Weekly Reads—February 16, 2024

Enjoy PEAK’s weekly roundup of timely insights from the grantmaking community and beyond.

“At the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Demographics via Candid helps us fulfill our commitment to embed racial equity and racial healing in all that we do. In 2015, we began asking all grantseekers to provide demographic data. … We learned, however, that in many cases, nonprofits would have to provide this same information multiple times to multiple funders. Demographics via Candid eliminates this inefficiency. It also helps address some questions beyond our own data, which we realized was limited and lacked context.” [more]
Huilan Krenn, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, for Candid

“Grant makers must also take care not to legitimize conservative attempts to redefine the goal of the civil-rights movement as the creation of a colorblind society. The purpose of the movement wasn’t to avoid classifying people by race — it was to prevent the subordination of Black and other people of color to white control. Racial justice requires people of color to name themselves and have a say in the policies that shape their lives. Burying those values is key to the far right’s strategy for gutting civil rights law.” [more]
Lori Villarosa, Ben Francisco Maulbeck, and Gihan Perera, The Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity, for The Chronicle of Philanthropy

“Lean funders are increasingly focusing on racial equity, an essential part of philanthropy. Nearly three in four members of the Exponent Philanthropy community see racial equity as somewhat or very relevant to their foundation’s mission. Although fewer foundation boards have all members who identify as White compared with years past, individuals who identify as BIPOC are still underrepresented among foundation boards and staff. Our findings [published in the report 2023 Racial Equity in Lean Foundations: Incorporating Allyship Into Your Philanthropy] show that the demographic makeup of a foundation’s board directly relates to how that foundation regards racial equity. And how a foundation views racial equity is, in turn, explicitly tied to how it chooses to support its grantees.” [more]
Exponent Philanthropy

“For Black folks, being associated with disability adds an additional layer of oppression. So there’s this sense of, if you can avoid having a diagnosis—having that label—you can hopefully avoid a little bit more of the systemic oppression and bias that you might face. Now, we know as folks who have non-visible disabilities that you can avoid ableism just because you don’t call yourself disabled. But there are ways, structurally, if we think about within the school system or within hiring, that avoiding that term might actually avoid some aspects of ableism for Black folks.” [more]
Sami Schalk, PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison, on the Disability & Philanthropy Forum’s Disability Inclusion: Required podcast