webinar, coronavirus response, link up future and my friends, I'm Sherilyn, program manager, grant makers in the arts. This webinar will be live streamed on the GIA website. For participants who are deaf, hard of hearing or request accommodation, live captioning and ASL interpretation will be available via the live stream. The links for these have been provided to the left of your screen in the notes section. This is our second coronavirus response webinar and we have seen immense energy from funders around flexibility and trust over the past few months. The national staff was limited to no requirements for application, repurposing current grant program boards and centering experiences for their grantees. These elements of rapid response can inform structural changes for how we can operate in the future if we are committed to long term change. We're glad to have Randy Engstrom, director of Seattle office of arts and culture, Daris Johnson, current director of arts at the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Dana Hauoka-Cheng, executive director of justice funders, and Justin Lin, principal consultant of local LLC. We are calling for and working toward a more liberated future of grant making. And on this webinar, we will explore what is necessary to reimagine systems, power, and practice in response to this conduct and ongoing crisis of racial inequities. We're glad to have all of these presenters joining us today. The presentation, there will be an opportunity for you to submit your responses to questions. Please do so in the Q&A box to the bottom of your screen. There will also be an opportunity for you to write one central entry, type of writing to write for this activity. And at the very end of the presentation, I will be joining again to facilitate the Q&A. With that, I will turn it over to our presenters. Welcome Dana, Justin, Sharnita, and Randy. Dana, why don't you get us started? Thanks so much, Sherilyn. And hello, everyone. This is Dana from Justice Funders. Thank you all for welcoming me into your home offices. Today's, just so you know, I'm participating from unceded Ohlone land in what is also known as San Jose, California. So let's get some audience participation going here. Today's webinar is focused on systems for justice. Before we get to that in the chat, I'd like to invite folks to type in your responses to the following question. What systems does institutional philanthropy perpetuate? So folks could chat in their responses to that. Hi to those who've just joined, if you can, in the Q&A box, please type in your response to the question on the screen. What systems does institutional philanthropy perpetuate? Hopefully folks are typing in. Just in the interest of time, I'm going to advance to just say that some of the things that I think Sherilyn mentioned in her intro are things around white supremacy, the culture of begging for funds, the white savior complex. We're starting to see inaccurate meritocracy. I would also lift up economic inequality. So yes, all of you who are working in the field have a sense that these are the things that our current systems perpetuate. And so one of the things that our research at Justice funders has found is that in order to build a future that reimagined systems, we need to really understand how the current system of philanthropy got built and what structures and systems perpetuate them. So hopefully you'll see in the reading that was posted on the registration webpage for this program that one of the things we've learned through stifled generosity is that like other forms of wealth in the US, philanthropic wealth can be directly traced back to industries of extraction and exploitation, including slavery, stolen land from indigenous people and the systemic undervaluing of women's work. However, it was the Revenue Act of 1913 that we found to have codified several things. Public charities, independent foundations had been in existence for decades and had operated for the public good. This act formally started the era in which tax policy regulated philanthropic activities and incentivized charitable giving. These laws created a distinct nonprofit sector defined by their legal status. So this was the beginning of the nonprofit industrial complex in which the government had the ability to monitor and control social movements. And it also created a reliance then on state and foundation and corporate funding that has also served to derail then the power of social movements. From there we found other policies that we documented that pulled out the ways in which philanthropy has now become a tax shelter for wealth. Our colleagues at Grantmakers for Effective Organizations or GEOs has lifted up the ways in which the culture of philanthropy then is really coming from three dominant fields, academia, banking and for-profit corporations. So the ADCs of philanthropy. We see this manifest in how philanthropy privileges experts with an educational pedigree, how the job roles in philanthropy are program officers instead of loan officers where these folks are expected to perform a sense of due diligence to mitigate risk and the role of board of directors for foundations that are similar to corporations. So I start here to offer this context because while it may be easy for us to talk about what's wrong with institutional philanthropy it may not always be easy for us to say why. You'll see here that this is the just transition framework that's been articulated by the Climate Justice Alliance and Movement Generation. On the left you'll see a