This article is, with publisher permission, adapted from a more extensive journal article, “Fight and Build: Solidarity economy as ontological politics,” published this year by Sustainability Science, volume 17, pp. 1207-1221.

In early 2018, more than 100 people gathered for an event on building the solidarity economy in a local union hall in downtown Boston. The event was hosted by the newly formed Center for Economic Democracy (CED) and allied community groups. Two days earlier, about 50 organizers, activists, and educators were 90 miles west, in Springfield, having initial conversations about developing a statewide solidarity economy network.

Both events—as well as two others held in Amherst and Worcester—involved Kali Akuno, co-founder of Cooperation Jackson in Mississippi, who was brought to Massachusetts to engage with folks involved in solidarity economy activity. Towards the end of the evening, Akuno asked, “Do you have a shared analysis…of where you want to go and a shared program and strategy of how you are going to get there?”

In social justice movement spaces in the United States, analysis typically refers to a type of “power analysis” that assesses relations of power among decision makers, local institutions, community members, and perhaps flows of capital. A type of analysis that community organizing groups in Massachusetts have been adept at (see: Loh and Erlich 2021, Pastor et al. 2010), it has led to many movement victories. Yet, movements rooted in critique often remain wedded to existing systems, leaving little space to imagine ways to build beyond those systems.

Akuno and Cooperation Jackson brought an example of how fighting against the world as it is could be strategically joined with building transformative, solidarity economies that could, as Akuno explained, help to move us beyond “the protest model that we had been invested in for the past 30 years.”

Solidarity Economics as Transformative Politics

Solidarity economies are most often associated with ethical, cooperative economic practices, like local currencies, community land trusts, community gardens, fair trade, and cooperatives. These practices and their associated values—cooperation, sustainability, justice, interdependence, autonomy—make possible a transformative vision. Here, we focus less on economics than politics—exploring the solidarity economy’s potential to uncover and/or advance ways of being that are unrecognized or suppressed by the dominant reality (Lyon-Callo and Shear 2019).

As Audre Lorde (1984) famously said, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” However, we also find synergy with Walsh and Mignolo (2018), who suggest that transcending, in addition to dismantling, is an important strategy. In this sense, the solidarity economy is not about “the economy,” but rather about imagining, building, fighting for, and defending the conditions from which we can realize and embrace our interdependence with other people, beings, and planetary life systems.

The Limits of Conventional Thinking

Today’s global capitalism represents itself as the only possible reality. Bodies, minds, practices, and relations are subjected to and assembled into an order that shapes what is desirable, actionable, and possible, forming the terrain upon and limits through which social change takes place.

Ecological destruction and historic inequalities stem from much more than moral failings, government inaction, lack of knowledge, or elite interests. Woven through the fabric of reality itself are centuries of colonial violence, capital accumulation, patriarchy, and white supremacy.

Breaking out of this paradigm is not easy; it involves more than a shift in belief or subjectivity and something deeper than ideological struggle. It involves breaking free of the notion that there is only a single reality—one world.

A transformative politics seeks to go beyond not just capitalism, but the idea of economic development itself. Instead of alternative development, it seeks alternatives to development.

But the current one-world paradigm is losing coherence, as the edges and foundations of other worlds—already here or still on the horizon—become more visible. The Zapatistas of Chiapas, Mexico, describe their vision as a “world in which many worlds fit.” In the US, other worlds, other ways of being, can be clearly seen in Indigenous struggles to protect sacred land from enclosures and extractions (Whyte 2017); the calls by climate justice activists to “change everything” (Klein 2014); ongoing cooperative survival practices and liberation strategies (Nembhard 2014); the freedom dreaming (Kelley 2002, Love 2019) of frontline communities; the efforts of community organizers to invoke relational and emergent practices (Brown 2017, Sandler 2019); and the abolitionist, intersectional struggles for Black lives (Gilmore 2021).

Three Political Orientations

The political orientations that our work often takes can trap us in a one-world mindset—or lead us beyond it. The reformist (or neoliberal) orientation remains rooted in capitalist growth models—for example, enterprise zones to attract investment and create jobs. A social justice approach recognizes systemic shortcomings and promotes alternative ways to do economic development, such as hiring preferences and living wages. A transformative politics seeks to go beyond not just capitalism, but the idea of economic development itself. Instead of alternative development, it seeks alternatives to development (Escobar 2018, 2020). That is, it aims to advance other worlds that are not beholden to capitalist ideas and categories, where we can co-create different realities rooted in interdependence and solidarity.

