The Big Uneasy: New Data on Community Foundations and Social Justice

       P   O   S   T   E   D       B   Y       A   L   B   E   R  T

A community foundation is an odd institution.  Unlike a private foundation such as Ford or Rockefeller, it’s a public charity, meaning, that among other things, it must raise money each year from the general public to satisfy what the IRS calls the “public support test.”  Community foundations typically serve a specific geography—a metropolitan area or an entire state, say—and they combine grantmaking with other programs to address the needs of a broad constituency.

You will rarely find a community foundation that fully embraces the analyses, strategies, tactics, and values of social justice grantmaking, which I define here simply as grantmaking that addresses the root and/or structural causes of social, economic, or political injustice.  A recent survey of community foundations suggests why this might be the case.

My colleague Barry Knight, director of CENTRIS, and I invited community foundation staff members to respond to a five-question survey on matters relating to social justice philanthropy. We received a little over 50 responses.

We found that 57 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “Many CEOs or trustees of community foundations resist social justice philanthropy because they fear alienating donors,” while only 17 percent disagreed or strongly disagreed. 

Rather than guess at why social justice philanthropy might alienate donors, we included a question that would probe the roots of people’s unease with the notion.  There were two factors that stood out: (1) the term “social justice” sounds too radical for some, and (2) the aims of social justice philanthropy seem too vague or too broad for others.

On the one hand, the radical connotations of social justice philanthropy are a bit surprising given that a quest for social justice is central to various mainstream Jewish, Christian, and other faith traditions.  On the other hand, many people still associate calls for social justice with the politically charged language of the 1960s.

More troubling to practitioners should be the claim that the aims of social justice philanthropy are too vague or too broad.  Is the goal fairness and equal access to opportunity?  If so, how can this be sharpened?  Or is the goal a fairer distribution of society’s benefits and harms, something that might indeed cause a flutter in many a donor’s heart?

Not too surprisingly, our survey uncovered a significant difference of opinion between the corner office and program staff members: 62 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that “Program staff at community foundations are generally more supportive of social justice philanthropy than CEOs or trustees,” as compared with 15 percent who disagreed or strongly disagreed.

When we asked survey-takers to define social justice philanthropy, we saw a broad array of responses, the most popular involving, in some way, the attainment of “equity.”  Some respondents described equity as a leveling of the playing field; others as providing equal access to opportunity.  None, apparently, thought of it as a post-earnings redistribution of wealth.  If, as 11 of our respondents suggested, social justice philanthropy is simply a matter of helping those who are least well off, then the category suffers meaning inflation and comes to include just about every grantmaker in the United States and abroad.

As I ponder these survey results, I’m hopeful that community foundations will be able find the language— “fairness,” “equality of opportunity”—that resonates with their donors and other stakeholders.  I also believe it’s possible to clarify the aims of social justice to everyone’s satisfaction.

The persistent racial and other disparities in our communities highlight, in my view, the shortcomings of philanthropy-as-usual and prompt us to look for a new kind of giving. To make the same kinds of grants year after year to the same communities, to see the same disparities persist and even widen, and not to question one’s approach to grantmaking is, in my view, to do philanthropy in bad faith.

Social justice philanthropy offers us a way of recommitting ourselves to philanthropy’s great aims. In practicing it we acknowledge that what’s good enough for us might not be good enough for the communities we purport to serve.

Download CF_survey

 For more on the definition of social justice philanthropy, click here. 

Comments

[Prentice Zinn]

Several things ring true for me – and not just for community foundations.

I regularly see how foundation program staff involved in funder collaborative or other working groups discuss how to “play” the social justice elements of their grantmaking within their own institutions that do not have a social justice framework. They have to grapple with their personal commitment to social justice and an often muddy framework from their own institutions. I am sure many program staff can recount their own Robin Hood stories of how they have downplayed the politics of particular grants in order to sneak in a grant for good social justice work.

