It began with a painting. In 2017, philanthropist Agnes Gund was inspired to take a stand against mass incarceration after experiencing three powerful works of art: Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13th, Bryan Stevenson’s memoir Just Mercy, and Michelle Alexander’s nonfiction book The New Jim Crow. So she sold a favorite artwork that she had displayed for decades in her home, Roy Lichtenstein’s Masterpiece, and from its proceeds contributed $100 million to a new grantmaking program that would address inequality in the criminal legal system by aligning the narrative power of art and the momentum of policy change around justice reform.

Helena Huang
Project Director, Art for Justice Fund 

Art for Justice Fund, launched in collaboration with the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, did a few things differently from the start. Notably, it was built as a time-limited initiative: a five-year program that would go on to give expeditiously, react nimbly, and build substantial coalitions among artists, advocates, and allied donors. By our launch, thanks to the extensive network of friends and supporters who rallied behind Gund and our president, Darren Walker, we had roughly 20 other large donors, many individual art donors and philanthropists and some institutional funders and newer corporate leaders. Art for Justice then raised over $27M through 300-plus donations from individuals, businesses, and artists. With this additional $27M, we extended the fund for a sixth and final year, which helped recoup the time we lost to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our strategy was to bridge the divide between policy change and art as social change. We suggested to criminal justice funders, “Look what you can accomplish when you support narrative change. Might you consider adding a strategy related to the arts?” Likewise, we were saying to arts funders, “You’re interested in doing more social justice work. Might you support ending mass incarceration as a theme?”

Of course, no one could have predicted how much uncharted territory Art for Justice would have to navigate between 2017 and 2023. The ever-changing social and political landscape and historic events dramatically impacted our work, presenting new challenges and opportunities along the way. Like the rest of the world, the program had to reassess its path and its priorities amid COVID, the murder of George Floyd, the global sweep of Black Lives Matter, and more. But these moments of social tumult pushed the fund to respond with even more urgency, agility, and collaboration than before. When we began the project, our singular goal was moving funding toward the movement to end mass incarceration, and after our first grantee convening in New Orleans in 2018, our emphasis on building an intentional community grew. In 2020, this community rallied in support of one another and grew: We directed funds toward stopping the drastic spread of COVID inside prisons and jails. We connected people who were grieving and eager to improve their communities, from painters to policymakers to business executives.

With Art for Justice now concluded, I am proud of the many accomplishments that its leadership team—which included Agnes Gund, Catherine Gund, Sonia Lopez, and Darren Walker—achieved together, and grateful for the many times we were challenged, surprised, and humbled along the way. In six years, we made over 450 grants totaling $127M, with 38 of those over $1M. Major policy victories were secured and new narratives were advanced. And, in the greatest development none of us anticipated, the fund truly demonstrated what advocates, artists, and allied donors could accomplish together: inspiring a creative community to rise, with hundreds of artists, organizers, and donors collaborating on new events and initiatives in their shared passion to end mass incarceration.

The benefits of a ticking clock

The idea for the five-year timeline originated with Agnes Gund, with a central thesis of reparations—the perspective that these funds were not ours to guard. Our role as funders was to move these resources to the people working on the frontlines with the most at stake, who knew the issues best, and were devoted to solutions and alternatives to our current criminal legal system. This meant centering the leadership of formerly incarcerated leaders and prioritizing support for organizations led by directly impacted people. In the end, 44% of Art for Justice’s grant dollars were allocated here. 

From the start, we ran Art for Justice like a campaign. We had a beginning, a middle, and an end, and our attitude was that this wasn’t about building infrastructure that was going to last forever. It was about moving money to people who can create impact now.

Tanya Coke, director of Ford’s Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Justice program, quickly wrote a strategy that encompassed this perspective and addressed the three drivers of mass incarceration: 

• Too many people going into prisons, which requires bail reform
• Too many people being incarcerated for too long, which requires sentencing reform 
• Too many people going back into prisons, which requires eliminating barriers to reentry and creating opportunities for education, housing, employment, and voting

From there, we established our core fundamental principles:

• Bridging art and advocacy to drive cultural change: Advocacy in the movement to end mass incarceration typically works toward policy changes. Art for Justice highlighted the power of art as a complementary strategy to this, one possible of changing minds and shifting broad cultural narratives around the criminal justice system.
• Centering people directly impacted by incarceration: People from Black and brown communities and people with lived experience in the carceral system are essential to disrupting the dominant narratives around mass incarceration, especially considering the United States’ history of slavery. Formerly incarcerated and directly impacted artists and advocates are best positioned to transform systems of injustice. Funders can make space for artists in social movements by emphasizing the contributions of those with lived experiences and convening artists and advocates to strengthen their collective impact.  
• Practicing movement allyship as a funder: Those with power and privilege must use it to support and advocate for people with the most at stake who are bringing new ideas and solutions. For funders, this means getting behind them and their opportunities to advocate and create.

We engaged directly and regularly with movement leaders, both as artists and activists, and they told us what was helpful and what wasn’t. This was crucial information, and funders less deeply engaged with their grantees don’t always have access to it. 

Some of our earliest grants supported arts programs in prisons and writers who addressed the carceral system, thanks to Elizabeth Alexander and, later on, Margaret Morton as directors of Creativity and Free Expression at Ford. We were also supporting more organizations working to advance criminal legal reform. Soon, through our conversations with movement leaders, we saw how formerly incarcerated artists were hungry for opportunity—and that often, individuals can be more nimble and work more quickly than organizations. That really affected our funding going forward, and we took inspiration from Mural Arts’ fellowship programs for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated artists and an early Rauschenberg Foundation residency for artists focused on the carceral system.

As a time-limited fund, we needed to make investments that could produce short-term wins, too, not just lay the groundwork for victories years down the line. This meant pursuing policies that could change lives soon, or narrative change that was going to pop and get attention from media and other funders. We had to make these kinds of trade-offs to create proof of concept—because then it might have a chance of attracting other funding that would enable the work to continue to evolve without our participation later. 

Then came 2020. It’s hard to overstate how, at least 20 years ago, criminal justice was one of the most unpopular issues in U.S. philanthropy. Very few were interested in working around prison reform or had much concern about what happened to people when they came home from prison. Then George Floyd was killed and a widespread racial reckoning happened, and our phones started ringing off the hook; people were grieving and protesting and they wanted to channel that in positive ways. We had new contributions at every level, from modest donations to staggering ones: Julie Mehretu donated a painting that was auctioned off for $6.5M; MacKenzie Scott gave us $5M that same week.

An unexpected spark

At a recent event, a prominent philanthropist told me that she thought Art for Justice had ignited the idea that artists and activists are more powerful together. 

We didn’t create this notion. Artists and activists have been doing work in partnership forever, but I do think something about our timing, something about our scale, something about Gund and Walker’s profiles, made this unique. Above all, we made some good bets on some extraordinary humans.

Still, this intersectional work is nascent, and hesitation to embrace the potential of art within the criminal justice reform movement persists. We learned this on the ground in Ohio, where we focused one case study conducted by our partners at Engage R+D. It revealed that, for criminal justice reform organizations favoring policy-centric strategies, using art as a tactic wasn’t considered viable before Art for Justice proved it to be. Grantees in Ohio credited Art for Justice as helping to make the case. As Tenille Patterson, executive partner at the Pretrial Justice Institute, told us, “I would credit Art for Justice with having a significant impact on us organizationally, shifting our openness to approaching how we do systems change work. There’s a greater awareness that artwork, storytelling, and advocacy works. It moves things along.”

