Supporting artists in a time of crisis: A commentary by Maurine Knighton and Kerry McCarthy

Performing artists are in crisis due to COVID-19: Here’s how to help

The arts play an essential role in American society — bringing joy to audiences, provoking thought and ideas, giving voice to those who are otherwise overlooked, teaching us about cultures other than our own, creating pride in communities, and providing us with therapeutic outlets.

This last service has never been more critical than during the past twenty months, as we’ve dealt with the amplified, collective trauma connected to COVID-19, political division, and racial injustice. Throughout this tumultuous time, the arts have given us opportunities to heal and process the anxiety and stress of day-to-day life.

When we experience art, we often value the work itself. We rarely take time to think about and value the people behind the creation.

Many of us enjoy the benefits of art without considering the sweat that goes into it or acknowledging that the artists who create and deliver it are facing the same pressures and challenges that we’re experiencing during these difficult times. In fact, making a living as a performing artist during the pandemic has been impossible for most — and especially for artists who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color and for those who are immigrants or older adults, identify as women or LGBTQ+, or have disabilities....

Read the full commentary by Maurine Knighton and Kerry McCarthy, program director for the arts at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and vice president for philanthropic initiatives at the New York Community Trust.

(Photo credit: phegenbart via pixabay)

The top ten philanthropy stories of 2021

For our final newsletter (subscribe here for our newsletters and alerts) of 2021, the editors at Philanthropy News Digest shared (in chronological order) the ten stories that we felt were particularly significant for philanthropy — both in the moment and for the future. We aimed to include stories that addressed major areas of philanthropic interest this year: climate change, the coronavirus pandemic, education, racial equity, and social justice to name a few.

 

Perhaps the most noticeable omission from the list is the divorce of Bill and Melinda Gates, which we decided had not yet led to visible changes in the foundation’s grantmaking, although changes are expected in its governance structure.

 

What other social sector news resonated most with you in 2021? Please share your thoughts about our list on Twitter — tag us @pndblog — or leave a comment below.

Thank you for making PND a part of your important work on the vital issues of our time. We hope you all have a safe, healthy, and joyful end of the year and enter 2022 filled with hope.

— Matt Sinclair

 

DAFs may have cost charities $300 billion over five years, study finds

The report from the Boston College Law School Forum on Philanthropy and the Public Good found that the share of individual giving going to charities fell from 94.1 percent before the advent of donor-advised funds to less than 75 percent between 2014 and 2018, with an estimated $300 billion that otherwise might have gone to charities going into DAFs and foundations....

Asian American Foundation raises nearly $1.1 billion

Established with initial commitments totaling $125 million from founding board members, the foundation has raised more than $900 million from foundations, corporations, and individuals in support of efforts to address a longstanding lack of investment in Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities and combat anti-AAPI violence....

Marguerite Casey calls for funding police and criminal justice reform

Launched on the one-year anniversary of the police killing of George Floyd, Answering the Uprising: Closing the Say/Do Gap in Philanthropy is aimed at "correcting" the inadequate response of philanthropy to the racial justice uprisings in 2020....

MacKenzie Scott awards grants totaling nearly $2.74 billion

Grants were awarded to nearly three hundred "high-impact organizations in categories and communities that have been historically underfunded and overlooked"....

Rockefeller, IKEA foundations launch $1 billion clean energy platform

With the aim of reducing a billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions and providing a billion people with distributed renewable energy through mini-grid and off-grid solutions, the initiative will be run as a public charity designed to deploy catalytic capital more efficiently and at scale that supports the expansion of local renewable energy projects....

Nearly $40 billion pledged to accelerate gender equality by 2026

Commitments announced at the Generation Equality Forum convened by UN Women included $21 billion from governments and public-sector institutions, $13 billion from the private sector, $1.3 billion from UN entities and multilateral organizations, and $4.5 billion from philanthropy....

Philanthropies pledge $5 billion to 'Protecting Our Planet Challenge'

The commitments from nine philanthropies will fund efforts to meet the 30x30 goal to protect 30 percent of land and sea by 2030 in partnership with Indigenous peoples, local communities, civil society, and governments....

