In Minnesota funder news, recently two high-profile foundations, Target, and McKnight Foundation, released new funding priorities that focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion. This reflects a bigger trend that has been building among foundations for a while now. Target’s focus, as one might expect from a corporation, is on financial and economic equity, while McKnight’s is broader, including civic engagement and with an emphasis on the systemic failures that have created some of the worst racial equity gaps in the country in the Twin Cities.
This focus seems crucial. But, for me it also increases the urgency of the parallel conversation that predates and has gained new prominence as foundations look more at diversity and equity: can foundations - largely white, and entangled in the knot of race and access and wealth themselves by virtue of where their money generally comes from - be agents for structural social change? And more importantly, should they be?
A lot of other thinkers and writers have tackled the problems of diversity, equity and inclusion better than I can here - here I want to draw attention to the questions these authors and activists are raising as the nonprofit sector and institutional funders keep pushing on systemic problems. These are the questions we, especially those of us with more privilege working within the nonprofit sector, must keep pushing as more and more high-profile foundations adopt equity and inclusion priorities. We’re not all in a position to push foundations on these topics, but for those of us who can, questions to ask of foundations as they make new funding priorities and strategies:
Is a foundation focus on equity and access enough? Can inherently skewed power dynamics of institutional giving still create meaningful engagement and support meaningful change? What responsibilities do foundations have to be looking inward and making changes themselves to live the principles they espouse to support in broader society? Can foundations overcome individual and systemic conscious and unconscious bias to truly support diverse organizations and community led organizations?
I’m happy to see major foundations acknowledging systemic barriers, and racial disparities directly. I think the next question is how they back up that focus – if it’s true that the current way of doing things at foundations is never going to allow them to achieve their stated goals, what else needs to change for that to happen?