representation of our current economy which we would characterize as being organized around the right to accumulate wealth through the exploitation of labor, extraction of our natural resources and enforced through militarism. The just transition then is for us to begin to hospice this economy while building the one on the right which privileges people and planet thriving by being in deep relationship with one another that allow for the wealth of the productive labor of each community to remain in that community and be governed by deep democracy. As our colleague Ed Whitfield of the Fund for Democratic Community says the wealth of foundations is derived from the wealth that was created by laboring people. To us that means there is a moral imperative to give it back to the communities where it was generated and to do so in ways to ensure that it is used as a productive asset. This is why Justice Funders has decided to use our perch in philanthropy to call for a just transition in philanthropy. We believe that philanthropy must support the agency of communities to implement solutions and reimagine models for governing philanthropic resources, human financial and knowledge that redistribute wealth, democratize power and shift economic control to communities. I believe that Nadia and Sherilyn posted our link to resonance again on the registration page. So the way to begin your philanthropy just transition in whatever your starting point is is to identify ways to operationalize your values within all aspects of your organization. A just transition will look different for each philanthropy as it does for each community. Here we offer some of our interpretations of the ones that climate justice alliance and movement generation created for the just transition framework. So one moves us to Buensavir. In philanthropy we offer that some of these principles guide us to shift our thinking about the many actions we could take as an inherently privileged perspective to thinking about what is necessary for all to thrive. We think about how do we uphold self-determination and build deep democracy which really means ending paternalistic behaviors and controlling behaviors towards our grantees that are based in risk aversion and moving towards authentic partnership where grantees retain the right to design solutions for their lives rather than having these approaches imposed on them. We look at how we can equitably redistribute resources and power and really think about what does redistribution look like. How do we get beyond the five percent payout and use all of the capital at our disposal to really combat inequity. And how do we really build what we need now. How do we act with the level of resource that we see needed in the world right now. As this conversation is also about reimagining systems I think the conversation in philanthropy has often been about well what about diversity equity and inclusion. At Justice Founders we would offer that DEI is a means to an end and not the end itself. These are critical steps towards transferring decision making and control to communities that are most impacted by injustice. However if our intention is to build a future that reimagined systems for justice this analysis from Dr. Ibram X. Kendi is particularly provocative and particularly salient in this moment. He says racism and capitalism emerged at the same time in 15th century western Europe and they've reinforced each other from the beginning. Slavery and colonialism accumulated the wealth that powered capitalist expansionism.  An anti-capitalist. So given where we are now how do we move our institutions from a place of extraction to one of regeneration. It begins with transforming our underlying approach to capital. A way for an approach where individuals and institutions have the right to endlessly accumulate capital and make decisions on how it should be allocated for the public good and towards an approach where the collective capacity of communities most impacted by extraction and exploitation are able to produce for themselves. Give to and invest directly in what their communities need and retain the returns generated from these investments. It also means that we have to transform our underlying approach to philanthropy. We need to move away from our approach where foundations maintain power, accumulate wealth and grow their endowments indefinitely. To one in which foundations are actively supporting new economic systems that transfer the management and control of financial resources away from institutions and into the hands of communities who have been impacted by wealth accumulation and the extractive economy. As our colleague Edgar Villanueva at the SHOT Foundation says all of us who have been forced to the margins are the very ones who harbor the best solutions for healing progress and peace by virtue of our outsider perspectives and our resilience. When we reclaim our shared resources, when we recover our places at the table on the drawing board, we can design our healing. We can create new ways of seeking and granting access to money and we can return balance to the world by moving money to where the hurt is the worst. From there we offer seven sets of practices that philanthropies can begin to transition from extraction to regeneration. They include relationship to communities, leadership, operations, endowment, grant-making strategy, grant-making process, and grant-making decisions. Well, please ladies and gentlemen, we seem to have lost the audio for the presenters. I'll get that right back. Hold on. Hi, this