For your blank canvas: Key takeaways on uniting art and advocacy

1. Let relationships form organically through trust—not transactions.
Some of our peers see the Art for Justice model as a means to raise money for their own initiatives. In the creative sector, artists are often asked to contribute their works and donate to myriad causes. But the artists who participated in Art for Justice gave their works on their own accord because of existing relationships with members of our leadership team, an affinity for Art for Justice’s mission, or both. This way of working—focusing on the relationships with our partners and the community—encouraged our Art for Justice staff to do the same and work to build the same trust that engendered people to want to come to us.

The art world can be very transactional. Gund would not allow Art for Justice to be that way. One of the ways in which she stands apart is that she is so relationship-based. Art for Justice followed her lead and tried to create relationships with participants that were rooted in authenticity and trust.

2. Use time constraints to challenge internalized biases.
Having a five-year window for grantmaking meant we had to move with urgency, including confronting our tactics that didn’t work. Initially, we decided we would direct 80% of our funds to policy advocacy organizations and 20% to supporting the arts. It was a page from traditional philanthropy, to put money in silos like this.  

But this turned swiftly into bean-counting; we were spending time discussing, “Well, would this grant get counted in the 80% criminal justice side or the 20% arts side?” I remember having one of these discussions in Gund’s dining room, and thinking, “Why are we doing this if we’re trying to create broader narrative change and do truly intersectional work?” This happens a lot with traditional philanthropy: You get caught up in feeding your own internal systems that made sense at one point, but may not anymore. 

That was an early frustration, but we addressed it—and those silos crumbled. The grants became more fluid, less rigidly appraised by those categories, because the work we funded spanned criminal justice and art. That was the point. 

Another pivotal, early moment came as we solicited proposals from artists. Our approach was to ask each, “How much money do you need to support this project?” The responses fell along race and gender lines: Black women artists requested the least, and white male artists asked for the most. Board member Catherine Gund recognized this internalized inequality for what it was and proposed that Art for Justice fund every artist fellow at $100,000. In this way, we worked as a team to disrupt our own internal structural barriers and the status quo.

3. Center lived experiences but be mindful of exploitative approaches.
In one of our case studies featuring collective work in Illinois, we elevated the importance of centering lived experiences—and we became better at recognizing the importance of managing the power imbalance and vulnerabilities inherent in working across different perspectives and experiences. Cultural narratives around the carceral system intentionally and profoundly dehumanize people most directly affected; conversely, centering people with lived experience in it elevates our humanity through mutual respect, authority, and trust.

One of our grantees, Zealous, showed us that because the carceral system so devalues people, it is essential that artists, advocates, and funders take extra care to ensure that the storytelling opportunities they provide are not also exploitative. “There’s always a power dynamic to asking folks to share their stories, a high potential for extractiveness and exploitation even if inadvertent or well-intentioned,” Scott Hechinger, a leader at Zealous, told us. “How can aspiring allies have conversations with people with direct experience to ensure that we are true partners, to feel like we are engaging in mutual aid? When working with folks that are currently incarcerated, before even having the conversation, we endeavor first to work with local organizations or organizers, the people who already have built relationships of trust. We take the lead of local partners.”  

Ultimately, 53% of artists funded by Art for Justice were formerly incarcerated, and the program supported 78 organizations led by formerly incarcerated and justice system-impacted people.

4. Anticipate tension and differing views within social justice movements.
Building a community to end mass incarceration meant bringing many passionate leaders together. Not surprisingly, this meant differences in opinions surfaced—and we had to determine our place in these moments of conflict. In any movement, leaders and funders will face uncertainty and inconsistency—and, often, these ambiguities will lack a clear solution or timeline for resolution. This can be difficult to navigate, but a funder’s role is to be an ally to movement leaders. Art for Justice organizers needed to be diligent about considering how to best use our position, which meant navigating moments of tension with sensitivity and observation. When disagreements arose, Art for Justice had to decide when to leverage our experience, cede our power, take a stance, or stay neutral, always in service of moving the shared mission forward. 

5. Celebrate the tangible and intangible wins.
Art and advocacy are not always fields of clear victories. After all, how do you quantify a painting as a success? Often, the art world ascribes it a dollar value. However, Art for Justice wanted to achieve the tangible of directing money to the movement and impacting policy, as well as the intangible of creating narrative and cultural change.

This reminded us to uplift both types of wins as they happened. The tangible wins spanned dollars leveraged and policy. Our grantees secured important wins: The Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth secured the freedom of 1,000 individuals who were sentenced to life without parole as children, and Youth First Initiative succeeded in closing six youth prisons and redirected more than $50M to community-based alternatives to incarceration. The Civil Rights Corps, Essie Justice Group, the Vera Institute of Justice, and others secured a major win when Los Angeles struck down its bail system.

We also celebrated the more philosophical victories. At No Justice Without Love, Art for Justice’s cumulative show at Ford’s Center for Social Justice gallery in New York, we embraced the tension of our curation. How do you display the works of world-renowned artists alongside Art for Justice creators? That in itself is narrative change, and its power was immediate. Not only were audience members seeing this and reacting, but the participants were seeing themselves differently and anew. I watched Halim Flowers, artist and former “juvenile lifer,” staring at his painting next to the work of Mark Bradford, a famed contemporary artist, at the Ford Foundation. It was clear then that seeing oneself differently is a form of narrative change. It is transformative.  

This commingling will continue when Art for Justice’s archival website launches soon. It will serve as a digital record of work undertaken by the fund and its grantee partners, including case studies, an impact report detailing key metrics and policy wins, and lessons learned from our grantmaking. I hope creatives and advocates of all walks of life will use it as a resource.

What I’ve come to understand is the way in which narrative change can happen on multiple levels—at a cultural level, yes, but also the ways in which your mind can be pivoted. We had quite a number of these moments throughout Art for Justice, and I hope that those kinds of openings, pivots, and shifts will only continue to happen. And I hope that when people think about artists and activists making change in the world, Art for Justice will have played a role in elevating those possibilities and bringing more people into the fold. The work of transforming the criminal legal system continues, and the potential of art and advocacy together is limitless.

The post In broad strokes: Lessons from the Art for Justice Fund appeared first on Ford Foundation.

Just over a year ago, we urged philanthropic leaders, impact investors, ESG investors, and forward thinking venture capitalists (VCs) to take a proactive role in holding tech companies accountable for unintended harms. Our piece in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) asked these stakeholders to do more than push back against or condemn an industry that can define, perpetuate, or exacerbate existing racial, gender, socioeconomic, and labor inequities. In fact, it implored them to be deliberate and thoughtful in their investments and to drive funding toward the next generation of “public interest” tech companies committed to doing good and innovating. 

Today, we find ourselves in the midst of an “AI boom,” and the red flags keep appearing. For the better part of a decade, visionary leaders like Safiya Noble, Ruha Benjamin, Joy Buolamwini, and Timnit Gebru tried to warn us about AI. They stressed that there were huge risks in companies racing to train machines with massive amounts of data without addressing the social, political, and economic inequities that would result. Mainstream scholarship has finally caught up. The Federal Trade Commission has also voiced its concerns, opening a July investigation into OpenAI Inc., the company that makes ChatGPT. In a 20-page letter posing dozens of questions, the agency asked how the start-up trains its AI models and treats personal data. And yet, venture capital is pouring billions of dollars into the next generation of industry-defining technologies. As Silicon Valley continues to build at an enormous scale, civil society is expected to single-handedly protect the public interest while ensuring equitable and ethical outcomes for the next generation of technology with limited and constrained funding. This is untenable. Instead, we believe that impact investing and philanthropy must play a vital role—now, more than ever—in building an equitable tech future centered on the public interest. 

