and wisdom -- past and present -- that lives within our network and social innovation ecosystem.

PND: While the Echoing Green Fellowships support social entrepreneurs from around the world, the BMA Fellowships are specifically focused on the male African-American population in the U.S. Is this a strategic shift for Echoing Green?

CD: For us, the Black Male Achievement Fellowship is not so much a strategic shift but rather a unique opportunity to focus our strategy where we see an opportunity to have increased impact. One of Echoing Green's mantras has always been that you must strive to scale your impact rather than your growth. We saw in the partnership with Open Society Foundations an opportunity to leverage the resources, brand, and breadth of that institution to smartly scale our own impact.

PND: In addition to being a social entrepreneur, you served as a White House Fellow and in the Labor Department during Bill Clinton's second term and on the transition team for the Innovation and Civil Society subgroup of the Technology, Innovation, and Government Reform Policy Working Group in the first Obama administration. You also continue to serve as vice chair for the President's Commission on White House Fellowships. What do you think the role of public policy should be in the field of black male achievement?

CD: Good public policy can set the stage for new programs that otherwise might not be incubated. Structural barriers to black male achievement in America are not new, but we have struggled to catalyze innovative solutions that could be game changers for black men and youth. A policy environment that brings attention to and keeps the focus on black male achievement, incentivizes the deployment of financial resources and top talent around the issue, and privileges collaboration and the replication of proven concepts is key to moving the needle. I'm excited, for example, about the work that New York City, which recently launched the Young Men's Initiative, is doing to model this kind of public policy behavior. For those who don't know, the city plans to invest more than $43 million a year over the next three years in both public and private funds to find new ways to connect with, and help, marginalized black and Latino young men. And it plans to do it through a comprehensive approach that involves education, health, employment training, and justice systems. If successful and widely replicated, it's a public-private model that has the potential to effect positive change in the lives of men and boys of color all across the country.

-- Kyoko Uchida

Closing the Achievement Gap for African-American Males: An Economic Imperative

(Angela Glover Blackwell is the founder and CEO of PolicyLink, an Oakland-based national research and action institute working to advance economic and social equity. She currently serves on the President's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and is a co-author, with Stewart Kwoh and Manuel Pastor, of Uncommon Common Ground: Race and America's Future.)

In the United States, a black public school student is suspended every four seconds, while every 27 seconds a black high school student drops out of school. Black students are also 3.5 times more likely than white students to be suspended or expelled. Within this group, black male students fare the worst.

At PolicyLink, our mission is to achieve equity by "Lifting Up What Works." We find innovations and strategies that expand opportunity and, working with local partners, get what's working into policy so that effective innovations are more widely disseminated. We are particularly inspired by the strategies being employed by the Oakland Unified School District, where in 2008-09 only 49 percent of black males graduated, compared with 72 percent of white males and 61 percent district-wide, and where 18 percent of African-American males were expelled at least once, compared with 3 percent of white male students and 8 percent of students district-wide.

In response to those disturbing numbers, OUSD opened an Office of African American Male Achievement (AAMA) in 2010. With funding from Atlantic Philanthropies, the Mitchell Kapor Foundation, the Stuart Foundation, the California Endowment, and Kaiser Permanente, AAMA is working to change educational outcomes for young men of color -- and in the district as a whole -- in innovative ways. For instance, many Oakland high schools and middle schools now offer Manhood Development Classes, in which African-American men from the community teach skills designed to help students navigate the conflicting value systems they experience in different areas of their lives. Family and parent summits at each school include "data walks" where parents and kids are provided with charts detailing educational outcomes at the school as well as where the gaps in access and learning occur. And those efforts are bearing fruit: in 2012 the U.S. Department of Education announced a voluntary resolution of the compliance review initiated against OUSD regarding the disproportionate harshness and frequency of disciplinary measures meted out to African-American students. The district has even been cited as a model for other districts across the country due to its intense efforts to improve in this area.

Why is an initiative in one California city important? For starters, the country is undergoing a profound demographic transformation. In 2012, for the first time, more than half of all babies born in the United States were born to people of color. As that trend continues, the very racial and ethnic groups that traditionally have been left behind will account for an ever larger share of the population, so that by 2042 the U.S. will be a "majority minority" nation. On the way to that milestone, demographers expect a majority of U.S. youth to be of color by 2018, and a majority of the young workforce to be of color by 2030.

How will that changing workforce fare in the global economy? Forty-five percent of all U.S. jobs in 2018 are projected to require at least an associate's degree, yet among today's workers only 27 percent of African Americans have achieved that level of education. Closing the wide and persistent racial gap in educational attainment is not only the right thing to do; it is an economic imperative and the key to building the kind of workforce the American economy needs to thrive in the twenty-first century.

Turning today's youth into tomorrow's skilled workers and innovators is critical to restoring America's growth and competitiveness. Given the demographic trends, political, education, business, and community leaders, together with philanthropists, must address the gaping racial disparities in educational outcomes, income, health, and employment that serve as a drag on the economy and diminish its potential. Oakland is unique in that it has acknowledged and is addressing the systemic inequities in its school system, implementing programs that directly target students most at risk.

OUSD has focused on changing the culture of its schools, training teachers to be more aware of their biases and revamping a disciplinary system that in the past has responded to behavioral issues by removing students from the classroom -- and thus from the opportunity to learn. By improving educational outcomes for young men of color, we are better positioned to leverage everyone's talents and creativity to build a twenty-first century economy that works for all.

Oakland has the right idea. It takes a sustained and collaborative effort on the part of government, business, funders, parents, and other members of the community to provide young people with a clear path to a prosperous future. Yet we too often fail to target our resources to those who need them most. Young boys and men of color can and must be co-creators of our collective economic future. We at PolicyLink believe it is imperative that funders and leaders around the country come together now to support similar efforts to address systemic inequities and close the educational attainment gap. Nothing less than our future is at stake.

-- Angela Glover Blackwell

5 Questions for...Melissa Bradley, Chief Executive Officer, Tides

Created in 1926 by historian Carter G. Woodson, who designated the second week of February as "Negro History Week," Black History Month today serves as a reminder of the challenges and triumphs of the African diaspora in the United States and around the globe.

