Overwhelming demands for racial justice after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020, generated a surge of commitments to dismantle racist practices in the public and private sector, including investing more in racial equity and racial justice initiatives. Floyd’s tragic death set against the backdrop of a global pandemic, unleashed an unparalleled fervor— energizing a movement that pushed for accountability and a dismantling of systems that perpetuate harm against Black and Brown communities.
In 2024, the Midwest Center for Nonprofit Leadership engaged me to conduct research to assess whether such commitments within the philanthropic field have generated real change in subsequent years, particularly in the greater Kansas City community. What we found is that out of the eleven major foundations participating in this research project, only one could provide numerical data demonstrating increased grantmaking to BIPOC-led and BIPOC-serving organizations.
This is not to say that other foundations are neglecting to collect this data or that they are not contemplating or actively pursuing racial equity-based grantmaking strategies. Six additional foundations out of the eleven interviewees emphasized the importance of integrating a racial equity framework into their philanthropic practices and articulated their commitment to doing so. Translating these aspirations into tangible actions, however, remains a formidable challenge, according to interviewees. Each foundation shared differing ideas for how to move along a continuum of change.
The Findings
We sought to understand the approaches employed by local foundations to address systemic inequities in philanthropy, the challenges encountered, and the outcomes achieved, where possible. Our findings reveal a spectrum of approaches we explore more fully in the paper, including four prevalent themes and recurring patterns:
- Self-evaluation: Efforts to address historical inequities in funding by engaging in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training, researching best practices, seeking community feedback, and reflecting on their personal and organizational contributions to perpetuating inequity.
- Community connection: More intentional relationship-building with communities that have historically lacked access to their funding.
- Reduced barriers: Adopting some key tenants of the trust-based philanthropy movement to increase accessibility.
- Experimentation: Experimenting with grant dollars and taking more risks on organizations or ideas they might not previously have considered.
Moving Forward
Evidence suggests that the fervor with which foundations approached racial equity in the aftermath of the 2020 uprisings is waning. There are also indications that initial reports about how much funding was going to racial equity work in 2020 and 2021 were greatly exaggerated.
What was apparent from our study is that most interview participants are dedicated to evaluating how their foundations have contributed to inequitable funding practices. Many are even willing to adopt at least some best practices to enhance funding accessibility for BIPOC-led and BIPOC-serving organizations. However, it remains unclear what impact these changes will have, particularly in terms of funders’ willingness to invest more money and resources in efforts that would fundamentally shift systemic racial disparities in philanthropy. The consistent emphasis on experimentation and gradual learning expressed during the interviews may be hindering the implementation of more substantive reforms.
Several of the interviewees argued that increased funding alone is not the only way to gauge movement toward racial equity. One funder encouraged foundations to resist getting sidetracked by the latest “buzzwords” because terms such like “racial equity” and “racial justice” hold no meaning when foundations don’t know how these concepts translate into practice. The better questions to ask when striving for equity, she argues, are: “What is the impact we’re trying to make?” “Who has [historically] been unable to participate [in traditional philanthropy]?” and “Who are we centering in the work?” After George Floyd’s murder, despite the urgency, she recognized she couldn’t “shift an entire organization overnight.” Instead, she explained that change within her organization would come incrementally. Rather than focusing on quantifiable results, she was more concerned about adopting practices her foundation could sustain.
Another funder also placed an emphasis on sustainability, sharing that their foundation works carefully to select projects and partnerships they can invest in over multiple years. But while they believe in “diversity, equity and inclusion,” the director stated it doesn’t drive their foundation’s giving strategy. The concern is that a singular focus on increasing funding to BIPOC-led organizations might actually limit what they are able to fund. As such, the foundation doesn’t have any future plans to change their approach to giving and in fact, the director asserted that based on their current portfolio of projects, much of their money already “flows in the direction” of BIPOC communities.
There is, of course, a difference between assuming funds are benefitting BIPOC communities and ensuring that they do. “Failing to address race head-on is counterproductive,” explains a philanthropist in an Echoing Green report. It isn’t possible, he insists, to dismantle systemic racial inequities in philanthropy without examining how funders maintain the conditions under which disparities flourish. “On virtually every issue,” the report continues—from academic achievement and physical and mental health, to economic status— “holding all other factors constant, one’s race predicts [lifetime] outcomes better than anything else.”
