Trustees and Staff Don’t Always See Eye to Eye. Here Are Two Efforts to Bridge the Gap

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Foundation program officers feel largely aligned with their colleagues, but not with their boards. That was a resounding, if unsurprising finding of an Inside Philanthropy survey of more than 200 program officers earlier this year. 

Divides between the highest levels of leadership and rank-and-file staff are, of course, hardly unique to philanthropy. Yet in a mission-driven sector like philanthropy—animated by a broader goal of social impact—such a disconnect is perhaps more concerning. 

It is particularly telling that IP’s survey found this perception gap in two areas—getting feedback from frontline communities and advancing diversity, equity and inclusion—that have received more attention than ever over the past year, and have traditionally been critiqued as areas where window-dressing measures and empty words prevail.

Is there anything to be done about this disconnect in institutional philanthropy? In this article, I take a look at two organizations’ efforts to bridge the gap, including one rare attempt to work directly with board members. These programs are but two examples of the wide range of ways that groups, largely from the progressive side of philanthropy, have directly and indirectly sought to confront these splits. 

In some ways, it’s a topic as old as philanthropy, if not organizational hierarchy itself—and is unlikely ever to stop being a concern. It’s also vital to the sector’s efficacy. Anyone who’s worked in a divided organization knows what research also shows: It makes it harder to fulfill the mission. Ensuring a shared understanding among board, staff and grantees about the organization’s approach was one of three keys to creating a successful foundation, according to a 2019 Center on Effective Philanthropy report. 

A rare program that engages board members

The philanthropic sector offers an abundance of trainings for program staff, many concerned with questions of power and bridging divides with board members. People I spoke to mentioned a wide range of programs, including Neighborhood Funders Group’s Philanthropy Forward, designed for executive-level staff, and Thousand Currents Academy, as well as efforts by ABFE and Hispanics in Philanthropy.  

But few such programs target foundation board members. That’s an oversight, said Farhad Ebrahimi, president of the Chorus Foundation, a longtime advocate for reimagining philanthropic practices.

“Just because they’re important enough to be on a board doesn’t mean they’ve sprung forth from Zeus’s head fully formed,” he said. 

This reality was one of the drivers behind the launch of Maestra, a training program designed to serve pairings of foundation executives and trustees from the same organization, by progressive affinity group Justice Funders. The idea was both to create allies within an organization—and to organize trustees to push for broader change within the field.

“It’s not enough for just a bunch of woke trustees to be walking around. How can we shift them to be in better relation to the work?” said Jennifer Near, Maestra’s outgoing director. “If you move a singular person at an institution, be it a program officer, trustee, or ED, you haven’t fundamentally shifted the conditions in a way that will be helpful.” 

Maestra’s pilot cohort last year brought together pairs of representatives from Arch Community Fund, Borealis Philanthropy, Pink House Foundation, Victoria Foundation and the Libra Foundation. Admittedly, it’s a group already known for progressive practices. That was part of the strategy. “In the first round, what we were looking for was people who were ready for that particular leap,” said Near, who hopes some will serve as mentors and send different pairs to future trainings. 

The program was not only about bringing executive directors and trustees together to bridge their divides, but also moving them in support of goals that fall under the broadening banner of just transition. Some are actions few foundations have taken, such as fully divesting from the stock market and giving up control of grantmaking. It’s an ambitious ask, on top of the challenge of finding trustees who can commit the time for such a program.

“The bench of people who are willing to take that leap into this work is still pretty small,” Near said. She sees it as a long-term organizing effort, with waves of graduates spreading the word and building broader interest.

While COVID-19 led the group to hold a series of webinars in 2020 instead of a second cohort, the program, which aims to hire a new director in January, aims to hold a second cohort in 2021, albeit likely with some shifts. “If we run this again, we wouldn’t have quite as aligned of a group,” said Near.

Crystal Hayling, executive director of Libra, who joined the training with her trustee Regan Pritzker, said the experience was enhanced by learning and traveling together, including visits to communities in the Bay Area, Boston, and the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. 

“I think having the experience of having our hearts broken open in a way, at the same time together, allows us to go deep in how we understand the issues and think about our institution’s response to the work,” Hayling said. “That is a very powerful experience.”