Wilneida Negrón
Co-Founder, Startups & Society Initiative/Strategic Advisor Responsible Innovation Labs 

Lyel Resner
Visiting Faculty, Head of Public Interest Technology Studio, Cornell Tech; Co-Founder, Startups & Society Initiative

A brief history of the impact space: where it’s been and where it must go

Impact investing emerged as a new asset class more than a decade ago. In a seminal research paper from J.P. Morgan, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), the authors anticipated that the market would reach $400 billion in assets under management by 2020. There was abundant and necessary debate about what constituted impact, but field builders were committed to mobilizing a fraction of the capital markets to advance the Sustainable Development Goals and produce positive social and environmental impacts. Early skeptics questioned if the market would succeed, but their concerns proved unfounded. Today, the impact investing market is estimated to be worth $1.164 trillion, according to GIIN, and the vast majority of impact investors receive the returns they wanted and see the social and environmental benefits their money was meant to unlock. Positive changes are happening in fields including climate change, healthcare and biotech, and housing and real estate. And, growing evidence suggests that impact can generate alpha for investors.  

While it is certainly true that philanthropy is increasing its allocations to mission and program-related investments, these tend to favor investments with clear metrics for measuring impact. Most philanthropies haven’t built the capacity to source and evaluate tech-related investments. Ford is a notable exception. In 2016, it invested $20 million in public interest tech through its Technology and Society program. Four years later, in 2020, the foundation approved a $50 million grant budget for the Public Interest Technology Catalyst Fund, which has helped mobilize more than $130 million in complementary grantmaking from partnering foundations. 

Impact investors, ESG investors, and forward thinking venture capitalists have an opportunity to build an alternative model by investing in a new generation of companies that are committed to public interest and/or stakeholder values, but this is yet to happen. The reasons are manifold.

Until recently, impact investing was assumed to be largely concessionary, and very few truly impact-driven companies achieved venture-scale returns. Most impact investments have also been within discrete impact areas like climate, health, and financial services that align with measurement frameworks like the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Additionally, early stage technology investments were often beyond the scope and networks of impact investors. At the same time, traditional silicon valley actors operated with tremendous speed and scale and continue to be the first hope and call, even for impact-minded founders. Thankfully there are growing efforts to bend impact investing in the direction of building tech in the public interest.

At this very moment, the future of tech hangs in the balance. It can be equitable and inclusive or, conversely, exacerbate inequality. The launch of ChatGPT has civil society back on its heels, with debates about how to curb the myriad potential harmful effects of OpenAI’s flagship and haphazard rollout. What if the biggest tech companies 10 years from now had practiced responsible innovation from their inception? What if we could seed a new generation of companies that tie public interest into the core of their operations? What if the next generation of companies proactively and constructively engage with government and civil society to address the great problems of our time?

Envisioning—and building—a different future

In 2018, as a co-founder of Swayable, Lyel was dismayed to find that there were minimal tools and no community for people interested in building responsible tech companies. This held true even in venerated startup communities like Y Combinator. Knowing other founders who shared his frustration, Lyel teamed up with Dr. Wilneida Negron, a Ford tech fellow at the time, and launched the Startups & Society Initiative (SSI) in 2020 to fill a critical void in the tech sector. Three years later, SSI is a nonprofit think tank comprised of founders, investors, and researchers who continue to believe responsible tech is both a business and societal imperative. We are not the only ones: We’ve interviewed hundreds of influential founders and investors about building companies responsibly and published dozens of case studies. We also launched the Responsible Innovation Primer for Founders, which distills and consolidates more than 100 lessons from investors, operators, and founders. And, we lead the Responsible Innovation Founder Summit, which has attracted more than 700 global leaders each year since 2020.

We know that we are in a perilous moment but believe that if we act now, we can alter course. It is possible to create a different alternative than the present, frightening one that has many of us up at night, wondering if our data is being mined or manipulated, and how technology companies will impact the future of work, dignity, and democracy.

Now is the time to scale up efforts exponentially. The long-term tech strategy must do more than support civil society organizations in responding to how technological innovation impacts society, the workplace, and the labor markets. It is essential to take a proactive response by marshaling private capital into the public interest so that we build an alternative ecosystem—one that is populated by a new generation of companies committed to public interest tech and/or stakeholder values. This is not utopian. It’s possible, and we believe there are specific actions investors, limited partners, early stage funders, and philanthropy can take right now: 

Guidance for good actors: How impact investors can accelerate public interest tech

1. Embrace speed and urgency: Technology is building the future right now, and we need to ensure that prosocial and impact-minded investors have a prominent seat at the table. Impact investors need not compromise their due diligence but they cannot delay: It’s important to keep pace with other investors in the ecosystem who move quickly. Strive to be founder-oriented—respect founders’ time, keep your word, and move through your diligence processes as quickly and respectfully as possible to close or pass on deals.  

2. Support ecosystem-building: Like many venture capitalists, a growing number of impact investors recognize the value of working together to top off funding rounds. By collaborating, we can help impact-founders hit their target raises and build their businesses more quickly. Investor collaboration also improves the ecosystem by creating more companies with a “cap table”—or shareholder ownership—that is values-aligned and interested in steering the company toward responsible practices and operations. There are notable pioneers in this work, including the membership association Impact Capital Managers and the Impact Investing Alliance, but the space is still fragmented, and collaboration isn’t happening early—or often enough. 

3. Broaden impact scope: Some investors are strictly focused on the Sustainable Development Goals, but others are in a position to consider investments that go beyond this purview—to prevent harm or promote responsible tech. Such investments are critically important and can steer and shape companies so they become good corporate citizens. For example, ChatGPT, Airbnb, and Zoom are not social impact companies per se, but they are building technologies that affect fields like education, affordable housing, and healthcare, respectively. If such entities were more attune to social issues and if their early investors prioritized such a focus, the landscape would be markedly different.

4. Catalyze capital: The next generation of founders is hungry for an alternative to traditional venture capital, which exerts pressure to grow at all costs. A recent survey from Sifted, for example, found that 96% of Gen Z founders said they want to prioritize values-aligned capital, and in a 500 Global survey, 91% of founders said responsible company building practices would make an investor more attractive. And yet, early stage impact investing in technology is underdeveloped, and there are limited funds where founders can go for values-aligned capital. Public interest tech impact funds that pool catalytic capital from philanthropy and impact investors can meet this demand.

5. Increase the number of impact operators in impact funds: There is a new generation of “impact operators,” who have built and scaled purpose-driven companies as founders and executives. Such individuals understand what it means to work at the intersection of impact and purpose at the execution level and can significantly help source deals, conduct due diligence, and provide value to portfolio companies. Traditional venture capital is indexed heavily on bringing operators into funds, and impact capital would benefit from this as well.

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At the Ford Foundation, we are committed to being responsible and responsive grantmakers. As funders, we recognize how uneven the power dynamic is, and how few opportunities there are for us to receive the kind of feedback that can help us improve our relationships to the organizations we support. We know that if we want honest and candid feedback, we need to offer channels for input with an emphasis on anonymity. That’s where the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) comes in.

Since 2008, our CEP colleagues have conducted six surveys of our grantee organizations to assess how we are seen by the partners we support. The findings provide us a sense of how we have improved or declined in key areas over time, as well as how we compare to the over 300 funders who rely on the Grantee Perception Survey. Between 2008 and 2017, we received four surveys that gave us consistent feedback: We had much to improve. But in 2017, we made concerted efforts to take this feedback and apply it.

Among our efforts, we streamlined our grantmaking systems and made significant commitments to multiyear general operating support through our BUILD initiative. These multiple and combined efforts helped lead to significant improvements in our 2020 survey.

