Voices of Power Builders

(Illustration by Taslim van Hattum)

Building People Power has included a range of perspectives and scholarship from researchers, funders, and power builders.

In the short video below, we’ve asked the following power builders to speak directly to the roles and contributions that philanthropy can have in supporting community organizing and power building, to explain their reasoning and motivation for focusing on building power, and also to share their experiences in funding power building: Joseph Tomás McKellar, executive director (People Improving Communities Through Organizing); Marc Philpart, executive director (California Black Freedom Fund); Tracy La, executive director (VietRISE); Terry Supahan, executive director (True North Organizing Network); Miya Yoshitani, executive director (Asian Pacific Environmental Network).

For a longer discussion with the foundation executives who are funding power building, the following audio discussion features Judith Bell, chief impact officer (San Francisco Foundation); Nicole June Maher, president & CEO (Inatai Foundation); Brian Payne, former president & CEO (Central Indiana Community Foundation); Pamela Ross, vice president of Community Leadership & Equitable Initiatives (The Indianapolis Foundation); and Robert Ross, MD, president & CEO (The California Endowment). An edited transcript follows below.

 

 

 

Edited Transcript:

How is investing in power building critical to achieving the foundation’s mission and what lessons and experiences convinced you of the importance of power building?

Judith Bell: We have been a social justice funder, really, since our inception 75 years ago. But when we decided to make our North Star racial equity and economic inclusion, we began a very in-depth process to figure out what that meant for our grantmaking and for all our work in community. In that process we needed to think about the pathways that we would need to follow to get to greater racial equity and economic inclusion.

We identified People, Place, and then Power as those pathways. And we identified power because we felt that without an increase in power, without an increase in voice, without an increase in agency, without an increase of literally hearing people and having them be connected directly to the levers of power, we were not going to be able to make the kinds of structural and fundamental changes that were needed. You’ve got to change the rules if you're talking about racial equity and economic inclusion. If you're changing the rules, you're changing systems, and you're changing policies. And the only way to make big changes is by investing in the organizing and power building of the people who are most impacted—the Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities. To do that, we had to invest in power building. 

Nichole June Maher: We knew that we needed to get to all 39 counties in our state, and not just ask the nonprofit community but ask the communities who we needed to be accountable to, what they wanted, what they needed, what they were looking for in a partner. They talked a lot about being forced to make false choices that minimize their humanity. We heard time and time again, “I'm not going to choose between immigration reform and childcare. I'm not going to choose between my voting rights and housing. If you—philanthropy—were strategic and open and trusted us, you would actually support us to work on all of those things because we are multi-dimensional people.”

The other thing that’s been really important is spending a lot of time defining what power is. We heard very clearly from our grantees that while there are lots of different kinds of power, community power is the most important thing to invest in to really get to transformation. I don't think we would have landed on community power if we hadn't spent the time listening.

Pamela Ross: In 2018 we changed the mission of the community foundation to focus on creating more opportunities for everyone—regardless of their race, place, or identity—to reach their full potential. We knew within Marion County, specifically within Indianapolis and the Indianapolis Foundation, that we had to focus on dismantling systemic racism. You can't really talk about equity, especially racial equity, if you're not going to also talk about racism. And so for us to name systemic racism, we also needed to name how power plays into perpetuating 400 years of systemic racism.

Brian Payne: The one thing that is seemingly consistent: where there is systemic racism, the system was built around helping white people or was built by white people or was built from the perspective of white people, and usually more often than not, it was built by white people, from the perspective of white people, for white people, for the advantage of white people. Consistent in all of that is that power is not equitably distributed. White people have way more power than people of color. Unless you address the power imbalance, how are you going to address racial disparities? 

Robert Ross: For us it became clear that investing in healthcare just wasn't enough to get us from this place to that place. The CDC and public health research shows that only 20, maybe 25, percent of life expectancy and health status is attributable to healthcare and the other 75 to 80 percent [is attributable] to other factors that are rooted in community, including housing, poverty, air quality, water quality, and quality of jobs. So for us, it wasn't as much a romantic attachment to the idea of power building as it was a strategic and pragmatic and rational realization that democratic participation in power building is the most effective way to change systems and policies to improve the conditions that would allow certain communities to be healthier. We have the opportunity to assess who we are as America and as Americans. Angela Glover Blackwell correctly makes the case that realizing a well-functioning, multiracial democracy for America is the next great step for the nation. I think it’s the height of patriotism for philanthropy to invest in power building. The tools that we're talking about investing in are really the best of America. We’re using the tools of a vibrant participatory democracy to more explicitly center the voices and participation of the oppressed and the marginalized.