Powell Jobs to invest $3.5 billion in climate action over ten years

According to an Emerson Collective official, the Waverley Street Foundation "will focus on initiatives and ideas that will aid underserved communities who are most impacted by climate change" and sunset after ten years....

GivingTuesday 2021 raises an estimated $2.7 billion in the U.S.

The GivingTuesday Data Commons estimates that giving totals increased 9 percent from $2.47 billion in 2020, with thirty-five million adults in the U.S. participating, a 6 percent increase over last year....

Bloomberg Philanthropies commits $750 million for charter schools

The five-year initiative is aimed at closing student achievement gaps — which have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly for students from lower-income families — and creating an additional hundred and fifty thousand seats at high-quality charter schools in twenty metro areas....

We need an integrated approach to serving homeless youth: A commentary by Melissa MacDonnell

Falling through systemic gaps: The invisible plight of youth experiencing homelessness

Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, 4.2 million young people in the United States were homeless. According to the Voices of Youth Count initiative at the University of Chicago’s Chapin Hall, one in thirty adolescents between the ages of 13 and 17 and one in ten young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 had experienced some form of homelessness in any given twelve-month period.

You might ask: Where are these youth? They are, quite literally, right in front of us. They’re blending in near college campuses or at bus stations. They’re moving from one friend’s couch to another’s. In too many cases, they’re exchanging security for exploitation. Often, youth experiencing homelessness don’t want to be found. They’re running from families that have abused them and systems that have failed them. By the time they’re on the streets, their young lives have been mired in loss.

The “experience” of youth homelessness is not one that is equally shared. LGBTQ+ youth are more than twice as likely as their peers to report homelessness. Black or African-American youth face an 83 percent higher risk of being homeless. Over a third of homeless youth were in the foster care system, and 35 percent of homeless youth have experienced the death of at least one parent or primary caregiver.

While our nation’s attention has understandably been on older adults with the highest risk of mortality from COVID-19, recent reports illustrate untold stories of its impact among young people: alarming levels of school absenteeism, hunger, housing insecurity, and mental health challenges. When the COVID wave recedes, it’s bound to leave far too many young lives devastated in its wake....

Read the full commentary by Melissa MacDonnell, president of Liberty Mutual Foundation.

 

'All that we hold sacred hung in the balance': A Q&A with Allie Young, Founder, Protect the Sacred

Allie Young is a citizen of the Diné Navajo Nation from the Northern Agency of the reservation in Northern New Mexico. She is founder of Protect the Sacred, which educates and empowers the next generation of Navajo and Indian Country leaders and allies to use storytelling and community building to strengthen Indigenous sovereignty and protect Indigenous elders, languages, and medicine ways. Protect the Sacred is a program of Harness, an organization launched after the 2016 presidential elections to educate, inspire, and activate an interdependent community of cultural organizers to use the power of storytelling to imagine and create a more equitable world.

Protect the Sacred began as an emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic — which struck the Navajo Nation particularly hard — to organize Navajo youth to stay home and keep their families safe. Ahead of the 2020 elections, Young organized Ride to the Polls, which encouraged tribal citizens living on reservations and in remote communities to saddle up and travel to polling places. Over the past year, Protect the Sacred has expanded into a grassroots movement supporting frontline efforts to address the pandemic and ensure access to healthcare information and vaccines.

This Native American Heritage Month, PND asked Young about her work with Protect the Sacred, including efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 and its impact on Native cultural heritage; her focus on youth; and the impact of storytelling on racial equity.

Philanthropy News Digest: What compelled you to return home to the reservation and launch Protect the Sacred? What were your immediate priorities in the earliest days?

Allie Young: In March 2020, I made the decision to travel from Los Angeles — where I’ve resided the last five years — to my homelands of the Navajo Nation to be with family and in my community. The first confirmed COVID-19 case reached the Navajo Nation before I did. By the end of March, the community was abuzz with talk of the rapidly rising positivity rate. By mid-May, the Navajo Nation dominated national headlines for having the highest per-capita infection rate in the United States. Few of these early articles spoke to the threat of cultural devastation posed by COVID-19. For my community and others like it, much more than death was at stake: All that we hold sacred hung in the balance.

