The differences between those with a focus on reparations for specific past harms and those with a present focus can be subtle. Both agree that we must act now to interrupt the cascading affects of past injustices and course correct for the future. Both may be likely to believe that our systems and our culture are in such a moment of crisis, because of their unsustainability in both environmental and social terms, that we cannot truly make amends for past wrongs without deep transformation of these systems. However, organizations with a present focus take some different strategic approaches to address this state of affairs. This includes spending down endowments, and broad processes, which go beyond granting streams, focused on healing and system change. For Cuong Hoang, our podcast guest who runs Mott Philanthropic, it is difficult to place harms squarely in the past. Harm continues to accrue everyday in our highly inequitable communities. Hoang defines a meaningful reparations framework as one that helps us rethink how we redistribute resources, today, along a spectrum, rather than a threshold. A threshold operates as a line, past which people are determined needy enough for charitable support or wronged enough for reparations. Hoang calls for a broader and more nuanced approach:
Widening the viewfinder and addressing how society is organized became core to the work of the Chorus Foundation, which Cuong advised. When Chorus Foundation shifted its purpose from climate change to 'just transitions,' it also shifted its strategy from grantmaking in perpetuity to spending down its endowment over a decade. Their rationale? If they didn’t generously invest in enabling communities to transition from extractive to regenerative ways of being, immediately, their dollars would become less effective, if not inconsequential, over time. Chorus Foundation spent the last of its endowment in 2023. On it's website, the Chorus Foundatio states:
Farhad Ebrahimi, Founder and President of Chorus Foundation draws a clear lline between his vision, values, and the structure of Chorus Foundation:
Read more about the Chorus Foundation and how it used its resources
Click hereCanada's Justice Fund espouses a similar logic in its work. Podcast guest and Co-founder and CEO of Justice Fund, Yonis Hassan, wants to see all foundations have an expiry date. For him, the way to ensure a fair and equitable future is to dedicate all current philanthropic resources towards risk capital, and then to move out of the way and enable governments to take new social models to scale.
The Justice Fund website is a bold call to action to address the startling inequality of experience in its home city, Toronto. An opening letter challenges readers to locate themselves in that highly unequal society and question why we aren't treating the present as an emergency.
The Justice Fund advances a campaign to reform philanthropy to better address needs and rights of the present generation and to make philanthropy more equitable and accessible. The six pillars of this reform are:
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Consider the Justice Fund's call to action.
Click HereVicky Stott and Oronde Miller at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation aren’t calling for an end date to philanthropy, but they do see a need for philanthropy to deeply invest in healing, right now. For them, healing proceeds transformation. Without deep opportunities for truth telling, acknowledgement, catharsis, and relationship building, systems are doomed to repeat past harms. Why? Because you can’t construct a future without laying a different relational foundation. Rather than emphasize financial reparations, W.K. Kellogg Foundation emphasizes relational repair. They fund a network of healing practitioners, gatherings, and storytelling sessions within communities, corporations, investment firms, and even their own foundation. TRHC is Kellogg's Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation framework. W.K. Kellogg connects their vision of a nation that marshals its resources to assure that all children have an equitable and promising future with thriving families and communities, which leads them to invest in much more broadly than programming and supports for children. Oronde Miller acknowledges that "The Kellogg Foundation has traditionally not participated actively or explicitly in conversations for or against reparations. But that's reparations as sort of a concrete policy proposal. But the TRHT framework is in essence a reparatory framework."
"It is the essence of what reparations is intended to accomplish. And it is the truth telling. It's the truth telling about the harms that have been caused by racism, small and large harms, the historic harms and the current contemporary harms, and the impact that has on children and families. And in having that conversation, it's identifying the current policies and practices that are at play every day in communities. They could be policies and practices within public institutions or city, local government, or state government, but also the policies and practices of businesses and corporations and other organizations in a particular community."
In addition to their healing work and a commitment to racial equity, developing leaders, and engaging communities through their grants, W.K. Kellogg Foundation has mission driven investments. Their mission-aligned investment program "explores untapped markets to scale investments that advance racial equity and drive equitable access to opportunity." So far, they have committed over $265 million this way. Given the size of foundations' endowments relative to their annual disbursements through granting, strategies that re-direct endowment investments to under-financed communities is an area of huge potential impact, in the present as well as the future.
As Margaret Urban Walker explains it..
- Convening local communities for deep healing work
- Curating a network of healing practitioners
- Enabling truth telling & story sharing including about the role of foundations
- Crafting new narratives
- Running radical experiments
- Advocating for hyper-local policy change
- Offering operational rather than project funding, along with sub-granting to grassroots groups
- Engaging corporations, investment firms and media
- Establishing mission-driven investment streams, outside of granting
Transformation Starting Today
Foundations with a present focus are concerned with re-establishing structures, relationships, and narratives in the present. Though they may see the work as reparatory, they are not necessarily focused on specific past events so much as achieving an equitable and sustainable present.- Disruptive Strategies
Present-focused foundations are spending down endowments, reforming philanthropy and supporting broad processes, which go beyond granting streams, focused on healing and system change. - Questioning Philanthropy
Present-focused foundations seem to be the most likely to question whether institutional philanthropy should exist or propose that it should look wildly different. They are necessarily reflective about their own purpose in perpetuating a highly unequal society.
Experiences & Observations
Do you have any giving or contribution practices, formal or informal, that in some way reflect the values and concerns of present-focused philanthropy?
Reactions & Impressions
Present-focused philanthropy presents some of the sharpest critiques of contemporary institutional philanthropy: what resonates with you? What do you feel frustrated by or defensive about?
Questions & Hunches to test
Thinking of a foundation you are close to, what are some curiosities you have about the potential for investing in community growth and learning, beyond granting streams?
Abolitionist