What are some examples of how you have invested in community/people power building?

Nichole June Maher: We work very hard to make multi-year grants, and we are issue agnostic. We fund organizations to work within local counties to restore voting rights. We fund organizations to advocate for equity within our education systems. We fund folks to fight for historic rights in their sovereign homelands. Another issue our field has to grapple with is that, when you look nationally at where power building resources go, they mostly go to large, often coastal, urban, liberal cities that already have strong and important power-building infrastructure. It’s not enough and it’s not equitable, but it’s more than the places that have the greatest inequity, the greatest civil rights violations, the most blatant racism from their local municipalities and their police forces. These places with the greatest inequities are the least likely to have power building investments.

Judith Bell: The classic mistake is to just invest in campaigns. What happens in a campaign is that organizing groups experience an enormous increase in resources while they're in the middle of the campaign—trying to pass a housing bond or create new worker rights. And then at the end of the campaign, there is a crash in resources. They don't have capacity and they're not well set up for the next campaign. So we really need to understand that our commitment has to be to the long-term infrastructure that is needed and make sure there is a regular flow of resources, of capacity, of being in partnership, of being an ally to groups in the long term.

Robert Ross: Patience, humility and the ability to listen to those who are fighting the battles for structural change and systems change and systems transformation. These are the grassroots leaders that, as Bryan Stevenson likes to say, are most proximate to injustice and health inequity. This work requires a foundation to do more bottom up listening than is traditional in our field. We'd want to see a robust, inclusive power-building ecosystem of community organizers and base builders, and activists and advocates who are equipped and skilled at winning racial equity and health justice battles. And that would be reflected by and supported by more robust, philanthropic, and private sector support for the members of that ecosystem.

From an outputs or outcomes perspective, the state of California would emerge from this work, unapologetically, as the nation's first state of true belonging, a “for all” state. You would see equity in the health system—unapologetic, total and complete inclusion in the health system, including undocumented immigrants. You would see equity in the justice system on a statewide basis, with care, services and support superceding incarceration. You would see it in schools with equitable funding formulas, and young people receiving opportunities to have their mental health and trauma needs addressed in the school setting. And you would see it in economic development, moving California from a state of rapacious capitalism to one of truly inclusive capitalism. No matter which way you viewed, touched or experienced California, you would see equity, and inclusion. My vision for the state of California is what Martin Luther King, Jr., described as “the beloved community” and that the policies and practices and funding and budgets would reflect that.

How have you engaged your board of trustees (and donors for community foundations) in power building as a strategy?

Judith Bell: By keeping in mind that the Board has to be on the journey too. You can't just bring in the Board once you've reached the destination. We started first by giving Board members data and stories to help them understand the challenges around racial equity and economic inclusion in the region. And then we used illustrative examples that would allow the Board to think about what kind of changes we were talking about. 

Then we brought in community leaders who had already determined how to get to the kinds of transformative change that we were talking about, and they explained that the focus had to be about building power, about organizing, and about advocacy. It was those series of conversations that allowed the Board to be on the journey with us.

Nichole June Maher: At our last board meeting we adopted our 50-year vision and strategy and then the Board quickly turned around and said, “Our job has to completely change. We are no longer going to center ourselves as the experts.” Our most important job is to make sure that we are holding our team accountable to make sure that in every step of our work we're centering community in in a truly authentic way, and not in a symbolic or a cliche way.

One of the most important lessons we learned and struggled through was spending the time at our governance and board level to become crystal clear on who we hold ourselves accountable to. Through multiple board meetings, we adopted the vision that we're accountable to the people of Washington who have been structurally organized out of health and wealth and who share our value, that racial justice is essential to our shared liberation.

Brian Payne: We put out a call for neighborhood leaders to be what we called ambassadors. We didn't turn anyone away and we got 38 people who represented specific neighborhoods, the Hispanic community writ large, and community organizations like food banks. Our board was so moved by each interaction with those neighborhood ambassadors that it was transformative for everybody. It changed the hearts and minds of our board members and our board signed on to [the power-building strategy].