When my former colleagues at the Indian Health Service asked in early March whether I’d be interested in helping them execute a social media campaign centered on COVID-19 awareness, I agreed without hesitation. This felt like a glimpse of hózhó (beauty and balance) — an opportunity to help change the trajectory of the virus in the Navajo Nation.

Read the full Q&A with Allie Young.

Rethinking traditional models, committing to an equity lens: A commentary by Amy Klement

Leading with learning: How we’re reimagining philanthropic impact in 2022 and beyond

For those who work in philanthropy, the chaos that began in early 2020 have propelled more much-needed critical introspection than the field has ever faced. The inequities laid bare by the devastating pandemic highlighted how too many of our systems have been failing the majority of people. For us at Imaginable Futures, an education- and learning-focused philanthropic investment firm, owning up that we’re part of the system and have been part of the problem was only the first step.

It’s clearer than ever that for philanthropy to be truly effective in driving sustainable change, we need to rethink traditional models that are too often top-down and risk perpetuating the same systems of oppression they seek to transform. We, as philanthropic organizations, need to work harder to undo the culture of colonialism and white supremacy that is deeply woven into our field of work. And, critically, we must commit to utilizing an equity lens, starting from the inside out.

While a strategy refresh for Imaginable Futures was always the plan for 2020-21, it was done against the backdrop of COVID-19 and the global movement for racial justice. We’ve spent the last year and a half listening, learning, and evolving our approach to reimagine our philanthropic efforts.

Throughout this process of reevaluating and refining our strategies, the entire Imaginable Futures team has committed to doing the work individually and as a team to continually evolve and evaluate our own mindsets, behaviors, and approaches....

Read the full commentary by Amy Klement, managing partner at Imaginable Futures.

(Photo credit: GettyImages/rapideye)

A unique opportunity for governments and place-based funders: A commentary by Darius Graham

ARPA's $350 billion opportunity and what philanthropy can do

In March 2021, President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which provides $1.9 trillion in funds across federal, state, and local governments. The funding streams are numerous and most funds flow through existing programs and agencies to bolster health and economic recovery — for example, $28.6 billion for the Small Business Administration's Restaurant Revitalization Fund and $21.6 billion to continue rent relief. While it would be impossible to identify any one source as more important than another, there is a portion of the funding that presents a unique opportunity for governments and place-based funders to ensure that local communities' urgent needs are prioritized — equitably and strategically — in both the immediate and long term.

Included within ARPA is $350 billion in State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) that will be allocated to state, local, territorial, and Tribal governments with no specific predetermined use.

According to the U.S. Treasury Department, the SLFRF's goals are to:

• Support urgent COVID-19 response efforts to continue to decrease spread of the virus and bring the pandemic under control
• Replace lost revenue for eligible state, local, territorial, and Tribal governments to strengthen support for vital public services and help retain jobs
• Support immediate economic stabilization for households and businesses
• Address systemic public health and economic challenges that have contributed to the unequal impact of the pandemic

Notably, these funds offer substantial flexibility for governments to meet local needs and can be used to make investments in water, sewer, and broadband infrastructure. These flexible funds, which must be committed by the end of 2024, provide governments with the opportunity to fund immediate needs, fill gaps, and/or make strategic investments....

Read the full commentary by Darius Graham, program director for Baltimore at The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation.

The sustainable nonprofit: Post-pandemic fundraising

The 'virtual' reality of post-pandemic fundraising events: Suggestions for the future

In spring 2020, like so many in the nonprofit fundraising space, the organization I then worked for refashioned our large-scale luncheon to a virtual experience. A year later, with pandemic uncertainty still looming, we did it again. I wrote about the 2020 event last year, and this update provides further learnings from the 2020-21 shift to virtual fundraising as we look ahead to how our events will function in the future. My hope is that these observations inspire conversations among your teams, with your donors and stakeholders, and around your communities.

Programming opportunities within the virtual space

"Virtual events have broken down access barriers, democratized the event space, and solved issues of scale," said Ariel Glassman, a member of the Virtual Gala Collaborative. One of the most striking certainties Glassman shares is that virtual opportunities can be far more inclusive and equitable, and my former organization found this to be true.

