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PEAK Grantmaking

Weekly Reads—May 19, 2023

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

“Tema Okun’s ‘White Supremacy Culture’ has become ubiquitous across the progressive movement in recent years … which identifies characteristics of ‘white supremacy culture,’ including perfectionism, a sense of urgency, defensiveness, worship of the written word, objectivity, and the right to comfort … The Forge brought together five longtime racial justice leaders—Sendolo Diaminah, Scot Nakagawa, Rinku Sen, Sean Thomas-Breitfield, and Lori Villarosa—to discuss why the paper resonates, the problems with relying on it to criticize organizational practices, and the path forward for racial justice work.” [more]

“To start, I believe [DEI] looks like an organization actively committed to a set of values. To achieve real change, those values must be rooted in a formal acknowledgment of the organization’s history, and complicity in oppression and inequity of any form. That commitment then serves as a base from which we can apply each argument and build an accompanying action plan, and truly begin the work toward tangible, sustainable change.” [more]
Amira Barger, for Nonprofit Quarterly

Leading With Courage is a new report from Philanthropy Southeast that examines the forces influencing Southern communities and looks at the ways philanthropy is adapting to meet the region’s evolving needs. [more]

“Advancing equity in and for rural communities is a unique challenge. When impacted by crises—economic or otherwise—rural areas are typically harder hit than urban areas and take longer to recover, yet the public and private financial resources allocated to rural areas are disproportionately low. Rural leaders must also navigate the tension between cultural values like neighborliness and rugged individualism. In rural communities, which are neither culturally nor politically homogeneous, diversity is an especially vital asset. As rural leaders identify, embrace, and build on the strength of that diversity, they create bridges of understanding across seemingly insurmountable cultural and political divides.” [more]
Brian Carey Sims, Jomoworks, for Stanford Social Innovation Review