Charitable Giving Through an Equity Lens
When we started Humanize Wealth a year ago, I didn’t know much about the non-profit landscape. My time advising clients on charitable strategy was mostly limited to funding donor advised funds (DAFs) with appreciated securities to maximize the tax benefit – but what happened to the money after the DAF was funded was left to the client to manage.
Clients were often so overwhelmed by the task of forming a philanthropic strategy that they would leave the funds in the DAF untouched, delaying the downstream impacts of the donation (we discussed DAFs and their criticisms in this blog post).
At Humanize Wealth, we believe that a deep understanding of the root causes of inequity underpins systems change at the local level. To achieve this level of understanding, we must get to know the communities being impacted by systems that are oppressing or excluding them, and the people providing services to fill the gap; primarily grassroots non-profit organizations and leaders.
While the concepts previewed here have been discussed in non-profit circles for many years, I share my experiences because I know many of our clients are on the same path of trying to figure out how to have the most impact with their charitable dollars and to give through the lenses of racial justice and economic equity.
Collective Giving & Trust-Based Philanthropy
I joined the Washington Women’s Foundation last year to kickstart my learning journey. The Foundation is a grant-making collective, where members democratically allocate a pool of their contributions to charitable organizations. The Foundation’s grantmaking focus is on increasing equity and reducing disparities in Washington State, with a specific focus on communities affected by inequity due to race or gender identity. This aligned with my personal giving priorities and I figured the impact of my own gifting would be amplified as part of a collective.
The Washington Women’s Foundation is one of many charitable organizations that aspires to implement the practices of trust-based philanthropy. The movement is a reaction to overly burdensome grant-making practices that slow nonprofits from doing the work they know best.
Trust-based philanthropy is centered around the idea that those closest to the problems are best equipped to serve their communities and know how to deploy their scarce resources for maximum impact.
Examples of trust-based practices include:
Providing unrestricted funding, trusting that the organization knows how to best use to funds to further their mission
Simplifying the grant application process so that charitable organizations do not need to jump through hoops to customize each application
Engaging in mutually accountable relationships through effective feedback loops and support beyond financial contributions
Last fall, I joined a sub-committee of women reviewing grant applications at the intersection of food sovereignty and security and support for women and girls where I was able to implement these practices. It was my first time reviewing grant applications, and fortunately, I was able to lean on the collective experience of the women in my group. They encouraged me to focus on the alignment between our grant making priorities and the content of the application and not on things like grammar or slickness of the website. To the extent we had a question that wasn’t answered in the application we did the research ourselves.
The experience taught me that the process of grant-making matters as much as selecting a recipient – said differently, an equitable process felt as meaningful as giving to an equity-focused organization.
This hands-on work also deepened my understanding of the urgent problems in our backyard and made me want to learn from non-profit leaders in our community directly to hear about what they are seeing and needing.
Trust-Based Philanthropy in Community
Last November, Kyle and I attended a roundtable of organizations serving residents in South King County co-hosted by LeAnne Moss, Executive Director of Renton Regional Community Foundation and Jill Nishi, CEO of Philanthropy Northwest. South King County includes cities like Renton, Skyway and Tukwila, all of which have higher percentages of communities of color than Washington state as a whole¹.
The purpose of the event was to bring funders and nonprofit service leaders together to discuss the diverse but interconnected challenges communities are facing in South King County. Tables were organized around topics that prior gatherings and surveys identified as most impacting these communities: food, health, housing, immigrant services and advocacy, and mental health.
Each table had a community facilitator alongside representatives from non-profits who work deeply and directly within their communities to support individuals, families and businesses navigating these issues.
Some key themes emerged from the table discussions:
Demand for services has increased dramatically (in the survey, 92% percent of respondents reported increased demand in programs and services with 58% reporting they are unable to meet the demand for services).
The long-term impacts of Covid have been profound and gaps in food and health care access have grown.
Service organizations are focused on collaboratively building capacity and sharing resources between them.
It is critical to design and deliver culturally relevant and accessible services whether around food, personal items, healthcare or even things like cookware.
Educational programming and orientation help service recipients better understand systemic housing and food shortages and let go of feelings like shame and guilt.
There is a need for mental health services provided by therapists who look like and share lived experiences with their patients.
We were struck by the intersectionality of these issues – a person who was struggling with hunger and housing was also likely to need mental health services. As we went table to table, the topic of mental health surfaced as the overarching issue driving other needs.
