A Year Ago, 12 Funders Committed to Support Racial Justice. Here’s What We’re Learning

Ben Von Klemperer/shutterstock

There’s a lot of talk about change in philanthropy—especially when the topic is racial justice—but what does that change actually look like in practice? To be engaged in this work in a real way, we have to see and believe the many painful truths of systemic racism. We must resist the urge to individualize racism as only a problem of bad actors and instead commit to systemic interventions designed to address what’s actually happening in communities. And we have to open ourselves to curiosity while sitting in discomfort, rather than philanthropy’s traditional habit of asserting certainty about our ‘solutions.’ Those changes in stance are exactly what the Democracy Frontlines Fund is offering the 12 funders who joined this effort a year ago: an opportunity to learn and be changed.

That deeper growth emerged when we recently talked to the fund’s members about the remarkable learning journey we are on. Together, we are tackling topics that may feel messy, struggles that are long term and extremely complex. Funders have to abandon their longtime habit of searching for silver bullets or cookie-cutter models that you can plunk down in every community and say, “make it work.” We must exit that pattern and enter into a new relationship with our grantees, one where we let leaders and experts from the Black community show us and teach us and give them resources they need. That’s the fascinating road we’re on with the fund, and at just after the year mark, I’m going to share a few insights we’ve gained along the way.

“Philanthropy can create an extractive relationship where we kind of sink our claws in or sink our teeth in and extract information and knowledge from activists and advocates,” notes fund founding member Joe Sciortino, executive director of the Schmidt Family Foundation. “[DFF] doesn’t feel like that. This feels like we’re genuinely hearing from groups that are on the ground and we get to learn what’s working and what’s not working.”

Kataly Foundation CEO Nwamaka Agbo adds: “A container has been created, both for activists to come and share their expertise, and for funders who are willing to be vulnerable and own where they are struggling, where they don’t understand.”

Building power is about building movements

Our learning journey began last fall by entering a deep conversation about the historic 2020 election with the leader most widely credited with saving our democracy: Stacey Abrams. Because she is a political genius, she didn’t come to look back on her historic achievement, but to lay out a 10-year strategy for transforming the electorate in Georgia. For some in the group, her vision was galvanizing—and prescient. Since hearing her, says Joe Sciortino, “we’ve been looking for opportunities where we can help with free and fair elections and other spaces outside of it.” 

Building power is all about building movements, as we learned from Alicia Garza, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, during our fund’s “book club” about “The Purpose of Power.” She taught us that the purpose of organizing isn’t to find your tribe—it’s to grow your tribe, always widening the circle to include people unlike yourself. 

Susan Pritzker, Libra Foundation board member, sees the potential for a “ripple effect in the funding community if we can be an example for how to fund movement, how to trust movement, how to resource the folks who are really doing the hard, heavy lifting.” Later, two of those folks—Cliff Albright of Black Voters Matter and M. Adams of the Movement for Black Lives—took us deeper into the “how-tos” of power-building, and Cliff left us with this gem: “Liberation is the goal. Democracy is one of the most important means of achieving it.” 

Challenging conversations about defunding police

I’ll be blunt: Talking about defunding the police—a major topic of discussion over the summer—makes folks in philanthropy nervous. But that’s why it’s so essential to discuss it. Funders’ assumptions about the issue were deeply challenged by two leaders who are forward in this space: Andrea Ritchie of Interrupting Criminalization and Kayla Reed of the Movement for Black Lives. They laid it on the line about the unacceptable cost of policing for communities of color. 

It wasn’t your typical funder convening. With his characteristic candor, Hewlett Foundation President Larry Kramer acknowledges that “talking about defunding the police is not the most comfortable thing for a lot of philanthropists.” But sitting with this discomfort is key to this approach to learning, in which those involved “understand what we’re hearing from the people most affected, and let that sink in.”

Stephen Heintz, president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, agrees that this discussion “hasn’t been easy.” But he also sees that “DFF has created that kind of space, a kind of community of people who respect each other and have an open mind and are there because they really want to learn and they want to change.” Amen.

Understanding intersectionality

To explore the profound topic of intersectionality, we invited three leaders from the Black LGBTQIA and Migrant Project—Oluchi Omeoga, Trinice McNally and Zack Mohamed, who talked of bearing (and sometimes having to mute) their multiple identities as Black, trans migrants. The intersectional conversation “will deeply challenge us,” observes Regan Pritzker, founder of the Kataly Foundation. “I want to invite us to sit with the reality: We can no longer fund single issues.”

Realizations like this are what we are reaping, the harvest of the seeds we planted a year ago when we founded Democracy Frontlines Fund. “It allows funders to sit in their humanity in a way that’s necessary if they are going to be truly in solidarity,” says Tynesha McHarris, our brilliant guide on this long and winding learning journey. This is how change happens—sometimes through sudden “a-has,” sometimes through vexed and difficult discussions, through reading and questioning and learning. That is why I cannot wait for our next Democracy Frontlines Fund convening—and how I love that we are writing this story as we are living it. This is what change looks and feels like. Stay tuned.

Crystal Hayling is the founder of the Democracy Frontlines Fund and the executive director of the Libra Foundation. Hayling previously contributed to Inside Philanthropy with the 2020 post, “An Open Letter to Funders on the Fight for Racial Justice: ‘Get In and Stay In.’”