The recent appointment of Toya Fick, Meyer Memorial Trust’s new CEO, is something of a study in both stability and change. Her tenure marks a continuation of Meyer’s commitment to combating structural racism, which it began in 2013. Additionally, Fick served as a Meyer trustee for six years, and in her former position as the Oregon executive director of the nonprofit Stand for Children, has led a Meyer grantee.
Fick’s new job also comes at a time of change for the grantmaker. In May, Meyer announced three major shifts in its grantmaking, including a shift from its former focus on equity to “a focus on justice.” The funder intends to bring the final plans for the changes, which were originally approved in October 2021, back to the board of trustees this October after spending the past year getting input from grantees and the wider community.
IP recently talked with Fick about issues including going from board member to CEO, Meyer’s shift from equity to justice in its grantmaking, and how much fealty modern foundations may or may not owe to the visions of founders a generation or more after those founders have passed away.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Meyer began working on racial equity in 2013 — long before other funders started their own work, whether in the wake of Michael Brown’s murder or George Floyd’s. How far do you feel the work has progressed? Where do you feel the work needs to go next?
The conversations I’m having now externally are very different from the ones from a couple of years ago; the foundation world has shifted quite a bit. You know, I was a grantee and a trustee before, and have been having these conversations for a long time. I was on a recent call with representatives from foundations across the country, and we were talking about how to make sure that we’re measuring the diversity of the managers who manage our endowments. We’ve been having that conversation at Meyer for a while, and now, we don’t have to go and ask these questions by ourselves, and be the only ones that are asking these questions about diversity. We are all asking these questions — and the more people asking these questions, the more people expecting things to be different, the further we can go.
We haven’t reached the end of this journey. I think the system — and I when I say “system,” I personally mean state government, local government, the systems that have been kept in place that help perpetuate these issues — are things that we need to continue to address. The state of Oregon actually, two years ago, granted $62 million to do something very similar to Meyer’s work. So it’s starting to tread in a different direction. But we still need more resources. And we need to continue to check in with communities and measure indicators for progress.
As you pointed out, you’re not just shifting from being a trustee to being Meyer’s CEO. You’ve also been the executive director of a Meyer grantee. How important do you feel it is for funders to hire nonprofit leaders into foundation leadership roles? What do people like yourself bring to these jobs that funders might not get otherwise?
There were times when we [at Meyer] would consider, how we do grantmaking in some way, shape or form? And I would say, “Hey, this is what it looks like on my end of things when I’m not in the room with you all. So being able to bring that perspective so that they understand what their decisions feel like on the receiving end, right? Because I was an ED, so part of that job is fundraising. But that should be just this much (holds fingers apart an inch) of the job: the job should be focused on having the impact. And that’s what we want our grantees to be doing, not working to chase paper so they can get the check. So bringing that perspective to those conversations has been really informative for our trustees and for the CEOs of other foundations I engaged with in my role as a grantee.
In May, Meyer announced a shift in focus from equity to racial, social and economic justice. Can you talk a bit about what that looks like?
I think justice just feels like going way deeper down the equity perspective. So really thinking about what that looks like is going to be important. One of the things that the team has done a lot over the last few months is really hearing from community what that means. What justice means to me in my life right now will be different than what it means for the Black community in North Portland, or a Native community on the reservation — it looks different, it feels different, which means we have to be clear, once we hear from community, where we might be able to go. We won’t be able to do all the things; there are so many injustices, sadly. But explaining that is going to be a really important task for us as we get into funding things a little bit differently.
Speaking of centering community, when funders decide they’re going to do a strategic process or shift how they move money, that’s an obviously stressful time for grantee organizations. They don’t know who might be cut, they don’t know what new hoops they might be expected to jump through, or which hoops will disappear. What has Meyer done, if anything, to alleviate some of that stress? To what degree have grantees been given the ability to help drive the process?
Grantees are the center of the work. It’s not just grantees; we are hearing from community. That’s one of the things I was very adamant about as a trustee, because I’ve been a grantee for a while: We talk to as many people as we can.
We learned a lot from the last time we made a shift in how we do grantmaking. I wasn’t on the board at Meyer at that time, I was a grantee last time, and I remember getting an email saying, “Hey, we’re gonna pause grantmaking for a year to figure it out.” I was like, “No, no, why would you do that? My work won’t stop this year, Meyer Trust.” And so we’re not doing that. Making sure we’re learning from the past is a really important tenet of how we do our work.
On a bigger-picture front, when Meyer Memorial Trust was founded in the 1980s by Fred G. Meyer, it seems to have been a fairly traditional, white-funded-and-run foundation. With that in mind, how much fealty do you think that people who are running foundations now owe to founders who may have been gone for a generation or more? How much should funders now be constrained by the racial and other blinders that most founders probably had back then?
Here’s why I’m super-lucky to have this job: Mr. Meyer gave the trustees a lot of latitude and flexibility to address issues that are being faced today. There was no, “You must fund these four things because I really care about these four things in the ’80s.” It really was about making sure that there was space to understand what’s going on in Oregon at any given time, and fund the need at that time.
So the fact that we can change our mission statement and put racial justice in it is… holy cow, I’m getting goosebumps. It’s amazing that we can do that and still be within the parameters of the charter of the foundation. And so that is really important. And that I know every foundation doesn’t have that structure, right? So it’s about figuring out what structure they’re playing in, to sort of lean into the space we’re in right now and move a little bit away from the traditional, wealthy white family that says, “I want to fund this thing in perpetuity.”
Do you have any advice for younger people of wealth who may want to establish foundations of their own, but don’t want to lock succeeding generations into what may be today’s too-narrow versions of justice or equity?
The way we’re sort of thinking about this right now, where we’re listening to the community around us, is really important. So setting up that structure within their own family foundations is super-important. I don’t think we would have gotten to the same mission statement (Meyer’s new statement focused on racial, social and economic justice) with the same people in the room five years ago.
What’s happening in the community around you that you’re trying to improve is important — how can you possibly improve outcomes for folks if you don’t have a clue what they need? You gotta engage. And so setting up a process by which that engagement is constant is a very important part of the work.
Is there anything else you’d like readers to know, either about you or about Meyer at this moment?
I bring all of my experiences to bear in the work I do. I don’t feel that changing. I was an advisor to Senator Clinton, and the reason I was successful at that is because I was a teacher beforehand. I bring all the things to bear to do this work. From the grantee perspective, from a Black woman’s perspective. I’m also a single mom, and so the things that are required of my team to help me make sure that I can get to my kids when I need to set an example for my team, right? And seeing all this fullness and richness to do the work ahead, is, I think, beautiful and important.