Therefore, the assignment for this current moment of pushback is to push forward—reward the wins by continuing to do the work. We intend to push forward. (In that vein, this article is also part of a collection of companion articles and an episode of the Dreaming in Color podcast featuring a roundtable discussion with members of the new vanguard of philanthropy, all on Bridgespan.org)

Five Truths to Help Donors Committed to Equitable Philanthropy Push Forward

1. Movements need to be durable to allow focus on the long term.

Durable movements carry the strength of not a single organization but of entire evergreen networks that can adapt over the long term to meet evolving needs. “Movements are a means to broader goals of inclusion and justice, so while their development, strength, and impact are important markers of progress, they are not an end in and of themselves,” says Rao.For movements to be durable, funding needs a long-term mindset as well. For instance, the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, a place-based grantmaker in New England led by Gisele Shorter, supports community-based organizations to partner on collectively addressing barriers to racial equity. The funder sees strengthening state-wide, regional, and national coalition efforts to advocate for racial equity policy changes as part of its mission. Its five grant funds collectively advance its mission to challenge inequities and are largely geared toward long-term movement building with an emphasis on supporting leaders of color.A long-term mindset does not lack urgency. Solidaire Network, led by Rajasvini Bhansali, is committed to moving money quickly to enable movements to be nimble and evolve. Through its five funds, Solidaire, which was founded by donors inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement, focuses on the interdependence of movements and seeks to strengthen that alignment. Solidaire has moved $42 million through its pooled funds since 2020 with an emphasis on giving to Black- and Indigenous-led efforts as a pathway toward justice for all people.Lasting organizations also can help movements evolve. And when it comes to securing an organization’s future, endowments can help with that. Yet, a 2022 Bridgespan analysis found that, on average, endowments at nonprofits led by people of color are only one-fourth the size of those of white-led organizations. That disparity underpins long-standing calls from leaders of color to endow nonprofits and provide them the freedom to think beyond survival to focus on ambitious goals.To counter this disparity, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation recently launched an endowment grant-making strategy to deepen its commitment to racial equity. Similarly, under the leadership of CEO John H. Jackson, the Schott Foundation for Public Education is calling on fellow funders to invest in the first-of-its-kind fund to raise capital for nonprofit endowments with its EndowNow campaign. And the Children’s Foundation is in the early stages of exploring ways to employ endowment grantmaking across a single ecosystem, in this case 10 youth-serving organizations in Detroit that will each get initial endowment gifts of at least $1.5 million, and also receive unrestricted grants in 2025 and 2026, plus technical assistance and capacity support through this process.Lastly, ensuring durable movements also means valuing rest and wellness for leaders themselves. The Walter and Elise Haas Fund is at the forefront of thinking about rest as an essential ingredient of social change. Last year, under the leadership of Executive Director Jamie Allison, the foundation launched the Endeavor Fund, a $24.5 million investment that it sees as a step toward upending philanthropy’s acceptance of burnout as a byproduct of nonprofit work and instead recognizes the importance of worker well-being. The fund provides nonprofits $500,000 a year for seven years so they can pay their staff better wages and offer benefits that contribute to wellness.

2. Our differences are our superpower.

Audre Lorde once explained a critical lesson of the civil rights movement was how complex oppression truly is: “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” Likewise, these durable movements endure by strategizing and collaborating across issue areas and valuing the different experiences of our intersecting identities.“Dominant culture teaches that there is a singular narrative, only one way is true, or one way will get us to victory,” says Tynesha McHarris, co-founder and co-director of the Black Feminist Fund, which supports Black feminist movements around the world. “But many of us come from ancestries and communities that embrace multiples and many possibilities as part of how you build new worlds. Seeing multiples means there doesn’t have to be any silver bullets because you can try many things or believe in many things at the same time. As a sector, part of an equity growth spurt is trying on multiple strategies and recognizing there doesn’t have to be just one.”Multifaceted approaches require donors to transcend siloed portfolios and instead fund in ways that encourage relationship building and collaboration across movements. That might include something as specific as funding to convene movement leaders or as expansive as making unrestricted, multiyear, general operating support the norm across an ecosystem.“As funders, we need to be asking leaders what is the world that they are trying to build and how can we help them to build that world,” says Vanessa Mason, principal at Omidyar Network, where she leads collaborative efforts to heal the legacies of slavery and colonialism and cultivate a healthy culture of repair in the United States. “That can’t happen by thinking and funding in silos. Instead, how do we open the aperture of thinking to recognize that, since oppression is pervasive and the harms are multiple in nature, the nature of repair needs to be as well.”In fact, not every organization has the same role to play or the same theory of action—and that’s okay. Lorde would go on to point out that it is our differences that are a source of power; the challenge is not only to claim our differences but to do so without letting them divide us. By funding organizations to embrace their unique vantage point at the intersections of issues and identities, philanthropy encourages the kind of innovation and creativity needed. In essence, philanthropy can bring out the best in movements by equipping leaders with the resources and conditions to succeed. Think of a potluck dinner–not everybody can (or should) bring the same dish. Instead, the goal is to match what you’re good at making with what is needed. The success of the overall meal comes through the interwoven patchwork of each diner’s contribution.

