"On July 21, 2022, NPN’s Board of Directors voted to support the launch and an initial three years of the Department of Racial Justice and Movement Building: a new programmatic arc of work for NPN. Sage Crump, who has led NPN’s Leveraging a Network for Equity (LANE) initiative, will become the department’s first director. Under her guidance, NPN will work intentionally in the realm of systemic change and movement building by engaging the question 'What’s possible in our sector when we are in ideological alignment, deep learning, relationship building, and practice together?'"
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The GIA Library is an information hub that includes articles, research reports, and other materials covering a wide variety of topics relevant to the arts and arts funding. These resources are made available free to members and non-members of GIA. Users can search by keyword or browse by category for materials to use in research and self-directed learning. Current arts philanthropy news items are available separately in our news feed - News from the Field.
"As the co-founder and co-CEO of Be Nimble Foundation, Kelli Jones saw the need for more philanthropic support for Black organizations long before the pandemic tightened budgets," said author Jayden Kennett for the Indianapolis Recorder."Coming out of the pandemic, she’s seen the money and resources that Black organizations had been begging for."
Black August, born out of Black liberation, resistance, and justice movements, is a month dedicated to critical learning and analysis, reflection and study of our roles in oppressive or liberatory systems, and an opportunity to grow, connect, and prepare for the challenging work ahead.
From the Black Liberation Movement and the Black August Hip Hop Project to“Writing While Black” andhow to fix classical arts, we invite you to join us this month in collective reflection where arts and culture are at the root of justice and liberation. As we are reminded by ABFE, A Philanthropic Partnership for Black Communities, “We must be in it for the long haul.”
"Over the past few years, companies made it their mission to commit to diversifying their boards and fostering a more inclusive culture. But, with women holding just 24% of senior leadership positions globally, and white people making up almost 80% of the American workforce, there is still work to be done," said author Ashton Jackson for Make It Black. "That's why Lybra Clemons, chief diversity, inclusion and belonging officer at Twilio, works to build diverse representation at every level."
From the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation:
In the first episode of a three-part podcast series by Grantmakers in the Arts, DDCF Program Director for the Arts Maurine Knighton spoke about the impetus behind the Racial Equity Coding Project, which aims to gather data around racial equity funding practices to illustrate a more nuanced and accurate accounting of grantmaking efforts to advance racial equity. The Equity Coding Project began with a culmination of research led by DDCF with Callahan Consulting for the Arts and provides funders with an opportunity to examine and refine their own coding practices, as well as to adopt new data collection practices for the future.
“Although major cultural institutions, businesses and organizations have made renewed commitments to supporting arts organizations led by BIPOC leaders since 2020, Black-owned art galleries and collections have long played a central role in diversifying the art market and acquiring artwork of artists from underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds,” purports Sabrina Greig in NewCity Art.
“Everyone in philanthropy can potentially play a role in supporting transformative racial justice work," remarks Lori Villarosa, founder and executive director, Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity (PRE) in a piece for PEAK Grantmaking blog. "But to unlock that potential, each person needs to apply racial equity and racial justice lenses to all aspects of their work. And grants professionals can be a driving force by both shifting practice and ensuring that the organization is impactfully looking at its work through both lenses.”
"Grants management professionals are strategically positioned to influence a funder’s racial equity and racial justice funding. But in three decades of working in and with foundations, I have consistently seen a pattern where people serving in these roles are excluded from these conversations as a matter of institutional habit," writes Lori Villarosa, founder and executive director, Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity (PRE), in PEAK Grantmaking Journal, issue 19. "As a result, there is a lack of understanding across the field about how the work of grants management directly relates to advancing racial equity and justice."
"It is too early to determine whether the waves of protests of recent years as part of the Black Lives Matter movement will actually constitute a 'racial reckoning' (as the media dubbed it) or not, but awareness of the role of systemic inequality and structural racism appears to be at or near its historical peak, especially among White Americans. This means that the aperture for meaningful policy change has opened," writes Stephen Menedian in an essay on the Othering & Belonging Institute blog.
"Racism is structural; it is upheld and perpetuated by institutions, like foundations, in the ways that they operate," writes Celia Bottger, program assistant & grants manager, NorthLight Foundation in a blog for Philanthropy New York. "In addition to taking concrete steps to institutionalize racial equity in our policies and practices, we at NorthLight came to recognize that we must engage in a process of decolonization."