It’s natural at this time of year to reflect back on work completed and to plan for the year to come. This year, we particularly sought to understand the progress we’ve made against our strategic commitment to advance racial equity through our practices and governance. Here are some of the actions we took in 2021:
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- Deaconess was interested to expand its pool of grantees in 2021, and in doing so, particularly sought to support Black and Latinx leaders and organizations. The Foundation made ~$500,000 in grants to organizations new to the Foundation, with the racial composition of organization leadership as follows:
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Grantees Dollars
Black-Led 8, or 30% $162,00, or 32%
Latinx-Led 4, or 15% $83,000, or 16%
Other 15, or 56% $259,000, or 51%
Total 27 $504,000
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- In September, Deaconess asked its investment management firm, Clearstead, to identify ways we could advance racial equity through our investment portfolio. This month, Clearstead put together its first recommendation for consideration reflecting a mutual fund led by people of color for whom the size of the fund and historical returns are similar to existing options. We expect more of these types of discussions in the future and plan to make changes in our portfolio in 2022.
- We continue to advocate for advancing racial equity as a critical aspect of the work we do with our collaborators. The Workforce Funders Group, of which we are active members, seeks to improve the outcomes of workers and achieve parity with respect to Black and Latinx job seekers. The Fund for our Economic Future is just as committed to advancing equitable outcomes and processes in our community.
- We continue our own learning journey. After finishing up a two year agenda of learning through a local workforce funders race equity learning circle back in the spring, Lissy Rand, our VP of Grantmaking and Strategy, has been participating in a learning circle of national workforce funders in discussions about racial equity and worker voice. We are also considering other learning opportunities for our staff team and plan to increase our engagement in these areas in 2021.
- We continued to advance the racial diversity of our Board of Trustees, and to provide educational opportunities for board and staff through both the Third Space Action Lab’s Racial Equity Institute and the Cleveland Leadership Center’s Co-Creating an Equitable Future Plans (both of which are excellent.)
- Internally, we are finishing an updated vendor management policy that supports bringing a more diverse group of vendors to support the Deaconess Foundation itself, as well as a vendor survey that will allow us to gather data on the activities of our vendors and understand their commitment to DE&I activities. Furthermore, I hope by asking the questions of our vendors, we continue to demonstrate our view of the importance of these actions, to them. As we collect that data, we will be able to share it as well as use it to push our work further.
- We have begun to ask our direct service grantees to report performance data disaggregated by race. While it will take into 2022 and beyond to receive all of the data on grants made this year, this is a step towards being able to understand how the Foundation might accelerate its work to advance racial equity.
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We know there is likely more we can do and will do in 2022. Please feel free to share your reactions to our work at cbelk@deaconessfdn.org.
This post was written by Cathy Belk, President & CEO of Deaconess Foundation, and Lissy Rand, Vice President, Grantmaking & Strategy at Deaconess Foundation.