How might solidarity economies empower communities to lead their own transformations towards other worlds?

Among advocates of solidarity economy, all three tendencies exist. The phrase, “solidarity economy,” can describe a coherent economic system that would replace capitalism, or it can refer to cooperative economic practices that have always already existed. For some, the phrase indicates economic reform and for others radical transformation. In some locations, solidarity economy is institutionalized and recognized by the state but in others involves civil society and informal practices. Common to all efforts is a politics that seeks economic justice and advances relations, institutions, and practices that put people and planet over profit. These include “things like cooperatives…community land trusts, alternative currencies, time banks, and so on—that privilege cooperative rather than competitive, behaviors, that are democratic rather than hierarchical, that seek to bring together rather than individualize, and that reveal rather than conceal sociality and interdependence” (Shear 2019).

Much is at stake in how this movement assembles and advances. What and who does it include or exclude? How and by whom are decisions being made? How might solidarity economies empower communities to lead their own transformations?

From a Matter of Concern to a Matter of Care

To explore how the solidarity economy movement might move towards a transformative politics, it can be helpful to look at two registers. First, solidarity economy activists expose the capitalist economy as a matter of concern (Latour 2004), highlighting diverse economies and economic possibilities, but within existing structures. In a second register, the solidarity economy becomes a matter of care (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017), attending to how relations and values are enacted and maintained. Here, activists orient towards a transformative politics, where the goal of building a particular “economy” forms part of a more fundamental effort to create the conditions in which communities can realize their wellbeing through solidarity, autonomy, and interdependence.

Recent critiques of the community land trust (CLT) movement reveal how some trusts have become more of a tool for individual home ownership and affordable housing production than building community and changing relations between people and land (DeFilippis et al. 2019, DeFilippis et al. 2018). The solidarity economy remains in the grips of dominant politics to the extent that it over focuses on the growing, connecting, and scaling up of institutions and value chains (Hudson 2020). Pursuing scale at the expense of solidarity economy values and relations can leave the movement vulnerable to cooptation by the state (Sutton 2019) or multi-national corporations (RIPESS 2015).

Avoiding these pitfalls brings us to the solidarity economy as a “matter of care.” Care involves attention to the arrangement and doing of all the things necessary to maintain, transform, or cultivate particular worlds.

Fight and Build: Solidarity Economy Movement in Massachusetts

Massachusetts is a wealthy state with some of the highest levels of inequality and racial segregation in the United States. Our efforts have strong bases in Boston, Worcester, and Springfield—the state’s three largest cities. Boston is the academic and financial center of the New England region, with a dense network of nonprofits, funders, community groups, and social movement infrastructure. Worcester and Springfield are, to varying degrees, post-industrial cities and have less extensive networks of nonprofits and movement infrastructure.

Many US solidarity economy activists have labeled their approach fight and build. Fight and build can suggest a dual orientation: attending to the world as it is and a transformative politics that is building other worlds. Importantly, a discourse of fight and build has centered the needs, interests, and knowledge of frontline communities, bringing a social justice politics to the solidarity economy.

Building the Solidarity Economy Initiative

In late 2014, eight community base-building organizations in Massachusetts (mostly in Boston) came together with several progressive funders to envision and develop strategies towards solidarity economy. Over a year-long design process, the cohort held quarterly half-day sessions to build “shared analysis around the need to drive political, economic and cultural transformation in tandem, in order to move towards a shared vision for an equitable and abundant future that does not replicate capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy.” Over the past five years, the grassroots cohort has grown to include nearly a dozen organizations, and the quarterly sessions continue. SEI member groups have launched various solidarity economy projects, including the Boston Ujima Project, the Chinatown Community Land Trust, the Greater Boston Community Land Trust Network, (Matahari Women’s Worker Center, and the Center for Cooperative Development and Solidarity, which supports Latinx immigrant-led cooperatives in East Boston.

SEI was set up as a learning space, prompted by recognition that grassroots strategies for policy change often failed to achieve transformation. As CED Executive Director and SEI co-founder Aaron Tanaka has often stated, “We can’t co-op our way out of capitalism.”

This space of deep relationship building and radical imagining in support of world building can be simultaneously thrilling, unsettling, and challenging. Monique Tú Nguyen, Executive Director of Matahari, describes how SEI is filling the “heart space” and “practicing patience and community.”

