May 3, 2007 | Read Time: 5 minutes
As the Council on Foundations meets this week in Seattle, it will devote a special set of sessions to the topic of diversity.
The council first embarked on this path in the mid-1990s, when “multiculturalism” and “diversity training” were hot topics in corporations and foundations. Recently, the Joint Affinity Group, an umbrella organization for grant makers interested in diversity issues in philanthropy, held its first “unity summit” aimed at setting a new diversity agenda for philanthropy.
Both the council’s renewed interested in diversity and the deliberations at the unity summit are indications that the democratizing of philanthropy has still not been achieved.
One way to measure what has changed in recent years, and what is left to be done, is to look at the role of women.
In 1982, when the first data on the gender of foundation officials became available, only 22 percent of the top executive positions were held by women.
Now, 55 percent of top executive positions at the nation’s foundations are held by women.
In addition, the potential of female donors has exploded. A 1998 report by the Internal Revenue Service showed that 38 percent of top wealth holders were women with a combined net worth of almost $4.2-trillion (up from $2.2-trillion in 1995). Women will also control a large share of the $4-trillion expected to pass from generation to generation over the next 50 years.
More than 100 groups devoted to making grants for women and girls now exist, and they raised more than $400-million in the last 15 years. Many of these groups are working overseas, seeking to improve the lives of impoverished women and girls worldwide.
Those developments are emblematic of how philanthropy is changing. First, the work force at the nation’s foundations is more diverse overall. People of color, openly gay men and lesbians, women, and other minorities are now a bigger part of the paid staff at the nation’s foundations, although the gains have been uneven among certain minority groups and in different regions.
Second, the overall expansion of the ranks of the wealthy — both through the intergenerational transfer and the creation of new wealth — has increased the number of donors who are members of minority groups.
Third, globalization and the heightened awareness of the role of immigrants in the United States have contributed to a greater interest in international grant making.
However, the foundation world still faces more challenges as it seeks to diversify and better serve a multicultural America:
- While the staffs of foundations are growing more diverse, the boardrooms are not. Until all levels of power within foundations include a diverse set of people, up and down the line, philanthropy will not be truly democratic. Foundation boards must work harder to identify, recruit, and retain a diverse pool of members. Expanding recruiting efforts to look beyond gender and race to include other minorities, like gay men and lesbians and people with disabilities, will help foundations find plenty of worthy candidates who have the time and expertise to serve on a foundation board.
- It is not clear whether the diversification of staff at foundations has meant that a bigger share of foundation grants are now going to organizations led by minorities, so new efforts need to be undertaken to learn what the situation is.
Recent reports suggest foundations are not moving ample resources to minority-led organizations, but the lack of reliable data makes those reports at best suggestive and at worst misleading. Foundations need to create better tools that are used by everyone so that they can better gauge their progress. Having good data is essential to diagnosing and analyzing where foundations are falling short. It is also critical to devising solutions.
- Over the past decade, dialogue about multiculturalism and diversity has moved away from a discussion of differences and the divisions they cause. Current thinking about diversity focuses on convergence — of race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, class, national origin, and disability — and how best to take advantage of the backgrounds and qualities of all people.
Applying that thinking can help foundations achieve the “deep diversity” described in Effective Philanthropy, a book by Mary Ellen Capek and Molly Mead that looks at how foundations have gone beyond a focus on equity to a comprehensive effort to change norms within their organizations. The idea is not just to make sure women and other minorities are hired and promoted, but also to make sure the skills, backgrounds, and special assets of all employees are harnessed to make the foundation as effective as it can be.
- Traditional philanthropy has virtual tunnel vision when it comes to how it conducts business. The approaches that foundations use to award money have not changed much over the century in which organized philanthropy has existed. For the most part, grant makers still see themselves in a transactional relationship with grantees: Money is handed over in an exchange for services.
The way that foundations identify and evaluate grantees, moreover, is similarly bound by the timeworn conventions of an application and review system that limits grant seekers’ access to foundation officials and makes it impossible for the give-and-take that would benefit both grant makers and grant recipients.
In other words, grant making has not adapted to changes among the people and communities most foundations want to serve. Foundations need to ask themselves what “culturally responsive” giving means, and how grant makers can adapt to the needs of the diverse population they seek to aid, rather than always expecting grant seekers and other constituencies to adapt to the ways foundations want to operate.
International grant makers have already begun making such efforts, notably in efforts to promote economic development and microfinance. American foundations have much to learn from the experience of these grant makers about how to best serve the needs of immigrants in the United States, who make up such a large proportion of those who do not get sufficient services from our nation’s schools, hospitals, and housing providers.
Changing philanthropy to reflect the diversity of America is not just a moral imperative, but a practical one. Equity will make foundation giving more effective and produce greater results. Foundations cannot achieve their goals unless they become truly diverse and democratic institutions.
Gwen I. Walden is chair of Women & Philanthropy and director of the Center for Healthy Communities at the California Endowment, in Los Angeles.
