Building an Accountable Organization at LV

Before Liberation Ventures officially launched in February 2022, we spent countless hours writing, dreaming, and debating our organizational beliefs. In five words, our beliefs are: Black, Coalition, Liminal, Complexity, and Courage. We published our beliefs on the homepage of our website and in a blog post, so our community can hold us accountable to who we say we are.

Accountability is central to all our beliefs and we strive to create systems that deepen accountability practices throughout our organization. Accountability, in addition to acknowledgment, redress, and reckoning are the four key pillars of racial repair that we outline in our report, A Dream in Our Name, which outlines LV’s vision for building A Culture of Repair.

In this article, we’ll discuss two major arenas of accountability: grantmaking and operations. Throughout 2023, we checked in with our community through conversations, surveys, and other ad hoc opportunities to gather feedback about how we are walking the walk. This year, we’ve focused on ensuring what worked is embedded in our organization and what wasn’t aligned with our beliefs is being recognized and phased out.

With this in mind, we are sharing with our community examples of our accountability measures over the last year. We don’t see the following list as exhaustive, rather it’s a snapshot of our commitments. Although it’s essential that our efforts are expressed and made visible, the expression only goes as far as how our practices are felt individually. Thank you to everyone who holds our feet to the fire. Please continue to, and we’ll do our very best to continue to act accordingly, and cultivate a culture where this is the norm.

Grantmaking: Expanding Transparency

In the summer of 2023, we shared three key documents with our movement partners and a few other close co-conspirators: our grantmaking FAQs, our grantmaking criteria, and a grantmaking survey in service of expanding transparency, gathering feedback, and incorporating more perspectives into our grantmaking. There are no easy answers in this work, so we wanted to take the time to articulate the complexity we are holding and the tradeoffs we are making as we make grantmaking decisions.

We recognize that the work of grantmaking comes with real power. For a movement that has historically been ignored by traditional foundations, decisions about who gets money makes a difference. These decisions can elevate certain ideologies, campaigns, and projects over others; resource certain leaders but not others; and, lend credibility to the work of those that are funded and vice versa to those that aren’t. How we give — including the kinds of proposals, reporting, impact measurement, and/or metrics that we do or don’t require — can also lead some organizations to be excluded. In addition, we walk a fine line as both a funder and a grantee ourselves. We are a drop in the bucket compared to endowed foundations and we cannot underestimate the power imbalances that exist because of our funder role. We know we need to use our power intentionally, by implementing deeply bold, empathetic, and durable interventions in the philanthropic space and in our own funding process.

What We’re Doing

Accountability mechanisms help to ensure that this power is checked and distributed. LV’s first organizational belief states very clearly what we are accountable to: the work of repairing systems and culture, to ensure Black healing and thriving. To date, this has meant a number of intentional internal practices:

• The vast majority of the organizations we have funded are Black-led and Black staffed.
• We cut written proposals and reporting, and opt for calls instead. More relationship building, less paperwork.
• We aim to maintain at least a 50% re-granting ratio as we grow.
• Grants are unrestricted, unless an organization specifically asks us to support a particular project.
• Our second and third round of grants came with a $2500 wellness stipend.
• We have a strong commitment to building a culture of repair within our own organization; tough feedback, joyous appreciation, practicing what we preach, and learning from mistakes and pilots.
• We ask movement partners for introductions and recommendations about who we should consider for funding.
• We have a non-traditional “program officer” model, where everyone on our team has relationships with folks across the movement — helping us to be more attuned to the current state of things.
• We reject perfectionism. We aren’t perfect, and we don’t expect anyone else to be either.

How We’re Growing

1. The Reparations Grantmaking Blueprint: We want our grantmaking priorities to be closely aligned to the priorities of movement leaders as well as grounded in relevant research (e.g., on effective narratives, the successful tactics of other social movements, etc.). To realize this vision, Liberation Ventures is currently in the process of co-creating a 10-year investment strategy called the Reparations Grantmaking Blueprint. Learn more about The Reparations Grantmaking Blueprint in our latest grantmaking announcement.
2. Infusing more movement input into our decision-making process: In the survey we sent movement partners, we asked for recommendations for additional groups we should talk to and for shoutouts to organizations and leaders they can’t do their work without. In addition to The Reparations Grantmaking Blueprint, we will be exploring many other participatory processes — such as standing up a separate advisory committee to advise grantmaking decisions, standing up a donor collaborative, and more.