The COVID pandemic has shown how the relationships and shared values cultivated in SEI can create conditions for transformation that go beyond politics-as-usual. With emergency aid from the City of Boston Resiliency Fund, six SEI members (along with three other community partners) formed a consortium to assemble wellness kits for families with COVID-positive members across Boston. This mutual aid project took shape quickly, as groups mobilized to respond to immediate needs. Instead of buying commercially available face masks, they sourced 2,500 masks from a newly formed sewing cooperative in East Boston.

At the same time, an emphasis on relational practices has come into tension with a mindset of economic growth. For SEI groups, which are all nonprofits, using the master’s tools means navigating the nonprofit-industrial complex (Incite 2007), in which they are tethered to and potentially constrained by their funding sources. Their efforts to birth cooperative businesses face the same exigencies of all small businesses in capitalist markets to compete and be efficient.

Yet, winning incremental reforms can create resources for building collective solidarity, which might be described as “non-reformist reforms” that create logics and rationalities that are different from those of the dominant formation (Akuno 2017: citing Gorz). SEI is approaching and embodying solidarity economy as a matter of care.

Boston Ujima Project: Envisioning New Worlds

Perhaps the clearest example of this transformative politics to emerge in Massachusetts is the Boston Ujima Project. Led by and for working-class and frontline communities of color in Boston, Ujima is an effort to build a local solidarity economy ecosystem centered around a democratically controlled investment fund. Ujima—a Kwanzaa principle meaning collective work and responsibility—is assembling an array of enterprises, philanthropic resources, cultural and education efforts, and relational, democratic decision-making practices to build a Black-led solidarity economy.

Founded in 2016, Ujima’s founding members included City Life/Vida Urbana, a housing justice organizing group; Boston Impact Initiative, a local impact investor; CERO, a Black and Latinx worker cooperative that came out of a green jobs campaign; and NAACP Boston, established in 1911 as the first chartered branch of this national racial equity organization.

Nia Evans, Executive Director at Ujima, was serving as the volunteer chair of the NAACP branch’s economic development committee when she was first introduced to the initiative. What attracted NAACP Boston to Ujima, according to Evans, was that participants had an opportunity to both invest in a development fund and vote on how it was allocated.

Ujima’s decision-making and governance structure are a critical part of its world building efforts. While the project receives capital from impact, philanthropic, and individual solidarity investors, these providers do not make decisions for Ujima. Rather, members from working-class neighborhoods of color in Boston (Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan) govern the fund and Ujima itself.

Ujima’s focus on relationship building also helps to bridge ideological differences amongst its stakeholders. Evans describes Ujima as a world-creating project. She says Ujima is “what’s next because we’re doing it. We’re trying our best to create the future.”

Concluding Thoughts

The solidarity economy movement has rapidly evolved over the last decade in Massachusetts. It reveals that the economy is diverse and dynamic, an assemblage in the making—in which practices, values, relations, and institutions beyond capitalism might be enacted.

At the same time, diverse elements of the solidarity economy are caught up in multiple political projects with differing political orientations. Just like reformist politics, a social justice politics can become mired in making policy demands on the state.

The central question for actualizing a transformative politics is how solidarity economy elements are created, assembled, and advanced. Addressing this question, we argue, is a matter of care.

In Massachusetts, as we have shown, SEI and Ujima are, in their own ways, advancing a transformative politics, though not without tensions and challenges. It is a tricky matter to use the master’s tools to assemble new worlds. SEI groups have created spaces for learning about, discussing, and practicing solidarity and advancing solidarity economy projects. Yet, they are still nonprofits, in part dependent on the grants provided by SEI’s funding partners.

That the current economic and political paradigm is losing coherence and fracturing in different ways is bringing more attention to and creating opportunities for solidarity economy activists. But the grip of the one-world order is still strong.

There are a few ways that solidarity might build new worlds.

• First, we must attend to and care for our practices and relationships.
• Second, do not confuse form with function. Structures (such as cooperatives) do not exist beyond the relations (cooperative or non-cooperative) that enact them.
• Third, be attentive to the continual slippages and ruptures in the current economic and political paradigm. These provide opportunities to advance solidarity economy principles and practice.
• Finally, we must support and learn from alternative worldviews that already exist. In these alternatives, there are many tools and concepts that can inform and strengthen solidarity economy work.

In short, solidarity economy efforts can help to build and strengthen other worlds. Non-capitalist formations like cooperatives and community land trusts propose different logics and possibilities than their capitalist counterparts, but they do not guarantee conditions and practices beyond the dominant paradigm.

