Seven Questions for McKnight Foundation President Tonya Allen
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tonya allen. Image provided by the McKnight Foundation.
McKnight Foundation President Tonya Allen spent the majority of her career in Michigan, including leading Detroit’s Skillman Foundation, before moving to take the helm of the $3 billion, Minneapolis-based McKnight Foundation in 2021. We most recently covered McKnight’s role in convening the $1 billion, cross-sector GroundBreak initiative, which is creating a new financial services structure to combat racial wealth inequality in the Twin Cities. GroundBreak is far from Allen’s first experience collaborating with multiple sectors; during her tenure, Skillman was part of cross-sector work during the city of Detroit’s bankruptcy crisis and in efforts to save the city’s schools.
We recently asked Allen about the benefits and surprises of cross-sector initiatives, the similarities and differences between philanthropy in Detroit and the Twin Cities, and her thoughts about criticisms of philanthropy and the sector’s response to the racial equity backlash. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Most of your career has been spent working for and leading foundations, but you also spent three years as the founding executive director of a small nonprofit, the Detroit Parent’s Network. How has that experience informed your grantmaking as the leader of first Skillman, and now the McKnight Foundation?
It influences me in a couple of ways. One is, when I ran that nonprofit, luckily we had enough money to run our programs and operations, but I still woke up every night worrying about whether or not I would make payroll. When I think about that experience, and I think about our role in philanthropy, I think that the work of these organizations is so difficult and complex, so how can we relieve them of the fear of not having financial consistency? So I try to think about whether or not we are under-investing.
If you believe in an organization, act like you do — meaning, give them enough resources and figure out how we can bring additional resources to them, like creating relationships with other funders for them, connecting them to research and ideas, and making sure that we're broadening their perspectives. It's really about thinking about those other supports and those other ways that philanthropic institutions can support nonprofits and showing up strongly and with the conviction that we're going to support those organizations in a way that matters and that will really allow them to give as much attention to their mission as possible.
You have worked in two areas, Detroit and the Twin Cities, that share some of the same issues in terms of racial wealth disparities and police abuses. What similarities, and what differences, are there in the philanthropic landscapes of the two areas?
The first similarity is that both of these regions are rich with philanthropy comparatively to other parts of the country. So when you look at them per capita, they have more philanthropies because of the founders’ historic wealth and presence in different industries. Their founders built philanthropic institutions that have created a tremendous amount of wealth and so those organizations are, in both areas, trying to find their niche in a very complex and crowded environment. I'm not saying “niche” to suggest they're minute; I mean they're really trying to figure out where they can show up to bring the highest and greatest value to their respective regions and to the issues that they care about.
The difference is that both of these philanthropic sectors sit in different economic contexts. Detroit is under-capitalized, it is poorer, it has a lot of pretty significant challenges which aren't just about social issues; there are governmental challenges and taxation challenges, whereas the Twin Cities is a pretty prosperous place. So you see Detroit’s problems in the context of a tremendous amount of poverty and you see the Twin Cities’ challenges in a context of a lot of prosperity. So what I see as the difference is that in Detroit, the funders have to work together to get enough to try and get to the scale of the problems that they have, and they still don't have enough, while the Twin Cities has enough to go it alone.
You’ve had significant experience doing cross-sector work involving philanthropy, nonprofits, government and for-profit entities in both Detroit and, most recently, with GroundBreak. What advice do you have for other funders that are considering similar efforts?
I think my advice to other philanthropic partners is that it's a privilege to convene, so we have to show up conscientious about that privilege. That means that we have to do things to mitigate some of that privilege, like being as thoughtful listeners as we possibly can, really creating the space for co-creation, and being comfortable with messy. We've seen a big movement across philanthropy where people have agreed that diversity, equity and inclusion is an important part of who we are and what we do. But they also have made this erroneous assumption that it's going to make things easier, when in actuality, it creates more tension points for us, because we have diverse sets of ideas and experiences. So my advice would be to build a skill set to actually navigate conflict, which I think philanthropy doesn’t really have, and to see conflict not as a bad thing, but actually as an opportunity for us to get more ideas and better solutioning done together.
Has there been anything that has surprised you while doing cross-sector work; something that might also come as a surprise to fellow funders?
What’s so powerful about cross-sector work is that you're bringing in different capacities, assets and different forms of capital to actually move your idea. I'll give an example in Detroit, when we were working on basically saving the Detroit Public School District from bankruptcy. A philanthropic institution could never be at the Capitol lobbying about an issue or a topic. And we did not; however, because we had a cross-sector group of partners, of course including nonprofits, but also lots of corporations that have public relations departments and who had deep relationships with legislators all across the state, that work could be advanced strategically.
