Foundations Made Impressive Moves in the Aftermath of George Floyd's Death, but Much Work Remains
/
June 2020, Chicago, Illinois. ryanbphotography/shutterstock
The historic racial justice uprisings in the summer of 2020 and beyond brought with them a torrent of philanthropic activity. Foundations, major donors, small donors, corporations and new funding collaboratives collectively promised billions to the work of dismantling structural racism, a cause that the sector seemed to wholeheartedly agree had been neglected for too long.
Two years later, a lot has changed in the American political and social landscape — and yet, so much has not. If anything, the 2020 movement moment was a reminder of the constant work required to make progress on racial justice and the entrenched opposition that will always push back.
The outcomes of that year’s philanthropic pledges are a similarly complicated and mixed bag. Our analysis of hundreds of grants and many millions of dollars resulting from 11 prominent foundation pledges found little in the way of a unified narrative, much less a happy ending. The diffuse nature of this grantmaking may, in fact, be a sign that the sector relaxed its historically heavy hand.
We did, however, identify certain key points — highlights, lowlights, and just as importantly, areas where movement leaders say philanthropy still has a long way to go. Here’s what we learned.
How are funders doing?
For starters, the funders we looked at have overall done a good job in getting money out the door, with many providing both immediate funding as well as longer-term commitments spaced out over a specific timeframe.
The Surdna Foundation, for example, is not only on track to meet its initial commitment, it’s poised to exceed it. Open Society Foundations (OSF) followed its initial $220 million pledge to support organizations and leaders building power in Black communities with an additional $150 million for organizations doing similar work in Asian American and Pacific Islander, Indigenous, Latinx, Muslim, Arab, and South Asian communities. Funders have also done well in providing unrestricted, multiyear grants, more than is typical in the sector.
“It’s really about making sure you stay focused on keeping and providing sustainable funding for organizations, and that you include in those organizations a mandate to not just fund specific operations but to fund general operations,” said Dirk A. Butler, the Center for Policing Equity’s president and COO, describing what the movement needs from funders.
Across the board, organizers like Butler indicated that funders have been largely supportive and have taken on more trust-based approaches in the aftermath of 2020. In fact, as research from the Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity, other researchers, and several organizers we spoke with have noted, these changes began taking place prior to 2020, though it remains to be seen if and how these shifts will be sustained in the future.
“I think our funders… believe in us. They believe in the mission. They believe in the work. They believe in the hope and the promise that we made when we accepted their dollars,” said Cicley Gay, Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (BLMGNF) board member.
Particularly impressive was the Democracy Frontlines Fund, far from the largest commitment in both dollars and number of grants, but remarkable in the way that it rallied several large, mainstream foundations behind a pooled funding effort, and its laser focus on systemic change. Essentially 100% of grants made so far are going toward power-building and strengthening democracy. The Democracy Frontlines Fund was also the only funder that fully met all of the criteria we looked at when gauging the responsiveness and effectiveness of grantmaking. The collaborative is dedicating the entirety of its funding to both general operating and multiyear support, entirely to organizations led by people of color. All of its funding decisions are being “guided by an all-women-of-color brain trust of lifelong activists and advisors accountable to social change movements and Black-led organizing.”
As far as regional efforts go, the California Black Freedom Fund was similarly impressive, receiving top marks in terms of unrestricted, multiyear funding to Black-led groups, and for relying upon a panel of community leaders to guide its $25.8 million granted to date. The Boston-based New Commonwealth Fund also stood out. Made up of Black and brown executives in Massachusetts, it’s dedicated to addressing and eliminating systemic racism in the state. Though different from the other funders we analyzed — it did not make an initial pledge of the amount of funding it would raise, though it did announce its goal to raise more than $100 million — we chose to include it as a unique pooled regional fund launched at the time. While it did not include participatory or multiyear grantmaking in its funding so far, both will be components of its strategy going forward.
The work of these funds exemplifies how a regionally focused organization can make a difference by supporting both power-building organizations and providing funding to groups that address the needs of local communities through art, family services and healthcare, among many others.
Where results have been mixed is the extent to which funders included communities in their decision-making processes. While a few funders did have significant input from community members, leaders and organizers, the majority relied on existing staff members to make these decisions. And while funding explicitly for power-building was high relative to run-of-the-mill philanthropy, there remains room for improvement as the movement that surged in 2020 heads into its next chapters.
What the movement needs from philanthropy now
On that note, it may be tempting to celebrate the influx of funding and some encouraging patterns in the execution of these commitments, but organizers we spoke with were all emphatic that they still need a lot more support to be effective changemakers. While organizers gave mixed responses on whether or not their funding had increased since Floyd’s death in 2020, most were in agreement that there is still an underinvestment in Black-led organizations and other groups led by people of color, especially relative to the task at hand.