Ultimately, solidarity economy movement is not about economy at all, but about the potential for solidarity economy to be part of a politics that can fight for, assemble, and advance the conditions through which communities can remake themselves.

References

Akuno, K. Build and Fight: The Program and Strategy of Cooperation Jackson. In Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi. Edited by Kali Akuno and Ajamu Nangwaya. Wakefield, QC: Daraja Press, 2017. 3-42.

Brown, AM. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017.

DeFilippis, J, Stromberg, B, and Williams, OR. “W(h)ither the community in community land trusts?” Journal of Urban Affair, 40.6 (2018), 755-769, DOI: 10.1080/07352166.2017.1361302

DeFilippis, J, et al. “On the Transformative Potential of Community Land Trusts in the United States.” Antipode 51.3 (2019), 795-817.

Escobar, A. Designs for the Pluriverse. Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Other Worlds. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2018.

Escobar, A. Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020.

Ferguson, J.  “The Uses of Neoliberalism.” Antipode, 41 (2009), 166-184.

Gilmore, RW. Change Everything: Racial Capitalism and the Case for Abolition. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2021.

Hudson, L. Building Where We Are: The Solidarity-Economy Response to Crisis. In Pandemic and the Crisis of Capitalism, a Rethinking Marxism dossier. Summer 2020.

INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence. Eds. The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2007.

Kelley, RDG. Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2002.

Klein, N. This Changes Everything: Capitalism v. The Climate. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.

Latour, Bruno. “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry. 30.2 (2004), 225-248.

Loh, P and Erlich, M.  “Community Labor United: Building Bridges in Greater Boston.” In Louise Simmons and David Reynolds. Eds. Seeking Social Justice and Progressive Power: The Partnership for Working Families Cities. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2021.

Lorde, A. “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press, 1984. 110-113.

Love, BL. We Want to do More than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2019.

Lyon-Callo, V and Shear, B. “Introduction to the Special Issue. Academic Practice and the Ends of Possibility: Negotiating Power and Enacting New Worlds Through Teaching and Research.” In Collaborative Anthropologies, 12.1-2 (2019), 1-23.

Nembhard, JG. Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014.

Pastor, M, Benner, C, and Matsuoka, M. This Could be the Start of Something Big. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010.

Puig de la Bellacasa, M. Matters of Care. Speculative Ethics in More than Human Worlds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017.

RIPESS. Global Vision for a Social Solidarity Economy: Convergences and Differences in Concepts, Definitions and Frameworks. Intercontinental Network for the Promotion of Social Solidarity Economy. 2015.

Sandler, J.  “Critical Relational Solidarity: Collectivist and Transformative Knowledge Practices in and Beyond the US Academy.” In Academic Practice and the Ends of Possibility: Negotiating Power and Enacting New Worlds Through Teaching and Research. Special Issue of Collaborative Anthropologies, 12.1-2 (2019), 76-106.

Shear, BW. “Towards an Ontological Politics of Collaborative Entanglement: Teaching and Learning as Methods Assemblage.” In Academic Practice and the Ends of Possibility: Negotiating Power and Enacting New Worlds Through Teaching and Research. Special Issue of Collaborative Anthropologies, 12.1-2 (2019), 50-75.

Sutton, SA. “Cooperative cities: Municipal support for worker cooperatives in the United States.” Journal of Urban Affairs (2019). DOI: 10.1080/07352166.2019.1584531

Walsh, C and Mignolo, W. On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018.

Whyte, KP. “The Dakota Access Pipeline, Environmental Injustice, and U.S. Colonialism.” Red Ink 19.1 (2017), 154-169.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

This article is part of Black Food Sovereignty: Stories from the Field, a series co-produced by Frontline Solutions and NPQ. This series features stories from Black food sovereignty leaders who are working to transform the food system at the local level and explores how these leaders are addressing critical issues at the intersection of food sovereignty, racial and economic justice, and community.

How does a community come together to build community wealth and advance Black food sovereignty? It is not easy. But it helps to build on the legacy of those who came before.

In one sense, the organization that I support is new. A little over two years ago, Black food advocates came together in Raleigh to form the Black Farmers’ Hub. Our mission was to make fresh food affordable to the community and support local farmers in the process. We provide food for pick up or delivery, and all our produce and products are sourced from local Black farmers and businesses. In Southeast Raleigh, where we operate a small grocery store, the US Department of Agriculture has estimated that 30 percent of residents live more than a mile from their closest supermarket.

