Executing philanthropic work with the intention of racial equity is not just the "right" thing to do—it is necessary for achieving meaningful and sustainable change. After 25 years in philanthropy, I firmly believe that any foundation aiming to have a positive impact on any issue or community must adopt a racial equity lens.
For many foundations, the question is not whether racial equity should be incorporated, but how. It’s the how that can often feel most daunting. Where to begin? What staff should be involved? Who will be accountable for progress? How will the external support needed to build necessary knowledge and tools be resourced?
While the answers will vary for each organization, I’d like to share a few lessons learned throughout my career that have helped me navigate these questions.
Engaging Racially Diverse Grantees and Leaders with Clear Intention
It’s crucial to create authentic ways to engage with racially diverse grantees or community leaders. This is especially true for lean foundations with family boards. General Service Foundation, for example, intentionally seeks non-family board members from racially diverse backgrounds to challenge our thinking and improve the effectiveness of our grantmaking.
This engagement must be done with clear intention. It’s also important to ensure that board governance and bylaws are explicit in giving these non-family members equal decision-making power. Without it, these voices can easily become tokenized, rather than integrated meaningfully into decision-making.
Trusting Those Most Affected by Injustice
Another key lesson is that those who are most directly impacted by injustice are often best equipped to solve problems. It’s easy to assume that well-meaning philanthropic staff and board members know what’s best for marginalized communities, but true equity means having a constant, strategic conversation learning journey to deeply understand grantee stories.
For lean foundations, this may mean focusing on a few key communities or stories rather than trying to aggregate progress across every single grantee. The work should be strategic and intentional. By deeply connecting with the lived experiences of grantees and the communities they serve, foundations can learn how their investments are making a difference over time. This iterative process of trust-building and learning—across multiple funding cycles—is where real progress is made.
Reexamining Foundation Strategy and Defining Success
Perhaps the single most important ingredient in advancing racial equity within grantmaking is in how we define “success.” A foundation’s strategy must be continuously interrogated, especially around racial equity.
If racial equity is not explicitly defined as part of the strategy, in a manner that aligns with how you are measuring it, any attempt to measure it will likely fall short. Take, for example, a foundation that focuses primarily on policy advocacy. If that foundation’s strategy is built on traditional models of political insider status—where a foundation defines success by the number of policy wins or legislative changes—it can unintentionally overlook the leadership of racially diverse communities that have been systematically excluded from those very circles. These leaders may have immense power within their communities that takes forms that cannot be measured in familiar ways. This is why it’s essential for foundations, especially smaller ones, to be flexible in how they define success.
As philanthropic organizations, we have an incredible opportunity—and responsibility—to contribute meaningfully to a more equitable world. However, this cannot happen without intentional action to center racial equity in our strategies and decision-making. Engaging with racially diverse leaders, building trust with those directly impacted, and rethinking what success looks like are just a few of the ways that foundations can start to make a real difference.
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