Council on Foundations Leadership Summit Highlights Diversity
Diversity is “not a program but a value we must weave through everything we do,” Council on Foundations President and CEO Steve Gunderson told attendees at last month’s Council on Foundations Leadership Summit in Washington. The philanthropic sector’s annual national gathering wove diversity sessions throughout the three-day meeting, expanding on DPP’s important contributions to the 2007 Seattle Conference with a first-ever plenary session devoted to the topic and various breakout sessions focused on diversity and inclusion issues.Also at the Summit, the Diversity in Philanthropy Project (DPP) broadly disseminated a draft statement of Common Principles and Promising Practices, developed in concert with a wide range of philanthropy stakeholders, to promote diversity and effectiveness in philanthropy.
During the coming months, DPP will further collaborate with interested philanthropic leaders to gain their input on ways to strengthen and broadly implement the statement across our sector.
Following are summary highlights from the diversity sessions at the Leadership Summit.
Plenary:
Philanthropic Impact: Achieving Diversity Through Leadership or Legislation?
With legislation pending in the California legislature – Assembly Bill 624 (or AB 624) – and other lawmakers taking a closer look at the nonprofit sector, this historic plenary conversation on diversity offered a global opportunity to explore the inherent tension between two divergent positions on diversity and inclusiveness in philanthropy: voluntary leadership or legislative mandate? With over 1,500 conference participants attending, there was a spirited exchange among leaders whose views range from one end of the spectrum to the other; and the plenary made clear that foundations are at risk of government regulation unless they can show a deeper commitment to diversity and inclusiveness practices.
Highlights included insights from Dr. Robert K. Ross, President and CEO of The California Endowment, who chairs the DPP’s national advisory board and who has been working on the issue for some time. Having seen how difficult it is to standardize notions of diversity, Ross said that defining diversity should be left to each organization, not to government. The Endowment, for example, found that defining diversity by focusing on race and ethnicity may not be enough in that it doesn’t necessarily cover constituencies such as poor rural people or people with disabilities. Furthermore, Ross said, “mechanistic approaches” won’t solve core problems like income gaps and racism.
Representative Xavier Becerra (D-CA), a senior member of the House Ways & Means Committee, said that because nonprofit organizations are tax exempt and receive what he and many other members of Congress consider a $32 billion federal subsidy, the sector should devote a greater percentage of its resources to assisting low-income communities and people of color or risk the very real probability of governmental intervention.
Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation Trustee Ann Wiener agreed and reported that the foundation’s board of directors has voted to endorse the AB624 California bill that recently passed as a means of encouraging foundations to be more accountable for reflecting progress in this area.
Adam Meyerson, President of The Philanthropy Roundtable, pointed out that the Roundtable devotes one third of its budget to advancing philanthropic strategies that open up opportunities for low-income families and neighborhoods, most of which are also racially diverse. The Philanthropy Roundtable emphatically does not support requiring foundations to meet prescribed criteria with respect to diversity, however, said Meyerson. Instead, Meyerson reported, voluntary efforts of funders committed to the issues makes more sense to Roundtable members and stands a much greater chance of producing the desired result of greater philanthropic inclusion.
Underscoring the point that diversity isn’t just about race but is also about inclusiveness, I. King Jordan, a board member of the Theodore R. & Vivian M. Johnson Scholarship and former president of Gallaudet University, noted that persons with disabilities should be included in all planning and implementation of diversity practices, as they represent a significant portion of the U.S. population but one that remains woefully underrepresented in the organized field. “Diversifying changes the way people think,” Jordan said.
Angela Glover Blackwell, CEO of PolicyLink and the panel’s moderator, agreed adding that “just my presence in the board room has often made a difference.”
Break Out Session:
A Leadership Exchange on Diversity in Philanthropy: Moving the Needle
For over a year, foundation and independent sector leaders have held unprecedented, ongoing exchanges that have inspired voluntary initiatives aimed at developing more broad-based diversity and inclusiveness practices within the sector. Leading practitioners and advocates at this session openly shared what they have learned about the implications of expanding diversity practices in foundation governance, grantmaking, institutional leadership, and business practice. In the process, they engaged attendees in a dialogue about how best to advance efforts to promote diversity and inclusive practices in organized philanthropy.
