Shifting power in philanthropy: our three-year journey

Charities and philanthropic foundations can play a big role in tackling major social issues and disrupting inequity. But it takes work. If we don’t examine our structures and systems, we can end up propping up power imbalances.

Systemic inequity and white supremacy are deeply rooted in many sectors and institutions, including philanthropy. Community foundations like ours take time to change, but the outcomes are worth the effort.

In August 2020, Vancouver Foundation made our first public commitment to advancing racial justice. As we witnessed increasing levels of racialized violence, we felt it was time to take a more active role in tackling systemic racism. That commitment built on the work of our youth engagement initiatives and their focus on Indigenous youth and racialized immigrants, refugees and newcomers.

In advancing racial justice, we’ve also advanced justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) and begun to push back against today’s power dynamics in philanthropy. That push takes the shape of more than 100 new practices and initiatives that have changed how we grant, hire, invest, engage, and tell our story.

Vancouver Foundation will continue to shift power in philanthropy and reduce inequity through philanthropy. Making things right for and with marginalized communities is an ongoing journey. We’re committed to staying with this work as long as it takes and will continue to navigate the tension between doing things quickly and doing things sustainably.

One thing remains clear to us: philanthropy has a huge role to play in shifting power. Vancouver Foundation’s 120 employees, advisors, and board members are working together to change our systems to become a place where Indigenous, Black and racialized people can thrive.

We can’t do this work alone. We are grateful to the community advisors, sector peers, and others who have informed and supported our journey, and commit that this is not the end of the road for us -. We are actively thinking about what our next commitments to shift power and how to turn them into action.

Learning 

We’ve learned so much this year on how systemic racism affects different communities. We’ve also taken these learnings to start redesigning how we do things at Vancouver Foundation to begin dismantling racism. 

• Indigenous cultural safety consultant Len Pierre led us through six hours of training on Indigenous cultural safety, anti-racism, and what meaningful allyship looks like.

• Our colleague Njamba Koffi, Manager, Partnerships, led us through an Anti-Black Racism training session on his experiences with anti-Black racism, and what meaningful allyship looks like with the Black community.

• Our JEDI Committee (Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee) compiled a “JEDI Library” containing a list of vetted resources tailored to our employees. This library is now part of our onboarding for new employees.

• Our Grants & Community Initiatives departments, VPs and CEO took the Conscious Use of Power training by Inner Activist. The Grants & Community Initiatives department also took this training separately.

• Our IT director took the Equity Essentials for Philanthropy Tech course.

• Our communications team learned to write and speak in plain language, with an anti-oppression framework.

• Our communications team learned about web content accessibility guidelines, how people with screen readers navigate our website, and how to write effective alt-text from Accessibrand, an agency led and staffed by people with disabilities.

Learning also extends beyond training sessions. We also started learning more about the makeup of the people who carry out our work… 

• We learned about the demographic makeup of our employees, board, and volunteers by gathering data about race and gender. We’ll publish this report later this year. 

…and made sure to extend our learnings far and wide: 

• Senior leaders in the Engagement and GCI departments presented our learnings with community foundations across the world about advancing Indigenous Priorities as a settler-created community foundation.

• The IT team took several training courses about ethics in data and shared it back with our community foundation peers.

• CEO presented to employers in BC about how we’re advancing equity and inclusion in the workplace. 

Partnering with Foundation for Black Communities 

The Foundation for Black Communities (FFBC) is the first foundation in Canada focused solely on investing in Black communities. Building on a $1 million grant we offered to seed their work last year, we became FFBC’s Allied Public Foundation Partner. We wanted to support them with not only money, but time and energy as well. 

• Our VP, Grants & Community Initiatives, temporarily moved over to FFBC to help them secure the right to administer $200 million in federal funding through the Black Communities Endowment Fund.

• Helped FFBC to build the skills to invest their endowment independently.

• Investigated what sharing administrative platforms, like our grant making platform, would look like 

Advocacy 

• Influenced federal laws to ease around granting to grassroots organizations (aka non-qualified donees) through our CEO’s work on the ACCS.

• Changed the Vancouver Foundation Act to enable us to keep granting even when markets slump and our investments don’t generate returns, so that we can better serve communities that are disproportionately affected by times of adversity.

• Strengthened our network of racialized youth who learned to create policy change through our LEVEL Youth Policy Program with a new alumni engagement circle.

Making grantmaking more equitable  

Grantmaking is at the heart of all we do, and we’re working to lower barriers to applying and receiving money, as well as nurturing relationships with our grant-seekers that are based in trust. 

Supporting non-qualified donees  

In Canada, regulations make it easy for organizations that issue tax receipts to also receive charitable dollars. These are called “qualified donees.” Laws are changing slowly to allow funders like Vancouver Foundation to more easily grant to non-qualified donees (non-QDs).  

• Influenced federal laws to ease around granting to grassroots organizations (aka non-qualified donees) through our CEO’s work on the Advisory Committee on the Charitable Sector.

• Tested paying out grants to non-QDs for the first time under new CRA regulations.

Reducing barriers to grant applicants  

• Two grant programs tested different models for compensating grant-seekers applying for a grant.

• Two grant programs offered closed call applications for previously successful grantees so that people did not have to re-apply.

• Two grant programs introduced oral applications as an option alongside written applications.

• All open-call grant programs that Vancouver Foundation directs offers multi-year funding.

• One grant program tested a low-barrier application relying on randomized selection through an equity lens to reduce reviewer bias. This led to many organizations applying to a Vancouver Foundation grant for the first time who have never applied with us before.

