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As grantmakers, we often ask our applicants to amplify their impact through collaboration, but what happens when we turn this mandate on ourselves and join forces with other funders to magnify our giving?

The U.S. House Education and Labor Committee began the process last week of reauthorizing the Older Americans Act (OAA). This law represents the primary dedicated Federal funding to support seniors through home- and community-based services. This legislative effort also included an expanded focus sought by Grantmakers in the Arts (GIA) to ensuring seniors have access to and engage in cultural and arts experiences.

The Blanket Exercise, led by Native Americans in Philanthropy (NAP), is "a participatory simulation that teaches about Native people, the colonization of their land, and its consequences, and how oppression continues today," as Jen Bokoff, director of Stakeholder Engagement at Candid, reflected in an article published in Alliance Magazine, after participating in one session. The blankets, as she describes, represent Turtle Island (North America), while a time lapse of stolen land loops on screen.

What We Publish

Grantmakers in the Arts (GIA) welcomes submissions of previously unpublished content of various lengths, ranging from short reflections to long-form articles to poetry. GIA regularly publishes research, book reviews, interviews, personal essays, poetry, and nonfiction commentary, reportage, and features of interest to arts and culture funders, organizers, advocates, presenters, and producers. While GIA members have priority access for submission review, we accept submissions from any and all writers interested in submitting.

The following is an excerpt from a longer essay, “Dynamics of Difference,” inspired by several years of work with Peter Pennekamp, then head of the Humboldt Area Foundation. In a 2013 paper we co-wrote, Peter distilled principles that establish conditions for what he calls “living, breathing, on-the-street democracy.” One of these principles is the “dynamics of difference,” the idea that working with our differences can bring about positive outcomes.

Digging Up

It’s Friday night. A Netflix subscriber is sitting on their couch, scrolling through an endless feed of entertainment options. They pass by the next episode of Stranger Things, skip over the Marvel movies, shrug at Friday Night Lights. Finally, they land on the latest environmental documentary film release. They grab their blanket and popcorn and eagerly press play.

Adults age sixty-five and above are currently the fastest-growing segment of the US population. In 2016, there were 47.8 million individuals age sixty-five and over in the United States (US Census Bureau 2017), and this number is expected to more than double by 2060. By 2040, nearly half of older adults are expected to come from diverse racial/ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds (Vincent and Velkoff 2010; Johnson, Rodriquez-Salazar, et al. 2018). San Francisco’s population of older adults is higher than the national norm.

“Contested Memory” is an essay series I recently wrote for Monument Lab (see http://monumentlab.com/news/2019/2/24/the-rebel-archive). In the first two essays, I drew from a range of theorists and writers to examine how the historical record is constructed through active erasure and probed at the radical potential that imagination holds for charting black cartographies of freedom.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) have become major topics of conversation in arts and culture within the past decade. Studies have shown that there is a marked lack of DEI in all areas of the sector, including audiences, artistic offerings, governing boards, professional staff, and financial support. Compounding this issue is the rapidly changing demographic makeup of the United States; it is estimated that by 2042, people of color will no longer be in the minority.