In 2022, we conducted another survey and hoped that we were still on the right track. The results were heartening, as we held strong and even saw some additional improvements. This sort of sustained improvement is fairly unusual in the philanthropic field, CEP notes, particularly for a large funder like Ford. While we celebrate the good news, we also hear that there is still room for improvement—and we take this very seriously. We’re pleased to share the top findings of the survey and our plans to address this invaluable feedback.

What we learned

We are on an upward trajectory, with grantees’ perceptions at their highest-ever point on a number of key issues.

The foundation received its highest-ever rating for impact on grantees’ fields and organizations. Ratings also improved for the foundation’s understanding of the social, cultural, and socioeconomic contexts in which organizations work, as well the foundation’s understanding of the needs of the people and communities that they serve. Comments from respondents highlighted our crucial leadership on issues related to their fields and our influence on other funders. They described our funding as “transformational to their organizations and to their ability to make a lasting difference in their fields.”

We were also happy to learn that ratings are at an all-time high for the helpfulness of our selection process. Respondents reported more positive experiences for all aspects of the reporting process, and that they experienced low levels of pressure to modify their priorities in order to receive funding. These significant improvements on our selection process suggest we are on the right track, and we continue to work toward streamlining our processes.

Finally, we were able to build on our past strong ratings in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Given our commitments in this area, we welcomed hearing that Ford by and large communicates and demonstrates our work in DEI.

Key Ratings Summary

We can improve on our engagement and communication.

Even as we celebrate these strong results, there are places where we see need for improvement, particularly areas where we’ve made little progress over the years, where we lag compared to our peers. The first is our relationships, responsiveness, approachability, and engagement with grantee organizations. While we were able to maintain our gains from 2020 on a number of these measures, some of these results were still lower than we believe they should be. One of the most common suggestions for improvement was more frequent and substantive interactions between Ford staff and those we fund.

And while we improved significantly on the clarity with which we communicate our goals and strategies with grantee organizations, ratings for the consistency of our communications remained largely unchanged. These are still lower than other very large, private funders.

While the findings we share here are about the foundation overall, we also recognize that grantee organizations often have different experiences depending on program and geography. Our goal is to minimize that variability wherever possible so that all organizations we fund consistently have positive experiences.

Finally, while there were no meaningful patterns of differences associated with grantee disability identity or gender, respondents who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community provided significantly lower ratings across many survey measures. In the United States, respondents who identify as a person of color provided lower ratings on these issues than grantees who do not identify as a person of color. These are places where we want to see change.

Next steps

While we are encouraged by these most recent survey results, and pleased that we’ve seen positive trends since 2020, we’re also ready to roll up our sleeves and work to improve even further.

The survey reminded us that the organizations we fund view Ford as a leader in the philanthropic space and on the global stage, especially in our public commitments to social justice issues and incorporation of DEI initiatives. We will continue these efforts and demonstrate that a vibrant, diverse workforce is a richer one.

We are also looking to make the following commitments:

• Prioritize more substantive conversations between program officers and organizations, and help program staff become more responsive to the organizations they fund
• Include grantee organizations even more explicitly in strategy development wherever possible
• Continue to employ the use of multiyear, general support in our grantmaking and use additional, non-monetary institutional support to grantees where appropriate
• Convene the leaders and organizations we support and connect our grantee organizations to other funders where strategic
• Ensure consistent coverage of indirect costs for eligible project grants by applying our policy of a 25% minimum rate
• Seek ways to create a more consistent and positive experience for grantee organizations, regardless of program or regional area and without disparities based on LGBTQ+ status or race and ethnicity

These survey results are just the beginning of an important discussion. Please reach out to Ford staff if you have additional suggestions or any questions. We appreciate the remarkable organizations in our community and look forward to improving our relationships with them even further.

The post Building on Feedback: Results from our Grantee Perception Survey appeared first on Ford Foundation.

After three years of quarantines and isolation in China, the government has lifted its zero-COVID policy, signaling a willingness to open and resume connections with people from other countries. While movement across China’s borders becomes more routine, uncertainty remains around the future of China’s interactions with foreign governments and foreign civil society.

This moment reminds us of the challenges that foreign philanthropies, including the Ford Foundation, faced in the late 1970s when they began building connections with China after the death of Mao Zedong. The barriers seem even more formidable today: Instead of creating ties under an official Chinese policy of “Reform and Opening Up,” the current task is to rekindle relationships in an atmosphere that does not welcome reform.

We are facing a moment of extreme pessimism regarding the future of foreign legal assistance to China and the future of the country’s legal reforms. It is easy to feel discouraged, but positive insights from our research on the Ford Foundation’s nearly four-decade law program in China resonate today.

In fact, data from our expansive study on Ford’s multi-decade China program found that the law program was instrumental in providing Chinese actors with multiple opportunities. More specifically, the program produced three major outputs. It exposed stakeholders to new ideas, alternative norms, and practices; helped them engage in joint formulation of project designs; and provided access to sustained Ford project support critical to smooth and impactful implementation.

Since the end of the law program in 2015, we found that the Chinese government has initiated a number of restrictions on foreign funding for nongovernmental organizations, most notably through the Foreign NGO Law, which took effect in 2017. Encouragingly, the desire for foreign contacts persists. Legal academia and civil society activists continue to reach out to organize and participate in online meetings and other events.
The insights listed below may offer a path to pursue future collaboration.

Background

In 1979, the Ford Foundation awarded its first ever grant to support activities in China; $200,000 was provided to the Law Institute of the Chinese Academy for Social Sciences (CASS). This initial funding catalyzed a four-decade legal assistance program.

To design this new program, the Ford Foundation engaged a diverse range of collaborators across the country. Ford made grants to state institutions, law schools, and grassroots civil society organizations working on issues related to gender, discrimination, environment and other policy areas. Over the course of the program, the foundation nurtured generations of academics and NGO leaders.

The law program was initially centered around academic legal exchanges, which sent young academics from China’s leading law schools to the U.S. for training. By 1983, these exchange programs evolved, becoming the Committee on Legal Educational Exchanges with China (CLEEC). When CLEEC was phased out in 1995 and replaced with in-country programs, Ford had spent more than $4 million and sent over 200 Chinese scholars to U.S. law schools. CLEEC laid a foundation for future law-focused programs in China, and also served as a litmus test to determine the potential for legal reform as China opened to the world.

Most of the foundation’s partners were based in Beijing, but it also worked with actors across the country to ensure different needs in diverse geographies—both urban and rural—were being met. Additionally, Ford’s law program in China extended beyond the country’s borders. Chinese legal scholars and practitioners participated in summer schools on American and comparative law; these were offered in Chinese law schools and short-term foreign exchanges also brought students to train in the U.S., other parts of North America, Europe, and Asia.

Strategic focus

The law program’s core grant activities were organized into three categories: capacity building, advocacy, and legal reform.

After decades of Mao’s rule, China had limited legal talent; law schools were closed during several periods, including the Anti-Rightist Campaign, Great Leap Forward, and Cultural Revolution. In the post-Mao era, the government recognized that law schools urgently needed qualified professors to teach China’s future judges, prosecutors, and lawyers. The foundation likewise saw this need and provided critical resources to nurture a new cohort of legal minds who eventually became leaders in China’s legal academy.

For the second, the foundation supported public interest law institutions. The foundation sponsored university-based legal clinics and public interest law centers and supported internships and fellowships to link legal education with public interest advocacy. These efforts shaped China’s public interest law landscape.

To promote legal reform, the foundation supported legal experts to study legislative and policy challenges related to legal system functioning, including criminal procedure, legal aid, administrative law (encompassing judicial review, public hearing, and open government information), and the operation of the courts.