A Story from Our Ancestors

A century ago, Black land ownership in the US was at an all-time high. Hundreds of thousands of Black Americans owned 15 million acres of land. But the gains of the half century after emancipation were reversed in the following 50 years, as Black people lost land due to fraudulent tactics by government entities, banks, and individuals.

Here’s one of many stories of Black land loss. In fact, it is my own story—or, rather, the story of my great, great grandparents. It begins in the small town of Wilson Mills, NC.

In the 1880s, Ambert (Armitto Turner Sanders) and Hardy Sanders, both formerly enslaved, were able to save up enough money to buy a parcel of the very land where they had spent decades sharecropping. The farmland had been used as an orchard and vineyard. The family worked it diligently, earning a living by cultivating produce and making fresh molasses from sugarcane, with a mule being one of their greatest farming assets.

For decades, the 39-acre tract was a sacred space for the Sanders family to come together after a long day’s work and celebrate special occasions. The farming business came easy to them as their enslaved ancestors had passed down to them techniques and business practices. In time, with growing expertise and drive, the family expanded their farming business, selling tobacco, raising hogs, and developing other farm goods. The family business did well and was a force in the community.

The Struggle to Avoid Land Theft

That is, until tragedy struck. Just before the Great Depression, Hardy Sanders passed away from natural causes, leaving Ambert to take on farming responsibilities along with her adult children. It wasn’t long before Ambert felt the impact of her husband’s passing. Finances started dwindling, and it became more difficult to keep up with the farm’s demands.

During the Great Depression, Ambert’s great grandsons, Zelb and Raymond Hunter, took on the challenge of solving a community’s need for food. The brothers innovatively cut out the back of an old vehicle and attached it to a mule, increasing crop yield. As people began to migrate from rural to urban areas in droves, the pair traveled to Raleigh, NC, to ensure that seniors and those in need received healthy produce.

At the time, North Carolina was primarily an agricultural state, and the banking community knew well the value of its rich soil. The state government, local banks, and more than a few white residents were on a mission to fraudulently—and sometimes forcibly—remove Black families from their property.

The Sanders family were hardly exempt from these pressures, as our family archives document. Among these files are court documents from Johnston County and article clippings from the Smithfield Herald, which indicate that Ambert Sanders had a dispute, and her land would be repossessed after her death. The matriarch of the family, “Aunt” Ambert had lived 60 years of her life on that 39-acre tract, working, raising nine children, and rearing numerous grand and great grandchildren. She spoke about the loss of her land in an article in the Smithfield Herald, in which she was touted as one of the oldest Smithfield residents.

Another Herald article (“Aunt Amber files Civil Suit at age 103 to Regain Land,” January 26, 1940) stated that when Ambert walked into the courtroom to file suit against SH Massey, a local merchant, she was confident and steadfast. The article also noted that Massey provided a financial document signed by Ambert, but as Ambert was unable to read, she did not know what she was signing. Ambert passed in 1946 as a supercentenarian (“‘Aunt’ Amber Sanders Dies at the Age 110,” January 11, 1946),¹ believing that her mediation efforts had returned a portion of her land to her family, but most of the 39 acres was lost, and what remained was repossessed after her death.

Black farmer coalitions are playing an essential role in developing a new Black community food system.

The stress of land loss led to family disputes and disrupted family dynamics. Ambert’s great-grandson, Zelb Hunter, entered the military and fought in World War II. He was one of many men in the family who left the farm to fight for the country. His return from the war was a tough one. His family went their separate ways, and as he could not find work locally, he migrated to the Boston neighborhood of Roxbury. Years later, however, he moved back to Raleigh and began to grow food on a small plot of land that he purchased in 1953. Zelb Hunter continued to bring his produce and that of fellow farmers to Southeast Raleigh, providing fresh food options for 90 years.

What happened to my ancestors is just one example of the historical injustices Black farmers have faced.

A New Black Community Food System Emerges

Today, Black farmer coalitions are playing an essential role in developing a new Black community food system. There is a growing movement of Black farmers’ hubs and organizations in urban and rural North Carolina, a few of which are listed in Black Dollar North Carolina’s online directory. To help promote Black farmers and connect them to each other, the Black Farmer’s Hub is creating a green book.

How do Black farmers benefit from these farm hubs? Selling directly to consumers can be difficult for a small farmer, which is why most of the produce on grocery store shelves is either from a corporate farmer or a farmer marketing cooperative, such as Land O’Lakes, Sunkist, or Organic Valley.