3. Sustainable progress is only possible through cross-racial solidarity.

Successful movements toward equity and justice have always been those that leverage the power of cross-racial solidarity. The strength of these alliances comes from not only the aforementioned ability to embrace difference as power but also an understanding that “nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”Such solidarity has a long history in the fight for social justice despite false narratives invested in maintaining the inequitable status quo. As far back as the 1860s, Black abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass was giving speeches advocating for the rights of Chinese and Japanese immigrants in the United States, for example.Don Chen, president of the Surdna Foundation, a family foundation founded more than a century ago, often uses his position as a funder who is Asian American to advocate for the importance of such solidarity to achieve equity and justice. “I am an ardent believer in comprehensive cross-racial solidarity and spaces where people of color can come together and be more free. And, at the same time, be really intentional about building all the connections and visions to create belonging and opportunity for all,” says Chen. “But, to make that solidarity durable, we need to seed some robust, deep infrastructure and commitment to cultural change.”For the Donors of Color Network (DOCN), cross-racial solidarity is in its DNA. (Darren Isom, a co-author of this article, sits on its board.) Perhaps the most prominent cross-racial donor network focused on advancing racial equity and justice, DOCN was created to harness the collective power of people of color by bringing together a multiracial group of wealthy donors, philanthropic institutions, and movement leaders to work in solidarity. Members convene regularly to learn, reflect, and strategize about how to advance solidarity across race and class to effect social change. The network encourages its members to channel its giving in solidarity through three funds that support communities of color. Its philanthropic advocacy efforts aim to focus the attention of climate funders on approaches led by people of color.Philanthropy can also encourage cross-racial dialogue and thought partnership by elevating common or shared interests among grantees across their portfolios, providing patient funding that allows for the space and time to build relationships, supporting convenings, routinely asking organizations who else they are in conversation with, making introductions, and supporting the type of leadership development required for building strong coalitions rather than just strong organizations.It Is also important to recognize that cross-racial solidarity also means there is a place for white people in the movement for equity. “If we are going all-in on BIPOC communities—expressing explicit focus, investment, and care—it does not mean we don’t care about white people. Care isn’t scarce,” says Jamie Allison, the first Black woman to be executive director of the Walter and Elise Haas Fund. “There is a need for a better understanding that, if we get to a point where everyone is cared for, that is a better world for all of us. When I see suffering on my street, my thought isn’t oh those poor souls over there. My thought is that I’m not doing well in this community until I can walk down the street and greet my neighbors and they’re doing well, too.”

4. The best way to disrupt a broken narrative is to replace it with a more beautiful and compelling one.

That new narrative needs time to not only take root but also to grow, evolve, and be reborn when needed. Strategic alignment of narratives among justice movements is also necessary to accelerate progress. Philanthropy can create the conditions that allow for this visioning, collaboration, and intentionality by funding with an abundance mindset instead of a scarcity one. The new vanguard of equitable funders value narrative work, artists, and storytellers as critical must-haves to effect social change. They also trust the long-term goals that strategically aligned narratives are building toward even if they don’t always understand or agree with every message along the way.

“It is not just about what do we not want, what are we fighting against, what are we reacting to,” says the futurist Mia Birdsong, founder and executive director of Next River, a culture change lab that harnesses the expertise of strategist storytellers. “But what are we building, what are our dreams, what is the vision we have for a world that we really, really want that is not a reaction to the one we don’t want.”The Pop Culture Collaborative (PCC) is a $60 million pooled fund launched in 2017 to “transform the narrative landscape in the US around people of color, immigrants, refugees, Muslims, and Indigenous peoples, especially those who are women, queer, transgender and/or disabled.” The Collaborative’s seed funding primarily came from these very communities—either as donors themselves or philanthropic leadership.“In those early days, those who put their necks on the line to advocate and move money into the narratives space were largely BIPOC philanthropic leaders, queer philanthropic leaders, leaders with disabled backgrounds, immigrant philanthropic leaders,” shared CEO Bridgit Antoinette Evans during a recent DOCN membership webinar. “These are people who know at a personal level what narrative harm feels like and what narrative power feels like because they saw themselves as part of the communities deeply attacked and undermined by narrative strategies. We have to acknowledge that trailblazing role and name that part of what is driving that genius of leadership is lived experience.”PCC’s goal is to help the public understand the past, make sense of the present, and imagine the future of American society. To get there, Evans and her team developed the concept of narrative oceans, or working to change entire ecosystems of narratives, ideas, and cultural norms that shape the behaviors, mindsets, and worldviews of millions of people because, she says, narrative harm is systems-level harm that deserves systems-level solutions.

