Calling in White Philanthropy
Spend any amount of time in a room of white philanthropists and you’ll hear the question “How will we measure the impact?” Usually it’s the first question. Of course it is — white people are used to expecting a measurable return on the their investments. And why wouldn’t we? In a capitalist society designed specifically for us at the exclusion of others, we’ve been conditioned to expect to get something out of everything — our degrees, our property, our careers, our dollars.
“Metrics,” “ROI,” and “impact” have become coded words in philanthropy. We all want our grants to have impact but these words are precisely what is holding white philanthropy back in a moment that has the potential to create lasting social change. For decades, white philanthropy has steamrolled and undermined Black leadership by directing dollars to predominantly white/mainstream “trusted nonprofits” under the guise that they are able to “demonstrate impact” and make “measurable change.” White philanthropy can talk about the number of people we’ve served and the supports we’ve provided but we haven’t acknowledged the collateral damage of our biases — the vital community organizations that have struggled and folded because we’ve prioritized funding the nonprofit industrial complex, the number of BIPOC community members who have seen nothing good come from our community conversations and bus tours, the number of white donors and volunteers (and foundation staff) whose racism has gone unchecked and who have perpetuated harm against the communities we aim to serve. White philanthropy has actively participated in oppression and reparations are past due.
We find ourselves in a moment of national conversation about systemic racism and a growing collective awareness about the ways it has been baked into every facet of our society. White philanthropy, if we do not seize this opportunity to do better, we’ll be actively undermining our public-facing missions and blood will continue to be on our hands.
Philanthropy must dismantle practices that are actively doing harm to BIPOC communities and make both immediate and long-term commitments to anti-racist practice and continued learning:
· Recognize that funding BIPOC-led advocacy and systems change is not “risky” and that it is indeed more dangerous for us to do nothing and advance efforts to return to the status quo. A laser focus on data and risk has hindered our ability to be nimble and take critical action. What really prevents us from removing prescriptive data and reporting requirements or funding work that, from our privileged perspective, seemingly has less tangible and less immediate impact? The numbers we should be focusing on are the glaring disparities that exist between the health, wealth, and access of white people and BIPOC–no one program or organization will move that needle with a 12-month grant. We need to adjust our expectations, our language, and our practice to reflect the reality that it will take collective intention to advance critical community organizing, remove barriers to power for systemically-oppressed communities, and address the gaps that we’ve had a hand in creating. It is our responsibility to educate our donors and benefactors on why systems change is important and necessary. Challenge your Boards to think more expansively about this work.
· Take an explicit stand. It’s time to add our voices to the calls to defund the police. If any sector can understand the impact of redirecting police funding to education, mental health, and other community services, it should be the sector that has long been patching gaps in community budgets. Imagine how far our dollars could go and what we could achieve if critical social services were adequately funded by city budgets.
· Join together. Any good philanthropic organization should be trying to work itself and this sector out of existence, so what’s up with the competition in the philanthropic sector? We need to organize and act, collectively giving over our political and economic capital to BIPOC leadership, to magnify the possibilities of this moment.
· Engage and PAY people of color (especially queer and trans BIPOC) to shape your processes. Be open and responsive to the feedback they share. Take the actions they recommend. Build their services into your organization’s annual budget.
· Embrace participatory philanthropy and shift your practice to authentically give decision-making power to individuals with lived experience and invaluable wisdom. As a sector, philanthropy is critically disconnected from the realities many communities face because, by design, there’s a disconnect from people. Power, whiteness, and a smug reliance on over-intellectualized strategies have built a wall between philanthropy’s ivory towers and systemically-oppressed communities. Philanthropy is too comfortable and it’s made us unwilling to adopt strategies that can create critical change for BIPOC communities because they would change the very systems that keep us in business.
Every philanthropic organization wants their dollar to be responsible for turning the tide — the impacts and outcomes of this movement are not ours to claim. The sooner we can acknowledge how we got here and throw our support behind BIPOC leadership, the greater impact we’ll have, together.