Our goal is to continue to lend a space to the community in which land ownership and retention is the central focus.

Food hubs can help farmers make such direct sales by providing them with a place to store, pack, and wash their produce. food. If their produce cannot be sold on the wholesale market to a grocer, restaurant, or third-party buyer, they need a place to sell it; a food hub can provide guidance to Black farmers’ on how they can get their produce into grocery outlets, and it can assist farmers with meeting the federal and local government requirements and certifications they need to sell their produce commercially.

The Black Farmers’ Hub operates according to these community self-help principles and aims to provide space for Black farmers to sell their products. Our goal is to continue to lend a space to the community in which land ownership and retention is the central focus. We continue forming alliances, and a second hub about an hour north, in Warren County, is in development. A rural, Black-majority county of nearly 19,000 people, Warren has one grocery story in a 45-mile radius and, according to the US census, has a poverty rate of 22.8 percent.

Our mission, in short, is to build a platform for Black (and Brown) farmers to sell their products. This is the work not only of the Black Farmers’ Hub, but also of our many allies in the Black food justice movement.

It is long past time for Black food justice to be at the center of community economic development in the United States, especially in the South. By building a new food system, Black farmers can continue the legacy of “Aunt” Ambert Turner Sanders and so many of our ancestors.

The writer gratefully acknowledges the editorial assistance of LaTonya Andrews Hunter.

Notes

1. The Smithfield Herald refers to Ambert as “Amber.” She was variously known by both names during her life. It is also worth noting that six years passed between 1940 and 1946, yet according to the Herald, she was seven years older in 1946 than 1940. Ambert’s true date of birth is not certain. Like many born during slavery, birth records are not available.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

The following is a transcript of the video above, from our virtual magazine roundtable “Owning Our Economy, Owning Our Future.”

Sara Horowitz: We who care about the economic piece of how the democracy fits together, I feel like we’ve been wearing this shawl of impact investing and this corporate mindset that we don’t even think about. It’s like the moment that you have an idea, you have to say what the impact will be and how you will raise millions of dollars. The effect of that is that people aren’t starting things because they don’t feel that they can or have the capacity. So, it’s not just because they don’t have the money, it’s kind of shutting down a lot of activity. But I think people used to feel much freer to start things. And that kind of leads to the second thing, which is, I really think that there’s a different mindset—call it mutualism, solidarity economy, citizen sector, union movement, co-op movement—that when we look at human beings, we look at their power. We try to mobilize with their strength, their magic, and their energy. And we start with that.

But so much of the culture, I think, in the nonprofit sector, which I think can be corporate and onerous (and I say that lovingly), is that it makes us say that we have to start from a place where people are powerless. And I really feel like there’s something semiotic going on here, that we keep building these buildings on this foundation that’s not sturdy. I feel like at this moment, there is going to be a giant reframe. I think it’s really a scary moment, because we’re clinging to these things, because they feel like the old rules; when you look at anything around economics—especially around big communities, every ethnic group, every group, every Black community—every group has a way of coming together and pooling resources from hundreds of years ago, but somehow, we forget about that. I really do feel like that there’s something so important. And that’s what I’ve been really looking at, is building out this idea of a mutualist society and bringing people together who are practitioners in caring about that.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

The following is a transcript of the video above, from our webinar on “Remaking the Economy: Redefining Leadership.” View the full webinar here.

Tony Pickett: The expectation of us is somehow, we’re going to magically overcome multiple decades of oppression and bias in just the wave of the hand with very few real resources. I’ve been sort of harping on this for the last couple of years. The scale of the resources have to match the scale of the problem, and if you’re going to try to hold us to some standard of, “we’re going to base your resources on the size of your organization’s annual budget,” well, you want me to grow the organization, so why not give me the resources to allow me to do that, and not in this small incremental fashion? Because the problem is so large, and there are obstacles at every turn. I think we have to really kind of push hard to say that we need 10-, 20-year support, not 1, 2, or 3. That’s nice, but it’s a long struggle.