While the Chinese government recognized the need to rebuild the legal system—and acknowledged that foreign actors could facilitate this goal —it also insisted on limiting foreign engagement. Foreign projects were not allowed to advocate for political reform, but other guidelines were vague, and there was a general murkiness regarding what projects could and could not do.

Today, while the scope for foreign engagement in the field of law is narrower than at any time since 1978, it has not been eradicated. The Ford Foundation’s China law program’s nimbleness in navigating shifting political spaces demonstrates the need to be creative in identifying activities that are feasible today while always keeping an eye on what might be possible tomorrow.

Taking the long view

After making its first grant within China in 1979, it was nearly another decade before the foundation was able to establish its representative office in Beijing in 1988. For the following three decades of the law program’s existence, the Ford’s Beijing-based officers were keenly watching when, if at all, various projects were possible.

The multi-decade law program is a study in alert patience. The foundation, like other foreign funders, needed to be adept at reading the political winds that shaped the zone of permitted work. This required being both astute and flexible as the situation on the ground changed and, at times, to simply wait.

When opportunities arose, the foundation’s in-country presence positioned it to pivot from a more passive stance to seizing opportunities for meaningful engagement. The foundation’s capacity to be perceptive, unhurried, and reflective was key to its multi-decade arc of law-focused initiatives.

This decades-long program was only possible because the Chinese government wanted this collaboration. Throughout its duration, the Chinese government was the principal driver of legal reform, having recognized a need to develop the country’s legal system. The foundation was a supporting player in a vast ensemble that was suggesting various roadmaps for the ultimate decision-makers to follow.

Reconciling values

The Ford Foundation is guided by its mission to reduce poverty and injustice, strengthen democratic values, promote international cooperation, and advance human achievement. The primary reason Ford has been able to work in China is because the foundation shares the government’s poverty reduction goal.

The foundation did not come into China with a political agenda; it never advocated for change to the constitutional order, nor did it present a preferred structure of government. It did, however, arrive with deep-seated convictions about the inherent dignity of all people and that the legal system should support the rights of all.

The Chinese leadership and the foundation were far from sharing a unified, cohesive vision of the normative goals of China’s legal reform project. To do this work, the foundation had to avoid conversations around the Constitution and government structure. At the same time, the foundation never disguised its values and was always clear about its commitment to democracy, openness, pluralism, and rule of law. Many individual Chinese citizens with whom the foundation interacted over the years shared these values with Ford.

Striking aspects of the numerous conversations held with former Chinese grantees during our study were the overwhelming desire to improve the lives of their compatriots. These groups expressed tremendous gratitude for the foundation’s support and valued the relationships cultivated with colleagues inside and outside China. Many of these relationships endure today and can help both to seek out new ways to improve the lives of Chinese citizens.

Today, we anticipate that China’s initial path out of pandemic-period isolation will result in re-opening but not reform. We are, however, optimistic that the lessons from the foundation’s law program can help guide others seeking to resume or begin building relationships in the legal field.

The post From Reform and Opening to Opening without Reform: Lessons from the Ford Foundation’s Law Program in China appeared first on Ford Foundation.

Around the world, political and social divisions are deepening at faster rates than ever before. Political debate and differing opinions are integral to healthy societies, but polarization is different—and dangerous. A veritable threat to legitimate democratic systems and institutions, it threatens us all.

In its most severe form, polarization threatens national stability and impedes efforts to achieve equity and dismantle institutional oppression. When democratic norms—respect for human rights and dignity—are eroded, power becomes concentrated in the hands of a few, exacerbating challenges to advance social justice.

At the Ford Foundation, we asked ourselves, what would it take to create a more just society for all—one where opportunity is widespread, polarization is decreased, and there is a commitment to a shared understanding of the common good?

We realized we needed a partner to pursue this work. With colleagues at the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT), we launched the Global Initiative on Polarization to deepen understanding of the diverse causes and consequences of severe polarization in democratic and nondemocratic settings. We hope to ultimately learn more about how to advance meaningful dialogue and social justice while effectively preventing and responding to polarization.

In a new discussion paper, “First Principles: The Need for Greater Consensus on the Fundamentals of Polarisation,” IFIT’s founder and executive director Mark Freeman draws on wide-ranging research, consultations, and convenings conducted through our joint initiative. I recently met with Mark to discuss the paper’s key ideas and the path forward.

Hilary Pennington: In IFIT’s new report, you call polarization a “hyper-problem” — the kind that makes the solution to every other problem even harder. What do you mean by that?

Mark Freeman: It’s an expression that I coined as I was thinking about what makes polarization so dangerous. The idea is that for every issue you or I might care about—climate change, civic space, systemic discrimination, and so on—we will have a harder time addressing it if our society or political system is plagued by polarization.

I’m not arguing that polarization is on par with civil war, authoritarianism, genocide, and other such evils; but if it’s ignored it can become their harbinger and accelerant. Our experience is that, inconspicuously and incrementally, polarization can come to threaten everything we hold dear.

HP: You’ve noted that there is a profound need for greater precision in how we understand and define the term polarization. What can you tell us about some of the misconceptions you’ve uncovered over the past 18 months?

MF: We’ve found huge disparities in how people understand polarization. One large segment of experts, for example, defines polarization as a state that can be entered and exited. For another, it is a phenomenon that can intensify or deflate but can never be entirely escaped. Another ambiguity is whether polarization is always a negative for societies and political systems, with some wondering if it could sometimes be a “benign” or effective tactic to mobilize movements.

If polarization posed no risk to societies and political systems, such ambiguities around its definition wouldn’t matter. The problem is that if there’s no minimally shared definition, we end up in conversations that go in conceptual circles, leading away from—rather than toward—greater cooperation and global lessons learning. Societies and political systems already affected by polarization are the clear losers, unable to overcome its combination of radicalization, conflict, othering, and division.

HP: Let’s take a closer look at one of those ambiguities—whether polarization is always negative. What’s your response to those who say there can be potential benefits or positive aspects?

That’s an important question because many deem polarization tolerable or neutral, and only a cause for concern once it passes a certain threshold and becomes “pernicious,” “severe,” or “toxic.”

Others go further still, arguing that polarization can be positive. For example, some social justice advocates believe that there is utility in strategically fomenting polarization; they argue that doing so can mobilize allies into large-scale movements to advance noble causes.

There is logic to that theory, but what happens when the same tactics—and consequences—are used to take rights away from marginalized communities, or to advance causes that are less than noble?

HP: But is it fair to say that polarization is predominantly viewed as a negative?

When we look at how polarization is described in different societies and political systems, we mainly hear people draw comparisons to things like conflict, division, tribalism, sectarianism, extremism, and radicalization. These are, without a doubt, negative phenomena.

HP: So how would you define polarization?

MF: In my paper, I develop and offer the following baseline definition: polarization is a prominent division or conflict that forms between major groups in a society or political system and that is marked by the clustering and radicalization of views and beliefs at two distant and antagonistic poles.

In offering a structured definition, my goal is not to establish a conceptual ceiling that eliminates nuance and flexibility in how polarization is understood, but a conceptual floor that enables greater precision.

The argument is that, eventually, it should become possible to speak about polarization in the same unambiguous way one speaks about sectarianism, for which the span and number of qualifying adjectives are narrow and few because the baseline definition is so settled. When we reach that stage, the benefits should prove substantial. We will be better equipped to diagnose polarization’s causes and symptoms, develop stronger early warning and response strategies, measure the impact of interventions more precisely, and draw connections to potential allies.

