Foundation Programs Aim to Increase Diversity Among Grant-Making Staffs

TOOLS AND TRAINING

By Darlene M. Siska

Three years ago, armed with a master’s degree from Stanford University and a work history that

included stints at charities that primarily serve minorities, Adele James entered the San Francisco Foundation’s Multicultural Fellowship Program — reluctantly.

Ms. James, who is from Trinidad, says she was talked into applying for the fellowship by a counselor at the Women’s Employment Resource Center, in Berkeley, Calif. The fellowship provides young minority professionals with hands-on experience in grant making and strengthening impoverished neighborhoods. “I wasn’t interested at first because I didn’t know about the foundation part of philanthropy,” says Ms. James. “The counselor at the Women’s Employment Resource Center told me I could always turn it down.”

She ended up being sold on a career in the foundation field, and now works in San Francisco as a program officer at the Women’s Foundation. “The work I did at the San Francisco Foundation really got me involved in organizational issues and that led to my learning a lot about capacity development,” she says. But what was equally important in drawing her to foundation work, says Ms. James, was how the San Francisco Foundation embraced diversity by employing minorities throughout its staff. “When you see people of color model leadership,” she says, “it makes the field seem accessible.”

Many minorities in the nonprofit field lack, as Ms. James did, an awareness of their opportunities in grant making, philanthropy observers say, and foundations do not always reach out successfully to a diverse pool of job candidates. As a result, minorities remain underrepresented at foundations compared with their numbers in the total U.S. population, especially in the managerial ranks. A survey released in February by the Council on Foundations, an association of grant makers, in Washington, reported that the number of minorities who led foundations remained at 5.3 percent from 1996 to 2000, and the number of minorities who were employed by foundations during that period increased only slightly, from 22.5 percent to 22.9 percent.

To encourage diversity, some foundations have started internship and fellowship programs over the past decade to help cultivate minorities with an interest in philanthropy. Some programs focus on college students and recent graduates while others attempt to nurture the development of minorities who already work as grant makers.

The San Francisco Foundation’s board started its fellowship more than a decade ago because its region’s ethnic makeup had been changing and its nonprofit field was robust, according to Sandra Hernández, the foundation’s president. “It’s clear there were minorities wanting to get into the field, but not having a portal in,” she says.

The program seems to be opening doors for its participants: A survey last year of 32 former fellows found that half were working at foundations and half at nonprofit groups.

Minorities and Recruiting

Striving for diversity should be a matter of practicality as well as fairness for foundations, says Emmett D. Carson, the first black president of the Minneapolis Foundation, because minorities “are often affected by the programs [that] funders fund. If funders don’t have access to diverse people on their staff or board, they may not do the best grant making. It’s not that people who aren’t of color can’t understand what it’s like to be in a minority or feel part of a problem. But people who don’t experience them directly can’t understand all the issues.”

It has been a long road for foundations to become even as diverse as they are today. Before the 1970s, many foundations were staffed, often part-time, by bank officers or family members. But as grant makers grew more involved in financing groups that work on social issues, they began to need specialists with advanced degrees, which started a move toward a professional field that continues today, says Joanne Scanlon, senior vice president for professional development at the Council on Foundations.

Despite the need for a broader range of skills than in earlier eras, many grant makers still don’t always aggressively recruit minorities, Mr. Carson says, noting that many job openings in the field are still advertised only via word of mouth.

“A cold reading of the evidence suggests foundations aren’t as open or progressive as we think we are,” Mr. Carson says. “Foundations are endowed institutions, isolated from marketplace realities. In other fields, there are dollars involved. There is no cost to funders if they don’t become diverse. Funders think, ‘We’re going to be around forever. We don’t need anything from you. You can’t pressure us to change.’”

Ricardo A. Millett, president of Woods Fund of Chicago, echoes Mr. Carson’s observations about hiring at foundations. “You get in by whom you know,” Mr. Millett says. “There is not enough consciousness or awareness of opportunities in foundations for minorities.”

In addition, he says, even the best efforts at increasing foundations’ diversity can be hampered because “to most people of color who get through the gantlet to get educated and professional skills, corporate positions often seem more lucrative.”

Hands-On Experience

Other grant makers in addition to the San Francisco Foundation have also formed programs aimed at bringing young minorities into the grant-making field. Several organizations in New York City have worked together for nearly three years to bring minority college undergraduates to the city to work at foundations under the Summer Internship in Philanthropy program, which is coordinated by Sponsors for Educational Opportunity and financed by three New York grant makers: the Edward W. Hazen Foundation, the Edwin Gould Foundation for Children, and the Durst Family Foundation.