is Dana. I'm so sorry. I got cut off. Oh yeah, Dana, you're back with us. So thank you. Continue. Sorry folks. Apologies for the technological difficulties. I just wanted to move back in to say that Justice Thunders believes that each philanthropic organization is fully capable of restructuring how our resources are deployed more cooperatively, restoratively, and regeneratively. And so in order to actually practice this, I'd like to invite folks to get a piece of scratch paper and with your non-dominant writing handed in cursive, I'd like you to try to write the following sentence. Regenerative systems will require us to build new muscles. So if you can on a piece of scratch paper with your non-dominant writing hand, regenerative systems will require us to build new muscles. If you can again in the chat, I'd invite folks to share how that's going with you. And Sherilyn, if you could share that back. We're seeing impossible, hard to do. Yes, awkward. Yes, uncomfortable. So if I can submit to you all, this exercise is really analogous to the work before us. It's easier, faster, more comfortable to do things that we already know how to do. And in the status quo, we may get rewarded for doing so. However, if we're really about reimagining systems for justice, it's not only about how we get competent in our ability to relearn how to do all the things we already know how to do, but to do so with a different intention and in conditions where it will be the spaces that you create that support this practice. So in closing, our movements today are waging some of the most courageous fights to build contested one power. And at the same time, we're witnessing communities around the country incubate, launch and build alternative economies. When we consider the magnitude of these natural and man-made disasters happening, we need all of our philanthropy to go all in on helping us to usher the world we want, the world that we need. Each of your foundations has control of your own story. It will be our grandchildren who can look back and determine whether or not we perpetuated the status quo or gave birth to a new world. The narrative of the future has yet to be written, but requires us to start now. Thank you. I will now pass it over to my colleague, Justin. Justin. Okay. Hope everybody's doing well out there. Thanks, Dana. I'm thanks to the Grand Maca and the Arts just for the opportunity to be a part of the conversation. I think, you know, one of the things that we just heard in the framework from Dana, I think if you look at it, it gives us a North Star in our philanthropy to think about a world where we don't have our philanthropy. If you take, I think if you follow the logic of it, that eventually they have actual community control over their own resources, there will have to be a whole different governing structure. And so what I want to talk about today, I guess, is a little bit around the idea of, well, what might interim steps look like or what I'm offering here is black radical fractals. I'll talk a little bit more about that definition, but what might be the specific steps in arts and cultural philanthropy and how do we look at the way that art plays a particular role in the structure of white supremacy and racial capitalism and how as either program officers or folks working in community, how could we start to get more clarity around this is the thing that we're going to be trying to replace. And so I think that's the long term strategy to the question that was asked, what might be a long term strategy? That seems to me to be a long term strategy. But I think I would require obviously a much broader base. I don't think it's simply as I think we all know from working in the field. It's not just a technical task of learning some theory and some ideas and going to work because I think the truth is that philanthropy has its own structure within it so that you have this even class structure, even inside the organization. So even though you have the foundation to grant each, you also have the foundation of program officers and you work in the field and you kind of get this sense that you know that it's not so simple. It's just you offering a good idea. You have some resistance often from the board with different issues. And so how do you deal with that? And so one way I think is the second question about how our funders working together, I think we might also have a how funders working together and how they're working together with grantees with publics and how are we beginning to practice some kind of democracy building that even if it's only an interim step now, it could be the muscle building to do that same analogy that could be taken advantage of and further. I mean I think the last thing regarding this idea of how do we influence systems, I think you know one of the things that's interesting about the work of GIA, which you know I've been privileged you know in all the sense of the word to be you know to work in prior iterations to be on the board, et cetera, is that some of the work has been put out whether it's systemic racism or internalized oppression, whether it's internal supremacy in terms of white people or internalized inferiority in terms of color is we have a lot of analysis that's gotten out there, but what are our applications? And so to this idea of fractals and black radical fractals, the piece I guess I'm interested in is what are specific steps that we can take, whether it's creating new ways of making decisions, and that was an article that was posted with this webinar that