The number of participants in our virtual events was double that of the in-person luncheons, and we found the reasons were two-fold: First, the content was incredibly strong, featuring our popular lead researcher — a well-known public speaker who is beloved in the community. Second, the events were totally free, thereby removing cost barriers to entry, and the sponsors who supported the events appreciated the expanded audience....

Read the full column article by Evan Wildstein, a fundraiser and nonprofiteer in Houston, Texas.

(Photo credit: GettyImages/SDI Productions)

Health justice and participatory democracy: An interview with Hanh Cao Yu, Chief Learning Officer, California Endowment

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the California Endowment (TCE) had been working to move from Building Healthy Communities, its place-based initiative, to an effort that provides more flexible funding to the organizations and communities it works with to build power across California. For example, TCE increased the share of grant dollars awarded in general operating support from 3 percent in 2010 to 20 percent by 2020.The foundation is on track to further increase flexible funding so that communities and grantees have more freedom to determine how best to use those funds.

Hanh Cao Yu is TCE's chief learning officer, in which role she is responsible for learning, evaluation, and impact activities and ensures that local communities, local and state grantees, board members, and staff understand the results and lessons of the foundation's investments.

PND's Matt Sinclair spoke with Yu about the foundation's effort to promote "People Power" and how the pandemic has affected its relationships with grantees.

Philanthropy News Digest: What does "health equity" mean? How is it different from "health justice," and to what extent has the foundation's idea of "health justice" changed in the wake of the pandemic and its impact, especially on communities of color?

Hanh Cao Yu: For us at the California Endowment, health equity has three parts: We want to achieve the highest level of health for all Californians, improve the systems and conditions of health for all groups, and make sure that those who've experienced racism and socioeconomic and historic injustices are helped and supported — because health equity helps advance social justice.

In terms of health justice, which is also a North Star of ours, the focus is on outcomes, whereas health equity is focused on the process of how we got to where we are today. At the heart of equity is the ability to meaningfully participate, to have a voice, to be heard, and to help set the agenda of the priorities for your community.

Even before the pandemic, TCE was working to achieve health equity in a major initiative called Building Healthy Communities, which is about investing in groups that are serving and led by Black, Indigenous, and people of color fighting for health systems reforms and the transformation of our justice system, as well as equitable public education and more inclusive community economic development.

Health justice is also about robust, participatory democracy, and it's good for equitable community health.

Read the full interview with Hanh Cao Yu.

As COVID persists, New York's youth need nonprofits now more than ever

This was not the "return-to-normal" back-to-school season many of us had hoped for. Remote learning and isolation for more than a year have left many students, especially the most vulnerable, behind. On average, K-12 students are now an estimated five months behind in math and four months behind in reading. And there is a mental health crisis among teenagers hit hard by loneliness. While schools, families, and government agencies continue to provide substantial support for youth, it is simply not enough. Nonprofits are playing a vital role in supporting our youth through this pandemic and its fallout.

As executive director of A Chance In Life, a New York City-based nonprofit that supports at-risk teens through positive youth development, I've seen how essential such organizations have been over the past eighteen months. We operate all over the world and recently opened a center for youth on Staten Island, our first U.S. program. The demand for our services, which include paid internships, food distributions, and afterschool programs, has been high.

As schools, government agencies, and the private sector come together to improve the lives of youth and their families, nonprofits must have a seat at the table. They can help mitigate COVID-related learning loss, provide supportive social reintegration settings, and use their local connections to provide support where other entities fall short.

The negative repercussions of the pandemic on youth and their education are staggering. The effects are even more pronounced for Black, Latinx, and Indigenous students and those from high-poverty districts. Educators are doing everything they can, and I am deeply thankful for their work. But volatile conditions and insufficient funding have put them in an impossible position. Moreover, budget and time constraints limit teaching to core subjects, leaving little room for the additional support many students need.

Nonprofits are perfectly positioned to provide extra support to supplement students' classroom education with free tutoring, afterschool enrichment programs, and distribution of school supplies. They can also broaden students' education to include topics that don't always make it into school curricula, like financial literacy education.

