Foundation News

By Ting Lee, Grants and Compliance Manager, and Henry Holmes, Grants and Compliance Director

On March 19-21, we were fortunate to attend the PEAK Grantmaking Conference in Orlando, Florida for three days of exploring new ideas to apply toward the Sierra Club Foundation’s grantmaking practice. For the first time since the conference started 13 years ago, a diversity, equity, and inclusion learning track was included in the program, and this commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion showed at all three of the plenary sessions. This was a welcome conversation and learning experience to share with grantmaking colleagues from around the country given Sierra Club Foundation’s own commitment to equity, inclusion, and justice.

The opening plenary kicked off the conference with Philip Li of the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation and Pia Infante of The Whitman Institute, moderated by Kerry Medek of the GHR Foundation, discussing trust-based philanthropy. Grantmaking processes often choose "winners" and "losers" based on who knows the system best and do not reflect values that foundations vow to uphold – values like trust, respect, and humility. With trust-based philanthropy, funders center the grantees and not their own needs. They take time to learn about grantees rather than requiring grantees to spend time and resources helping funders understand them. They maintain open lines of communication and transparency about processes and decisions. They provide flexible, sustained funding and support grantees beyond the grant check. At the end of the day, trust comes from funders and grantees seeing each other as partners. Sierra Club Foundation strives to uphold this trust-based approach to philanthropy when making grants to international partners in places like India and Indonesia, as well as domestically as we increase our grant support for partners, allies, and frontline grassroots organizations working to achieve climate justice in the United States.

The lunch plenary on the second day examined the state of philanthropy during the Trump administration. The panel, moderated by Aiko Bethea of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Institute, included C’Ardiss Gardner Gleser of the Satterberg Foundation, Marcus McGrew of The Kresge Foundation, Hadar Susskind of the Council on Foundations, and Edgar Villanueva of the Schott Foundation. People in the U.S. are facing threats to environmental justice, women’s rights, racial justice, immigrants’ rights, Indigenous rights, and human rights, and philanthropy is feeling the effects of policy changes that impact giving to nonprofits and federal spending on social and environmental programs. While many foundations are concerned about building the resilience of communities in these times, we have a lot to learn from communities that exemplify resilience, having survived and thrived over centuries of colonization. Marginalized and at-risk communities do not need more saviors; they need partners who give as much as they receive in the knowledge, skills, experience, and grassroots power of the people in those communities.

The closing plenary with Kelly Brown of Viewpoint Consulting, formerly with D5, and Satonya Fair of the Annie E. Casey Foundation addressed using demographic data to improve equitable practices. This is multi-faceted and includes funders surveying their own boards and staffs, the communities they are serving, and the organizations that are serving those communities. By collecting and analyzing demographic data, funders can understand whether their leadership and their grantees’ leadership reflect the characteristics of their constituents and identify gaps in who they are serving. In the environmental field, the Green 2.0 initiative is a vital catalyst for increasing racial diversity across mainstream environmental organizations, foundations, and government agencies.

In between the plenaries were many sessions on values-based and equitable practices. One highlight was a session on participatory grantmaking. While many funders may consult with the communities they serve to inform their grantmaking, participatory grantmaking provides representatives of those communities with the ultimate decision-making power over funding decisions. This reinforces the fact that people who have historically received “charity” have power and agency to make their own decisions. Grantmakers all over the world who have started up more recently and are unburdened by traditional systems prove it can done successfully. It was recognized that such an approach is very people and time intensive and a "one size fits all" approach is not appropriate for every grantmaker. However, the value of finding appropriate mechanisms to include community perspectives, even if not a fully participatory process, is something to which all grantmakers should pay attention.

The Sierra Club Foundation’s operational values statement was developed a few years ago based on our existing practices, and we reflect them in specific ways in our work. After the conference, we are inspired to review how our values of collaboration, integrity, and stewardship can be reflected across all of our grantmaking processes. But, we value so much more than that, too. In 2013, the Sierra Club Board of Directors adopted a vision for the Sierra Club, whose charitable environmental programs we sponsor, to become a multicultural organization, and the Sierra Club Foundation Board of Directors passed a resolution in support shortly afterward. If we want to see a more equitable, inclusive, and just environmental movement, we can start by ensuring we reflect these values in our own practices. That is a commitment Sierra Club Foundation is proud to make and to practice.