“We still have not hit that goal or anywhere near what’s going to be necessary to end the scourge of racism in our society, in America, in just two years,” Movement for Black Lives’ Charles Long said. “We have to go deeper and we have to fight.”
In addition to the need for increased support as a whole and support for power-building work, several organizers brought up the importance of funding intersectional work and moving beyond racial justice as a niche area of funding.
“I do think there has been an increase in philanthropic funding for organizations, but… it’s really gone to folks who have been more singularly focused on racial justice issues,” said Paris Hatcher, executive director of Black Feminist Future. “There was not the same influx of resources to organizations that were not solely working on racial justice.”
Philanthropy tends to work in silos, but organizers and experts alike have encouraged funders to break down these programmatic compartments and work together to effect the most change. Some of the grantee organizations that funders supported do indeed work on a variety of intersectional issues, but this still isn’t the typical way funders approach issues.
“Black life is multifaceted and experiences oppression in a lot of different intersections,” Long said. “We continue to see a siloing of Black life, by which I mean, groups who are just categorized inside of a racial justice portfolio versus being across the board in the LGBT portfolio, the gender justice portfolio, the environmental justice portfolio. … There are still huge investments that need to be made and resources that need to move to Black leadership across the board.”
Organizations working on racial justice also need steadfast support from philanthropic institutions beyond writing checks. Lulete Mola, co-founder of the Minnesota-based Philanthropic Collective to Combat Anti-Blackness & Realize Racial Justice, for example, called for philanthropy to be “more courageous than it ever has and do more than express sentiments of empathy, but really stand in power and solidarity by taking accountability that each of us has a role in perpetuating structural systems… and commit to moving forward in a transformational manner.”
Although there were positive political and social changes that took place following Floyd’s death — an increase in funding, promises to reduce police budgets and investment in communities and social programs, to name a few — there’s also been significant backlash. Conservatives have manufactured outrage over critical race theory, an academic lens used to explore how racism is a part of the nation’s institutions, as a strategy to halt what limited progress has been made. Additional funding has also brought increased scrutiny of how Black-led organizations use their money, a form of paternalism that has long plagued such organizations.
“There are absolutely forces out there who do not believe that we should exist and who do not trust us to manage money in our own communities,” Gay said. Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation has faced a barrage of increased media scrutiny about how resources are being spent, and on a level that few nonprofits will ever experience.
“It really comes from the pathology that believes that Black people don’t deserve access to money and power,” BLMGNF board member Shalomyah Bowers said. He added, “The idea that we shouldn’t be trusted, that we don’t know what we’re doing, that we’re inexperienced, there’s a long-standing history of that for Black organizations.”
Meanwhile, many moderates and Democratic leaders have largely distanced themselves from the rallying cry of Black lives matter, defunding police departments, and other criminal justice reform efforts. Following the 2020 general election, Democratic leaders voiced their frustration with “defunding the police” messages. And while there was some reduction in police budgets as a response to the events of 2020, many cities have not only restored this funding, but increased it, as well. Earlier this year, the L.A. City Council approved a proposal to increase the city’s police department budget by $87 million, which would bring the department’s budget to a whopping $1.9 billion.
In light of the backlash, advocates and organizers have urged funders to remain unwavering in their support of this work and not to treat racial justice funding as a passing fad. “There are many ways that white supremacy, homophobia and patriarchy are operating, moving and attacking Black movements at this moment,” Long said. “It’s philanthropy’s job to see through to fog and continue to support a broad base of Black-led organizations and groups.”
And according to Dr. Chera Reid, co-executive director of the Center for Evaluation Innovation, “We are in a generational-defining moment right now. We are living it right now. So what we do and what we choose not to do are going to be what we will be judged on, not only today, but years from now.”
After two years, the philanthropic sector is still working to make a difference, but it’s not the kind of effort that yields linear results. On April 20, 2021, Derek Chauvin was convicted of the murder of George Floyd. Earlier this month, four current and former Louisville officers were charged in connection to the death of Breonna Taylor. As of May 2022, law enforcement officials have killed at least 229 Black people across the U.S. since Floyd’s death.
“After the death of George Floyd, the nation and the world collectively rose up to recognize something that we Black people have been crying out for for so very long. And that’s to be seen as fully human,” Gay said.
“With the support of philanthropists and individuals and corporations, we can achieve the promise that we set out to achieve when they trusted us with their dollars after the groundswell in 2020. It is indeed a movement; it’s not a moment. And we have a lot of work to do.”
