In this moment of extreme need for – and backlash against – racial justice work, capacity builders need to come together across organizations to both strengthen and sustain their efforts for the long haul. However, these kind of intensely relational, collaborative, and learning-oriented activities are infrequently prioritized and inadequately resourced.
One longstanding network of racial equity capacity building organizations, which is informally known as the Knowledge Share Group, is doing just that. Knowledge Share is a collective of eight multi-racial organizations that center Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC) in their approach to building capacity. It’s a powerful model of what can happen when funders invest in capacity builders and support their collaboration. The Knowledge Share Group rejected the capitalist practice of hoarding knowledge and treating one another as competitors. Instead, members bring a spirit of generosity and a belief that the more they share, the better they can serve justice-focused organizations and leaders.
How the Collaboration Began
In 2018, a group of racial justice capacity builders, trainers, coaches and strategists began building a community of deep trust, open conversation, shared learning and collaborative action. Through The Kresge Foundation’s Fostering Urban Equitable Leadership (FUEL) program, the group was designed to strengthen the leadership of grantees through a racial equity lens.
At first, the FUEL program coordinator, Community Wealth Partners, gathered the capacity builders for quarterly meetings. But the group increasingly gathered outside of the FUEL program, and in 2021 it officially became a self-facilitated entity.
“The group kept pushing the work forward in thoughtful, creative ways. Over time, it became clear that they had developed a rhythm of their own, were meeting independently, and would likely carry on beyond the program’s lifespan — which felt like success to me,” said Carla Taylor of Community Wealth Partners.
Today the group includes individuals from: Change Elemental, CompassPoint, Crossroads Antiracism Organizing and Training (Crossroads), Interaction Institute for Social Change (IISC), ProInspire, Rockwood Leadership Institute (Rockwood), The Management Center, and Together Rising as an Environmental Community (TREC).
What Created the Conditions for Deep Collaboration
A Culture of Trust
When selecting capacity builders for the FUEL program, Kresge prioritized those interested in collaborating and building relationships with one another. As a result, the chosen organizations began with a set of shared values and practices, including ones around authenticity, relationships and care.
“This group has been willing to share the deep-rooted tensions in their organizations without masking, competing or pretending,” said Kelly Frances Bates of IISC.
As an example, in January 2020, ProInspire facilitated a conversation in which group members shared service prices and other information about their business models with one another. This allowed them to understand how each organization approached resource allocation and made informed decisions.
Talking explicitly with one another about their pricing, funders, partners, contracts and processes is uncommon across capacity building organizations. This was only possible because of the group’s foundation of trust, which was built and fortified through consistent meeting participation, in-person time, mutual support, and joyful connection. As the cohort collectively wrote in a grant report, “This group is a buoy to each of us.”
Building a culture of trust allowed the members to get a range of perspectives, ideas and encouragement to navigate the challenges they face, ultimately equipping them to better serve leaders, organizations and movements.
Takeaway for Funders
Provide flexible, long-term funding for capacity builders to ensure nonprofits have the systems of support they need. “Investing in building this type of community isn’t extra. It’s fundamental to the work and should be funded just like program delivery is funded,” said Caroline Altman Smith of the Kresge Foundation.
A Responsive Funder
In July 2020, the Knowledge Share Group collectively wrote a letter to the Kresge Foundation. At the time, the capacity builders were supporting organization and movement leaders on the front lines of responding to the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and of structural anti-Black racism and violence, even as they themselves faced financial instability as clients canceled contracts. In the letter, they detailed the challenges and needs of the moment for those like themselves who “provide essential support to essential workers, leaders, organizations, and networks across the sector.” The group collectively asked for funding to survive and emerge from the crises stronger.
“I experienced it as a love letter,” said Neesha Modi of the Kresge Foundation. “I’ve been in this for nine years, but I have never experienced something like this.”
“To cast your lot in with others and not try to go it alone, but to talk about what’s in the best interest of the group and how to make a shared case – that’s not common in our funding world,” said Altman Smith.
Kresge responded by providing equal general operating grants to each of the capacity building organizations and streamlining proposal and reporting requirements.