"Despite [Woodson's] original intentions and the federal expansion of the week into a month, critics rightly argue that African Americans and other people of color are still viewed as the exception to the majority white rule, and that this marginalization continues to be pervasive," argues Tides CEO Melissa Bradley on the organization's What's Possible blog. "We must fully embrace that this 'exception' of race is the rule -- as data shows -- and more justly distribute resources and elevate opportunities to pursue true equity."

Bradley joined the San Francisco-based organization as CEO in 2010 and, over the last few years, has helped boost its capacity to facilitate African-American donor engagement and support of African-American communities through a variety of programs. One such program, 21CF Powered by Tides, engages philanthropists and community leaders to address the opportunities and challenges facing African Americans and "new majority communities" globally.

Recently, PND interviewed Bradley about the program, Tides' work in the impact investing space, and philanthropy's support for human rights/racial justice initiatives.

Philanthropy News Digest: Tell us about the Twenty-First Century Foundation Powered by Tides program. How did it come about? And how does it support Tides' stated goal of "scaling the growth of African American donors and supporting new majority communities that are lacking financial and social capital"?

Melissa Bradley: Before moving back to Washington, D.C., in 2004, I lived in Harlem, where I became very familiar with the Twenty-First Century Foundation, which at the time was working independently to encourage strategic giving for change in the African-American community, as well as many of its grantees in the neighborhood. I even volunteered at one of them. So I was a longstanding supporter of and contributor to the organization before it joined the Tides Network last year.

Like many other intermediary foundations focused on addressing the needs of one group or subset of the general population, 21CF’s business model was contingent on large private foundations giving smaller public foundations money that they would then re-grant. Once 21CF realized there was a disconnect between the availability of funds and its growth prospects, we started talking about how Tides could be of help.

For us, the merger was more about being able to preserve the history and relationships 21CF had forged, both within the African-American community and also beyond California. I think the majority of people assume that most of Tides' work is done in California. But we actually have a national presence, including an office and building that we co-own in New York City, as well as an office in Washington, D.C. So the merger was an opportunity for us to expand our geographic footprint among donors and doers in New York and around the country.

The partnership supports Tides' goal of growing the African-American donor community, in that we now sponsor many of the programs 21CF had started. For instance, 21CF initiated an African-Latino Diaspora initiative with the Baobá Fund for Racial Equality in Brazil, and we have continued that effort, actually accelerating some of the deliverables. 21CF also accomplished a lot in terms of grassroots organizing, and as a result of that work we have been convening, and looking at how to support, many of those organizations. So, while we’re continuing some of the organization's work, we're also expanding on it to engage donors and communities who had not had exposure to 21CF before, and walking the work it had started across the country through our networks.

PND: What other programs and tools has Tides created to assist groups and individuals involved in this kind of work?

MB: We are about to complete work on our three-year business/strategic plan and a couple of things have come out of that process. One, we decided to refine and grow the core aspect of our business by promoting the use of donor-advised funds and collective action funds. With so many organizations competing for resources, we believe we need to be proactive in expanding our fiscal sponsorship work. So that's our number-one priority, in terms of just really pushing, promoting, and growing the programs we currently have.

In terms of new programs, one of the things that will help us meet our long-range strategy is engaging more people in the act of philanthropy and in the work of the social sector. So the second area we’ll be focused on is impact investing, which we have been doing for more than fifteen years, although not as part of the larger conversation.

And the final area we'll be focusing on is employee resource groups at large corporations. These groups contain individuals who haven't yet figured out how to leverage their corporate contributions, and in many cases the groups themselves don’t have a national network they can tap into. Under the leadership of 21CF Powered by Tides vice president Toby Thompkins, we will work to help these groups set up a more formal philanthropy program and connect them to other groups across the country. We see the effort as tying into our goal of democratizing philanthropy, as well as with our belief that regardless of whether you have $5 million or $5, your contribution and willingness to serve is important.

PND: As you mentioned, Tides was an early proponent of impact investing. What have you learned from your work in that field?

MB: In 2010, when I first arrived, we surveyed our clients who had done impact investing and a couple of things became clear. For starters, we learned that it's still a nascent field, and that people are struggling with how to define a "good" investment. Now, as we work with donors, we advise them to learn more about a project before investing by examining trends within the sector, potential outcomes, and so on. Our research shows that "good" investments all involve a significant amount of preparation by donors/investors.

The second thing we learned is to be patient. I think within the philanthropic community, there's an expectation that a donor will exit a program within ten years. But the impact investor is learning that their commitments are not business as usual and that more time may be required to achieve a project's goal.

And the third thing we learned is that while there are a great many new evaluation tools out there, qualitative data counts the most. Many of our clients have told us that it's about finding the right balance between qualitative and quantitative measures.

PND: How would you characterize philanthropy's support for human rights/racial justice initiatives and programs?

MB: I think philanthropy's support for human rights and racial justice is strong but maybe not always self-evident because of how little the public knows about those areas or philanthropy in general. One of the things we have found through our racial justice equity work is that there are tons of people and institutions focused on racial equity and racial justice, but if you were to ask the average person who, beyond the key players -- those featured in national media -- is funding this work, that person would be hard pressed to name more than a few foundations. So while there's a significant amount of support for human rights and racial justice in this country, a lack of public knowledge about the details tends to hold us back a bit.

That said, it won't surprise anyone to hear me say that more needs to be done. If you look at philanthropy in the U.S. alone, there is definitely not enough money flowing to human rights and racial justice initiatives and programs. And as new issues emerge, there will always be needs, unfortunately, that go unmet.

I also think a lot more advocacy work needs to be done, from the community level on up, to really get people to focus on legislation and policies that address systemic issues of race and discrimination in this country. It's one thing to be able to invest in changing a person’s mind, but at the end of the day it's the rule of law that tacitly endorses many of the inequities that exist in America, and so there’s a huge opportunity there, I think, that is being missed.

PND: What would you say to those partners who are nervous about supporting or advocating on behalf of underserved communities?

MB: I would say they should talk to other people doing this work to get a better understanding of what to expect in terms of a community response. If, after they do that, they are still hesitant, they should consider partnering with an organization like Tides. We are ready and willing to be out there, to support and invest in things we think will have a real impact and create lasting change, projects that sometimes make people uneasy. And if they don’t want to be aligned with us or anyone else, then I would say to them to at least consider being part of the solution. Groups don't have to fund this work, but they can help us spread information and knowledge through their networks. The benefits of educating and organizing people are huge. So if they don't want to put their money out there and have their support counted in that way, they certainly can -- and should -- help us organize other people around this important work.

