Advancing Racial Equity through our Grantmaking Portfolio

Written by Danielle Crawford and Cathy Belk

From the authors:  After we wrote the blog, we learned we had misrepresented some historical information about the Deaconess Foundation. In particular, in 2020, the Deaconess Foundation made a grant to an organization led by Black individuals: Cuyahoga Community College.  The specific grant was from the Deborah Vesy Fund at the Deaconess Foundation, and was in support of the healthcare sector partners.  William Gary was the Tri-C leader of the program while Dr. Alex Johnson was the CEO of Tri-C at the time.  We are sorry for this misstatement!

At our convening in February, we were asked this question: “How are we truly advancing racial equity in our grantmaking when we are also continuing to work with so many long-time grantees, many of which are white-led organizations, and Black and Latine-led organizations are systemically excluded from access to philanthropy?”  We thought this question was worthy of a longer answer – longer than even the one we provided in our written Q&A – and thus this blog.

Our fifth strategy is “advancing racial equity in everything we do”.  We note this strategy because it means that in every effort and activity we undertake, we need to determine how we can advance a more equitable workforce ecosystem and hasten a future where racial equity is a reality.  For a foundation, this means we think about this not only in our grantmaking, but also in our location, where and how we invest our funds, the composition of our staff and board, the vendors we use, the relationships we build, the knowledge we gain, and all our other activities.

We also use this approach when we think specifically about grantmaking: in every effort and activity, we need to think about how we are advancing racial equity. 

One obvious activity is the one the specific question asks – in essence, seeking out new partners who will receive grants from the foundation. This is an action we’ve been taking for several years and in our last year, 25% of our grants went to organizations led by Black or Latine individuals (compared to 0% in 2020.) Our board sees this data, which makes us all accountable, and the board continues to encourage the staff to increase this number within the context of our strategies.

One of the ways we’ve been able to make this increase within the context of our strategies is because we expanded our view of the critical partners whose activities contribute with our desired outcomes.

In the past, the foundation focused on core workforce provider organizations – those organizations which not only offer career pathway training and placement, but also all the wraparound services individuals need to be successful in their training and employment.  To offer so many services, it makes sense that these organizations are more mature and have more capacity.  These organizations have not yet had Black or Latine CEOs, for a variety of systemic reasons as well as reasons unique to each organization (such as a CEO who hasn’t changed in several or many years.)   They are important organizations to Deaconess Foundation, because they play a core role in the ecosystem, support the greatest number of job seekers, and also provide services the ecosystem needs which aren’t able to be tackled by smaller organizations, such as advocacy.

We believe a wider range of organizations are important to the success of the ecosystem, including community-serving organizations who refer individuals to workforce services;  training providers; and employer-serving organizations.  (Our view to the critical members of the ecosystem is here.)  By recognizing the importance of a wider range of organizations, and the ecosystem itself, we have been able to partner with organizations doing incredible work in important roles to the ecosystem – which are led by Black and Latine leaders.  While our strategy was not created to allow ourselves to add different organizations, we are very glad that the strategy we think is the right strategy for Deaconess Foundation – to recognize all the different roles in the ecosystem – allows us to make grants to a broader range of organizations.

We also recognize that in advancing racial equity in all that we do, it isn’t enough to just make grants to organizations with Black and Latine leaders. We also need to recognize and encourage efforts of organizations with white leaders to advance racial equity.

Our application, and our decisions, and influenced by our belief that it is not enough to have a more diverse group of CEOs within our portfolio. We also need every grantee to be advancing racial equity in their own work. As a result, it is very important to our evaluation of potential grantee partners – whether long-term partners or new partners – that we understand their perspective on these questions:

• • • Demographically, what is the race and ethnicity of those people you serve? How do those demographics track relative to outcomes? Are there any disparities between your client base and the outcomes of your client base?
    • Does the staff reflect the same race and ethnicity breakdown? Is the staff culturally competent? Are there individuals on the staff with lived experience of the people you serve? How does the organization move towards these goals?
    • What is the board composition related to the race, ethnicity, and lived experience of those you serve? How does the organization move towards these goals?
    • Is the organization doing anything to learn about and dismantle systems within the organization which are based on white professional and cultural norms?
    • How can we learn about your organization’s work in ways which reflect the diversity of the people you serve?
    • How is the organization participating in the ecosystem in ways which address the systemic challenges of racism? Are there programs, partnerships, activities, or new ways of working which advance equity within the day-to-day work of the organization?

This last comment about partnerships is particularly relevant, as larger organizations may have the capacity to partner with Black and Latine-led organizations which are smaller and offer capabilities, understanding, or activity which complements those of the larger organizations.   As an example, this was certainly a hypothesis we sought when we launched our Connections program in 2021. In this program, Deaconess sought trusted, community-based organizations which would help  people interested in work (but without understanding or access of these core organizations) to be connected to the services they wanted.  The program had some bright spots, and a lot of learnings, but fundamentally, recognized the importance of Black and Latine-led organizations which have the trust of community members.

In summary, our strategy is to do both: to provide grants to Latine and Black led organizations aligned with our strategy and desired impacts, and to recognize and encourage activities which advance racial equity by white led organizations.