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PEAK Grantmaking

Weekly Reads – August 28, 2020

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A roundup of timely insight from the grantmaking community and beyond.

“Few of [philanthropy’s] efforts have recognized that we can’t put an end to racism until we create a more just housing system: A stable place to call home is necessary for learning, maintaining employment, being healthy, feeling safe, and building strong family and community life.” [more]
– Amanda Andere and Bill Pitkin, Funders Together to End Homelessness

“Philanthropists insist that they provide support in an apolitical way. But since the entire philanthropic world exists as an artifact of political choices — the tax and corporate code first among them — this is simply not possible. It is not a coincidence that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s admonishment of white moderates applies perfectly to nonprofits and foundations.” [more]
– Lucy Bernholz, Stanford University’s Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society

“For most nonprofits of color, capacity-building opportunities have been largely inaccessible because conventional capacity building requires organizations to have attained a level of ‘readiness’ […and…] even when conventional capacity building has been accessible, it has often encouraged organizations to assimilate to standards rooted in white professionalism.” [more]
– April Nishimura, Roshni Sampath, Vu Le, Anbar Mahar Sheikh & Ananda Valenzuela, in Stanford Social Innovation Review

Guiding a Giving Response to Anti-Black Injustice, a collaborative memo offering funders potential paths to invest in organizations and movements within the Black-led racial justice ecosystem. [more]
– Susan Taylor Batten, ABFE; Edward M. Jones, Leslie MacKrell, and Jerry Petit-Frere, The Bridgespan Group