Community Foundations Take the Lead: Promising Approaches to Building Inclusive and Equitable Communities

Features the work of several community foundations that have promoted racial equity, highlighting their successes and challenges

Researchers Experiences Inform Recommendations for Funders to Facilitate Racial Equity in Research

Funders of research—including federal and state agencies, philanthropic foundations, and nonprofit organizations—play a key role in shaping efforts to incorporate equity in research. This role may include conceptualizing, designing, conducting, and disseminating racial equity in research. However, for funders to effectively facilitate equity in research, they should understand researchers' experiences with implementing racial equity methods.This brief aims to connect researchers' experiences and funders' work in racial equity. We interviewed several Child Trends researchers who have many years of experience integrating racial equity in research. We aimed to understand researchers' motivations for engaging in racial equity work, garner examples of how they have incorporated racial equity in their research, and determine the supports needed to integrate racial equity methods in research. Based on findings from these interviews—and discussions with our program officer at the Annie E. Casey Foundation—we provide key recommendations for funders to better support equity-focused research

Towards a More Responsive Philanthropy: Grantmaking for Racial Equity and LGBTQ Justice

In 2007, Funders for LGBTQ Issues (Funders) launched its LGBTQ Racial Equity Campaign, a multi-year initiative to increase grantmaking to and strengthen lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people of color (POC) organizations and communities. This effort was a natural next step for us after updating our mission the previous year to include advancing racial, economic, and gender justice as integral to achieving LGBTQ equality and rights. Our intent was to forge a conversation among funders about the critical intersection of racial equity and LGBTQ justice and how institutional structures and grantmaking practices impact the resources available to diverse communities.This report marks another step in our continuing effort to advance work at the intersection of racial equity and LGBTQ justice by offering the stories of five foundations that have made an intentional commitment to do this work with their grantees. We present their innovative efforts hoping that they'll encourage others who are engaging in or considering similar efforts. This work is not always easy. It requires time, diligence, dialogue, and resources. Yet, as these stories reveal, it can yield tremendous impact -- on organizations, individuals, and the various communities of which they are a part

Journey Toward Racial Equity: Baseline Findings from the Racial Equity Capacity Assessment

This report represents the latest in an effort by Philanthropy-Serving Organizations (PSOs) to advance philanthropic practice and impact by centering racial equity. Written by some members of United Philanthropy Forum's Racial Equity Committee together with Community Centered Evaluation & Research, the report is based on findings of the Forum's inaugural Racial Equity Capacity Assessment for PSOs. Nearly three-quarters of Forum members completed the assessment, which provides a baseline to examine PSOs' internal efforts and external programming in advancing racial equity. The Forum also completed the assessment, and is using the results to inform the Forum's internal racial equity work

Advancing Racial Equity in Housing and Community Development: An Anti-Racism Guide for Transformative Change

Racial equity will be achieved only through intentional actions and decisions. Even with intentionality, racial equity will be difficult to put into operation. Within the field of housing and community development, racial equity approaches intend to proactively address the enduring racism within contemporary policies, programs and practices that routinely advantage White people while further producing negative outcomes for people of color. Furthermore, racial equity approaches must also be focused to address the enduring racism within the private corporate sectors of the banking, investment, and real estate industries. Effective racial equity approaches also explicitly recognize the cultural assets, resilience, and strengths within communities of color. This means centering communities of color in the process of advancing change.

Creating Cultures and Practices for Racial Equity: A Toolbox for Advancing Racial Equity for Arts and Cultural Organizations

Creating Cultures and Practices for Racial Equity contains a variety of tools that emerged from Race Forward's Racial Equity in the Arts Innovation Lab to help artists, arts advocates, culture bearers, and cultural workers to imagine, plan, and implement racial equity strategies in arts organizations. Whether an arts or cultural practitioner already working with a racial equity team and plan or just beginning the journey towards organizational transformation, these tools can help guide, focus, and reinvigorate efforts. Using a racial equity tool helps give deliberate attention to racial and social justice. These tools can be used to make strategic and equitable decisions in assessing existing or proposed policies, practices, plans, programs, grantmaking, contracting, budgets, etc

Grantmaking with a Racial Justice Lens

When the Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity (PRE), in partnership with GrantCraft, released Grantmaking with a Racial Equity Lens, a few foundations had made racial equity a central focus of their work, but many were still exploring how to incorporate equity into their grantmaking.Our guide helped surface how to advance racial equity in philanthropy, aiming to make it a core practice and goal of grantmakers. Rather than other popular approaches of the time—"colorblindness," universal approaches, diversity—PRE's guide defined a racially equitable world as one where the distribution of resources, opportunities and burdens is not determined or predictable by race. We successfully argued that an explicit racial equity lens ensures that the particular needs and assets of communities are

What Does it Take to Embed a Racial Equity & Inclusion Lens?

This report seeks to inform the next phase of Living Cities' racial equity and inclusion work, and we hope it is useful to other organizations wrestling with how to better operationalize racial equity and inclusion in their own work.This report is the capstone project of the Racial Equity and Inclusion Learning Question Team. It captures themes from the team's field and internal scan, as well as what we have learned from our grantmaking and investments in cities across the country–what we call applied research, and seeks to inform the next phase of Living Cities' racial equity and inclusion work. We also hope that this report might be useful to other organizations wrestling with how to better operationalize racial equity and inclusion in their own work

LGBTQ Grantmakers 2008 Report Card on Racial Equity

A research study examining how a subset of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) grantmakers addresses racial equity in grantmaking, governing documents, policies and practices, demographics and leadership, and strategic communications

From Seed to Harvest: A Toolkit for Collaborative Racial Equity Strategies

This tool is meant to guide racial equity practices in the creation and assessment of sustainability and renewable energy policies and programs. It offers a framework and systematic process to build cultures of accountability and work towards racial equity outcomes in decision-making. Lastly, it provides a tangible pathway for an ecosystem approach to operationalizing collective racial equity values.