Participating panelists included three members of the DPP’s national advisory board – Dr. Robert K. Ross, President and CEO of The California Endowment, Steve Gunderson, President and CEO of the Council on Foundations, and Dr. Sandra R. Hernández, CEO of the San Francisco Foundation, who served as the panel moderator. Other panel participants included leading representatives of foundations that have also brought significant institutional leadership to the DPP’s work and to inclusiveness efforts across our sector – Sterling K. Speirn, President and CEO of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and Leslie Lowe, Board Chair of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation.
Together, these panelists agreed that:
- at increasing numbers of foundations, diversity and inclusiveness in staffing and grantmaking is moving conceptually from something that is seen as “nice to do” to something that is seen instead as “essential for effectiveness.”
- a working and meaningful commitment to diversity and inclusiveness in foundations principally has to come from board and executive level leaders.
- diversity and inclusiveness should be a clearly stated priority of an organization and part of the ongoing conversation among staff and peer groups about how best to achieve excellence.
Dr. Robert K. Ross emphasized that the evolution of The California Endowment’s diversity practices has been more a journey than a destination. He stressed that a conversation about diversity and inclusion is not a conversation merely about race, but also about other forms of diversity including (among others) gender, class, disability, geography and sexual identity. He also said that one of the greatest challenges is expanding diverse practices among contractors and foundation investment managers.
Panel moderator Dr. Sandra R. Hernández echoed Ross’s sentiments about the particular need for foundations to reflect on opportunities to expand representation and effectiveness through diverse contractors and investors, while acknowledging that this is one of the field’s most complicated next areas of focus.
Sterling Speirn reported that the W. K. Kellogg Foundation’s evolving efforts to address structural racism in all aspects of its internal and external work has resulted from its leadership’s growing recognition that in order to achieve its basic mission-driven goals as an organization, it cannot gain traction in its key areas of interest without confronting the continuing negative consequences of disparate racial policies and practices.
Leslie Lowe similarly spoke to the challenges and yet the possibilities of achieving meaningful impact on the issues as a family foundation, reflecting that Noyes Foundation family members who comprised the Foundation’s board since its founding realized about fifteen years ago that they could not hope optimally to understand and act on their various areas of social justice concern without substantially broadening representation within their leadership and partnership circles.
Finally, Steve Gunderson spoke to the need for still more leadership in this area while reminding participants of the inherent challenges of contending with certain realities in the field, especially the fact that an overwhelming proportion of COF members have staffs of less than two individuals and extremely limited capacities to act on diversity concerns in the same way that larger foundations can. He also spoke to the Council’s redoubled efforts in this area through new senior staffing arrangements, as well as important new programmatic efforts resulting from the work of its Inclusive Practices Committee, headed by COF trustee and DPP national advisory board member Arturo Vargas.
Break Out Session:
Beyond Counting: What Can We Learn From Diversity-Related Research?
This session alerted participants that there are now a number of research and peer-learning efforts underway to better understand diversity in philanthropy and its relationship to field effectiveness and impact. At the session, panelists focused on this emerging body of research and learning activity, especially on efforts to collect, analyze, and report on grantmaking to diverse communities.
The panel was moderated by DPP advisory and executive board member Lawrence T. McGill, Senior Vice President of Research at The Foundation Center. Featured speakers included: Thomas H. Jeavons, Executive Director of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA) and COF Philanthropic Research Director Judith Kroll (both members of the DPP Working Group on Data & Research along with McGill); James Head, Director of Programs for the San Francisco Foundation and Colin Lacon, President and CEO of Northern California Grantmakers.
Among the panelist’s key insights were the following:
- Numbers (of diverse staff, grants, etc.) are important, and we need to track them more accurately.
- Numbers are never enough, however, as cultural considerations come substantially into play. Qualitative analysis as well as quantitative research are both needed.
- While much good work is being done in this area, there is need for greater leadership, coordination, prioritization, and funding for diversity-related field mapping and study.