-- Regina Mahone

[Infographic] Healthy Food and Community Change in NYC

On Thursday, the New York City-based Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund launched its Healthy Food & Community Change initiative with a commitment of $15 million over five years for healthy food programs across the city.

As the fund-created infographic below illustrates, there are vast disparities in diet-related diseases across New York City. The initiative aims to address these disparities by supporting strategies designed to increase the availability, affordability, and knowledge of healthy foods while promoting healthy food choices in high-need neighborhoods.

In everything it does, the fund tries to leverage its impact through partnerships with nonprofits and other foundations, public-sector agencies, businesses, colleges and universities, and individuals. Do you know of any efforts that have made headway against the food-desert problem and or diet-related diseases? Share them with us -- and the folks at the Illumination Fund -- in the comments section below....

-- Mitch Nauffts

On 'Race, History, and Obama's Second Term'

On January 25, Washington Monthly, in partnership with the New America Foundation, marked the publication of its January/February issue by hosting a two-hour panel discussion on "Race, History, and Obama's Second Term." Led by WM editor-in-chief Paul Glastris, the panel sought to do something "that doesn't much happen in Washington...[that is,] talk frankly about questions of race."

First, though, a factoid, courtesy of political scientist Daniel Q. Gillion: President Obama -- who was sworn in to office for a second four-year term on January 21, a hundred and fifty years after Abraham Lincoln formally issued the Emancipation Proclamation during the American Civil War -- mentioned race fewer times in his first two years in office than any other Democratic president since 1961.

The panelists -- Douglas Blackmon, author of Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans From the Civil War to World War II and a contributing editor at the Washington Post; Elijah Anderson, author of the Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life and William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Sociology at Yale University; Taylor Branch, an award-winning author and historian; and Dr. Gail Christopher, vice president for program strategy at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation -- engaged in a conversation on race in America while answering a series of questions posed by Glastris: What is the state of race relations in America a century and a half after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation? Have we progressed as much as we like to think we have? Why are people of color in America still subject to disparities in health, wealth, education, and incarceration? What might President Obama do in his second term to narrow these disparities? And, at a time of reduced social and economic mobility, what policies that help minorities can also benefit the majority?

Blackmon discussed his book Slavery By Another Name, now a PBS documentary, which argues that contrary to popular belief, forms of slavery persisted in America for another hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War. Under the Thirteenth Amendment, involuntary servitude was legal as punishment for a crime and continued to impact millions of African Americans in the rural South, thanks to the efforts of white supremacists and others who, with the connivance of local and state courts, "reconfigured the criminal justice system...to force huge numbers of African Americans into hard labor." While the amendment paved the way for the short-term reconstruction of the South, said Blackmon, it also helped revitalize the cotton-based economy of the region and made possible a system that was harsher and, in many instances, more brutal than the "peculiar institution" that preceded it. The repercussions are still with us. "We can see it in the persistent disparity between whites and blacks," said Blackmon -- and that is why, he added, we must acknowledge and confront the enormity of what was done to African Americans, before and after the Civil War, if we are to fully heal and move beyond our dark past.

Next up, Elijah Anderson discussed his most recent piece for Washington Monthly, which looks at how racial prejudice in America has changed over the past sixty years by comparing the murder in Mississippi of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955 and the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida last February. Beyond the fact that both were killed after purchasing candy from a local corner store, Till and Martin were both victims of what Anderson called "different strains of racial tension in America." The racism that led to Till's death, said Martin,

was embedded in a virulent ideology of white racial superiority born out of slavery and the Jim Crow codes, particularly in the Deep South. That sort of racism hinges on the idea that blacks are an inherently inferior race, a morally null group that deserves both the subjugation and poverty it gets.

The racial prejudice that led to Trayvon Martin's death is different. While it, too, was born of America's painful legacy of slavery and segregation, and informed by those old concepts of racial order -- that blacks have their "place" in society -- it in addition reflects the urban iconography of today's racial inequality, namely the black ghetto, a uniquely urban American creation....

Anderson went on to explain the concept of the "iconic ghetto," an idea rooted in older forms of racism that identified African Americans with a specific physical context -- such as the field or maid's quarters -- and which often punished them when they were encountered out of that context. Today, said Anderson, African-Americans are identified, in the minds of many Americans, with the ghetto, and when an African-American individual is encountered in, say, a wealthy neighborhood,  he or she is often "treated with suspicion, avoided, pulled over, frisked, arrested -- or worse." It is this strain of racially based tension that led to Martin's death, Anderson said, and it is one of the things that continues to hold America back from making progress on the racial front.

Taylor Branch followed Anderson at the lectern. Best known as the author of America in the King Years, his magisterial three-volume chronicle of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights movement, Branch explained how King was unable to get President John F. Kennedy to issue a second Emancipation Proclamation outlawing segregation on the one-hundred-year anniversary of the original proclamation. Kennedy's failure to act was a turning point for King and the movement, said Branch, because it was then that King realized he had to "go to Birmingham and essentially recreate those conditions -- not a full-fledged Civil War, but something that dramatized the moral imperative of the segregation issue in America."

Branch also noted that over the next five years the nation will celebrate a series of fiftieth anniversaries linked to crucial moments in the civil rights movement -- from the assassination of NAACP field director Medgar Evers in Mississippi in June 1963, to the March on Washington and Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech later that summer, to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Like many in the audience, Branch seemed to be looking forward to celebrating how far we've come since those violent, traumatic days, but he also noted that recent events like the shooting of Trayvon Martin serve as a reminder that too many people are "still imprisoned by a Reconstruction, post-Civil War blindness that shapes the whole landscape such that we're not even aware of it. Until we get as comfortable talking about race as we are about sports," Branch added, "we are just not there."

Last to the podium, Dr. Christopher discussed the work of the Kellogg Foundation in addressing "the legacy, not of race, but of racism -- an important distinction -- and the belief system that undergirds the history we speak of that somehow there is a [racial] hierarchy which has been embedded in every system we have and is not conscious in most of us." Christopher reminded the audience that issues of race are not simply black or white but are something that affect all of us. She explained that Kellogg partnered with Washington Monthly because media "shapes our consciousness and...project[s] a lot of the confusion [about race in America]." Moreover, the foundation believes it can play a role in helping the country heal its racial wounds by supporting media efforts to give voice to those that "have courage to tell the stories that make us who we are as a country."