Takeaway for Funders
Funders should be thoughtful about how they invite and receive feedback. “Power dynamics are embedded in everything, including how we communicate with one another,” Modi said. When you get feedback, as Kresge did in the letter, receive it as a gift, an expression of trust and a belief you can do better together. At the same time, when you ask for feedback, be explicit and upfront about your constraints – in other words, what’s off the table.
A Commitment to Learning With and From Each Other
When the Knowledge Share Group gathers, they often take time to learn together to strengthen their own organizations as well as deepen the rigor and transformational capacity of their offerings.
The group dedicates monthly meetings to discussing relevant topics including: the rise in demand and then backlash against racial equity work; the needs of BIPOC leaders and how best to meet them; shared and distributed leadership models; building organizational cultures that allow staff to dream and grow while remaining sustainable – at the human and financial levels; and much more.
The group also takes time to learn about one another’s work and approaches. Understanding what they each do has helped them clarify their own practices and support cross-organizational connections.
“This has helped us right-size our work,” said Bianca Casanova Anderson of ProInspire. “Knowing what others do, you can get clearer on your lane and make recommendations [and referrals] in other spaces.”
This knowledge helped the group coordinate services and develop new offerings for the FUEL program. “Crossroads wanted to think about what individual leaders need in order to advance equity, and Rockwood was seeking to infuse more systemic racial equity emphasis in their work – so we co-created something that built on our strengths,” said Jessica Vazquez Torres of Crossroads. “Funding made that possible. It allows us to dream, imagine, and prototype.”
Expanding the Circle
In addition to funding the Knowledge Share Group, Kresge recently funded a cross network gathering of racial equity practitioners that included the Knowledge Share Group, Deep Racial Equity Practitioners Network (DEPn), and the Borealis REACH fund Community of Practice. This cross network gathering resulted in racial equity strategies, pathways and collaborative relationships that will continue to strengthen our collective racial justice work in support of leaders, organizations and movements.
Takeaway for Funders
Provide the spaces, connections and funding for capacity builders to build their own capacity and learn from one another. “There has to be investment not just in gathering, but also in learning and development and refreshing our approaches as capacity builders,” said Miriam Messinger of IISC. “Groups like this coming together helps weave our work together to make bigger changes.”
“It’s about strengthening the ecosystem, of which racial equity capacity builders are a critical part,” said Aja Couchois Duncan of Change Elemental.
The Time Is Now
To have the impact they want, funders must embrace a fuller understanding of how change happens and invest in the critical role of capacity builders.
“We are the people who help build the capacity, the imagination, who accompany people when they are beating themselves against the wall,” said Vazquez Torres. “The ecology we represent is essential for the liberation project that’s required in this nation.”
“Invest in groups like ours to provide support for us to dream, to envision, and sometimes to literally save our organization,” said Sharon Price of Rockwood.
The need is more critical than ever to fund the entire social justice ecosystem – grassroots organizations and movement leaders as well as the people and institutions that provide guidance, tools, strategies, and amplification of their work. During this moment of acute attacks on civil society, funders must invest in the entirety of the social sector to ensure a healthy ecosystem able to advance justice and change over the long haul.
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Aja Couchois Duncan is a leadership coach, social justice capacity builder, and learning, communications and strategy collaborator of Ojibwe, French and Scottish descent living on the ancestral and stolen lands of the Coast Miwok people. A Senior Consultant with Change Elemental, Aja is also an author and librettist and has written toward a better future in articles like Loving Accountability and the Limits of Cancel Culture, published by NPQ, Ceremony: Reyoking the Sacred with Our Social Justice Work and Returning to Sacred Reciprocity: Reflections on Learning & Evaluation.
Rachel Hutt (sher/her) leads organizations in creating strategies and building capacity, partnering with leaders to achieve meaningful change in both big and small ways, as a Director at Community Wealth Partners. She is a proud wife, mom of twins, and Clevelander.
Lauri Valerio partners with organizations to tell their stories, guides programs and processes, and helps them practice their vision of the future. She leads her own independent consulting practice and is an affiliate consultant at Community Wealth Partners. She can be reached through her website and LinkedIn.