Philanthropic practice

In a recent piece published by The Women’s Foundation California, Meredith Youngblood has a conversation with two members of the Ruth McGuire Legacy Circle on how they "practically and emotionally invested in a feminist future" and why they chose to write Women’s Foundation California into their wills.

Upstart Co-Lab released "The Guide: what cultural institutions need to know about investing for values and mission" as a primer on impact investing specifically for leaders of museums and other cultural institutions.

A recent article in Alliance magazine discusses how "unrestricted funding has been more talked about than practiced by foundations."

Christine Yoon, senior program officer, Arts, at the Wallace Foundation sat down with Imagine This Podcast to discuss “navigating culture shifts in the workplace, the philanthropic community's shifts over the last year, leadership development in nonprofits, managing uncertainty, and more.”

Farhad Ebrahimi, founder and president of the Chorus Foundation in Boston, MA, writes for The Forge on the subject of private philanthropy's future, and the structural reforms that are needed:

Philanthropy as it’s conventionally understood is the product of racial capitalism. As a result, I see progressive — or even radical — private philanthropy as, at best, a transitional form. If we seek to support transformational work, then we ourselves must be open to transformation. I like to think of this as a “just transition” for the philanthropic sector: we must directly challenge the conditions that produced the wealth inequality that allowed for private philanthropy in the first place.

The full transcript of this podcast is published below.
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The Opportunity Fund announced support totaling $1,112,500 in grants to arts and social and economic justice organizations, the largest cycle in its seventh year of grantmaking. "The increase in amount awarded is a result of the Board of Directors decision to release funds at a rate of 6% of its endowment annually, rather than the minimum requirement of 5%," states the announcement.

In a recent Nonprofit Quarterly webinar, participants including Natalia (“Nati”) Linares, coauthor of the "Solidarity Not Charity: Arts and Culture Grantmaking in the Solidarity Economy" report, commissioned by Grantmakers in the Arts, discuss "Remaking the Economy: Core elements of system change."

"The idea behind participatory grantmaking is both simple and powerful: What if we shifted decision-making power away from supposedly expert grantmakers and investors? What if people with lived experience had the power to devise and implement solutions to the problems they face?" write Ben Wrobel and Meg Massey in Nonprofit Quarterly.

In a recent article published in Generocity, Bread & Roses Community Fund and Philadelphia Black Giving Circle discuss why large grantmakers are "beginning to think like their much smaller counterparts."