I’ve talked about this, that it takes a lot of patience to kind of test an approach to shift systems, shift mindsets, and really start to show demonstrations of what a different kind of approach, a different world even, a different outcome can be for communities of color. And sometimes no matter what data or proof that we have, people still don’t embrace that as a solution. They still are doubtful when you’re presenting data that shows them what success looks like. So, we’re still ourselves having to overcome, I would call it, a resistance to leaders of color actually achieving success at a large scale. It’s like we’re being held to some incremental standard, when again, we should be free to create something that we, from our experience and coming from the communities that we come from, know is part of the answer to the situation.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

Events and social movements of the past three years have spawned many efforts to advance racial justice in philanthropy, as many have written about at NPQ and elsewhere. Headlines were filled with financial commitments from different sectors to racial equity and justice. Many foundations launched racial equity-focused collaboratives and funds. Participatory grantmaking is on the rise, and powerful philanthropic institutions have made public commitments to do better.

Such actions are crucial as philanthropy’s current and historic practices have led to disparities in funding between white-led organizations and organizations led by people of color, reinforcing broader racial inequities. Progress will only be achieved, however, when funders begin measuring resource allocation across white- and BIPOC-led organizations and taking steps to ensure equitable funding.

There are a few things about racial equity in grantmaking that we know for sure:

• Historically, Black- and Brown-led nonprofits have received disproportionately low funding when compared to white-led nonprofits.
• Social impact efforts are more effective when led by individuals who reflect the populations served.
• Measurements of commitments to racial equity vary widely across nonprofit and philanthropic institutions and efforts.
• Organizations across the country lack a shared understanding of the demographics of nonprofit leadership—including their race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, and disability—making baseline comparisons of progress at scale difficult.
• In this context, according to the Center for Effective Philanthropy, 40 percent of foundation leaders have said that they are focusing on improving their demographic data collection.

You can only improve upon what you measure

Measurements of commitments to racial equity vary widely across nonprofit and philanthropic institutions and efforts.

Ensuring that Black and Brown leaders have access to philanthropy’s vast resources is central to funders’ efforts to realize equity in the nonprofit sector. The sector is a vast network of institutions, projects, and programs that provide critical social services throughout the US; today, one social-impact oriented nonprofit exists for every 200 people. Combatting historical and systemic racism in nonprofit funding requires intentionality, and this is where measurement comes into play. The nonprofit sector generally measures progress along a cycle that spans about three to four years. We try out a new program or way of operating, implement it, then look back a few years later to review our successes and failures. We apply the lessons learned to the next three to four years and repeat the cycle.

The problem with this cadence is that the world changes faster than our ability to measure progress, leading to a long trajectory of incremental change.

We must ask, “How are we doing?” several times a year rather than, “How did we do?” once every few years.

When nonprofits and funders practice real-time, data-driven strategy in a way that influences the decisions and behaviors of the people responsible for carrying out a mission, they identify and solve problems much faster. Progress toward a more racially equitable system in both grantmaking and nonprofit program delivery is one area where measuring the results of people’s decisions and behaviors as the work unfolds leads to greater impact much faster.

What does this look like in practice?

When it comes to our nation’s most urgent issues—like reducing racial disparities—nonprofits, government, and philanthropy must accelerate the pace of change. This requires asking different questions about our progress. We must ask, “How are we doing?” several times a year rather than, “How did we do?” once every few years.

In March 2020, Northeast Ohio funders established the Greater Cleveland COVID-19 Rapid Response Fund (GCCRRF), a collaborative that has provided local nonprofits with over $20 million in additional resources through a bi-weekly—or sometimes weekly—grant cycle. Early in the pandemic, it became clear that Black- and Brown-led nonprofits were having the greatest impact in on-the-ground community response. In September 2020, GCCRRF resolved to prioritize racial equity in their funding, which they defined as allocating resources to communities disproportionately affected by the pandemic—specifically Black and Brown communities served by Black- and Brown-led nonprofits.

Step 1: Measuring a commitment to racial equity in grantmaking

To do this, GCCRRF modified their funding application to include questions about the racial demographics of each nonprofit’s leadership (board, executive director, and staff) and the population served. A few months after they started collecting this data, their analysis illuminated two patterns in funding disparities between white-led and Black- and Brown-led organizations:

• White-led organizations were 15 percent more likely to receive funding from GCCRRF than Black- and Brown-led organizations.
• Overall, white-led organizations were awarded 31 percent of their requested grant amount, while Black- and Brown-led organizations received just 19 percent of their requests.

Step 2: Taking action on unconscious bias right away

During an hour-long facilitated discussion, this group created four actionable practices to reduce racial disparities in funding by 1) discontinuing the denial of funding because a program was unknown, new, or unproven; 2) providing more staff salary support for Black- and Brown-led organizations; 3) noting the racial makeup of nonprofit leadership during decision making; and 4) conducting due diligence through additional conversations with Black- and Brown-led organizations’ grant applications to fully understand the potential of their programs.