In addition, movement partners ranked grantmaking criteria so their wisdom could be incorporated into LV’s grantmaking decisions, which included the following prioritization:

• High: Explicit focus on the work of reparations; Potential for impact and learning over the next several years; Commitment to building a culture of repair within the reparations movement.
• Medium: In relationship with other movement organizations and/or other LV partners; Experience of the group’s leadership in the reparations movement
• Lower priority: Leadership composition; Organizational infrastructure; Organizational budget
• Not a priority: Length of operation

Further feedback from the survey included:

• Continuing to deepen movement participation in our grantmaking decision processes
• Checking our own blind spots, especially as it relates to breadth of state and local advocacy happening across the country
• Clarifying if and when there is “separation” between our grantmaking and non-grantmaking functions, and what this looks like; we have more to understand about what this boundary needs to entail

Operations & Programs: Prioritizing the How

In the fall of 2023, we requested feedback from our whole extended community — movement partners, funders, advisors, peers in the field, and contractors across various domains of the organization. The goal of this survey was to learn more about how LV is living up to our beliefs in big and small ways, what we’re doing well and where we need to grow.

What We’re Doing Well

1. Collaboration: Our community appreciates our commitment to collaboration. Last year we co-authored articles with movement partners and researchers, conveyed the Reparations Narrative Lab, are currently in the process of developing The Reparations Grantmaking Blueprint with our incredible steering committee, launched the Reparations Research Consortium, and there’s more in the works.
2. Showing Up: People notice that we show up and recognize the importance of coming to events in person and virtually. We traveled a lot last year, and continue to this year, and attended dozens of events across the US, including Tulsa, Richmond, Savannah, Berkeley, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Seattle, and more.
3. Relationship Building: It was especially meaningful that folks said they really see us building relationships in ways that really matter to them. We really value 1:1 time, don’t shy away from jumping on the phone to problem solve whatever might be going on, and we try to respond as quickly as we can.
4. Rigor & Clarity: It’s humbling to hear that our commitment to the quality of our work is seen and appreciated. From ideation to implementation, we take our work seriously and we attempt to be clear, rigorous, and organized about what we do and how we do it. We hold a high standard of rigor for our work, and our operational processes are designed to meet that standard through inclusivity, collaboration, iteration, and input. Here’s a little more from our internal operating philosophy on this point in particular:

In addition, we believe that a high level of rigor is required in order to maintain accountability to our movement. Our written work is clear, thoughtful, and nuanced, and has been reviewed by peers, partners, and/or experts before it is published. Our projects and deliverables are executed with the spaciousness necessary to execute them well and attend to small details. Our events and gatherings are planned well in advance, and are thoughtfully executed as an art — with care, relationships, and impact embedded in their DNA.

How We’re Growing

1. Operations: There are concerns about delayed contracts and payments. While being fiscally sponsored has provided essential infrastructure for us (and so many small nonprofits), it also has its challenges for us, such as lack of control over our finances, different capacity for risk in contracts and agreements, and generally more red tape that we don’t have the power to change. In light of this, LV is becoming our own 501(c)3! Our new Vice President of Operations Karin Gerald is leading this lengthy process and we couldn’t be more excited to make these improvements.
2. Communications: We’ve been hearing that we need to communicate more effectively with our community at large. People need to know what we’re up to and why we’re up to it! As an organization, we’ve made a strategic decision not to invest that much in communications and invest in other elements of the organization. We are realizing this needs to change soon and we’re planning on right-sizing our communications over the next couple years.
3. Coalition Building: Everyone, everywhere, wants to be together more in person, and so do we! Folks are telling us that they want us to co-create intentional spaces to bring the reparations movement together, especially with different stakeholders. This year, we brought on a Vice President of Movement Building, Marsha Davis, who will do just that. We are also gearing up to host our first ever full-community gathering in 2025.
4. Amplification: Last but certainly not least, although we also got positive feedback about this, folks want us to turn up the volume on building narrative power by amplifying the brilliant work of our movement partners, audience research, and polling data. Under the leadership of our new Vice President of Narrative Change, Amity Paye, we are going to continue to dedicate time and resources to this through the next phase of our narrative work, as well as LV’s communication efforts, events and conferences, writing opportunities, and more. We want to magnify the light the reparations movement is shining!

We want to thank our extended network, especially our movement partners, for all the ways they keep us vigilant, with grace and tenacity. We’ve named the more formal ways we request feedback and we’d like to honor the everyday ways courageous checking in happens. For example, pausing a conversation to ask a hard question, following up one-on-one to check in about a misunderstanding, and email that asks for clarification after a sensitive conversation — just to name a few!

Our door is always open to our community for your questions, concerns and feedback. Please keep it coming.

-The LV Team