Christopher added that a lot of work needs to be done to "put legs on" the unconscious bias concept and to help change the minds of people who are unaware that they are biased against a particular race or ethnic group. To that end, she briefly discussed the work of Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner, whose 2004 book Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other People’s Minds argues that people underestimate how difficult it is to persuade people to adopt a different attitude or perspectice. As hard as it may be, said Christopher, "This is the unfinished business of our time, and we must rise to the challenge [if we are] to become one America."

What do you think? Do you agree with the panelists that America still has a long way to go to realize Dr. King's dream of equality for all? If so, how might social justice funders and activists go about addressing the many barriers to change? Use the comments section to share your thoughts....

And don't forget to check out the webcast of the event.

-- Regina Mahone

Weekend Link Roundup (February 2-3, 2013)

Our weekly roundup of new and noteworthy posts from and about the nonprofit sector....

Diversity

Writing on the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy's Keeping a Close Eye blog, Owen Dunn shares highlights from remarks made by Karen Kelley-Ariwoola at a meeting of the Association of Black Foundation Executives in April 2012. In her remarks, Kelley-Ariwoola, a former vice president of community philanthropy at the Minneapolis Foundaton, describes her work with community groups to address racial equity issues in a region where many white people thrive while "low-income people of color suffer from disparities on every indicator."

In celebration of Black History Month, Center for High Impact Philanthropy program manager Autumn Walden chats with Sherrie Deans, executive director of the Admiral Center, about philanthropy in the African-American community, which, argues Deans, is an "important yet overlooked part of black history."

Gun Violence

Getting Attention's Nancy Schwartz suggests that nonprofit communicators can learn a thing or two from former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. Giffords, who was critically wounded by a deranged gunmen at a public event two years ago and has been fighting to recover from her injuries, slowly but clearly articulated her message that the time has come to address gun violence in America. "We must do something," Giffords told committee members. "It will be hard, but...[y]ou must act. Be bold. Be courageous, Americans are counting on you."

Nonprofits

In a post republished on Beth Kanter's blog, Beth Noveck, former U.S. deputy chief technology officer for open government, discusses findings from Information for Impact: Liberating Nonprofit Sector Data, a recently published report she co-authored with Daniel Goroff, program director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. In the report, Noveck and Goroff argue that Form 990 data should be made available to the general public at no charge and in a format that lends itself to "doing aggregate analytics, creating visualizations and building analytic tools." In turn, writes Noveck, that "will enable more innovators, researchers, and entrepreneurs to use the data to benefit the sector."

To learn more about open data, the report, and the Aspen Institute's Program on Philanthropy and Social Innovation, which commissioned the report, check out this video of a recent panel discussion featuring the authors; Jonathan Greenblatt, director of the White House's Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation; and Aspen's Jane Wales and Cinthia Schuman Ottinger. (Running time: 1:46:04)

Philanthropy

On her Nonprofit Marketing Blog, Katya Andresen shares findings from a recent report on "nex-gen" donors issued by the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy at Grand Valley State University and 21/64, a nonprofit consulting firm. Among other things, the report, Next Gen Donors: Respecting Legacy, Revolutionizing Philanthropy (80 pages, PDF), found that high-net-worth Gen X and Geny Y (Millennial) individuals "care about impact and want to feel personally tied to the causes they support. Family heavily influences their choices of causes....[And they are serious]...about making real change and how heavily they use technology to engage with causes."

On the Council on Foundation's What Matters Now blog, Michael Bzdak, director of corporate contributions for Johnson & Johnson, applauds Bill Gates' call for a more thoughtful and holistic approach to measurement. "Implicit in Gates' essay," writes Bzdak,

is the fact that funders and grantees require the capacity and proficiency to set clear goals and design the means to measure progress. This shared responsibility creates an opportunity for meaningful dialogue and collaboration and could deliver the innovations in measurement that Gates suggests. Although measurement can be very complex and difficult, grantmakers have a responsibility to make it one of their core competencies....

For more on the emerging field of data-driven philanthropy, check out the remarks by self-described data wonk Lucy Bernholz at a recent Girl Geek Dinner. (Running time: 19:10)

Social Entrepreneurship/Innovation

Jane Chen, the CEO and co-founder of Embrace Innovations, a social enterprise that has developed a low-cost infant warmer that regulates the temperature of vulnerable newborns without the need for constant electricity, explains on the Harvard Business Review blog network why she decided to split the enterprise into two organizations: a nonprofit arm that would own the intellectual property for the technology, take philanthropic contributions, and build an ecosystem around which Chen and her colleagues could help promote newborn health; and a for-profit arm that would raise money from venture capitalists.

In her monthly "10 Great Social Innovation Reads" post, Social Velocity's Nell Edgington shares links to four different sets of predictions for the coming year, an article by Matthew Forti and Colin Murphy in the Stanford Social Innovation Review about what President Obama's successful reelection campaign can teach nonprofits about measurement, and a post by Foundation Center president Brad Smith about the unique freedom of foundations "not to forget" those whom society has forgotten.

Transparency

On the Foundation Center's Transparency Talk blog, Jacqueline Ackerman, project coordinator for the Million Dollar List at Indiana University's School of Philanthropy, explains why the list is useful to high-net-worth donors, nonprofits, the media, and the general public. "Perhaps the most significant benefit of the [list] is that it promotes transparency in philanthropy," she writes. What's more,

Donors have provided their own information to the [list] in order to help provide a clearer picture of patterns and trends in million-dollar gifts. At the same time, the [list's] transparency offers donors the opportunity to leverage and coordinate their giving in supporting particular organizations or causes....

Women and Girls

Finally, on the Impatient Optimists' blog, Melinda Gates looks beyond the 2015 target date for achieving the Millennium Development Goals to share the different hopes and visions of prominent activists in the space for 2030.

That's it for now. What did we miss? Drop us a line at rnm@foundationcenter.org. And have a great week!

-- The Editors

The Archives of U.S. Foundations: An Endangered Species (Part 1)

(John E. Craig, Jr. is executive vice president and COO of the New York City-based Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that works to "promote a high performing health care system." A version of this post originally appeared on the Foundation Center's Transparency Talk blog).

