This year, the United Philanthropy Forum offered eight scholarships to allow emerging leaders in the Forum network to attend their 2024 Annual Conference. This piece was originally published as part of UPF’s blog series featuring the eight emerging leaders who received scholarships to attend the conference. Below, Maggie Mascarenhas, SAFSF Public Policy Manager shares her reflections and key takeaways from attending the conference.
Last month, I was lucky enough to attend United Philanthropy Forum’s Annual Conference in St. Louis, Missouri. It was my first time attending an in-person Forum event apart from Foundation On the Hill, and my first time seeing the famous Gateway Arch (though I cannot say I braved the tram to the top). I am deeply grateful for the opportunities #ForumCon24 provided me to build relationships with colleagues working statewide, regionally, and nationally, learn skills as an emerging practitioner in this field, and inspire new ideas on how we can collectively catalyze lasting change. Since the conference concluded, I have been reflecting on four key messages related to philanthropy’s role in systems transformation, the overarching throughline of our time together.
To be effective advocates for systems change, we must first reflect on our personal experiences with power and organizational policies.
My convening experience started with a workshop led by Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy, and I’m so glad it did. After joyful introductions, we began a discussion on the many different types of power at play in philanthropy, and in our extractive, capitalist society. Perhaps unsurprising given the current political context, it became clear in both large and small group discussions that the images and words many of us equate with power are largely negative. By the end of the session, and certainly by the end of the convening, however, I felt more grounded in the power that we do have, whether that be our personal power, our cultural power, or our collaborative power, as individuals, as networks, and as movements. Without this essential reorientation from a deficit to an asset mindset, we risk accepting today’s inequities rather than pushing for tomorrow’s liberation. I felt this most profoundly when Rev. Bethany Johnson-Javois, President & CEO of the Deaconess Foundation spoke later in the conference, “Transformed people transform systems.”
Day two’s session, “Collective Action: How to Advance a Racial Equity and Justice Lens in a Post-Affirmative Action Climate,” led by Jamani Ashé and Juston Cooper at A Philanthropic Partnership for Black Communities, also made clear, I felt, that transformed organizations transform systems. In other words, we must embody and practice the transformation we want our members to make and that we want to see in society. This transformation must include concrete and intersectional commitments to racial equity that specifically decry anti-Blackness and that are grounded in pro-Blackness. In doing so, we will be better equipped to implement strategies that counter anti-Black racism, strengthen partnerships with community, and build a more just and equitable world.
The importance of adapting our mental associations with power, and prioritizing organizational change in support of advancing systems change was further cemented for me in Wednesday’s session, “Beyond-Transaction: Embodying a Flexible Funding Ethos,” led by Lauren Gentry, Bo Dorsey, and Allison Beck at Grantmakers for Effective Organizations. I greatly enjoyed the opportunity to reflect on how we as PSOs can adopt fundraising and membership models that mirror the same effective practices, such as the importance of flexible funding (more on that below), that we want our members to implement.
Philanthropy must embrace policy advocacy as a key lever for systems change.
On day two, I also attended the breakout session, “Catalysts for Systematic Change: Philanthropy, Racial Justice, + Advocacy,” led by Amanda Andere at Funders Together to End Homelessness, Kenita Williams at Southern Education Foundation, and Tyeshia (Ty) Wilson at Philanthropy Together. The energy in the room was electric, much like the St. Louis skies that day, as these three incredible leaders called upon our sector to embrace the urgency of the moment. As PSOs, we are uniquely positioned to both participate in the advocacy process and expand foundation support for and engagement in a broad range of advocacy activities. Specifically, we can:
- Meet members where they are by providing regular learning opportunities on what advocacy strategies funders can do themselves and use dollars to support;
- Inform members about policy in a way that provides clear calls to action;
- Take action on behalf of the philanthropic sector but also our specific issues;
- Model for members what we are asking them to do: build coalitions, engage in cross-sector collaboration, and center community.
While some foundation board members and trustees may express concern about perceived risks in funding policy advocacy, the real risk comes from not funding this work at all. Consider, as we did in this session, the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson, which determined that the Eighth Amendment’s “cruel and unusual punishment” clause does not prohibit the City of Grants Pass from enforcing criminal punishments against people experiencing homelessness camping outside the city. This harmful decision has major racial justice implications as it will disproportionately impact people of color. Without concerted efforts to engage and educate policymakers, we know that threats against people experiencing homelessness will continue to grow in the form of local and state laws. Philanthropy has a key role to play in resourcing organizations not just to combat harmful policy, but to build better policy.
Of course, this is not to say that funding policy advocacy and systems change work is mutually exclusive with funding basic needs. Healthy and nourished minds, bodies, and spirits, are essential foundations of systems change. Rather, strategic, coordinated investment in policy advocacy should be considered a powerful means for foundations to address the root causes of inequity, raise the voices of historically underrepresented communities, and leverage federal and state funding.
Funders must heed the call for long-term, flexible funding and commit to investing in community capacity and power building.
The fantastic speakers on day two’s lunch plenary, “Shifting the Tide: PSOs as Accelerators of Systems Change,” brought more profound insights. Namely, funders have for too long operated with a fear of ceding power, rather than a commitment to shifting power. This has resulted in project-based, scattered, almost fad-like approaches to funding that have often impeded progressive movement building and racial justice.
How many examples can we collectively point to that demonstrate what happens when community-rooted organizations receive an influx of funding only to see it dry up as soon as work gets going? At Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funders, we know that many food systems-focused organizations engaged in farm bill advocacy can experience a windfall of support during the legislative reauthorization every five years that then reduces significantly after a bill is passed. These trends demonstrate that funders have prioritized short-term action over the long-term relationship-building necessary to inform policymakers and combat lobbying from corporate agribusiness.
Perhaps the most salient example of philanthropy’s failure to commit to shifting power came during the closing plenary when Judith Browne Dianis shared concrete data on the initial massive influx and then steady decline of funding from both foundations and individual donors that the Advancement Project experienced in the years following the murder of George Floyd. The expectation cannot be to dismantle white supremacy and steel democratic institutions from far-right attacks in four years. If we know power building takes time, then funders should provide it and trust community-led organizations to steward it. As Judith so perfectly surmised, “Philanthropy should fund us like they want us to win.”
The narrative of who has been deemed a philanthropist is exclusionary.
Finally, we must consider who and what we mean when we think of philanthropy in the first place. For too long, Tyeshia Wilson, Senior Director of Community at Philanthropy Together, noted in the breakout session on catalyzing systems change I mentioned above, philanthropy has operated with a savior complex. In doing so, communities are cast as causes of problems rather than leaders and solvers.
To truly change systems, we must think beyond traditional grantmaking and the traditional definition of philanthropy. Collective giving circles, for example, present a new, community-driven model wherein funding is pooled by community members and invested back into the community or toward particular issues. In this way, accountability lies with community, strategy is built by those impacted, and funding is grounded in shared values. As Tyeshia said, “Everyone is a philanthropist.” Let us remember this.
In closing, I want to thank the entire United Philanthropy Forum staff and board for organizing such a memorable and impactful event. As PSOs, we are all familiar with the work it takes to plan a convening, and I am grateful for the care and intentionality that grounded this one. I look forward to continued reflection and learning, and attending future Forum events.