HP: Given the growing threat of polarization—which, as you noted, we ignore at our own peril—what hope is there that we can effectively address this urgent challenge when we haven’t reached consensus on fundamental questions to define it?

MF: Decades ago, the conflict resolution field faced a similar issue. Diagnostic tools were limited, early warning mechanisms were rudimentary, response strategies were ad hoc, and success measures were esoteric. Today, by contrast, there is widespread agreement among academics and practitioners about the fundamentals of conflict resolution, even if its exact parameters remain open to debate and evolution. Eventually, we will need to reach the same clarity with polarization.

Encouragingly, our Global Initiative on Polarization with your colleagues at Ford has made great progress in mapping out, globally, all major organizations and projects that are currently focused on preventing or combatting polarization. An early picture emerged through the exercise. The vast majority of attempted strategies and solutions fell into three categories: outreach and dialogue efforts, fact and narrative interventions, and structural reforms.

There are several promising interventions that fall within this initial “solutions spectrum,” but these only scratch the surface of what might be included in a future comprehensive global toolbox of tested and adaptable strategies.

HP: In your opinion, what role can philanthropy play in understanding and countering polarization?

MF: Philanthropy is already playing an important role in some countries, but we are still at a very early stage, at least when compared to the level of philanthropic investment in other areas.

However, not everyone views polarization as a serious problem. Some see it as a dilution or distraction from more important social concerns or individual malefactors; while others view it as an issue whose risks are overstated.

But the disagreement could be artificial, since we are so far from having a baseline consensus of what polarization actually means. That is why our paper calls for everyone to pause—and take a step back. We need to debate and clarify principles with much greater precision. Once that happens, we might discover what is already evident in IFIT’s global work across very diverse authoritarian, fragile, and conflict-affected states: Polarization in all its forms is something best avoided.

HP: We are so grateful for the collaboration with IFIT as we seek to better understand polarization’s core dynamics and the strategies that are most effective in reducing its worst forms. Thank you.

You can download the full discussion paper on the IFIT website: First Principles: The Need for Greater Consensus on the Fundamentals of Polarisation

The post What do we really know about polarization? Q&A with Mark Freeman appeared first on Ford Foundation.

The Challenge

Numerous technology-related proposals compete for attention in the philanthropic space. Approaches and themes vary, but many share an assumption that in addition to reducing inefficiency, technology can also increase equity and justice. Evaluating potential project costs and benefits is complex. Utilizing a “follow the money” approach, advocates have called on philanthropies to fund more responsibly by considering unintended and longer-term consequences of digital technology-enabled and data-driven proposals. This guiding framework was designed to inform those assessments.

What’s in the Report

This guiding framework supports thoughtful evaluation of how new digital technology-based proposals can affect the U.S. public sector, with a particular focus on their impacts on human rights, social and economic justice, and democratic values. It will benefit funders, procurement officers, and advocates evaluating proposed projects that are often framed as “tech for good,” “justice tech,” or public interest technologies.

The framework contains a list of red flags across seven categories: theory of change and value proposition; business model and funding; organizational governance, policies, and practices; product design, development, and maintenance; third-party relationships, infrastructure, and supply chain; government relationships; and community engagement. Each category includes key takeaways, hypothetical scenarios, and suggested questions, in addition to deeper dive resources for areas of interest. The framework can be used in conjunction with your current due diligence process and during multiple proposal evaluation stages.

Sections of report

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Late last year, we partnered with our grantee Just Capital to issue a request for proposals for research related to human capital management (HCM).

Human capital is one of the most profound drivers of corporate value, and corporate disclosure can hold incredible promise for businesses, shareholders and workers. We sought projects that would help investors and other stakeholders understand the impacts of workforce management and compensation on company performance as well as in other domains.

While the recent uptick in climate-related disclosures is encouraging, only 15% of public companies in the United States disclose wage data, and even fewer report on benefits costs, worker retention and training initiatives.

This is a problem. In the U.S., 90% of the value of S&P 500 companies derives from “intangible” assets like brand reputation, intellectual property and, critically, talent. Yet, our accounting standards reflect the “tangible” economy that existed when they were created nearly a century ago. In practice, this means investors, consumers, and regulators, among others, are using a 20th-century lens to examine 21st-century enterprises. By maintaining an antiquated frame of reference, this system does a disservice to investors, regulators and myriad stakeholders as they attempt to evaluate companies. The tight labor market of the past few years, fraught with staffing shortages and turnover, has only made this challenge more salient.

HCM disclosure makes intuitive sense: Shareholders and others should be able to see how companies manage this mission-critical, value-generating asset. But it takes a high volume and quality of data to change standards, practices and regulations. Together with Just Capital, we created a proposal that would lead to research contributing to this evidence base.

We expected to receive about a dozen proposals—and we received 80, which we believe reflects the pent-up interest in this topic. Our expert review committee, which included leading accounting academics, a former regulator, asset managers and nonprofits, landed on seven proposals:

• Shiva Rajgopal and Steve O’ Byrne will expand their research on calculating employee value-add and publish such estimates for S&P 1500 companies based on their past article titled “Employee Value Added: A New Measure of Gain-Sharing between Labor and Capital”
• Ellen Frank-Miller, the Founder and CEO of WORC, will measure the effect of frontline workers’ job quality on the financial and human capital management outcomes of private equity-owned companies
• Alex Edmans, Caroline Flammer, and Simon Glossner will study the effect of diversity, equity, and inclusion and its links with firm performance
• Boshuo Li and Wei Shi will research the costs and benefits of human capital management transparency, using job compensation postings
• Professor George Georgiev will expand research on his article, “Human Capital as a Mission-Critical ESG Factor: New Evidence & Legal Implications,” and analyze new evidence from firms’ disclosure of information under the SEC’s 2020 HCM disclosure requirement
• Ifeoma Ike, the Founder of Pink Cornrows, will study how diversity announcements within companies impact performance, satisfaction, morale and health outcomes
• Professor Lenore Palladino will examine the impact of corporate policies and behaviors towards employee freedom of association as part of their approach to human capital management

Individually and collectively, we believe this research will advance our understanding of critical HCM issues. We look forward to learning from these researchers and helping them share their findings with one another and the public.

Related Grantees

• Just Capital Foundation, Inc.

The post Better understanding the value of human capital appeared first on Ford Foundation.

At the Ford Foundation, we believe a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is critical to the success of any social justice organization. We have created a toolkit to help funders, organizations and the philanthropic community at large identify and instill best practices for DEI-related issues.

The case studies and guides draw from four real-life scenarios to help grantmakers and grantees become more adept in establishing processes and policies in their own work.

Learning: #MeToo

What is the role of funders in responding to abuses alleged within the organizations we support? Read the article “Grantmaking in the #MeToo era,” by Bess Rothenberg of the Ford Foundation, on the Stanford Social Innovation Review website.

Read the article

Funder’s Guide 

This guide captures lessons from our team’s experience navigating challenging situations. Its aim is to help funders build a system of grantmaking based on DEI values by offering real-world experiences and lessons.

Download the Funder’s Guide (109KB)

Case Studies 

This series, which draws upon real-life experiences, looks at four challenging scenarios faced by grantees and how our team worked with them to identify solutions.

Download the Case Studies (274 KB)

Drawn from Ford’s learning efforts with its program staff, this guide offers a starting point for any grantmaker looking to integrate a disability perspective into their work.

Download the Case Studies (291 KB)

Facilitator’s Guide

This guide is designed for use with the case studies to foster discussion and help funders become better equipped to address issues as they arise.

Download the Facilitator’s Guide (95 KB)

The post Diversity, Inclusion and Equity Tools and Resources for Grantmakers appeared first on Ford Foundation.