I also think the problem of “meaning inflation”, as you call it, needs a lot more discussion in the field. If it is endemic among nonprofit organizations that we support, it is not surprising that foundations, especially community foundations are masters at faking the equity dance. The endless fusillade of NCRP reports seem to bear this out in 3-D. Better yet, ask grassroots organizations in communities of color to rate the equity scorecard of all of their local foundations.

While community foundation boards and leaders tend to reflect the social and political elites of communities, I am optimistic that they can move beyond the dominant charity banking model and recapture some of the promise of the community foundation movement. Many of us are amazed at the noisy public conversation about social inequality that was relegated to the margins only a few months ago. In this context of failure and frustration, I’m hearing rumblings of discontent suggesting that our models of governance, our grantmaking practices, and the way the institutions authentically engage with the community need a dramatic overhaul.

[Albert]

I suggested to the Council on Foundations that it do a reprise of its popular "Philanthropy on Trial" plenary session at its 2012 annual conference, this time inviting the residents of communities served by various foundations to sit on the jury. When this session was first introduced at the 2011 conference in Denver, 10 out of the 12 philanthropoids on the jury voted to convict. Better bring the bail money if, as you suggest, we invite grassroots organizations in communities of color to pass sentence.

[Hilary Gilbert]

Lots of interest and many apposite points here, both in the article and in the comments. Both are focussed on the western environments and value-systems in which the community foundation model evolved. But the same conundrum occurs, in a different guise, in the very different socio-economic environments in which the movement is now emerging. In the Middle East (the corner I'm familiar with)the dichotomy is not 'social justice' vs 'business as usual', but 'philanthropy for development' vs 'philanthropy as a religious duty to succour the poor'. Reduced to their bones, though, they amount to the same thing: should philanthropy uphold or challenge the status quo? I've always seen the role and purpose of CFs as being one of brokerage between the two positions. We stand of necessity with a foot in both camps, and it is our specific function to interpret each side to the other and make them intelligible. A CF that plants itself squarely on one side or the other will betray its mission. The question is how overtly it can take this brokerage role. In the global north, working overtly for social justice may lose you some wealthy conservative donors. In parts of the global south it can land you in jail. We serve mutually incompatible constituencies - proponents of social change vs upholders of the status quo. All over the world, I suspect, people in CFs are deliberately muddying waters in order to satisfy them both at once. It's what we're good at, and if we leaned too far in either direction we'd stop being CFs and become something else. Whether that makes us healthy pragmatists or shocking hypocrites is, I guess, for others to judge....

[Albert]

Wonderfully put. In the US context, challenging the status quo doesn't land you in jail because these challenges typically have little effect. Chomsky would argue that we're free to say whatever we please in a deeply indoctrinated society that has so thoroughly internalized the pieties of the market and of historical exceptionalism. As for the proper role of the community foundation, I like very much your metaphor of the interpreter. Is the interpreter supposed to have no feelings one way or the other about what he's being asked to interpret? Does he interpret ultimately for the sake of justice, or does it matter? I think it does matter, and that we cease to be a community foundation not when we side with justice, but when we fail to understand what living in community requires of us.

[Devon Kearney]

I guess the good news, to an extent, is that few respondents view the social justice subsector as weak or ineffective. And given that respondents also see social justice work as hard to measure, but not ineffective, perhaps there is a recognition of the value of long-term strategies that do not show immediate pay-off.

On the other hand, looking at the heavy concentration of 1s and 5s gives me pause: roughly equal numbers of respondents see "social justice" as too radical and social justice nonprofits as not ineffective. Though I recognize the fallacies in drawing this conclusion, is it possible that funding radical, effective work is a particularly scary combination?

[Albert]

We need to ask ourselves: When did basic fairness and decency become a radical notion? But you're right, there's some good news in this survey for proponents of social justice philantropy.

[Gano Carnahan]

I just heard that there is such a community foundation. This is not common in our country. What is know are private foundations. God bless to the philanthropist!

[Duca Jackman]

Yeah.Good luck!