• One grant program prioritized funding organizations with an annual revenue of less than $1 million, with the idea that more orgs at this size tend to be led by equity-denied communities 

Making Indigenous Priorities more equitable 

• An all-Indigenous advisory council developed the criteria for the new Thriving Indigenous Systems Fund (TISF).

• Grant design of TISF is rooted in feedback solicited from grant-seekers, community advisors, Elders, and people from Indigenous-led organizations and land-based nations to discuss challenges they face and to inform this new grant program.

• Built up Indigenous capacity on the team leading Indigenous priorities.

Engaging donors on giving with a generous spirit 

The COVID-19 pandemic showed why charities need to be ready to respond to new needs. That’s why we’re encouraging our donors to give in a way that makes their dollars go further as well, by promoting the importance of trust and giving without placing burdensome limitations on how recipients can use the fund. 

• Promoting the idea of giving unrestricted funding to charities while also committing to giving over multiple years to reduce fundraising efforts.

• Donors granting from their funds now must specially request if they’d like their grant to support a specific project, rather than it being the default option.

• Launched the Granting Hub to activate more donors to give unrestricted funding to charities serving equity-denied communities. 

Building a more inclusive workplace 

It’s not enough to diversify our workplace. It’s important to ensure everyone feels like they belong and are included.  

• We offer one starting salary instead of a salary band for new job applicants. Salary bands are still in place for current employees.

• We base our starting salary and salary bands on general industry data instead of only not-for-profit data. Research shows that workplaces tend to undervalue and underpay positions dominated by women and racialized people – which applies to the not-for-profit sector.

• Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) is a competency included in all job descriptions to reflect that it is considered in employee performance reviews.

• We encourage hiring managers to remove or lower education criteria in job postings if it is not necessary to the job function.

• We’ve piloted a flexible four-day work week (at full pay) to understand the benefits of more time off for mental health and overall well-being at our workplace.

• Integrated JEDI library and JEDI training into New Hire Orientation, so all team members will have a base level of knowledge of anti-racism and allyship and the historical roots and current impacts of racism and colonization.

• Launched first revision of Ethical Reporting policy, engaging all employees in a tabletop exercise, gathering input to ensure the reporting mechanisms take into account all perspectives with the aim of creating a safe space for everyone.

Building a more diverse and inclusive board & volunteer program 

Having a diverse range of perspectives at the board level ensures that we have a fuller picture of the present and future.  

• Our board and standing committees’ responsibilities now center right relations with Indigenous communities and JEDI in its work to advance decolonization, Indigenization, equity for marginalized communities, anti-racism, and feminism. We revised the Board and Committees’ Terms of Reference to formalize this.

• We revised our board recruitment materials to attract candidates who can consider the root causes of complex systemic challenges such as racism, as well as candidates who are involved with community at the grassroots level.

• We added JEDI and reconciliation as competencies to a chart that outlines all important competencies to have at the board, and who possesses those competencies.

• Our board volunteered their demographic information to support our work in understanding the gender and racial makeup of our board.

Communications that includes more people 

• We assembled a creative team to produce the 2022 Magazine that was not only diverse, but offered meaningful representation of the communities we serve and grant to. Nearly all of our creative budget for this publication went to racialized creatives.

• We developed a framework and calendar to guide us on the occasions throughout the year that we mark. These occasions were chosen with the communities we work with in mind.

• A growing number of our communications materials are produced in plainer language with an anti-oppression framework so that our audiences understand what we do, what we offer, and how to take action.

• We redesigned vancouverfoundation.ca by consulting with our audiences: donors, professional advisors, and grant-seekers, including racialized grant-seekers.

• We’ve improved web content accessibility standards for both vancouverfoundation.ca and our donor portal (The Hub), with a focus on Deaf and hard of hearing people, people with low vision, and screen reader users. 

Aligning our assets and systems with our purpose 

Behind the scenes of our work with donors and grantmaking, we have several teams that create and maintain the systems that underpin the flow of money through Vancouver Foundation. These are teams that often rely on systems outside of Vancouver Foundation, philanthropy, and the non-profit world to serve us.  

Investing our endowment 

Like many other philanthropic foundations, we earn income by investing our endowment in the market. An ethical issue that we grapple with is to ensure we aren’t contributing to the very problems we’re trying to solve, so we’re making continuous strides towards more responsible investing practices. 

• Most of our investment managers are signatories of UNPRI (the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investing).

• All new gifts we receive are invested in our Socially Responsible Investing stream, except upon request. This SRI stream focuses on fossil fuel free and high quality sustainable companies with strong consideration in environmental, social, and governance factors.

• As a SHARE partner, we’ve signed eight letters asking companies we invest in to engage more deeply on topics like human rights, climate transition and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

• As a SHARE partner, we signed onto the he Investors for Racial Equity Project which moves financial capital to advance racial equity in Canada’s financial and corporate sectors. This project’s premise is that financial capital is a contributing factor to racial oppression.

• We’re testing out a new Impact Investing stream first using money from our own budget. This new stream will focus on investing in companies with strong social and environmental impact. 

Managing our finances 

• We balance the needs of all people and organizations with a stake in our activities and decisions, including grant-seekers, when deciding on our distribution rate and how much of our endowment we spend or save each year.

• Our new stabilization ratio helps balance mobilizing funds to solve urgent social issues and saving for future needs. The stabilization ratio generally refers to the market value of our endowment divided by the capital that was contributed.