When it comes to philanthropy, much has been written about the need to move to more trust-based grantmaking. Critical to transforming how foundations fund is to understand the evolving role of the program officer with respect to how we relate to grantees. As funders, we need to cut through bureaucracy, and create space to reimagine our roles in ways that shift and transform power dynamics between grantees and philanthropy. Many of our fellow funders, like Voqal, are leading the way, transforming the ways philanthropy works. We not only champion this change but want to do our part to make it more ubiquitous. And that starts with program officers.

Any serious adoption of trust-based philanthropy needs to create opportunities for program officers to spend less time on compliance and more time partnering with grantees on the journey to impact. This is a change that not only can accelerate outcomes but also allows program officers to engage with grantees more creatively and strategically. As research from the Center for Effective Philanthropy shows, relationships matter.

These relationships can also catalyze change across philanthropy. We at Ford commissioned a study with MilwayPLUS to find ways for funders to accelerate more equitable grantmaking.We found that leaders across nonprofits and foundations agreed on four qualities in program officers that build true partnerships with grantees: inclusiveness that elevates the grantee as expert, a service orientation that puts the grantee in the driver seat, an equity mindset and network weaving that connects grantees with key partners and stakeholders to elevate their impact.

Elevating the grantee as the expert

Program officers are often hired for their expertise on an issue, so naturally a growing number of Ford’s grantmakers come from the sectors we fund. However, the minute we step into our roles, we make a point to recognize that our grantee partners are the true experts and we, in fact, are their supporters. This is especially important because of the longstanding power dynamics that enable a single funder to determine the fate of an organization. We’ve learned this from our grantee partners like Tania Turner, executive director of women’s rights nonprofit Fondo Semillas, a women’s rights nonprofit in Mexico. “To shift power [as a funder],” she said, “first you need to acknowledge that the partner you are talking to has expertise and knowledge about their context and what they are doing. If you really think that you are their partner, the conversation and the dialogue should be peer to peer.”

As program officers, it’s our job to build a respectful relationship with grantees, so nonprofits can ask funders for the support and tools they truly need to make change. We make sure to communicate that we are open and accessible, and value hearing from grantees, be it a question, concern or feedback on the grant process. In our experience, inclusiveness happens when officers express curiosity about and support for a grantee’s entire organization, not just the parts that relate to the foundation’s strategy and goals. Indeed, inclusive grantmakers listen as much as they talk to grantees. At Ford, we also aspire to lift up the voices of grantees via surveys, one-on-one conversations or advisory groups to influence management and board conversations and decisions.

Putting the grantee in the driver’s seat

According to the research from MilwayPLUS, program officers who embrace a service oriented approach with grantees and the fields they work in will begin to shift their focus from rigid deadlines and burdensome processes and instead ask their grantees’ what they need and how to improve the grant process. We then have the opportunity to “walk the talk” by making as many changes as possible to ease the burden on grantees and shoulder more due diligence work on our end.

To achieve this standard and orient ourselves in service of our grantees, program officers should work to respond quickly to inquiries, using channels most accessible for grantees, like video chat or WhatsApp for those outside the United States. We can also ask grantees for feedback on which processes they value and how to simplify or eliminate other parts of the process. We use our status within grantmaking communities to work with peer funders supporting the same organizations to agree on a common, simple reporting format, or substitute phone calls for written reports. Moreover, we can give grantees freedom to share their highest impact story with us, unfettered by prescribed questions and word counts. According to Matt Forti, managing director of One Acre Fund in East Africa, funders can become better partners to grantees through “frank, one-on-one dialogue and being able to provide direct feedback on an individual program officer you work with, in the spirit of helping them do better and ensuring the way they work with grantees is part of how they are evaluated.”

Advocating for equity

Program officers can play a critical role in applying and accelerating the use of an equity lens to drive funding towards leaders from historically marginalized groups. We can ask tough questions about our own institutions, and back them up with data and experience. We can compile grantmaking data to show the diversity of leaders we fund and how it aligns, or doesn’t yet, with the intended impact.

And we can also show trends in the type of funding these leaders received: Is it flexible? Multiyear? Enough to advance change? Program officers can actively dismantle differential—even unconscious—grantmaking approaches and reporting requirements for leaders from underfunded communities. For example, in the U.S., the historic gap in multiyear, flexible funding for leaders of color has created an administrative burden that takes away time from program delivery and impact. Kris Hayashi, outgoing executive director of the Transgender Law Center in Oakland, stresses that “Starting with multiyear funding…is even more important for communities who, whether it’s because of race or gender or class or disability, have faced historic and ongoing neglect from larger funding streams, because of the amount of catch-up funders have to do.”

Connecting grantees to accelerate impact

Funders have long offered grantees three classic “T’s” of philanthropy: time on their calendar, talent, or knowledge, in a given field, and treasure in the form of grants. To better support grantees on the journey to impact, we encourage program officers to focus on two more: ties and testimony. Ties are about building networks across a field, introducing grantees to each other or inviting (and providing the funding for) them to participate in relevant gatherings, appear on panels, and continue to connect like-minded organizations. Testimony brings program officers’ influence to bear in lifting up grantees to other funders, sometimes as part of collaborative funds, to broaden their access to additional resources. Program officers serious about weaving networks can hold calls and gatherings for grantees to share their experiences and report lessons learned to peer funders. They can also join or create ecosystem networks, oftentimes hosted by philanthropic support organizations like Exponent Philanthropy, National Center for Family Philanthropy, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, New Profit, National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy or Council on Foundations, to strategically broker knowledge and grow movements. Abigail Dillen, president of Earthjustice said, “I have seen funders think about the ecosystem of groups who need to come together to achieve a long-term, audacious goal and actually embed in that ecosystem to do strategic thinking along with grantees.”

There’s no denying that foundations have focused on a more equitable distribution of charitable dollars in recent years. That is an excellent first step, but we must become even more strategic partners to grantees and deepen the practices that truly demonstrate our trust in them and advance their ability to affect change. Ariadne and EDGE Funders Alliance recently launched a Funding for Real Change toolkit for foundation staff and trustees, drawn in part from the equitable grantmaking study we commissioned, to help advance these important behaviors. The toolkit offers tips and resources for those who seek to shift the balance of power with grantees and learn, together, how best to achieve social impact goals. The grantee networks mentioned above also offer opportunities for like-minded funders to come together and support each other in improving philanthropic practices. The responsibilities we hold as program officers have changed in recent years in ways that have the potential to increase our impact. The good news is that there are resources and support available to help make this shift more than just a passing trend.

The advice in this reflection draws on the Funding for Real Change toolkit and Five Accelerators of Equitable Grantmaking.

RELATED GRANTEES

• FONDO SEMILLAS
• Transgender Law Center
• Edge Funders Alliance

The post It’s time to reimagine the role of program officer appeared first on Ford Foundation.

Since its launch in 2015, the Ford Foundation’s Creativity and Free Expression (CFE) program worked collaboratively to invest in creative organizations and storytellers shaping a more inclusive, just world across three areas of focus: Arts and Culture, Journalism, and documentary filmmaking through its JustFilms initiative. To assess impact and alignment with the changing needs of the field, the foundation is conducting a series of evaluations around each area of focus under the CFE program. This evaluation report on Arts & Culture conducted by SMU DataArts is one in a series of three evaluations to explore how arts and creative sectors can approach inequality thoughtfully.

The Challenge

Inequality in arts and culture shapes inequality in society. The gatekeepers who decide which creative works get funded and whose voices and perspectives are amplified define, in many ways, who is valued by society—and who is invisible and who is seen as “other.”