Just as essential are the spaces for social development nonprofits provide — away from the pressures of exams and grades. Teens have been particularly negatively impacted by the social isolation of COVID-19, with 61 percent of young adults surveyed in a recent study reporting feeling lonely. Detachment puts young people at risk for mental health issues including anxiety, depression, and substance abuse.

Nonprofits offer safe, enriching spaces that foster peer-to-peer connections. Whether it is for group tutoring, an internship or a music lesson, it is important to carve out room for teens to be themselves and form bonds away from outside stressors.

In addition, the close community ties many nonprofits forge through their work help them recognize problems sooner. And they can respond with solutions more efficiently because they're less constrained by red tape than government agencies.

As COVID-related budget cuts stretched social services to their limits, nonprofits have been stepping up. A Chance In Life chose Staten Island as the site of our first U.S. program in part because it had fewer social programs than other New York City boroughs. Nonprofits across the country have done the same by setting up shop in neighborhoods that have been most neglected — whether the problem is a lack of public transportation, crowded schools, or food deserts.

For-profit businesses that care about giving back should also work with nonprofits to achieve a meaningful and sustainable impact — for nonprofits are the link to the community. Community-based organizations, their leaders, and staff have built local relationships and know where resources are needed. Nonprofits use their trusted voices to let residents know how to access donations from businesses. They also know where to go in a community to reach the people who need those resources the most.

For example, this past August, we partnered with another community-based organization, Staten Island Community Partnership, and ShopRite to distribute food donated by the supermarket chain. Without the corporate donation, we would have had no food to share with our neighbors, but without our connections with local residents and physical presence in the borough, ShopRite would not have known where to distribute that food.

We may not yet have returned to "normal." But nonprofits are willing, ready, and able to ensure that the nation's youth are supported, no matter the state of the city. I urge those in influential positions — leaders in government, business, and philanthropy — to actively support and include nonprofits as we all work towards solutions to this crisis.

(Photo credit: Boys' and Girls' Town of New York City)

Gabriele Delmonaco is executive director of A Chance In Life, a nonprofit dedicated to providing shelter, education, and development for at-risk youth.

'Tips for rapid grantmaking during a global pandemic': A commentary by Sierra Fox-Woods

Five tips for rapid grantmaking during a global pandemic: Lessons learned supporting adolescent mental health organizations during COVID-19

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and the widespread losses people have suffered — of loved ones, jobs, safety, and a sense of normalcy — community-based organizations are stepping up to bridge the gaps in social services. While government agencies are slower to move resources in response to real-time and evolving needs, philanthropy can act quickly and mobilize resources through rapid-response grantmaking.

At the Upswing Fund for Adolescent Mental Health, we've seen firsthand the challenges of reviewing high-volume, short-turnaround proposals. The initial concept for the fund was proposed in July 2020 as a collaborative COVID-relief fund at Panorama to focus on adolescent mental health and well-being, and was seeded by Melinda French Gates' Pivotal Ventures with additional support from the Klarman Family Foundation. Over the course of three months, we developed a grantmaking and implementation strategy supported by an advisory committee of practitioners, policy experts, and researchers, and issued a request for proposals in late October, with applications open for six weeks. The fund received 485 proposals from forty states and the District of Columbia, and to date has awarded more than $11 million to ninety-two organizations.

We'd like to share five considerations for rapid grantmaking that were critical to our process and designed in the spirit of advancing trust-based philanthropy. Some validated our own grantmaking principles at Panorama, such as the importance of giving general operating support grants, while others were unique to processes required to execute on an expedited timeline....

Read the full commentary by Sierra Fox-Woods, a program officer for Panorama's Upswing Fund for Adolescent Mental Health.

 

'Building political power at a grassroots level': A Q&A with Romilda Avila, CEO, Tides Advocacy

Romilda Avila is CEO of Tides Advocacy (formerly the Advocacy Fund), a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization working with a network of fiscally sponsored 501(c)(4) projects and funds to strengthen political infrastructure and support power building and policy reform led by those most impacted by injustice. To that end, the organization provides capacity-building support, grantmaking support, and advising services to incubate advocacy initiatives. Avila served as Tides Advocacy's deputy director from 2017 to 2019 and as interim CEO before being appointed CEO in April 2020; she previously worked as a social impact consultant advising national foundations on grantmaking strategies for advancing social justice and equity.