A foundation's archives preserve records of the programs, activities, products, governance, people, and history of the organization that may have enduring cultural, historical, research, or institutional value. Yet despite the important role archives play in a field that focuses on investing in ideas, a recently released survey about foundation record management practices reveals that only a small minority maintain foundation archives. Clearly, there is a need to make a case for why foundations should devote resources to archive development and management. And there are at least six compelling reasons for why foundations should give their inactive files and historical records serious attention.

1. Historical Research on Social and Economic Developments and Influential Institutions and Individuals.
The late Paul Ylvisaker described philanthropy as "America's passing gear," and foundations serve this purpose in numerous ways: by helping to launch movements (such as civil rights, environmental protection, or health care reform); by developing new institutions and strengthening existing ones; by making society more inclusive through support of programs to improve the lot of vulnerable populations; by building up the knowledge base for social improvements and scientific advancement and, through the support of individual researchers, contributing to the nation’s intellectual capital; and by strengthening the social fabric and physical capital of the communities in which foundations operate. In the hands of good researchers, the records of foundations can provide guidance for future generations in tackling new and continuing social problems. For example, no history of the civil rights movement would be complete without access to the permanent records of the Ford Foundation; no history of the development of the "miracle" rice strains that sparked the Green Revolution, which helped transform Southeast Asian societies in the 1960s and 1970s, would be complete without the records of the Rockefeller and Ford foundations; and no history of the healthcare reform legislation of 2010 would be complete without the records of the Commonwealth Fund, the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and other national and regional healthcare philanthropies.

2. Promoting Accountability in the Foundation Sector
The permanent records of foundations help foster accountability among this very privileged group of institutions. Foundations, given their exemption from most federal and state taxes, owe it to the public to provide clear and accessible records of how they have conducted their business and what they have accomplished -- records that enable rigorous independent assessments of the impact of foundations’ strategies and programmatic investments.

3. Protecting the Foundation Sector and Defending Institutions from Misinformed Attacks
Individual foundations and the sector as a whole periodically come under attack -- by regulators, elected officials, the media, or academics. In the absence of good historical records, foundations are at risk of not being able to make their case for being tax-exempt convincingly, or they may simply be caught flatfooted in being able to produce records of their accomplishments and actual behavior.

4. Facilitating Strategic Planning and Fostering a Learning-from-Experience Culture
Archival records enrich the research base for consideration of foundations' future directions and help ensure program continuity. The lessons from earlier experience that they hold can help prevent strategic and tactical mistakes by current and future foundation managers.

5. Ensuring Institutional Memory and Sense of Accomplishment
Permanent archives are also a primary source for the institutional memory that is vital to learning organizations, as well as for the institutional pride that ensures the strong staff morale needed to achieve high performance.

6. Good Management and Administrative Efficiency
Finally, the care given to archives is a beneficial operational discipline, with orderly archives being a reflection of efficient office practices and good management. Inactive records are not allowed to pile up and get in the way of current files and information from inactive files can be retrieved quickly when needed.

2012 Survey of Foundation Archives

As important as archives are for good foundation management, a confidential December 2012 survey of the three hundred largest foundations conducted for the Commonwealth Fund by Mathew Greenwald & Associates found that, even among very large foundations, no more than 20 percent maintain archives. (The survey findings are reported on the Commonwealth Fund Web site.) The surveyed institutions account for approximately 52 percent of the foundation sector's endowment assets, including private, community, corporate, and operating foundations. Among the responding foundations, those with larger endowments and staffs, as well as those that are older, were found to be more likely to maintain archives.

The survey revealed that only 37 percent of the non-archiving large foundations have formal short-term records-retention policies, as required for nonprofits under the 2002 federal Sarbanes-Oxley legislation -- suggesting worrisome laxness or informality with respect to institutional record-keeping within the sector.

The survey also found that most large foundations without archives warehouse their historical records, at least for a time (48 percent), and that many simply allow files to accumulate in their offices (Exhibit 1). While 20 percent of this group chose "doubt the importance of historical records" as a major reason for not maintaining archives, neither cost, privacy, nor confidentiality was identified as a major reason for not maintaining an archive. A sizable number of foundations cited their relatively young age as contributing to their failure to set up archives, explaining that the issue is either something they have not gotten around to or have not needed to address thus far.

For large foundations that do have archives, the survey found that two-thirds manage them in-house; 17 percent place their historical records with independent nonprofit archive centers; 9 percent place records with a historical society, museum, or research library; and 7 percent place them with a university or college archive (Exhibit 2). An example of a very large foundation that historically managed its archives internally but recently switched to the outsourced model is the Ford Foundation. In 2012, Ford selected as its repository the Rockefeller Archive Center, the independent archive organization most often used by large foundations, including, since 1985, the Commonwealth Fund.

In addition, many foundations that maintain archives indicated that they put all important records in them. Foundations generally follow traditional archiving practices in preserving program files, foundation publications, public relations documents, organizational records (for example, board and committee minutes), key administrative records, and, if they have them, photographs, documentaries, and videos. Most institutions do not archive declined proposals and no longer attempt to keep traditional archival material such as officers' calendars. External archive centers typically do not accept financial or human resources records, owing to lack of space and to processing priorities. Most foundations with archives (80 percent) are not preserving important e-mail correspondence, and over half are not archiving Web site information.

Most foundations restrict researchers' access to their archives, but nearly half will permit access if the research objective is deemed worthwhile (Exhibit 3). About a third (31 percent) routinely open their archives to researchers. The most common restriction is on access to administrative records.

The survey also found that the cost of archives varied with foundation size, age, and the nature of the foundation's work. For a 94-year-old, $650 million foundation with extensive intramural program operations and publications like Commonwealth, the annual cost of maintaining an archive is about $100,000. The mean annual cost reported in the survey was $60,000.

Like other institutions, foundations see their archiving system at risk of being overwhelmed by an influx of materials. Even so, foundations with archives seem to be keeping up with the paper flow relatively well: two-thirds say that at least 75 percent of records sent to archives have been processed. And many foundations with archives are using their own information technology systems to advance their archiving objectives, with some quite advanced in doing so. That said, over half of survey respondents say that IT system improvements could improve their archiving performance, while half expect that, over time, their archives will be primarily electronic (Exhibit 4).