The program, which takes college students who are at least sophomores and who are already involved in community service, has proved popular, garnering about 100 applicants per cycle for up to nine slots. Students from across the country work as interns for 10 weeks at such organizations as the AT&T Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Wallace-Reader’s Digest Funds. The interns receive stipends, participate in weekly seminars, and gain exposure to the grant-review process through site visits, budget preparation, program evaluation, research, and report writing.

Of the 17 alumni of the summer program, two are now employed at foundations, says Helen Dorado Alessi, a program officer at the Edwin Gould Foundation. But the internship program’s benefits, to both grant makers and interns, go beyond what mere numbers can convey, she says: “It informs our work as funders to have a young person here. Young people help you learn about problems they have today. If the students don’t want eventually to go into grant making, we say, ‘How about a related field, such as development? ‘“

Demetria Silvera, a Princeton University graduate, had been unfamiliar with the foundation world before hearing about the Summer Internship in Philanthropy program from a Princeton career counselor. Her internship assignment last summer was with the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, where she has since been hired as a program assistant. She spent her internship doing work much like she does now, reviewing proposals and making visits to recipients of the foundation’s aid. “I had a great overview of what happens at the grass-roots level,” she says.

The Ford Foundation has run its Program Associates program since 1994, which is intended to introduce a diverse group of potential leaders to the field of philanthropy early in their nonprofit careers. Program associates at Ford hold master’s or law degrees, usually have some nonprofit experience, and are given two-year, entry-level positions. They participate in the daily operations of the seven program units at the Ford Foundation’s New York headquarters. As they become more experienced, associates are given opportunities for individual and group projects requiring them to conduct research, provide analysis, and give their recommendations for new directions in a grant-making field or program.

About 70 percent of the Ford program’s alumni have remained in nonprofit work, says Bruce D. Stuckey, the foundation’s director of human resources. “Our program is aimed at bringing people into foundations, but to the larger field for sure,” he says.

Reginald Lewis, who, until he took a state government post last month, worked as director of policy and programs at the Fund for New Jersey, in New Brunswick, participated in the first class of Ford Program Associates. Unlike Ms. James’s and Ms. Silvera’s experiences with their foundation internships, Mr. Lewis, who is black, arrived at Ford already having some awareness of foundation work: As a graduate student in social-services administration at the University of Chicago, he worked at the Chicago Community Trust as part of his academic requirements. But he credits the Ford program with setting him on his career path.

Nurturing Minority Employees

The Council on Foundations is taking a different approach to creating diversity at grant-making institutions: It focuses on nurturing minorities who already work for foundations. Last year, the council established the Emerging Philanthropic Leaders Fellowship Program, which provides two-year fellowships for two minorities who work as program staff members or trustees at foundations. Two new fellows will be chosen every year over the next six years. The program is supported by the Edwin Gould Foundation for Children, the Otto Bremer Foundation, in St. Paul, and the St. Paul Companies Foundation.

Each of the council’s fellows are matched with mentors who are recognized leaders in philanthropy, says Dorothy S. Ridings, the council’s president. Fellows are asked to identify their personal growth goals and organizational-development needs. The program provides fellows with funds for such learning opportunities as traveling to conferences and meeting with consultants.

The council created the program in response to a need it saw throughout the grant-making field, says Ms. Ridings. “There are growing communities of color in this country whose philanthropy is growing and whose philanthropic efforts are different from traditional philanthropy,” she says. “We need to look at new leaders who understand their philanthropy. Although the council is pleased with its program thus far, she says, it foresees the need for greater support for the participants: “More mentoring and access to the institutional philanthropic network is needed to develop these leaders.”

Grant makers that are looking at how they might better support minorities, says Ms. Hernández of the San Francisco Foundation, need to learn that “fellowships can’t be an add-on. They must be central to a foundation’s mission.” Furthermore, she adds, they must recognize that serving as a mentor is a labor-intensive activity, and fully commit to the effort. “These relationships are most successful if the mentor is available, thoughtfully guiding a person, and has a resonance, in that the mentor and mentee share interests and background.”

And foundations shouldn’t look upon any young intern or fellow, whether they are part of a minority group or not, as merely clay waiting to be molded in a grant maker’s image. “Each fellow brings new blood and thought, and will keep you on your toes,” Ms. Hernández says. “Young people bring their own networks, skills, and knowledge to an organization. The field has to be broader in its view of who can bring what to a foundation.”

Just as grant makers must take steps to increase diversity, minorities need to become more aware of their options in philanthropy. If she were serving as a mentor to a young minority person, says Diana Campoamor, president of Hispanics in Philanthropy, in Emeryville, Calif., she would tell him or her to consider the power of grant making to create social change. “There’s also an opportunity for people of color in the field to make the case for including more people of color in foundations,” she says. “That isn’t to say there won’t be any challenges, but I believe there is also support and desire on the part of funders to be inclusive.”

Do foundations do enough to foster diversity among their ranks? Tell us your thoughts in the Job Market online forum.