Or looking at the Twin Cities with GroundBreak. Usually, when we're trying to solve some of these social problems, we build a workaround to a system. But with GroundBreak, what's so amazing is that this is not a workaround to the system; we're working with people who actually facilitate the system, the financial institutions and the banks, on how to change the process from the inside versus trying to pressure and create change from the outside. This gives you an opportunity to have both an inside and outside game around systems change — building pressure from inside the systems that you need to influence versus just putting pressure on the outside of those systems. I don't want to suggest in any way that either of those alone are insufficient, because I actually do think that an outside game is important. I also think the inside game alone is important, but it's perfect when you can do them both at the same time. And I think that a cross-sector approach allows you to have that proper balance between the two.
Going back to your mention of diversity, equity and inclusion, how do you feel philanthropy is responding to the threat of actual and potential legal attacks on racial equity giving since the SCOTUS anti-affirmative-action decision last summer?
I believe that we’re trying to figure out how we support our partners in the field related to this, and how we might invest in work that is from a defensive posture. I also think that there is some additional work we ought to do and be very intentional about. First, because we have tended to be a bit conflict averse, I think the field is afraid. And therefore, we kind of fan the flames of that fear, but right now, what I would love philanthropy to do is actually help each other and our partners stand in our power. So be prepared if there are some attacks that come at us, but not to orient ourselves in a reactive manner or a defensive posture.
What I'm really looking forward to in philanthropy is seeing some of these organizations wrestle with some of the challenges and figuring out how we mitigate those challenges. How do we mitigate the conflict, but also, how do we move out of fear and move into standing and being bolstered in our power? And thinking about, what are the assets and the resources that we have as a field uniquely that we could be deploying proactively to keep reinforcing the work. I'm really hopeful that we reposition ourselves back to the long game, and not fall into the short-term nature of our work because the attacks are part of a long game. We can't just respond in a way that isn't strategic or adequate for the moment.
I do think that there is a little bit of retreating in philanthropy because they are afraid, but part of that fear is really driven by this narrative that lawsuits are coming from everywhere. That's not actually true. There is a very specific plan that is happening, which is really about focusing on organizations that are in the Fifth District with cases that have an opportunity to get appealed at the Supreme Court. And so because we are fearful, we're not actually looking at the strategy that's happening, and we're not responding in a way that strategically positions us in our strengths. I worry that we are spending more time talking about fear than we are about power and possibility in the moment.
There have been a lot of criticisms of philanthropy and calls for reform, from proposed legislation to an idea that funders should basically just write checks and otherwise get out of the way. What do you feel wealth-holding institutions owe to the nonprofits and communities they serve?
I always think, what’s our mission, and how are we helping to make sure that that mission shows up in our beneficiaries — the people who are getting the services — because, ultimately, we are a public trust held with private governance. We have to keep that in mind all the time. The nonprofits are the intermediaries in that work and they’re our partners, and so our responsibility to them is that we have to be fantastic partners. So how do we show up in a way that actually meets their needs, and how do we show up in a way that's transparent? What I mean by transparent is that sometimes, we don't say the things that we probably need to say, and we don't create the environment for grantees to say the things that they need to say to us. And so it has to be this reciprocal relationship.
I think that this notion that foundations should just give money and walk away is naive at best. What I mean by that is that it assumes that philanthropic institutions aren't a part of the ecosystem of change. We are, and we have a great influence on that ecosystem. So how do we show up in a way that's more accountable in that ecosystem is the question that we need to ask, and not “How do we shrink?” Because we think in some ways that if we shrink, that will make our problems go away. And in actuality, it won’t.
I actually think that there should be more demands of philanthropic organizations from nonprofits and from communities. How are you using the power you have? Because wealth comes with other kinds of power, right? Wealth is not just money, wealth is not just about having financial power. It's about having all kinds of other influential powers. Now, of course, that's not fair. It's not equitable. But nevertheless, it's a reality. And I guess what I would argue is, how do we use those various kinds and forms of power in a more equitable way, and pursue the mission alongside partners, so that it isn't just the partners doing the heavy lifting and we just get to give resources away? I have said before that the greatest form of privilege is to say what you will not do. Most nonprofits don't have that privilege. And I don't think that we ought to have it either, if we're trying to be purpose-driven, mission-oriented institutions. So I think we need to show up more powerfully in partnership and not shrink away from the full breadth of the power that our wealth provides to us.
To close, I wanted to ask something more personal. What do you miss most about Detroit?
I think I miss Detroit's swagger. I remember listening to a mayor in Berlin once say, “We're poor, but we're sexy.” And I said, “That's Detroit.” There is a certain kind of swagger and you see it in the phraseology of Detroit vs. Everybody. I miss Detroit’s deep pride that no matter what comes our way, we're going to tackle it with courage.
