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“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."

GIA is sharing this blog post to as in introduction to the collaborative Racial Equity Grantmaking Coding Project being led by Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF) with Callahan Consulting for the Arts (CCA) and a cross section of grantmakers nation-wide. You may find more information here and apply to join this cohort here by November 1, 2023.

We believe that what we count counts. GIA is participating in the Racial Equity Grantmaking Coding Project, the culmination of research led by Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF) with Callahan Consulting for the Arts (CCA), for just this reason.

This pandemic and the ongoing murders of Black people by the state has made eminently visible a crisis as old as the nation itself – structural racism. Our national grantmaking field has used this historic moment to increase support to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities, as we should. With that said however, the national grantmaking field is already expressing some ambivalence about maintaining these changes going forward.

Cultural Policy Action Lab Timeline

March 1, 2022: Cultural Policy Action Lab Announcement

March 8, 2022: Cultural Policy Learning Cohort Application Opens

March 15, 2022: Cultural Policy Learning Cohort Application Info Session
(Watch the Info Session here)

The Cultural Policy Action Lab is a leadership and professional development community of practice program for public sector workers who seek to advance racial equity through arts and culture and public policy. It consists of an open source 8-part web learning series (public, open to all) and a nationally selected learning cohort of public sector leaders in an intentional community of practice working to strengthen applied policy transformation.

Workshop Resources

• Agenda
• Slides

Written materials we referenced

Grantmakers in the Arts resources:

"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."

In a new report, "Pulse Checking Progress Toward Operationalizing REI: Arts, Culture & Healing," from LivingCities revisits learnings and progress from internal racial equity work over the part five years in response to a 2017 internal learning report, “What Does it Take to Embed a Racial Equity & Inclusion Lens?"

"We’re moving beyond DEI (bodies at the table), racial equity (measuring POC against white people), and perhaps even racial justice (the righting of racial wrongs), to an actual focus on what Black people need to thrive (building pro-Black)," Cyndi Suarez writes in the latest issue of NonProfit Quarterly (NPQ). "These parallel realities exist right now. But there is a gap between the leaders of color and radical white conspirators at the edge—and the funders who claim to be."