COVID, Structural Racism and Inequality: How One Foundation Responded to a "Triple Pandemic”
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A Black Lives Matter protest in Boston, June 2020. Maverick Pictures/shutterstock
As we enter the third calendar year of what Boston Foundation President and CEO Lee Pelton calls the “triple pandemic” of COVID-19, structural racism and economic inequity, it’s time to take stock of how funders have responded thus far to the moral, practical and societal imperatives in front of us, starting in 2020. More importantly, funders have the opportunity and responsibility to use this time of reflection to adapt, act and evolve as a funding partner to the nonprofits serving on the front lines. As part of our own reflection process, the Boston Foundation has committed to sharing with the sector the lessons we have learned and the data we have collected—and will continue to collect—as we continue our long-term transformation into an equity-centered foundation.
Temporary shift or lasting change?
COVID and the subsequently increased visibility on issues of racial justice and systemic inequity have shifted the way many funders operate and forced us all to face some hard truths about the role foundations and other institutional funders have played in perpetuating inequities. Too often, our approaches, such as burdensome applications, antiquated standards for a “healthy nonprofit,” and restrictive funding, have created power dynamics that keep people and organizations closest to the work at arm’s length from the support they need and deserve. This not only negatively impacts our nonprofit partners, but also deprives our communities of the impactful programming they provide. Now that we more fully understand how our practices have been harmful, we are committed to change—and to continue learning.
For the Boston Foundation, this conscious approach feeds a process that began five years ago. At that time, our Program Department developed a series of principles to guide our work, hold us accountable to community, and place racial equity at the center of our decision-making and resource allocation. We called these our “Action-Based Principles” and we continue to incorporate them into our internal work. They serve as a daily reminder that the privilege we hold as a well-resourced organization comes with a responsibility to be authentically invested in our communities. The principles, and our evolving understanding of how we can have the most positive impact on Greater Boston, helped prepare us to lean into the overlapping crises of 2020 and beyond.
Tracking our progress
At the heart of our principles is the understanding that we are most true to our values and can have the most impact when we directly support organizations that are led by Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) and break down the barriers that have been blocking their access to institutional funding, power-sharing and resources. Research and our own experiences have borne out the words of Ford Foundation President Darren Walker: “Funders that lean into trust, flexibility and vulnerability are better positioned to achieve the change they seek because they have true partners in their grantees, who have the freedom to give direct feedback and the capacity to deliver on the promise of a better world.” We have seen this confirmed repeatedly in our day-to-day work.
How successfully have we lived by this principle? Looking at our “discretionary grants” data in 2017–2018, it was clear that our words and our dollars weren’t yet in alignment. Just 28% of our grants that year went to BIPOC-led organizations (those where a person of color was executive director, CEO, or held another leadership position).
Armed with this eye-opening data, we refocused our work. By our 2019–2020 grantmaking year, more than half of our grants and grant dollars were reaching BIPOC-led organizations. But more powerfully, that transition set the stage for our work in the spring of 2020, when the devastating effects of COVID-19 collided with the ongoing traumas facing the Black community, which reached yet another peak with the murder of George Floyd.
Our earlier commitment to change meant we were better positioned to respond quickly and invest heavily in communities of color. In fact, investing in organizations most proximate to the people hardest hit by the multipronged ordeal of the pandemic, economic disruption and racial inequity was a core element of our grantmaking in response to COVID-19. In our most recent year of grantmaking (ending June 2021), 62% of discretionary grants were awarded to organizations that identified as BIPOC-led. Of the 620 grants awarded in FY21, 382 grants, translating to nearly $14 million, went to BIPOC-led organizations working across our communities. Importantly for us, that number wasn’t driven by a wave of grants from our COVID-19 Response Fund, which explicitly prioritized racial equity in our resource allocation. When we pulled out the COVID grants, the percentage didn’t change. Of the grants made in our ongoing Impact Areas, the share awarded to organizations that identified as BIPOC-led remained at 62%.
Next steps
While we can feel optimistic about our progress, the process has also forced us to acknowledge some areas for continuing improvement. First, while we will keep many of the innovations that we developed in response to COVID, such as simplified grant applications and reduced reporting requirements, we must continue to grow community partnerships in our grantmaking decisions—bringing leaders of color not just closer to funding, but into the decision-making.
We must also continue to develop better measures of our efforts in pursuit of racial equity and then hold ourselves accountable. While tracking the leadership of our nonprofit partners is one way to assess our impact and outcomes, it’s just one superficial dimension, and we need to work with our community partners to get deeper in our development as an organization and understanding of how to assess what we do and how we can be the best partner in change.
Equity cannot be part of our work. It must be our work. We need to move away from expectations and methods of evaluation that do not challenge—or that even reinforce—inequity and imbalances of power. We need to deeply interrogate our language and expand our definitions of equity-centered nonprofit partners. We need to embrace that the terms we use and the data we collect are imperfect and commit to continuous improvement, because progress cannot wait another moment. We need to truly engage in power-sharing, dismantle racist structures, and, most importantly, we need to listen to our communities, really hear feedback and criticisms, and commit to action.
How we accomplish all that isn’t entirely ours to say. We are proud of many things, but we must humbly acknowledge how much we need to learn. We will look to our nonprofit and funding partners for feedback and inspiration, and hope that by sharing our journey, we can add value as a foundation, funder and member of our local and global community. Together, we must work to repair the damage of centuries of injustice and build new platforms for a fair and equitable society.
Orlando Watkins is Vice President and Chief Program Officer of the Boston Foundation. Amanda Holm Hartigan is the Foundation’s Associate Director for Learning and Engagement.