Step 3: Monitoring key indicators of disparities in funding

GCCRRF collected and analyzed data to identify how and where disparities could be or were present and decided to track two key indicators during every grant cycle: the funding rate (that is, the rate at which organizations were receiving grants relative to the number of applicants for those grants) and the amount of funds applicants requested compared to the amount of funds awarded. The following chart illustrates changes in funding rates across 18 rapid response grant cycles (over nine months).

Funding Rates: Changes Over Time

In grant cycles one through seven, white-led organizations were funded at a rate of 56 percent, while Black and Brown-led organizations were funded at a rate of only 47 percent. Once GCCRRF’s partners implemented the actionable practices described above, these grantmaking disparities began to close. Within three months of implementation, GCCRRF’s racial disparity in funding allocation between white-led and Black- and Brown-led organizations was eliminated, sending more resources to organizations led by people who represent the populations being served.

Amount Of Funds Requested Versus Funds Awarded

The preceding chart illustrates changes in the amount (in US dollars) that applicants requested compared to the amount that they were awarded during the 18 grant cycles measured. Each bar illustrates the average grant amount requested by and awarded to each group during a set of cycles. Groups are broken down into white-led, BIPOC-led, and BIPOC ED-led, with a final bar representing all organizational applicants. The diamonds illustrate the average percentage of the requested dollars that was ultimately awarded. In the section of the chart representing grant cycles 1–7, there is a significant gap between the light blue diamond (white-led) and the yellow and pink diamonds (BIPOC-led and BIPOC ED-led, respectively).

By following simple actions to reduce unconscious bias—namely, by collecting data about the racial makeup of funding recipients—GCCRRF eliminated racial disparity in their funding practices within three months of analyzing their data, changing their approach to grantmaking.

Within four months, they began to counteract historic racism in funding practices by awarding Black- and Brown-led nonprofits a greater percentage of total dollars requested than awarded to white-led organizations—a large step toward achieving equitable grantmaking.

Step 4: Realize the impact of a data-driven approach

GCCRRF’s work shows that philanthropy can measure its commitment to equity and use data to close racial disparities. In this case, Black- and Brown-led nonprofits became more likely to receive funding—and more of it. As a direct result of eliminating racial disparity in grantmaking, such organizations saw a 21.5 percent improvement in their likelihood of being funded and an 18 percent increase in the total amount awarded relative to their initial request. A more equitable allocation of resources resulted in about a 20 percent increase in total funds allocated to Black- and Brown-led nonprofits.

This work changed the culture in many of Cleveland’s grantmaking institutions, which likewise began to track and measure their allocation of resources across white-led and Black- and Brown-led nonprofits. “The data helped us examine our assumptions and unconscious biases and adjust our approach. This is one small step of the many we need to take to address inequities in our community,” said Jeanine Gergel, a consultant at Foundation Management Services in Cleveland. By regularly collecting and analyzing their data in this way, Cleveland funders can set tangible benchmarks, meet measurable goals, and build traction towards equitable grantmaking. “Philanthropy should not go back to the way it worked before,” said Dale Anglin, Vice President of Programs at the Cleveland Foundation. “If we’re doing grantmaking three years from now the way we did it three years before, we didn’t learn anything.”

Lessons for the field

GCCRRF’s collaborative work offers many lessons for philanthropic organizations. Looking ahead, funders can:

• Start by measuring their commitment to racial equity in grantmaking. You don’t need to wait for a baseline or all the data in the world—get started by looking at what you are doing now.
• Stop measuring their commitment to racial equity based on the demographics of the populations served by their grantees alone and start measuring the demographics of leadership.
• Implement practices to eliminate unconscious bias in grantmaking by:
  1. Getting to know Black and Brown nonprofit leaders
  2. Investing more heavily in operating support for Black- and Brown-led organizations
  3. Creating a culture that encourages equitable distribution of resources in day-to-day decisions by noting the racial demographics of nonprofit leadership during decision-making conversations with staff and boards.
• Be intentional about establishing key indicators of funding disparities and monitor them every time you make grants. Turn your grants management data into insights by setting up dashboards to automatically calculate and monitor progress while reducing the burden of frequent data analysis.
• Be humble about your shortcomings. Chances are that when you start measuring resource allocation—who’s receiving resources and how much—you are going to find disparities. You can only improve upon what you measure.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.