5. The prospect of winning should outweigh the risk of failure.

When it comes to risk, Omidyar’s Mason argues that philanthropy is thinking about it all wrong: “Why as funders are we asking about risk to our own organizations rather than thinking about risk to grantee partners or risk to the community and people we are supposed to be serving?”Indeed, philanthropy cannot allow its fear of failure to prevent it from being bold or to limit it to a reactionary mode of decision-making. Instead, funders need to acknowledge their own power and where they occupy positions of strength to allow the movements advancing equity and justice to play offense instead of defense.Funding with a success mindset is about asking the question “What would this organization need to succeed” and then working to bring those conditions to reality. The sector experienced a taste of this mindset during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when much of philanthropy abandoned long-held processes and instead got money out the door quickly in more trust-filled ways. The challenge now is to hold on to that sense of urgency and continue to fund organizations as if philanthropy wants them to win.The Abundant Futures Fund (AFF), led by Mayra Peters-Quintero, embraces that mindset in its giving to the immigrant justice movement. When it launched in 2022, pro-immigrant advocates were feeling depleted after several years of intense battles. Because of this, AFF focused its first round of grants on bolstering resilience within the movement. The fund rapidly deployed $2.5 million that included $1 million to the new Black Migrant Power Fund, a migrant population typically overlooked by philanthropy, and $250,000 each to six individual groups. That funding helped seed new visions through strategic planning; provided restoration and deepened relationships; and helped strengthen organizational operations, including through human resources infrastructure, five-year financial projects, and staff retreats. The Black Migrant Power Fund used AFF’s seed funding to strengthen the capacity of 13 Black migrant organizations while also leveraging it to attract nearly $6 million from other funders.Next up, AFF is exploring ways to invest in three areas: financial resilience, including funding operating reserves, supporting real estate acquisitions, and funding development strategies with fundraising consultants. Another funding area is leadership development, including training for executive directors, particularly women of color, developing leadership pipelines, and planning for leadership transitions. A third priority: exploring digital opportunities, including building more robust data and IT support systems.

Going Forward: ‘It Should Feel Joyful’

A reality sometimes hard to ignore is “oppression is clever”—it constantly evolves and transforms, hides in plain sight, perseveres, and inflicts harm in an endless number of ways. The harm part can be overwhelming to think about. But, in true new vanguard fashion, Amoretta Morris, president of Borealis Philanthropy, a philanthropic intermediary that houses several funds, flipped our thinking about the “oppression is clever” framing. Instead of simply agreeing, she shot back: “Yes, super clever, and we are more clever. Our movements are more clever.”It was a joyful moment of clarity. This fight is winnable.One of the things that stands out when talking to leaders of color at the forefront of equitable philanthropy is how often the subject of joy comes up. Sometimes it is in organization mission statements, or personal value systems, or animating visions of the future, and very often in definitions of success. Or sometimes joy comes up in small moments with big meaning like our conversation with Morris.What if joyful leadership is a superpower for social change? Both part of the destination and part of the fuel to get there. Rajasvini Bhansali, of Solidaire, co-authored Leading with Joy, a book that plays with this idea, arguing that it is joyful leadership, which includes kindness and compassion, that better sustains social change and the possibility for deep transformation, and not leadership models grounded in competition.We would add that using joy as fuel in the face of oppression takes not only a tremendous amount of strength, innovation, and vision, but also love and empathy. Octavia Butler’s 1993 novel, Parable of the Sower, tells the story of Lauren, a Black teenager who is a hyper-empath in a future world—coincidentally, the world of 2024—that is besieged by climate change and economic inequity. Lauren’s empathy not only allows her to feel all that is wrong with the world but also to find joy and beauty in it too. As she writes in her journal: “The world is full of painful stories. Sometimes it seems as though there aren’t any other kind and yet I found myself thinking how beautiful that glint of water was through the trees.”At its core, we think equitable philanthropy is a joyful enterprise because it is anchored on our shared future, as Amardeep Singh suggested. It is why, when so many of the new vanguard were asked what the world might look like if donors committed to equitable philanthropy pushed forward, part of their beautiful expansive visions of the equitable future were versions of the same thought: it should feel joyful. We agree. And, as Morris reminds us, it is a future that is within reach.

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