I did a few months ago when the coronavirus started, whether it's specific rating criteria, whether it's new forms of evaluation that use a racial analysis or use a white supremacy analysis to look at how the program works. How do we start to incorporate these things into the daily practice? The third piece I have up here around black Marxism by Cedric Robinson is I think he offers one of the ways that I think that the arts and culture field could have an influence in the broader system is he talks about how not only did racism and capitalism kind of joint get formed together, but rather, or in addition I guess he would say, I guess I would say rather he offered a different theory that European culture gave us capitalism, it's a, it came out of a racialized culture, a culture that saw difference, it saw war, it saw aggression amongst themselves, and capitalism serves those kinds of that kind of cultural orientation. So I think one thing that we could offer is to begin some more of a cultural analysis of capitalism, racial capitalism as you would call it, and begin to discuss that it's actually we're seeing a culture and we see that in the white supremacy culture work. So I think that's one way that we could influence is that we could begin to get ourselves back at some of the larger tables of policy by starting to talk about the role that culture plays in terms of even that capitalism itself is a cultural product. So here, you know, I've been interested in the just transition framework and, you know, thinking about hopefully you can read this, hopefully it's legible, but that either be what does this look like in the arts field, you know? And so I think in this case here, I'm interested in the middle steps, you know, regarding what the Black radical fractals are, or you will call them non-reformist reforms, but their idea is that what might have in them that if you were to imagine them much expanded, they would have this much greater impact, but you could do them at the level of your program or the level of your foundation because you knew what you were, the principles they were based on, you knew where they were trying to go. So in this case here, I think on the left side, I have some ideas around the ways that arts and culture philanthropy upholds the white supremacy culture of a community. I'm most familiar with urban environment, so I think of some examples like downtown where I think you see that in many ways they're a monument to white supremacy culture. White supremacy, period, because which art forms have the greatest land, have the greatest real estate, have gotten gifts of all different kinds, and how does that serve as an ongoing learning place, a place where we learn who matters, who has culture, so on and so forth, who are the folks who really have contributed, you know, the greatest to the world, which is the underpinnings of white supremacy. And I think when we see these other incidences of like murder, as we see happening all over the place of black people from police, how can we see that also as a cultural expression of a world view that can typify sometimes even in the budget of a program? And how do we maybe start to think about language of using that inside the foundation? We might change how we say that, but to start to raise some critical analysis where there are allies, where there are folks who are willing to listen to that and start to say this is the way our program upholds that. And in the middle there are some examples of some steps I think that we could take. Most of the having to do with the way that you constrain capital is through expanding decision-making, having broader folks who are involved and particularly being explicit about this is about shifting power back towards BIPOC people and whether through an advisory board practice or through, again, that criteria I mentioned, but really trying to take these ideas that we mentioned in the previous slide and look at asking, what do they look like even in small applications? And so here are some on the right side. I have an idea on plural versality, not my ideas, maybe from a number of other people, but that what we're, with a cultural critique here we're saying diversity including equity has an idea of integrating itself into like a singular frame often. So we want the same frame, we want a different variety of people operating inside of it. How do we start to say what kind of cultural landscape would allow a multiplicity of cultural viewpoint, a plurality of cultural viewpoints, that might be radically different to one another, and that's what our field talks about. And some of these viewpoints, you know, from their indigenous or traditional African perspectives are much different than a material base that came out of the Enlightenment and what kind of system would we need in order so that all those systems had access to resources. So, not a fundamental improvement, but I think this idea that he had around developing specific reforms and strategies was useful in the so-called neoliberalism. He was writing about ideas in the 40s, 50s that didn't get applied so much later. So how do we start to develop ideas around reparations, around democracy of a capital that then in a larger crisis we'd be able to apply or if it got to a place where we had more liberated resources, we would have the actual systems that we've done on a smaller scale in all kinds of matters. Whether it's how we made decisions, how we evaluated programs that were using a whole other kinds of sets of criteria but they were now at a time we actually