We were so energized by the incredible work these organizations are doing, and also sobered by the lack of capacity they have in order to meet the demand for their services. Despite the heavy conversations, we most acutely felt the joy of being in community together and having face to face conversations after so many years of virtual meetings.
Toward the end of the event, Roxana Pardo Garcia, Executive Director of Alimentando al Pueblo, a culturally-relevant food bank for the Latinx community, emphasized to the room that the communities know best what their own needs are. She implored us to trust the people doing the work to serve the community and who are part of their communities as the people who know best how to allocate the resources.
Community-Centric Fundraising
Roxana’s comments highlighted something that now seems obvious to me: there is an inherent power imbalance between donors and charitable organizations. This imbalance not only shows up in the grantmaking process, but also the fundraising process. Definition break: grantmakers give money, fundraisers seek money for their organizations. Many of the same issues that plagued grant-making culture are also pervasive in traditional fundraising practices.
In the U.S. alone, philanthropy is a $427 billion dollar industry, of which 68% comes from individual donors. Yet the practices, theories, and foundation of modern philanthropy and fundraising often ignore the ways in which the industry perpetuates the very injustices the nonprofit sector wishes to end.²
Traditional philanthropy is too often grounded in donor experiences instead of community needs, which can create power imbalances and prevent important conversations about race, inequity, and privilege, and crowd out the voices of people served. I had heard about an effort to shift this dynamic – the Community Centric Fundraising (CCF) movement – and set out to learn more.
I was fortunate to have the opportunity to grab coffee with Andrea Arenas, a member of the CCF founding council. Andrea, through her practice Andrea Arenas Consulting, provides training, workshops, and strategic guidance for both fundraisers and grantmakers.
Community-Centric Fundraising is a movement that aims to reimagine fundraising and philanthropy in the nonprofit sector. It encourages critical examination of traditional practices, aiming to advance social justice and minimize harm.³
Andrea said that the ideas embedded in community-centric fundraising came out of informal gatherings of non-profit fundraisers of color who realized they were facing similar challenges in raising money for their organizations. Fighting tooth and nail – often pitted against each other – for each dollar from donors, when the efforts to secure the funds often exceeded the benefit of the grant. Together these fundraising leaders sketched out 10 principles which are designed to ground fundraising and philanthropy in racial and economic justice, and encourage a more balanced relationship between donor, recipient, and community.
Andrea told me that it’s a common misconception that community-centric fundraising is anti-donor. Rather, she says, organizations want to share acknowledgement for all types of contributions, including the volunteers who give so much of their time and community-members who trust the organization to deliver services.
The CCF principle that stands out to me the most is #8:
We promote the understanding that everyone (donors, staff, funders, board members, volunteers) personally benefits from engaging in the work of social justice – it’s not just charity and compassion. Some call it “enlightened self-interest,” this belief that by investing in others and in the common good, we also personally benefit. It’s not just compassion or a sense of pity. Getting donors to see they and their families personally benefit from their donations will lead to stronger investment in their community, which will strengthen the community.⁴
This resonates with our belief at Humanize Wealth that investing in community and towards shared prosperity benefits everyone, even those that already hold wealth and power.
What I’ve Learned
If you’re having trouble getting started, consider joining a giving collective. You might be inspired by organizations in a way that will refine your personal giving strategy. Or you may decide that being part of a giving collective is how you want to give going forward.
Consider incorporating elements of trust-based philanthropy into your giving practices. An equitable process of gifting is as important as the end gift.
Get to know the non-profits in your backyard. Large national nonprofits are doing important work, but often the smaller organizations embedded in the community need resources more urgently and can have a more direct and tangible impact.
Photography credit: Tawfiq Abdulaziz at Original Studios
Nonprofit organizations we met at the roundtable event
Food
Urban Food Systems Pact | Restoration House Ministries NW | Alimentando al Pueblo
Housing
Vision House | Vine Maple Place
The Family Housing Sustainability and Ownership Project (FHOSP), a project of The African American Community Investment Fund, which is a program under The Jesus Center and Freedom Church in Skyway
Immigrant Services and Advocacy
GrassrootProjects | Mother Africa
Mental Health
DMHS: Deconstructing the Mental Health System
Citations
¹https://crosscut.com/sponsored/place-thrive-south-king-county
²,³,⁴ CCF website