At this session, participants also learned about a Fall 2007 gathering where researchers and grantmakers identified and prioritized together the types of diversity research the field needs over the coming several years. Proceedings from that meeting – the First Annual Researcher/Practitioner Forum (co-convened by ARNOVA, the Council on Foundations, and The Foundation Center with support from the Lumina Foundation) – can be downloaded here.
McGill rounded out the session by sharing highlights from selected surveys The Foundation Center has recently conducted with foundation and nonprofit organizations related to the composition of their staffs and boards, and in relation to their grantmaking practices targeted to diverse communities, primarily focusing on research in California in response to California bill AB624, collecting more nuanced information than available to date.
Break Out Session:
Exploring the Relationships Between Diversity and Inclusiveness Practices and Effective Grantmaking
This session, moderated by Peggy Saika, President and CEO of Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy, teased out several key observations for participants. To begin, it made clear that while there are a number of ways to measure grantmakers’ and grantseekers’ effectiveness (transparency, financial responsibility, adherence to mission, and more), philanthropy leaders can and should also consider effectiveness through a diversity lens, with language, cultural differences, socio-economic disparities and other factors coming into play. Panelists at this session shared their experiences in broadening their foundations’ grantmaking to be more diverse.
Danielle M. Reyes, Program Officer at the Eugene & Agnes Meyer Foundation, described how her foundation decided to shift the way it normally works and take a new level of risk by inviting smaller, loosely organized groups (e.g. an after school program started in a Korean church) to apply for grants. Such groups typically don’t have the systems in place to respond to grant requests, said Reyes, so the foundation offered technical assistance. Ernest B. Gutierrez, Acting President of the Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers and a former Program Director at the Michigan-based Kresge Foundation, shared lessons learned from his work on diversity issues that mirrored what was heard throughout the Summit, including foundations need to: fund research to generate data that connects diversity to effectiveness; be flexible about the “standards” of diversity used to inform this work; and build on board and executive leadership to forge lasting institutional change and an enabling environment for staff and community stakeholders concerned about the issues.
Kim Hutchinson, Executive Director of the Disability Funders Network, reminded attendees that the discussion is about both diversity and inclusiveness and that disability crosses multiple areas of focus, e.g. race, income, geography.
Break Out session:
Race Matters in Grantmaking: Unequal Opportunities or a Level Playing Field?
This last concurrent session underscored the point that while race is only one component of diversity and inclusive practice, it dominates much of the public discourse on the issues. In their exchange, panel members explored grantmaking effectiveness and how the inclusion of racially diverse boards, leadership, and staff can improve grantmakers’ ability to serve all communities more effectively.
Vicki J. Rosenberg, Vice President of Education, Communications and External Relations for the Council of Michigan Foundations (a DPP anchor institutional partner), moderated the session and opened by sharing working definitions of race, social identity and ethnicity/culture. Lisa Jackson, Vice President of Research at the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) and a member of the DPP Working Group on Data and Research, offered valuable evidence to illustrate the many dimensions of the issue and the obvious need for more research and intervention. For example, CEP has recently assembled data showing that people of color serving on foundation boards do not feel that their ideas have equal weight with white peers’ unless there are at least three people of color participating on the foundation’s governing board. The implication of CEP’s research in this area is that increased board diversity leads to more coherent, informed, and consensus-based foundation policy and direction.
Janet Murguia, President and CEO of the National Council of La Raza, suggested that foundations be more open to new approaches in attracting Hispanics to the field. For example, she said that instead of looking for Ivy-league educated applicants, foundations should look for people with a broad range of leadership experiences outside of traditional foundation networks.
Susan Batten, Senior Associate at the Annie E. Casey Foundation and a DPP national advisory board member, recounted how the Foundation has developed its competency around race, saying that one of the reasons it embraced the issue is that race is integral to its children, youth, and family-focused mission. According to Batten, “if we care about all kids, we have to care about race.” Batten also noted that “people will work on the issue if we give them the message and the tools,” and she closed by introducing the foundation’s Race Matters Toolkit, which she reported is in very high demand across the independent sector.
For additional information, download a program of all the diversity sessions offered during the COF Summit.