December 29, 2008 | Read Time: 3 minutes
Nine wealthy California foundations have pledged to distribute at least $30-million during the next two to three years to aid needy members of minority groups, a move that is meant to quell critics who argue that the grant makers fail to provide adequate assistance to blacks, Hispanics, and members of other racial and ethnic minorities.
The group of philanthropies, known as the Foundation Coalition, said that $20-million will support charities led by members of minority groups and other small nonprofit groups helping poor neighborhoods and areas with diverse populations, according to a report the coalition released last week.
An additional $10-million will pay for training to help minority and grass-roots groups improve their management, accounting, and other management and leadership skills. The charitable funds will also continue to give research grants to study the operations of minority nonprofit groups in California.
The coalition, which includes some of the wealthiest grant makers in the country, are the Ahmanson Foundation, the Annenberg Foundation, the California Endowment, the California Wellness Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the UniHealth Foundation, and the Weingart Foundation.
Their plan drew praise from some foundation critics.
“We think it’s a good start,” said Orson Aguilar, executive director of the Greenlining Institute, an advocacy group in Berkeley, Calif., that has pushed foundations to do more for minorities in need.
He said his organization would use the coalition’s efforts to push other California grant makers, especially corporations, to do more for Hispanics and others. “They created a model that foundations can emulate elsewhere.”
However, Mr. Aguilar was disappointed that some of the foundations — ones that have not historically supported diverse populations — did not make large commitments. For example, the Ahmanson fund did not pledge new money but restated a pledge to do more with its current grant making to help minorities, he said.
“It’s hard to tell what some of them are doing,” he said. “It requires more clarification.”
The Foundation Coalition originally banned together in February to fight a controversial proposal in the California State Legislature.
The bill, which Greenling supported, would have required grant makers to disclose to the public information about the diversity of their staff and board members and their grantees.
The author of the measure, Assemblyman Joe Coto, a Democrat from San Jose, agreed to withdraw it in June after the foundations promised to develop a plan to strengthen minority-led and grass-roots groups. The commitments announced last week are the result of that agreement.
(Read The Chronicle’s article on the legislative battle and about how lawmakers in other parts of the country are examining the issue.)
To develop the new programs, the grant makers spent five months talking with nonprofit leaders who are members of minority groups to see what they thought would best improve their organizations — and the relationship between minority-group grant seekers and foundations — said Fred Ali, chief executive officer of Weingart, in a letter that accompanied last week’s report.
“While each of our foundations was already providing substantial funding in these areas, we agreed more could, and should, be done,” he writes.
He also said that “despite heavy losses in their investment portfolios, they have kept faith” with their pledge to help minorities.
The 28-page report outlines the coalition’s plans and provides details on the work of each foundation member.
For example, the California Wellness Foundation, the California Endowment, and Weingart will award $3-million to the Liberty Hill Foundation, a charity in Los Angeles that works closely with grass-roots groups. Liberty Hill will provide training and redistribute some of the money to small organizations with budgets less than $2-million.
In addition to making grants, some members of the coalition have promised to change internal practices. For example, the California Endowment will conduct an “internal diversity audit” of its staff, and Ahmanson said it will revamp its Web site to help small charities learn about its programs.
