The Journey Ahead
This is the fourth post in a series. Click here to start at the beginning.
We are still far from who we need to be as advocates and partners for disability justice and equity. True, the Learning Together, Connecting Communities initiative was an important and necessary step in our organizational development. We’ve begun to implement much of what we learned from Learning Together in our organizational practices, policies, structure and culture, as well as our physical and digital spaces. But we still have a long way to go. Our staff and board need to reflect the disability community in Oregon and Southwest Washington. So does our grantmaking. Right now, they don’t. We could not be more excited to embark on this journey, and we’re hoping some of our colleagues in philanthropy and current leaders in the disability community will help us make the trek.
Disability Representation on our Staff and Board
We know we cannot be a true partner to the disability community unless we have people on our staff and board who self-identify as members of the disability community. With this in mind, we prioritized disability justice in our last board recruitment (along with expertise in advocacy, but that’s another story) and brought on disability studies scholar and activist Marjorie McGee. Marjorie identifies as a member of the disability community. She currently works as an Equity and Inclusion Policy Data Analyst for Oregon Health Authority’s Office of Equity and Inclusion, playing a key role in implementing the Race, Ethnicity, Language and Disability Standards, and is particularly interested in the intersections between social statuses (e.g. disability and race, or sexual orientation and income level). Marjorie has been instrumental in helping us examine our ableism as individuals and as an organization. But Marjorie should not be the lone member of the disability community on our staff and board and cannot be expected to stand for the entire disability community.
[Image description: A woman with short, blonde hair and glasses with bright blue frames smiles.]
One out of 12 Northwest Health Foundation board members, and none of our 11 staff members, identify as a member of the disability community. Considering that 1 out of 5 people in the U.S. have a disability, it is clear that our board and staff do not represent Oregon and Southwest Washington communities in the way that they should. This shows us that our recruitment practices and work culture are ableist. In response, we have revised our job descriptions, changed our outreach practices and are striving to create a more inclusive environment. We have more to do.
Disability Representation in our Grantmaking
We also need to do more as a grantmaker. In a previous post, we shared that, while our giving to disability-led and focused organizations increased to 14.9% in 2014, in 2015 it dropped to an abysmal and embarrassing 0.33%. While we made an effort to reach out to and prepare disability-led and focused organizations to apply for grant opportunities, we turned down many of the applications we received. Why? We believe there are several reasons for this.
[Image description: A bar graph showing giving to disability-focused organizations as a percentage of total giving from 2012 through 2015. Giving to disability-focused organizations is a very small portion of the bars representing 2012 and 2013, represents about a seventh of the 2014 bar, and doesn’t even show up in the 2015 bar.]
For one, we have not done the difficult work of examining the deep, underlying ableism embedded in our organization. It is embedded in our recruitment and hiring practices for staff and board, and it is also embedded in our calls for applicants for grant opportunities. For example, at our board’s last Equity Committee meeting, some of our board and staff members looked at a request for proposals (RFP) we released in 2014 using the in, out and down framework discussed in our last post. We saw that our failure to examine differences resulted in maintaining ableist hierarchies. For example, in our health compass, we chose indicators at key transitions in early life drawn from sources in education, health and early life, as well as community. Our intention was to identify measures where community and systems transformation in the region were aligned. But unexamined, they perpetuate notions of ableism. For example, we chose third grade reading as a social metric used by education and community as an indicator of learning development. This measure assumes a timeline of development that does not take into consideration the learning of students with cognitive, developmental or learning disabilities and assigns a value to one over the other that is unfair. By examining this RFP, we recognized that we need to rethink everything, from the words we use to the expectations we set, with disability equity in mind. In the long-run, we need to consider co-creating our funding initiatives with the disability community, as we try to do with communities of color, in order to fully integrate a disability equity lens. While the vision and ultimate outcome we desire may remain largely the same, the way we get to that vision and outcome will have to change.
[Image description: Four concentric circles. The circle in the center contains text that reads “Community Capacity” with arrows pointing outward from it. The three outer circles are divided into quarters, labeled “Social,” “Mental,” “Physical” and “Spiritual.” The quarter labeled “Physical” is divided further into “Weight” and “Dental.” The three outer circles are labeled “Healthy Birth,” “Kindergarten Readiness” and “High School” readiness from the center out. Each division of the circles contains words describing a key indicator of health. For instance, the quarter of the “Healthy Birth” circle labeled “Spiritual” contains the indicator “Family resilience.” The quarter of the “Kindergarten Readiness circle labeled “Mental” contains the indicator “Developmental Screening at third birthday.” And so on.]
In addition, private and public foundations (NWHF included) chronically underfund disability justice. Those foundations that do fund disability-focused organizations tend to fund disability-serving organizations, most of which do not have any members of the disability community among their leadership. This perpetuates the idea that people without disabilities are superior to people with. It also makes it difficult for the few disability-led organizations that exist to survive and compete with other organizations for funding. It’s an unfair cycle. Because few resources go to disability-led organizations, disability-led organizations can’t develop the infrastructure they need to compete for resources. The nonprofit sector needs to break this cycle.
[Image description: Two youth wearing ADA 25 t-shirts hold up a sign with the word “PITY” on it, surrounded by a red circle and crossed out with a red slash.]
Northwest Health Foundation’s Equity Committee recognizes a need for funders to help build the capacity of disability-led disability justice organizations to advocate and build power. This includes building capacity for all the civic engagement tools available to 501c3 and c4 organizations, as well as building the resources needed to survive and succeed as a nonprofit. We want to help create this opportunity, but we won’t be able to do it alone. We’ll look to and engage leaders in the disability community, as well as our friends and colleagues in philanthropy and the nonprofit sector. We want to help create this opportunity, but bear with us, because it isn’t going to happen overnight, or even within the next month. If we want to do this right, it’s going to take time. Stay tuned!
Everyone deserves the opportunity to lead a healthy life. Northwest Health Foundation is committed to addressing the inequities that prevent people from having that opportunity. Only through open, thoughtful dialogue, relationship building and authentic partnerships can we journey alongside communities to achieve that vision. To our partners in the disability community, we thank you for being teachers, leaders and champions in this movement.
