Programs that advance equity have been facing significant resistance across the country recently – I see it every day where I live and teach in Austin, Texas and hear similar stories from colleagues across the country – and this year’s election result means that alarming trend seems destined to continue.
It’s a fantasy to think this backlash won’t further affect philanthropy. It’s already done some harm. I’ve seen organizations that support basic, needed public health efforts subjected to harassment because of the incorrect perception they were related to diversity and inclusion programs.
Four years ago, the horrific murder of George Floyd prompted a national reckoning with our country’s history of entrenched racism. As a result, many organizations, in both the private and public sectors, started concentrated efforts to dismantle the systematic manifestations not only of racism but also of sexism and ageism.
That effort has stalled in many places and is under attack in others, making it more important than ever for grantmaking institutions like ours to codify policies, practices, and funding priorities centered on the needs to expand diversity, improve equity, and assure inclusion.
Archstone Foundation, where I have served on the Board since 2020 and am now interim president and CEO, has made it a top priority to institute policies and adopt strategies that systematically integrate justice and equity. While we have long had an explicitly stated and intentional focus on serving the most vulnerable older Californians, we felt the weight of that moment of national reckoning and concluded we could do more to put equity, diversity, and inclusion at the center of our work. We have worked intentionally ever since to make that commitment a reality – not only in our grantmaking and communications practices but also in our own operations. This focus on equity is centered within our 2024 annual report.
In 2022 we created our internal Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee to focus on this effort. I was the inaugural chair, a role now filled by Board member Jean Accius, PhD, the president and CEO of Creating Healthier Communities, while I lead the search process for the Foundation’s next president and CEO. Tanisha Davis, vice president of grant operations and planning, has been the staff co-chair since the start. The rest of the committee includes both Board and staff members, underscoring our intent to bolster equity throughout the organization.
Looking Inward to Start
The group started by looking inward to assess organizational practices. The Finance and Investment Committee has asked the Foundation’s investment firm, Cambridge Associates, to report annually on the diversity of its managers. We have also reviewed and updated the employee handbook to make sure our practices and policies are equitable and just.
Sharing information about our own leadership has been another step to improving equity. Transparency about the demographics of both the Board and staff, no matter the results, creates opportunities for discussion and building mutual understanding. For this reason, we annually disclose the races and ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, and disability statuses of the staff and Board. We encourage grantees, grant applicants and other partners to do the same by participating, as we do, in the Demographics via Candid initiative – because we are confident that information will make our grantmaking more equitable and improve care for more older Californians. (Read more here.)
Refining Our External Efforts
We have reshaped our outward-facing operations as well.
We have taken several steps to infuse a focus on justice and equity throughout the procedures and metrics of our grant programs. As an early step, we adopted the definitions of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) put forth by the D5 Coalition, a group convened in 2010 to advance DEI in philanthropy. We took the additional step of developing a definition of justice and placed it first, as it represents the goal we are working toward: equitable resources, opportunities, treatment, and policies to produce just outcomes for all older adults.
We drafted and have continued to refine our five grantmaking principles for reducing racial health disparities:
• Create inclusive, person-and family-centered, universal design
• Prioritize historically, and currently, marginalized populations
• Focus on areas with the greatest disparities between groups
• Test and determine if disparities are reduced
• Seek relevant expertise and include community voices
We have refined and added to those principles by reviewing and discussing such other documents as Justice in Aging’s Equity Analysis Tool and the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine’s Program DEI scoring guide.
To ensure we hear directly from the partners we fund, every two years we ask the Center for Effective Philanthropy to conduct a confidential survey of those grantees. This gives them an opportunity to tell us how they think we are doing, how they perceive our efforts, and where they think we can do better. Past results have prompted us to strengthen and clarify how we communicate our commitment to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Continuing the Journey
As individuals and through our organizational culture, we are committed to continuing to learn. And we also know there is much more we can do. To that end, this summer our Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee, our Proposal Review Committee, and our staff reviewed the Meyer Memorial Trust Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Spectrum Tool to understand where we are in our journey and identify next opportunities for growth. Our staff also recently met with Janet Spears of Metta Fund, a foundation focused on improving the lives of older San Franciscans that is well-known for its focus on equity, to hear about its work and think about practices we can adopt.
We will continue to lift up the work of our partners and center justice across all areas of our organization. At a time when others are shuttering or actively speaking out against diversity initiatives, it is essential that grantmakers make sure they are doing all they can to close gaps in racial and ethnic health disparities and work to achieve true justice across our society.