Finally, most foundations with assets under several billion dollars find that outsourcing their archives to an external center is more efficient than attempting to build a professional internal archives unit. The survey found that half of foundations using external archives centers find the services, overall, to be "very good" to "excellent," while another 35 percent rate the services "satisfactory." Echoing challenges facing the archiving profession, the chief areas of concern among foundation officers are the timeliness of such centers in processing materials and their ability to use information technology to maximum advantage.

Clearly, the state of foundation archives is a neglected "glasspockets" issue in the sector. In a follow-up post, I will present some recommendations for improving the archiving practices of foundations.

-- John E. Craig, Jr.

2012 Year in Review: Underserved Communities Targeted for Larger Share of Philanthropic Pie

The amount of money flowing to nonprofit organizations serving underserved populations and communities of color, and the number of private funders backing such programs, continued to grow in 2012, even as support for those communities from other sources was declining.

Over the course of the year, a number of foundations announced multimillion-dollar commitments to programs designed to address the needs of underserved communities and communities of color. They included the Ford Foundation, which announced a commitment of $100 million over ten years to extend its Ford Fellows program to young scholars from traditionally underrepresented groups; the Lumina Foundation, which awarded $11.5 million to thirteen partnerships working to increase college graduation rates among Latino-American students; the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which announced an investment of $9.5 million over three years to improve the health and success of boys of color; and the California Community Foundation, which launched a multimillion-dollar initiative to expand educational and employment opportunities for African-American teenage boys in Los Angeles.

A number of corporate grantmakers also stepped up their support for underserved populations. They included Walmart, which through its foundation awarded $3.35 million to six women's foundations working to help economically vulnerable women achieve financial and economic security; AT&T, which announced a huge, $250 million commitment over five years to improve graduation rates among at-risk youth; and the UPS Foundation, which in February awarded $6 million to nearly a hundred and twenty organizations working to promote diversity and support underserved communities across the country and in June announced grants totaling $6.9 million to support the same kind of work globally.

A number of reports on the state of giving to underserved and underrepresented communities released during the course of the year also served to highlight philanthropy's growing interest in underserved and -represented communities. In January, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation issued Cultures of Giving: Energizing and Expanding Philanthropy by and for Communities of Color (112 pages, PDF), which describes how identity-based funds -- funds specifically designed to pool contributions from donors and redistribute those funds through grants to individuals or organizations working at the community level -- have become essential drivers of social change. In February, Funders for LGBTQ Issues released Forty Years of LGBTQ Philanthropy: 1970–2010 (44 pages, PDF), which found that over the past four decades nearly eight hundred foundations have invested more than $771 million in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer communities, with a significant portion of that funding -- some 40 percent -- awarded between 2000 and 2006. And in the spring, the D5 coalition released a report (52 pages, PDF) that found a growing number of foundations and grantmaking organizations launching efforts aimed at making philanthropy more diverse, equitable, and inclusive.

An article in Louisiana Weekly found more good news, citing the success of the Open Society Foundations' Campaign for Black Male Achievement, which since 2008 has awarded $29.6 million to organizations working to increase educational opportunity for black males and strengthen African-American families; and the Kellogg Foundation's Men and Boys of Color initiative. Around the same time, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy announced that the number of signatories to its Philanthropy's Promise campaign -- an eighteen-month-old effort to encourage grantmakers to provide at least half their grant dollars for the benefit of underserved communities and at least one quarter of their grant dollars for systemic change efforts involving advocacy, community organizing and civic engagement -- had nearly doubled, to a hundred and twenty-five foundations responsible for nearly $3.4 billion in annual grantmaking.

George Soros' Open Society Foundations continues to be an important driver of these efforts, and in the fall, in partnership with the Foundation Center,  it released a report which found that philanthropic support for black men and boys has grown steadily over the last decade, from $10 million in 2003 to $29 million in 2010. Two reports released by NCRP in November echoed that finding. The first, The Philanthropic Landscape: The State of Giving to Underserved Communities (6 pages, PDF), found that the share of U.S. foundation grant dollars benefiting economically disadvantaged people, the elderly, women and girls, and other marginalized groups had increased from 33 percent between 2004 and 2006 to 40 percent between 2008 and 2010. And the second, The Philanthropic Landscape: State of Social Justice Philanthropy (6 pages, PDF), found that since 2004 more grant dollars are being classified as social justice grants and that the number of foundations saying that they provide social justice funding at a substantial level has increased.

A final sign of progress was the launch, in September, of the Leadership and Sustainability Institute for Black Male Achievement, a national membership network that aims to support the growth, sustainability, and impact of leaders and organizations across the country working to improve life outcomes and create systemic change for African-American men and boys. Sponsored by OSF, the Skillman Foundation, the California Endowment, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and the Heinz Endowments, the institute will work to assist advocacy and service programs focused on African-American men and boys that have experienced difficulties in sustaining their own work.

"Black men and boys are challenged by entrenched and systemic problems in need of innovative solutions," said Shawn Dove, who manages the Campaign for Black Male Achievement. "Leaders working in the field of black male achievement have always grappled with a lack of funding, capacity, and momentum. With the strong network of leaders created and sustained by the LSI, we [hope to] create the support system necessary to sustain effective programs and policies that will do much to improve the lives of black men and boys across the United States."

Related items:

UPS Foundation Awards $6 Million for Diversity Programs (2/13/12)

LGBTQ Community Received More Than $771 Million in Grants From 1970 to 2010, Report Finds (2/23/12)

AT&T Commits $250 Million to Boost Graduation Rates (3/19/12)

New Initiative Launched to Expand Opportunities for African-American Boys (5/07/12)

Foundations Working to Increase Diversity, Equity, Inclusion in Philanthropy, Report Finds (5/18/12)

Foundation Initiatives to Assist African-American Males Showing Results (6/07/12)

Number of Signatories to 'Philanthropy's Promise' Campaign Nearly Doubled (6/21/12)

UPS Foundation Awards $6.9 Million to Nonprofits Cultivating Diversity (6/21/12)

Walmart Foundation Awards Nearly $3.4 Million to Support Underserved Women (8/08/12)

Initiative Launched to Help Boys, Young Men of Color Succeed (8/21/12)

Lumina Foundation Awards $11.5 Million to Boost Latino Student Success (9/04/12)