At that time most of our board members were wealthy, or at least successful professionals. Now we're trying to have our board be more inclusive with people who are neighborhood leaders and who are not necessarily wealthy.

Have you experienced any pushback and how have you addressed it?

Judith Bell: I wouldn't characterize it as pushback. I would characterize it as a desire by donors to understand what we mean by power and a desire to understand why we thought power building was fundamental to moving this new agenda. In some community foundations there's a wall between the work that is being done programmatically and the work that is being done with donors. We have blown that wall up. Now we are in full partnership, working to bring as many donors as we can into alignment with our work around our equity agenda.

Pamela Ross: We really didn't get pushback in the beginning. But over time, as we continue to use our power to make statements, or to take a stand on issues, we started to lose a few donors. So we have to help them understand why equity is important, and why, if you actually have a passion and care about education, you should probably also know about the racial achievement gap. We tell them, if you believe in equity, even if you're doubtful, if you want to understand how race plays a role, we can help to bring you along.

Nichole June Maher: Those who have felt most critical of us have been the folks who have always had the greatest proximity and connectivity within philanthropy and who imagined that, even when we had a focus on health equity and racial justice, they would be the deciders, the designers, and the advisors on how it would be done. And so, even though there are folks who would be very uncomfortable to say, “I'm critical of you for choosing racial justice,” they didn't imagine that 85 percent of the resources we give would go to people of color, immigrant and native organizations. 

What advice or invitation would you give to other foundations, donors, and funders around investing in people power building? 

Nichole June Maher: We had to change our mission statement and completely redesign the structure of our institution and our grantmaking program. Our mission is to transform the balance of power to ensure equity and racial justice across Washington and beyond. The reason we say racial justice rather than just equity is because we got some incredible insight that philanthropy and government were watering down the word equity and turning it into nothingness. When institutions like mine, with power and privilege and positionality, adopt equity, they often omit racial justice. So we put it in there right alongside equity to hold ourselves accountable.

Judith Bell: Think about mission and values, and then think about the impacts that are critical to actually advancing your mission and to crystallizing your values in a way that matters in people's daily lives. Ask, what are you seeking to do? Are you seeking to make a major change in terms of economic opportunity or major change around housing or major change around climate change? Whatever you choose, I guarantee you that there are barriers to that change that are about policy and systems change. No institution, even one as large as The California Endowment, can make these kinds of changes happen alone. So it has to be about organizing funders, and by funders I mean both institutions and individual donors. It has to be about all of us sitting down and working together to identify both the overall support for how you build power, and the support for specific campaigns that allow us to aggregate the capital and then move it out to organizations and leaders and to minimize the amount of time and effort they have to spend in fundraising so they can be on the ground doing the work and pushing for the changes that we care about.

Pamela Ross: First, foundations must be willing to really lean into how much power they have. I think that too often it's difficult for people to name it and own it. So I say power can be oxygen or power can be carbon monoxide out here killing people. As a foundation that has a lot of power, that has resources, that has relationship power, you have to be willing to ask, “How are we using our power?” Even if it just starts with the one leader, the CEO or President, who wants to lean into it before it's even socialized in an executive team meeting. The strength of this power-building movement as a way to dismantle systemic racism starts with leadership. The power of becoming more equitable, the power of focusing on race, is going to require the most powerful people from an institutional level, who can make the decisions. 

What additional words or advice do you have around supporting community power building? 

Judith Bell: If you look at history, if you look at the way big change happens, it always involves investing in power, it always involves an increase in power, an increase of voice, an increase of agency and an increase in advocacy by the people who are most impacted. Embrace history as a sign of how we can make change in the future. 

Pamela Ross: When you share power, and when you provide influence, and when you support and create advocacy, which again is power, what will the community create? What will the people who are most impacted by what we invest in do if we don't prescribe or put additional barriers around them? I believe that we could see new systems with new essences of power. But it's going to take resources and it’s going to take those of us who are in the spaces of power right now to decide to create space for power to grow in those communities.

Robert Ross: I could make a compelling, rational case that the most important job in the United States of America right now is the community organizer who brings an inclusive orientation, who brings it for all orientations, and who is proximate to the pain and oppression of injustice.