Under the Hood: Shifting Philanthropic Practice in Times of Crisis
/Nearly three years after the racial justice reckoning and onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) held its first in-person learning conference last month in D.C.
With an intentional focus on courageous unlearning, a sold-out crowd of foundation leaders and evaluation practitioners gathered to share how the philanthropic sector is responding to the challenges and opportunities in a world of constant change. A diverse cross section of speakers, artists, and activists from across the country echoed the importance of trust, the iterative and adaptive nature of learning, and the courage required to unlearn and release the mindsets and practices that no longer serve us. There also was shared concern about the very real tendency to revert to entrenched norms and default settings. As GEO’s CEO, Marcus Walton, asked, “what would it look like to hold the line on our commitments to racial equity?”
As part of a GEO session called “Under the Hood,” I had the pleasure of facilitating a dynamic and honest conversation with Brenda Solórzano, CEO of the Headwaters Foundation, Charles Sidney Fields, Vice President of the James Irvine Foundation, and Hanh Cao Yu, Chief Learning Officer of The California Endowment, about what it takes to move beyond pledges and promises to deeper equity-focused shifts in organizational practices, structures, and culture. We framed our session around the values and four domains developed by the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project (TBP) because it intentionally grounds these reflections in a core set of values rooted in advancing equity, shifting power, and building mutually accountable relationships.
The session was inspired by an 18-month evaluation of The California Endowment’s COVID-19 Rapid Response grantmaking from 2020 to 2022. A unique feature of the evaluation was an intentional focus on the internal workings of the foundation and ways to operationalize their commitment to racial equity. As part of the evaluation, Engage R+D spoke with a group of funders and field partners to better understand what other funders were learning in this time of crisis and introspection. Our goal was to go “under the hood,” and uncover what it takes to fully embed equity in institutional culture, structures, and practice. The Headwaters Foundation and James Irvine Foundation were generous enough to share honest reflections about what they were learning at the time. Highlights from those conversations were captured in this field brief along with a set of recommendations.
We invite you to go “under the hood” and offer the following set of questions to guide your reflections.