Ford Foundation Commits $100 Million to Extend Fellows Program (9/21/12)

Leadership and Sustainability Institute for Black Male Achievement Launches (9/28/12)

Foundations Put African-American Men and Boys on the Map, Report Finds (10/01/12)

Giving to Underserved Groups, for Social Justice on the Rise, Reports Find (11/19/12)

Newsmaker: Shawn Dove, Campaign Manager, Campaign for Black Male Achievement, Open Society Foundations

In October, the Open Society Foundations and the Foundation Center released a report, Where Do We Go From Here? Philanthropic Support for Black Men and Boys  (40 pages, PDF), which found, among other things, that philanthropic support for African-American men and boys has risen steadily over the past decade, from $10 million in 2003 to $29 million in 2010. At a time when nearly every major indicator of economic, social, and physical well-being shows that African-American males do not have access to the opportunities they need to thrive, the philanthropic sector is working to address this critical need on two fronts: by supporting organizations in the "black male achievement field" and by spotlighting the fact that more needs to be done to tackle racial and economic inequality in America.

In the foreward to the report, Shawn Dove, manager of the OSF-based Campaign for Black Male Achievement, noted that former Open Society board member Lani Guinier has long argued that African-American males are not unlike "canaries in the coalmine," in that their socioeconomic plight foreshadows many negative trends that eventually will affect the broader society. That explains why, for many, the well-being of African-American men and boys is not a "black issue." It is, as Dove said when we spoke to him recently, "an American issue." Moreover, he added, "[g]rantmakers should not enter th[e] field with the expectation that they can parachute in and save the day....We need to look at what's working, and to spread the word about what success looks like."

After more than twenty years working in the fields of youth development, education, and community building, including stints as a director of a Beacon School in Harlem, as creative communities director for the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts, and as vice president for MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership, Dove joined OSF in 2008. PND spoke with him in November, shortly after the release of the report.

Philanthropy News Digest: We've been told that America in 2012 is a post-racial society. Is it?

Shawn Dove: I guess that depends on one's definition and interpretation of "post-racial." If one's definition is a society in which there are no racial disparities when it comes to opportunity, access, and equity, I would say, "Not so much." In 2012, America aspires to be post-racial. But judging by the wealth gap, ethnic and racial disparities in access to high-quality education, and the number of people of color in the House and Senate, I'd say we still have some work to do.

PND: Countless studies and papers have outlined the many root causes of racial inequality in America. If the causes are clear, why do large portions of the African-American community continue to be adversely affected by disparities in education, health care, and employment?

SD: You know, that is the billion-dollar question. Two of our grantee partners, the American Values Institute and the Opportunity Agenda, have done extensive research on implicit bias in America, and what their research revealed was that far too many people hold unconscious racial prejudices that affect their decision making when interacting with races other than their own. So while retail sales managers, for example, will say they don't have racist attitudes or are not prejudiced, they'll also resist putting people of color, specifically African-American males, in roles that have direct contact with customers.

Americans of all ethnicities still have an exceedingly difficult time having honest conversations about race. There are a number of organizations and leaders who are organizing people to have discussions about racial disparities in our society, but a lot of work still needs to be done to change the behaviors that perpetuate inequality in this country.

In 2013, a film called American Promise will premiere and lift up the issue of black male achievement, offering all of us an opportunity to have an honest conversation about race and education in America. The film provides a rare look into the lives of two middle class black families as they navigate the ups and downs of parenting and educating their sons. With support from Open Society, the Ford Foundation, and the Fledgling Fund, as well as other partners, a national outreach campaign is being developed to empower boys, their parents, and educators to help close the black male achievement gap and deal with racial disparities.

PND: As journalist Gary Younge noted in a Nation article last year, the economic gap between black and white has grown since President Obama took office. What advice would you give the president as he prepares for his second term?

SD: We need to be clear about what the president inherited when he was elected in 2008, and how long it will actually take to turn things around, especially when the political process for moving legislation is fraught with partisan obstacles at every turn. Back then, the American economy was in free fall, and by the time Obama took office in January 2009, the economy was in a certified crisis. The president had to take certain measures to avert a full-out depression. Yet even with those steps, the country could not avoid the layoffs and high unemployment that followed -- something that affected all ethnicities and racial groups but hit African Americans the hardest.

Now that Obama has been re-elected and the economy is slowly recovering from the collapse of the housing bubble, we need a plan to lower the poverty rate and help raise low-income families into the middle class. We need policies and solutions that are systemic and sustainable and will endure past 2016. The administration also should develop more partnerships with the private sector to ensure that young people are developing employable skills, and it needs to focus on how education can help people become first-generation members of the middle class.

PND: According to Where Do We Go From Here?, foundation funding for African-American men and boys started to pick up after 2006. To what do you attribute the increase?

SD: Fearless leadership and innovation in the philanthropic sector. Data across issues that have been disaggregated by race and gender. And any number of leaders who have pushed strategies and formed coalitions around targeted solutions designed to improve the life outcomes of African-American men and boys.

PND: Have efforts like the Campaign for Black Male Achievement and the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy's Philanthropy's Promise campaign helped to raise awareness of needs in the African-American community?

SD: The answer is a resounding yes. But, you know, even before philanthropy became more organized and coordinated around the issue, we were seeing greater investment in research and communications strategies to elevate the issue. Here at Open Society, our aim with the Campaign for Black Male Achievement was to keep the issue front and center in the public discourse, because we felt that if it dropped out of the conversation and if solutions were not identified and amplified, other things would wind up distracting us from addressing it. I think the same can be said of the Promise initiative, which in June, a year after its launch, had doubled the number of its partners to a hundred and twenty-five, representing nearly $3.4 billion in giving. These campaigns help shine a light on the needs of an underserved and underrepresented population, and how we are working to meet those needs.

PND: Tell us about the Campaign for Black Male Achievement. How did it come about? And how did you become involved?

SD: I would say an impassioned conversation inside philanthropy was ignited after an article titled "Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn" appeared on the front page of the New York Times in 2006. The article highlighted the many disparities and inequities confronting African-American men: indeed, at a time when the economy was booming and the nation's top earners were gaining significant wealth, African-American men were falling further and further behind. Well, the article ignited a conversation at OSF among staff who felt that an organization that prided itself on supporting a more democratic, fair, and just society and on empowering the most marginalized individuals in society to become agents in their own empowerment should be at the forefront of this issue. As I later learned, there was debate about whether the foundation should launch a campaign specifically targeting support for African-American men and boys, with some staff making a strong case that the foundation already was engaged in the issue through its investments in reform of the criminal justice system. But it eventually became clear to everyone that this was an opportunity to more directly address the causes of the "prison pipeline."

