What can philanthropy learn from the past year?

• In The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Tonya Allen, Kathleen Enright, and Hilary Pennington lay out ways for foundations to commit to change, including addressing inequities within their own institutions, treating grantees as partners in creating change, and exploring collaboration.
• On NCRP’s blog, Siobhan Davenport gives suggestions for philanthropy to "recover right" from COVID-19 by committing to multi-year funding, focusing on the root causes of inequities, and shifting the existing power structures in the sector.
• In Nonprofit Quarterly, Dax-Devlon Ross explores differences between the ways established and emerging leaders in the sector view racial equity work and how those differences can be bridged on both sides. Suggestions include having sector “elders” help emerging leaders better understand the history of the sector and encouraging emerging leaders to create better boundaries.

Want to talk more about how philanthropy can learn from this past year? Check out the breakout session Building Back Better: Creative Solutions to Embed Equity and Shift Power at the 2021 EPIP National Virtual Conference.

Recent Reports from The Sector

• The Nathan Cummings Foundation’s Values Proposition report looks back at how the foundation has put its commitment to mission-aligned impact investing into practice and shares a key finding: it is possible to cultivate impact without sacrificing financial returns.
• ORS Impact’s report Measuring Narrative Change looks at the ways in which narrative can be used to create change, and gives a framework for using language, stories, messaging, and other narrative elements to move the needle on important issues in both the short and long term.

Resources from EPIP Chapters

• EPIP Boston shared a CEP blog post from Grace Nicolette on the need for philanthropy to address its erasure of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) voices by taking steps including avoiding viewing AAPIs as a monolith and learning more about the history of anti-AAPI racism in America.
• EPIP LA shared guidance from Hollaback! on what bystanders can do when witnessing harassment, featuring the 5 Ds - distract, delegate, document, delay, and direct.
• EPIP DC highlighted the importance of collective care in supporting social movements and shared this article from openDemocracy on why care for activists must be centered in our funding of social movements. (Learn more about collective care at the EPIP 2021 National Conference with breakout sessions on healing justice and our Collective Loss, Collective Care plenary session).