Resources

To achieve our vision for individuals and communities, grantmakers must work to address the historic, emerging, dynamic and collective forces at work to suppress racial, social and economic justice.

Over the last 20 years, the GEO community has worked to transform a desire for results into real improvements by creating spaces where grantmakers learn together and use that learning to drive concrete changes in the way grantmaking work gets done. As a field, we've made progress. And, as we continue learning together, our understanding of effective philanthropy evolves.

Virginia Eubanks, professor at the University at Albany, SUNY and author of Automating Inequality offered lessons from twenty years of research and reporting on the use of digital tools in public service programs to place the big data revolution in its political and economic context.

Raj Jayadev of Silicon Valley De-Bug shared how De-Bug has been transforming the criminal justice system using a "participatory defense" approach that empowers families and community members to sway the result of court cases. He suggested ways grantmakers can support systems change work led by nonprofits and communities, and how creating space allows for the innovation that's needed to tackle oppressive systems and institutions.

Christina Canales Gorczynski highlighted the Simmons Foundation's work to address the power dynamics inherent in philanthropy and how the foundation identified avenues for communities to drive and direct change.

American culture and narratives are rooted in a collective ambivalence about how we formed this country - in both oppression and opportunity; open doors to some, closed to others; welcoming from afar but often discriminatory day-to-day. But traditional messaging campaigns and op-eds aren't generally effective at moving people toward a greater sense of shared fate.

Focusing on equity necessitates reflection on ourselves and reckoning with the impact of our actions, regardless of our intentions. Understanding how implicit bias can manifest in behavior is crucial to understanding how our organizations may perpetuate the very inequities we seek to reduce.

Organizations seeking to support authentic change on complex, multi-layered issues often find that listening to and being in relationship with impacted communities is central to the work.

Fania Davis highlighted efforts bubbling up across the nation and shared strategies such as truth-telling, healing circles, and reparative justice that will help individuals and institutions in the U.S. interrupt and transform cycles of racialized historical trauma.

Vancouver Foundation is launching a new youth engagement initiative focused on racial equity (specifically Indigenous, immigrant and refugee young people). We’re in the process of developing our grant applications, reports and criteria. I’m curious about the other funders out there that do racial equity grantmaking and wondering if it would be possible to get more information about your own grant applications, reports and criteria. And if there are any projects that you’ve funded that really stand out to you I’d love to hear about them as well!