At the same time that discussion was happening, I was publishing a community newspaper called Proud Poppa for African-American Fathers and leading a youth ministry at my church. Prior to that, I had worked with Geoffrey Canada at the Harlem Children's Zone. After the foundation decided to launch the campaign, a number of people encouraged me to apply for the position of campaign manager. Eventually, I did, and that's how I got involved.

The campaign, which launched in 2008, was originally supposed to be a three-year initiative. But about eighteen months into it, OSF founder George Soros and the foundation's board decided to get rid of the term limits and, based on our early work, increased our budget. I think that decision helped other philanthropic institutions to better understand the severity of the problem and the foundation's deep commitment to addressing it over the long haul.

PND: Has the campaign had an impact? And how do you measure that?

SD: Well, that's the other billion-dollar question. Four years ago, when the campaign was launched, there was no clearly defined field of black male achievement -- or it wasn't acknowledged in the way it is today by researchers, policy advocates, practitioners, and funders. In that way, we have been successful beyond measure. Today there is a movement and a field of black male achievement. To achieve this in four years speaks to the commitment among organizations, individuals, and communities who are seeking to find solutions to the problems plaguing black men and boys. But while there's been a breakthrough on both the national and local level in terms of awareness and activity around the issue, the verdict is still out on how and whether the field is creating impact on a national scale. There is anecdotal evidence that it is, but that's the main reason why my colleagues and I argue that philanthropy needs a sustained commitment to this work.

Through its Boys and Young Men of Color initiative, for example, the California Endowment has helped to introduce a number of bills in California around school discipline and dropout/pushout rates; four of which have passed. The endowment also is helping to reduce the number of African-American boys engaged in the juvenile justice system. Elsewhere, the Knight Foundation re-launched an effort called Black Male Engagement that supports African-American males in their communities. The unique thing about the Knight initiative is that the foundation acknowledges -- correctly, in my view -- that the problem isn't with African-American men and boys, the problem is rooted in the system and the society in which African-American men and boys grow up. And so the initiative seeks to recognize and elevate the work of "regular" guys who are already adding value and contributing to their respective communities.

Open Society, in partnership with Echoing Green, also launched a Black Male Achievement Fellowship, to identify innovative social entrepreneurs who are focusing on ways to sustain black male achievement across a number of issue areas and a Leadership and Sustainability Institute for Black Male Achievement, a national membership organization that we believe will be the engine that sustains this work over the long haul. We've already seen a tremendous response to the institute after its official launch during our Innovation and Impact Forum for Black Male Achievement. To date, over four hundred organizations across the country have been identified and expressed a sincere commitment to join efforts designed to improve the life outcomes of black men and boys.

Ultimately, however, it is important that we acknowledge that this is a generational issue that will require a long-term commitment. The challenges that prevent black male achievement come out of decades and centuries of systemic injustices. So to expect that after four years of a campaign we would reverse these trends is reflective of the general state of philanthropy, which often will focus on a hot or popular issue of the moment but, after a few years, will move on to the next pressing issue. If we hope to truly measure impact and see change we must commit for the long term.

PND: Even as some of the biggest foundations are stepping up their support for African-American men and boys, the sector continues to wrestle with its own diversity challenges, including the relative lack of minority representation on foundation boards or in foundation leadership positions. Is that an issue of there not being enough qualified minority candidates for these positions? And if so, what can foundations do to help boost the size of the applicant pool?

SD: It's definitely not an issue of there not being enough qualified candidates for these positions. Anyone who states that is not looking hard enough -- there are fellowships, internships, more aggressive recruiting tactics, and even affinity groups out there that can help organizations find qualified people of color to fill open positions. I do think we are seeing an increase in the diversity of leadership, but we have a long way to go to get where we need to be, especially when we closely examine diversity data at the trustee and CEO level.

PND: Given President Obama's re-election, are you at all encouraged by general trends in society with respect to African Americans, particularly men and boys?

SD: Oh, yes, I'm an eternal optimist. As you know, our recent Innovation and Impact Forum brought together leaders from every sector who are focused on the issue, including folks from New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg's Young Men's Initiative as well as Cities United, an effort led by Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter and New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu to galvanize municipal leaders to respond to the unacceptably high number of violent deaths of African-American men in cities nationwide. The issue has definitely gained traction at the municipal level, and I feel optimistic about the pace of our progress.

But as we look more closely at how we measure impact and promote what works, I am concerned about the sustainability of our efforts. There are groups doing phenomenal work, and they need continued support. What America really needs is something like a corporation for Black Male Achievement that would allow an endowed philanthropic social enterprise to really lean into this issue and create lasting change.

PND: What would you say to your colleagues in other foundations about the importance of this issue?

SD: Well, I would say that this is not a "black issue," it is an American issue that has a negative impact on all of us. I would ask them to focus on assets and not deficits. Grantmakers should not enter this field with the expectation that they can parachute in and save the day. I truly believe that the answers to the challenges African-American men and boys are facing reside in the hearts, minds, and hands of African-American men and boys. It's this whole idea of the power of positive deviance. We need to look at what's working, and to spread the word about what success looks like.

I would encourage my colleagues who ask "Why an explicit focus on African-American men and boys?" to look at the data. Once they do, I believe they will join us and the many other foundations working to build and strengthen the African-American community. I would also challenge my colleagues to think about how we can increase public-private collaboration around this issue, and about being in this for the long haul. We're not going to create lasting change with a three- or five-year campaign, or by launching another initiative. The philanthropic community needs to give this issue the time and support it requires.

Lastly, I would share a quote from one of my colleagues, John Jackson, CEO of the Schott Foundation for Public Education. In a speech he delivered at a recent grantmakers for education conference in New York City, John said, "Programs are progress, and we need progress. But policy is power." And with that, I would like to encourage my colleagues to invest in advocacy and policy change, not just programs. We are dealing with systemic and structural barriers that I believe can only be addressed and solved through policy reform.

-- Regina Mahone