PND asked Avila about Tides Advocacy's commitment to and process of becoming a pro-Black organization, the Political Movement Infrastructure Project, and the role of grassroots organizations in power building. Here is an excerpt:

Philanthropy News Digest: You were officially appointed CEO not long after the COVID-19 crisis began in the United States. How did your priorities for the organization shift as a result of the pandemic and its economic fallout?

Romilda Avila: Last year, when the pandemic hit, movement folks had to restructure in the moment; in the middle of organizing in the field, they had to transition to lockdown and figure out technology and community engagement. We rallied and were able to give $150,000 through our internal Resilience Fund to highly impacted partners to make sure that they were able to sustain themselves and their salaries and support healing justice and programming while facing an uncertain future. It was the first time that Tides Advocacy has done this type of grantmaking.

We're also supporting more organizations in terms of (c)(4) funding and inspiring folks to do more political work in the off-season. Through our Healthy Democracy Action Fund, during an important election year, we had an opportunity to work with a great donor who allowed us to support almost fifty organizations through nearly $6 million in grants. Almost $2.1 million went to Black-led organizations organizing in the South and the Midwest, and the rest went to Native, Latinx, Asian-American, and Pacific Islander communities. We're also looking to go deeper with leaders and organizations working on LGBTQ rights — particularly trans issues — and immigrant rights, disability rights, and more, so we can support all people directly impacted by injustice in organizing and building political power at a grassroots level....

Read the full Q&A with Romilda Avila.

[Review] The Post-Pandemic Nonprofit: 12 Disruptive Trends Your Nonprofit Must Master

The last eighteen months have seen dramatic and — not to wear out a word we've all seen too much of as of late — "unprecedented" change across all industries of the global economy. The United States is no exception, nor is the nonprofit sector. As charitable organizations contend with figuring out what the "new normal"  looks like, Jeremy Reis, an experienced fundraising professional with a particular expertise in international development, offers to guide nonprofits on a path to post-pandemic success. While there is no denying that Reis has solid advice to give in The Post-Pandemic Nonprofit: 12 Disruptive Trends Your Nonprofit Must Master, given how quickly change can happen, the biggest question may be how long that advice will remain relevant and useful.

The Post-Pandemic Nonprofit contains exactly what it says on the tin. Reis has identified twelve strategies across three categories that he sees as key areas of investment for nonprofits to focus on as a way to survive and thrive in a post-pandemic philanthropic landscape: Who We Are (organizational identity), How We Operate (programming and functionality), and How We Grow (innovation and organizational development). While not all of these strategies are applicable to every nonprofit — and identifying his audience is something Reis struggles with throughout the book — the breadth of the suggestions means that most nonprofit professionals will be able to find something relevant and helpful to their organization's needs....

Read the full review by Audrey Silveman.

'A roadmap for how to respond to and provide funding for addressing collective traumas': A commentary by Stephanie Berkowitz

Twenty years after 9/11: Prioritizing trauma-informed mental health care

Twenty years after the September 11 attacks, lessons from that experience continue to inform the most effective ways to provide mental health support to individuals, families, and communities in crisis. At the same time, new lessons have emerged as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing demand for racial justice. Together, these insights provide a roadmap for how to respond to and provide funding for addressing collective traumas for families as diverse as refugees arriving in this country from Afghanistan to those displaced by hurricanes. 

In 2001, the Greater Washington Community Foundation tapped Northern Virginia Family Service (NVFS) to provide trauma recovery services to survivors of the attack on the Pentagon. The September 11 Survivors' Fund was intentionally set up to be flexible and broadly focused. While we provided services to survivors most obviously impacted — those who were physically injured in the attack — we also supported a flight attendant who lost colleagues on the plane that flew into the Pentagon, a firefighter who saw the unimaginable and chose to change professions, and anguished family members who lost loved ones, among others. In all, the $25 million fund helped 1,051 people.