While Maestra’s structure is uncommon, there are signs of more efforts of this kind. Earlier this year, spurred by the sudden decision by the NoVo Foundation to lay off staff and end multi-year commitments, a volunteer group of consultants helped launch a new initiative, Trustee Accountability: A Call to Action for Foundation Trustees, seeking to foster a culture and mechanisms that hold trustees responsible for their decisions, as reported by Inside Philanthropy.

Notably, there are few studies of trustee attitudes. There are snapshots, like IP’s, about how foundation staff view board members. But there’s little light on how those calling the shots see the staff members that implement their decisions. There is also limited demographic data on boards beyond race/ethnicity, gender and age. Further research in both areas could be valuable in addressing these divides.

Bridging the divide from the bottom up

It’s a reality familiar to most who have worked in philanthropy: Foundation board members are more likely to be older, white and male than the staff they govern. A BoardSource report found 71% of board members are over 50, 85% are white—with 40% of boards being all-white—and 55% are male. By contrast, foundation staff are more likely to be younger (60% under 50), non-white (27% are people of color), and women (77%), according to a recent Council on Foundations survey. 

These differences in composition may be one cause for divides on racial justice. Inside Philanthropy’s August survey found 86% of foundation staff indicated their colleagues were “very much” or “completely” committed to diversity, equity and inclusion in the organization, but only half felt the same about their board members. The split was nearly identical when asked about advancing those causes through programs and grantmaking.

This is a theme that has consistently arisen for Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy, the 14-chapter national network, in feedback from its members, albeit with even sharper divides. For instance, just 20% of grantmaking staff agreed that their institution’s board was a “strong ally for equity” in a 2017 survey conducted by the group. “Because of my being a minority and a woman, I think there is a lack of respect toward me by the board of trustees,” one Black survey respondent told EPIP.

EPIP’s local chapters have become places where these experiences can be aired—and staff can seek not only solidarity, but tools for moving forward. Creating those spaces has been an “unintentional but very beneficial practice” within EPIP, said Storme Gray, executive director.

The organization has a saying: “People run to EPIP because they’re running from something else,” Gray said. “I think that does hold true for a lot of people.”

“Our members, they’re so passionate, they’re so dedicated, and they truly believe in the power of philanthropy to have long-lasting impact,” she said. Their critiques of philanthropy arise “not out of angst, but out of a deep desire for the sector to live up to its own promise of being about the love of people.”

In part, those spaces focus on more conventional professional topics, like how to negotiate a salary raise or how to manage up. But they’ve also become a place where members can discuss, for example, what it means to be a person of color in a sector with a white-dominant culture, Gray said. To that end, the group also maintains a network for people of color, and is exploring creating dedicated spaces for white members to work on how they can contribute to racial equity in their organizations and beyond.

To achieve that level of intimacy, the chapters rely on a simple rule, said Gray, one that predates her arrival at the organization: What is learned at an EPIP event can leave, but what is shared stays. “Kind of like Vegas,” she jokes. “It’s largely trust that holds a lot of this together.”

For Ebrahimi, who started his limited-life foundation to give away money he inherited from his parents when he was young, EPIP fills a much-needed role that networks like Solidaire and Resource Generation fill for donors like him.

“Places that are comfortable being ideological and supporting you in your ideological development and supporting you in challenging some of your institution’s ideological tendencies, there’s not a lot,” he said.

In another effort to address divides between leadership and staff, EPIP occasionally holds facilitated conversations between its members and foundation CEOs. In part, these events are a forum for each group to share their concerns and be heard. But they can also illuminate similarities. The discussions “demystify the idea that when you ascend to the highest level of an organization, you all of a sudden become immune to certain challenges,” said Gray. “In certain ways, it can become harder.”

In 2021, the group plans to launch a more formal pathway for these learnings. EPIP is developing an eight-plus-hour leadership program, Philanthropology, that will provide an introduction to the field with a focus on social justice and power dynamics. In such a privileged sector, it’s important to recognize that every position has some level of influence, Gray said.

“There is this belief that if one does not have the title that one does not have power,” she said. “Every person, every decision that is made within a foundation, is an opportunity to make a decision for equity.”