This year’s national reckoning on systemic racism has pushed philanthropy to devote more funds to the issue, but it’s also challenged the sector to reexamine who is at the helm of grantmaking decisions and the organizations receiving funding. One such effort to take on racial power dynamics in philanthropy has emerged in Massachusetts, where a group of business executives of color are leading a new racial equity fund.
Since the New Commonwealth Racial and Social Justice Fund launched in June, it has surpassed its initial seed goal of $20 million, raising about $25 million thus far, with the ultimate goal of raising $100 million. The first wave of grants from the fund has now gone out to 20 Black- and brown-led nonprofits in Massachusetts. The group has awarded a total of $1 million thus far, each organization receiving $50,000. Funding recipients include Elevated Thought, African Community Education, Boston’s Higher Ground, NAACP Boston, Data 4 Black Lives, and Youth on Board.
Given the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the nonprofit community, the money couldn’t have come at a better time for some of the initial grantees.
“We’ve been able to grow during this time and really put some pieces in place that are going to help us sink our teeth into the work in ways that we haven’t been able to do in the past, capacity-wise,” said Marquis Victor, who serves as executive director for Elevated Thought, one of the grant recipients.
The fund was created by a coalition of 19 Black and brown Massachusetts business executives shortly after the murder of George Floyd. The incident sparked nationwide protests dedicated to seeking justice for Floyd and other Black Americans killed by police, and fighting systemic racism in the United States. The fund, which is housed at the Boston Foundation, aims to address racial inequality in Boston and Massachusetts, and to challenge the region’s business and philanthropic community to rally in support of underfunded BIPOC-led organizations.
According to the Boston Foundation, the initial focus of the fund is to provide financial assistance to organizations that work to address policing and criminal justice reform, healthcare equity, economic empowerment, and youth education, empowerment and civic engagement.
“We started to think about the number of not-for-profits across Massachusetts that are led by Black and brown leaders that often get very little share of the philanthropic dollar, and what we do to support those nonprofits and moving the needle in those four pillars areas,” said Dr. Myechia Minter-Jordan, president and CEO of DentaQuest Partnership for Oral Health Advancement and Catalyst Institute, and one of the founding donors.
Others include Dominic Blue, head of strategic planning and delivery for MassMutual; Mo Cowan, president of global government affairs and policy at General Electric; and Damon Hart, senior vice president and deputy general counsel at Liberty Mutual (see the full list here).
“We decided that we would give our own personal dollars, as well as go back to the corporations that we work with and ask them to step up to the plate to do something different,” said Minter-Jordan.
In July, the Eastern Bank Charitable Foundation and the State Street Foundation each pledged $5 million to the fund, which will be provided over the next five years. Other corporate backers include DentaQuest Partnership for Oral Health Advancement and its subsidiaries, and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts.
Eastern Bank President Quincy Miller stated in a press release, “There are a number of highly effective Black and brown-led organizations in the Commonwealth doing extraordinary work — but they continue to be systematically underestimated and under-resourced. The time has come to build more capacity in these organizations so they can bring the change our communities need.”
The racial funding gap
In May, Echoing Green and the Boston-based Bridgespan Group published a report titled “Racial Equity and Philanthropy: Disparities in Funding for Leaders of Color Leave Impact on the Table.” In it, authors Cheryl Dorsey, Jeff Bradach and Peter Kim laid bare the racial gap in philanthropy.
According to the report, looking at Echoing Green’s 2019 applicant pool, and only at applications from the United States, the disparities add up to a $20 million racial funding gap between Black-led and white-led early-stage organizations. The gap in general operating support is even larger, with the unrestricted net assets of Black-led organizations being 76% smaller than white-led organizations.
“If we assume… that we cannot address society’s greatest challenges without a focus on race, then understanding racial dynamics becomes critical to finding effective solutions and achieving equitable outcomes,” the report states. “Funding leaders of color then becomes a significant piece of this puzzle because these leaders often bring strategies that intimately understand the racialized experiences of communities of color and the issues these communities face. Unfortunately, by and large, that is not happening today.”
Minter-Jordan further explained that it’s often difficult for Black- and brown-led organizations to break into philanthropic networks and access adequate funding. “There have been these traditional relationships that are often hard to expand to unknowns,” she said. “Black and brown leaders often don’t have the networks that their white counterparts do, and find it very difficult to break into those closed circles. And often, they don’t have the resources and the capacity to have the visibility that white-led organizations may have.”
While the fund is reflective of the prevailing discourse in philanthropy right now—with several large foundations and corporations making financial commitments in support of racial justice—the effort is uniquely resonant in Boston and Massachusetts, where there is a long and painful history of racial inequality. That legacy persists—one shocking study found that the median net worth of non-immigrant African-American households in the Boston area is $8 (that’s not a typo), compared to $247,500 net worth for white households.
The coalition behind the New Commonwealth Fund hopes to challenge racial divides in the region by directly funding oft-ignored nonprofits and by encouraging others to contribute to the new fund.
“We really want to rethink the way that we redistribute dollars to organizations,” Minter-Jordan added. “We want to bring visibility to organizations that often have not had the platform or access to the networks that their white counterparts have.”
First recipients
After extensive research, the 19 fund leaders had conversations with numerous nonprofit organizations. Ultimately, 20 grant recipients were chosen based on who was doing the work in the four pillar areas and who needed “both programmatic and capacity-building dollars,” according to Minter-Jordan.
One such organization is Elevated Thought, a nonprofit that works to address social and racial inequities by providing artistic opportunities for young BIPOC creatives.
“I think at our core, we really believe that art and creativity is a form of liberation,” said Victor, the group’s executive director. “Once young people have a foundation of self, then they’re able to put their mind and eyes toward the social landscape, identify these social, political, economic realities that often oppress us, that we exist in, and use that art to bring people together and find creative solutions.”
Since its founding in 2010, Elevated Thought has worked with more than 3,000 young people in Lawrence, sponsored 21 scholarships for nine students totaling $17,000, and completed more than 60 public and private murals.
Despite the pandemic, Elevated Thought has been able to grow this year. Although many of their school-based and in-person programs were put on hold, the organization was able to focus on care for youth and their young staff so that they could “get back into a creatively motivated frame of mind.”
“Once we did that,” said Victor, “we were able to roll out some smaller programs online, started a creative resistance institute, looking at social justice themes and experiential art practice online.”
With funding from the New Commonwealth Fund, Elevated Thought will be able to hire a youth organizer to support the organization’s social justice initiatives. Elevated Thought will also be launching a related apprenticeship program encompassing various art mediums including creative writing, photography, film and mural composition.
“I got a chance to actually chill out and think about the future more intentionally and build some steps that relate to the vision and strategic planning,” Victor said.
Hope for the future
According to Minter-Jordan, the goal is to do two grant rounds per year. Beyond that, the coalition behind the New Commonwealth Fund hopes to inspire a larger movement.
“We need allies,” Minter-Jordan said. “We need other Black and brown executives to step up and step into this work with us. We want this table to be full, full of people who are invested in our four pillar areas, but more importantly, full of people who are invested in wanting to see change and focus on social justice and creating a new commonwealth that is inclusive of all.”