Years later, we learned of a group of construction workers from El Salvador who participated in clean-up efforts at the Pentagon but did not receive Survivors' Fund services. Only then did we recognize a significant shortcoming on our part. Since then, we have come to understand that targeted outreach to underserved populations in multiple languages by professionals with fluency in a variety of cultural traditions is the most effective way to reach neighbors who are frequently overlooked and disproportionately impacted by communitywide crises....

Read the full commentary by Stephanie Berkowitz, president and CEO of Northern Virginia Family Service.

'What happens when funders don't center community voice in decision making': A commentary by Hannah Lee

It's time for philanthropy to trust and listen better to grantee partners

When Ralph Hoagland, the founder of CVS, recruited three hundred of his neighbors from the wealthy, liberal, and largely white Boston suburbs to donate to the Fund for Urban Negro Development (FUND) to support Black entrepreneurs, he promised a “no strings attached” approach to philanthropy. The group's aim was to support Black businesses and community organizations, build Black wealth, and foster community development across the city. FUND emphasized that Boston's Black leaders already had "the ability to solve the problems” facing their communities but just lacked the necessary resources to do so.

Importantly, the group promised not to interfere through "white controls, advice, or helpful hints." At the same time, FUND's white members did expect to serve as coaches and mentors. When Black leaders rejected some of the mentors' advice, members began pulling their support to FUND — and just four years after its launch, the group disbanded.

The story of FUND, more fully detailed in a research paper, took place more than half a century ago. But the rhetoric and eventual outcomes feel all too familiar. It serves as a powerful reminder about what happens when funders don't center community voice in decision making. And it remains a cautionary tale for those working in philanthropy today — especially in the wake of COVID-19 and our nationwide reckoning around racial justice....

Read the full commentary by Hannah Lee, a director at the Cognizant Foundation.

 

 

'We have to infuse equity into every part of the system': A Q&A with Priti Krishtel

Priti Krishtel is a health justice lawyer who has spent nearly two decades exposing structural inequities that limit access to medicines and vaccines across the Global South and the United States. She is the co-founder and co-executive director of I-MAK (Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge), a nonprofit organization building a more just and equitable medicines system. An Echoing Green Global Fellow, TED speaker, Presidential Leadership Scholar, and Ashoka Fellow, she is a frequent contributor to leading international and national news outlets on issues of domestic and global health equity.

PND asked Krishtel about inequity across the globe as it relates to COVID-19 vaccines, challenges in the United States of ensuring an equitable medicines system, the drug pricing crisis, and what funders can do to bring about change. Here is an excerpt:

Philanthropy News Digest: I-MAK states that a global pandemic, economic and racial awakening, and skyrocketing costs of medicine have created a crucial mandate for equity in the drug development system, especially with growing inequity across the globe as it relates to COVID-19 vaccines. What action do you believe leaders of national governments should be engaged in to mitigate those disparities? And what are the most significant barriers to improving vaccine access worldwide?                       

Priti Krishtel: I cannot stress this point enough: In a pandemic, no country is safe until every country is safe. Today, vaccinations are readily available in wealthy countries like the U.S. However, it's a completely different situation for most of the world's population: so far, less than 2 percent of residents in low-income countries have been vaccinated. Until we employ an equitable system to make sure that vaccines are available everywhere, that all countries have access to the vaccine, and that everyone who is willing and able is vaccinated, variants will not stop. Governments — and wealthy nations in particular — have to stop taking a country-by-country, nationalistic approach to pandemic responses and instead start looking at the system holistically. With every passing day, the risk of a mutated COVID-19 variant that is resistant to vaccines grows.

The Delta variant teaches us that we have to radically and rapidly rethink our approach to recover from this pandemic and adequately prepare for the next. We can't do this by relying on market incentives alone. Right now, pharmaceutical companies are incentivized to lock up knowledge to maximize profits to serve shareholder interests rather than share that knowledge and bring this pandemic to an end.

Philanthropy can play a catalytic role in this moment. Philanthropy is the only sector with the resources, capacity, and global connections to resource organizations and individuals leading the fight for a globally more just and equitable medicines system. It can and must play a connective and transformative role in stemming the gap in places where countries, communities, and individuals are being left behind....

Read the full Q&A with Priti Krishtel.