In America’s largest museums, the majority of artists represented are white and male. Pre-pandemic, two-thirds of creative workers had less than two months’ savings and those who are Black, Indigenous, transgender, and/or people with disabilities were the most likely to have entered the pandemic without any savings.¹ Pay inequity is also a serious issue: studies repeatedly show people of color artists making a fraction of what their white counterparts are paid.²

Without equality in the creative sectors—and deeper investments in untold stories and unheard storytellers—homogenous cultural narratives will continue to affirm racial, gender, and other hierarchies and stereotypes.

What We Did

Since its launch in 2018³, the Creativity and Free Expression Arts and Culture (CFE A&C) program has provided grants totaling $230 million to over 500 arts and cultural organizations.⁴ These are intended to help creatives who have been marginalized by both society and the arts and culture industries thrive and create meaningful, widely recognized work. Because we believe that these artists, cultural producers, and leaders must have the resources to tell the stories that reflect their perspectives and experiences, we strengthen organizations, leaders, and networks that support and value these expressions.

CFE A&C provides support through substantial, multi-year general operating support to small and midsized organizations and networks that are staffed and geared towards people of color, women, and disabled artists, cultural producers, and leaders. We also provide targeted project support to large institutions for programming by artists who are disabled or people of color. We also provide support for alliances and convenings and leverage influence through thought leadership, narrative and strategic communications, and building alliances with other funders.

Grants were primarily disbursed to organizations and networks across 33 states and territories in the United States. Grant amounts ranged from $2,000 to $5.6 million, with $200,000 being both the median and most common grant award amount. Just over half of the grants were in the $100,000 to $499,999 range.

In 2021, we engaged SMU DataArts, a national center for arts research based at Southern Methodist University, as an external partner to conduct an evaluation. SMU DataArts employed a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods to explore whether the CFE A&C program contributes to a larger base of support, stability, and continued success for grantee organizations; for thriving people of color and disabled artists whose work already receives greater production and visibility, and ultimately to a more diverse and accepting cultural landscape with expanded ideas of excellence. Over 600 artists provided their perspectives. Of the 230 CFE A&C organizations invited to be part of this evaluation, a total of 110 participated in some way.

What We Learned

1. Grantees report shifting dominant narratives.

CFE A&C grantees reported a remarkably strong sense that they are advancing their goals, and these goals very closely align with various elements of Ford’s short-term, intermediate, and long-term goals. Importantly, grantees seek to shift dominant narratives that perpetuate inequality, echoing Ford’s long-term goal of a more fair and just society where traditional definitions of excellence are expanded and audiences consider diverse points of view and experiences.

2. Grantees indicate they are thriving overall and having an impact.

Most organizations are thriving, have grown their revenue base, and have had lasting impact on artists in a spectrum of ways. The organizations are thriving most by advancing creatively and artistically, with strong demand for their programs. They have increased production and visibility of art created by underrepresented artists, cultural producers, and leaders, and they say that Ford CFE A&C funding had a direct impact on this.

3. Ford’s grantmaking is improving grantees’ financial stability.

Grantees say they are, on the whole, doing better now than they were prior to receiving CFE A&C support, with respect to overall operating and financial stability, and they largely attribute CFE A&C funding to their financial security, growth, attraction of grants from other funders, and ability to conduct multi-year planning in their organizations. Like their peers in the broader ecology of nonprofit arts and cultural organizations, they have run surpluses in recent years and increased their base of support, especially from other foundations.

4. Organizational capacity and compensation remain areas of concern.

However, the creative and artistic growth and increased demand for their programs has not been met with comparable growth in organizational capacity or staff and artist compensation levels, which may hinder their impact on artists in the future. If capacity does not increase, programming will plateau. Grantees are on the fence about whether their organizations are thriving financially, and generally disagree that they have adequate staff capacity to meet demand. Even with revenue growth and operational growth in other areas, it appears that arts leaders still feel like the funding level is insufficient to increase staff pay and substantially increase compensation to people of color and/or disabled artists.

5. Artists served by Ford’s grantees are thriving in key ways.

CFE A&C is succeeding in its short-term goal for leadership: supporting more thriving people of color and disabled artists, cultural producers, and executive leaders. Roughly two of every three artists say they are thriving. In the ways that Ford defines successful support (including, ability to advance artistry, exploring artistic forms, and visibility for work), as well as other dimensions, such as “feeling inspired”, and “connecting with community”, people of color and disabled artists are thriving, on average. Among CFE A&C grantees, the highest-ranked shared goal is to lift up the cultural contributions of artists and cultural producers of color, which aligns with the goals related to thriving artists and increasing production and visibility of these artists’ work. There are indications of a more widespread sense of thriving among people of color and disabled artists, cultural producers, and executive leaders working in the field, especially those who have been further marginalized by sexism, heterosexism, and xenophobia.

6. Grantees overestimate their impact on artists.

Relatedly, the majority of people of color and disabled artists, cultural producers, and leaders perceive that working with or receiving support from CFE A&C grantees has had lasting, positive impact on them in a multitude of ways. As positive as the artist responses were, the CFE A&C grantee responses were even stronger. Leaders of CFE A&C grantee organizations tend to slightly overestimate the extent to which they have lasting impact on artists, particularly the extent to which they increase visibility of artists’ work and provide artists with critical financial income. With respect to thriving, compensation was the area scored lowest by artists overall, despite the fact that two out of every three artists say they received adequate financial compensation, and grantees say that CFE A&C funding directly impacted their ability to increase people of color and/or disabled artists’ compensation. One might infer that artists perceive a gap between ‘adequate’ and ‘thriving.’

7. There are still gaps in representation of people of color and disabled people.

In the broader arts workforce study, individuals who self-identify as Black or Hispanic/Latinx were underrepresented among the ranks of those hired by participating arts and cultural organizations, compared to their relative numbers in the population of working-age U.S. adults. The percentage of arts workforce members with a disability was similar to that of the percentage of working-age U.S. adults with a disability. Among those working in the broader arts and culture industry during the period of the CFE A&C program, people of color and people with disabilities were just as likely to hold a supervisory role as a non-supervisory position. However, people with disabilities are under-represented among the ranks of board members and people of color are much more likely to be hired as an independent contractor than they are to be on staff full-time or a board member; this is key to note since many organizations hire artists in particular on a contract rather than staff basis. It appears that there is not equitable access to power and decision-making at the board level for people of color and/or people with disabilities.

In summary, Ford’s CFE A&C program has the potential to be catalytic, particularly through substantial multi-year general operating support to small and mid-sized organizations and networks that are run by and intended for people of color and disabled artists, cultural producers, and leaders. There is a lot to be proud of and a lot that is working well. To be more impactful in the future, however, decisions will need to be made about strategy trade-offs and their implications for the impact this will have on future necessary artistic works.

• ¹ Americans for the Arts (2022), “So Far Past the Brink: COVID-19 and the Ongoing Conditions That Keep Creative Workers in Free Fall,” April. Accessed 6 June 2022 at https://www.americansforthearts.org/sites/default/files/pdf/2022/So_Far_Past_the_Brink_FINAL.pdf.
• ² See, for example, studies featured by Counting Together: https://countingtogether.org/projects-and-findings.
• ³ Although Ford has a longer history of funding arts, culture, and media, the CFE A&C program itself was initially launched in 2016. It was refined in 2017 and 2018, and changes took effect in 2018. This evaluation covers the period from 2018 through 2021.
• ⁴ This figure represents Ford Foundation grants made through the following programs: general CFE A&C, America’s Cultural Treasures, NYC Arts, BUILD, Social Bond grants held by CFE A&C, and reserves.

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