These statistics certainly hold true in Kansas City. In comparisons between white and Black households, Black median incomes are 62.9% of white median incomes. The net worth of Black households is only 12.8% of that of white households. Black Kansas Citians have shorter lifespans, higher fetal death rates, less access to quality education, are more likely to be incarcerated, and more likely to be racially profiled and killed by police. In total, if quality of life were handed out like a pies, white Kansas Citians would get 100% while Black Kansas Citians would only receive two-thirds. These disparities, the authors of the Echoing Green report maintain, mean that funders seeking answers to society’s most pressing problems without using a “race-based lens,” will inevitably “arrive at the wrong answer.”
As Denise St. Omer, Executive Director of KC People’s Fund, asserted in the 2021 edition of the State of Black Kansas City, although many foundations acted swiftly to respond to racial unrest during the height of the pandemic, “moving the needle on persistent racial disparities requires a long-term commitment and a deep understanding of systemic racism.” Several funders acknowledged this deeper work to dismantle inequitable systems can be overwhelming. One funder shared, “Some days I wake up and feel hopeless, but we have to keep trying.”
Another cautioned that because some funders believe they lack the resources to address society’s most pressing problems, they become complacent. Rather than recognizing their power as change agents with the capacity to radically transform philanthropy, they fall back on “making grants just because it feels good.” This mindset, concludes one funder, means that Kansas City foundations have “given away a lot of money over the last 50 years, but haven’t really solved the problems” they claim to want to solve. “We haven’t even really made a dent,” she said. Because of this, foundations “get comfortable just existing” instead of asking themselves, “How do we actually work ourselves out of a job?”
One foundation director lamented that efforts to implement change in Kansas City sometimes feels like pushing against a tide. She notes the foundations she attempts to work with are often entrenched in “decades, sometimes centuries, of deeply ingrained philosophies and ideologies.” She admitted there are times she even “feels bad” for her foundation colleagues who struggle to shift gears. “But then I want to say ‘Come on, there are things you could do to change if you really wanted to.’”
In “Decolonizing Wealth,” Edgar Villanueva voices similar beliefs. He writes that foundations have been operating in the same way for so long that envisioning an alternative is difficult. But lasting transformation, he argues, will only come when funders are willing to acknowledge the harm philanthropy has caused and commit to healing and inclusivity over traditional power dynamics. Funders, he states, have the capacity and power to redistribute resources in ways that fundamentally reform the system. The good news, he asserts, is that the ways in which philanthropy operates today are due to intentional were made by design choices, which means that ultimately, we have the power to change the design.
The office as we know, at least pre-pandemic, was a ghost in the machine, a vestige of the industrial revolution. Thoughtful reflection tells the story of individual craftsmen moving from their own shops, farms, and homes, to larger collectives of workers. Workers specialized, with division of labor for mass production, achieving economies of scale. But these organizational behaviors were not in the name of worker morale, office lunches, collaborative innovation, or water cooler conversation. The driving force was the increasing scale and complexity of goods and services involved. It was no longer feasible for an individual craftsman to afford the facilities, power supply, machines and tooling, raw materials, and various specialized labor, all now required to efficiently produce high volumes of lower cost goods.
Richard Etienne opines, “While extroverts are celebrated for being outgoing, action-oriented and enthusiastic, introverts bring analytical thought and empathy…During the pandemic, those (latter) skills immediately became incredibly sought after. Introverts are reliable; people who take one project at a time and do it thoroughly. They’re good at deep thought and forming personal connection. That was really important during the period when companies were trying to hold onto clients…” He continues later, “The workplace was created by extroverts, for extroverts,” which likely explains a fair bit of the tension we’re seeing build right now over reverting to traditional offices. It’s worth examining to what degree the built environment has shaped the personalities of those typically promoted into your leadership. Your middle management extroverts’ cravings for constant interaction should not be allowed to constrain the productivity of your remote line worker introverts. (
Unfortunately, even with 18 months of evidence of successful remote work, there is still a stigma to working from home. But it has evolved. The prior resistance that productivity and efficiency would falter has been disproven. Now the resistance comes from individual fears, whether conscious or not. Organizations are human constructs and like all institutions are comprised of the habits of their members. A particular category of members, middle management, has lost their sense of purpose. Without tangible daily interaction with subordinates, Covid-19 has pulled back the wizard’s curtain and the emperor has no clothes! With no line of sight to direct reports, how are they to ensure TPS reports get the new cover sheets, Peter works on the weekend, and Milton stays in his closet with his stapler? 
Jeanie Sell Latz, J.D.is a member of the Bloch Executive MBA faculty at the University of Missouri – Kansas City. Dr. Latz completed her J.D. at the University of Missouri – Columbia and has served as executive vice president, chief legal officer and corporate secretary of Great Plains Energy, a Fortune 1000 publicly traded holding company. She currently consults in the area of corporate governance and holds the distinction of Governance Fellow, granted by the National Association of Corporate Directors.