had a greater opportunity and we actually have those practices beyond this kind of like language of critique which I think I feel is a lot of language of critique but we don't have as much small practice and that was one of my thoughts with TIA also that it can continue to be a place to propagate like the specific small practices that are being used that we can learn from. So here are four principles and so this is a lot of this is influenced by this gentleman named Andres Gores who has a thing around labor strategy but in curtailing capital and managing it they've been altered a little bit but I want to draw attention to this notion of accountability and that this idea there's a couple elements to it so one might be enforceability we're not there at the moment that would be where a community could actually enforce with a foundation or with an arts program here's the changes that we want because the way the government is structured that's not possible at the moment but unless you change the board which would be the highest level I think of really changing power which again is on that transition that Dana should offer but at least we could have in these smaller programs answerability where program officers are communicating clearly about what's going on having people participate in public budgeting even for again if it's a whatever the size of resources there are still practicing these broader democratic principles and so if we don't have enforceability where you actually have shared equal power maybe we practice answerability so the last comments here are around around this idea about language because that's a critical aspect and it's a critical aspect of a battle in philanthropy where in many ways philanthropy as much as it puts out money I think you could say it puts out language and so here's some different language I think that we could take greater advantage of critical race theory a lot of the language that it's been offered by that field to take an advantage of our education of course it's a battle inside the foundation to get to some of this language made public because that's where I think you see the attention of greater amounts of power in the organization that will resist narrative change but I want to offer a couple and maybe one framework particularly I draw attention to here is formal race which I think is a useful idea to see that a lot of RSPs are using a formal race frame in that they describe black and white to that next indigenous often particularly in what often they don't describe white at all they only describe the people of color white is rarely named and so and then also there's rarely a historical component to it so I think what are what reforms look like where whiteness is actually named in RFPs and actually given some real history to it and then use that as a justification for a different kind of program and that would be a battle but I think that's that would be space to where you'd have the more you could do it the more you learn about it these are these kind of practical greater amounts of radicalism that I think that you have to you have to monitor the level of the amount of tension that that would create so that's this model here from adaptive leadership which is you're looking to create they call them experiments you can call them fractals you can call them reforms that generate an amount of tension that is going to be felt but that is not so much that it exceeds and gets shut down but that when you see that that you're intentionally trying to create resistance with one of these different strategies because you know that when you get through that managed well and you have to do it in comfort of the people which is this other idea around working with the funders and working with the grantees to try to work collectively that once that's done more space is created and the putting of that together and having that to happen to again hold on Dana's earlier comment so this is just a list of the summaries here and I think what what I would say I guess is that you know if you're if we're looking at a number of strategies whether it's reading more clear applications of the principles we want to restrain capital we want to look at some names of applications that were whether we're starting to get clear and you might use a different theory here but that there would be some analysis that I know the long-term goal is a world where we don't have arts and culture resources controlled by such a small sector of the population and I know that's an expression of racial capitalism like cultural supremacy so what are my steps to where I'm going to democratize that that's the grandest thing no matter how good I get as an individual what is the way that I'm going to practice this and so then I have some other examples here around taking event you know being critical of colorblind analysis realizing that that my foundation does have a political framework is using I mean become more aware of that now let me look at challenging it with other frameworks let me start to design intentional experiments that have certain principles to them and then let me be aware that I'm going to create some tension I'm going to be ready to deal with that and modify it and I think you know to the extent this is related to the coronavirus that we have an opportunity now with clearly how coronavirus is impacting folks in other systemic races and racist ways what are ways that we then say well this is coming from a coronavirus time but this is actually something I did have to do and so I offer these ideas not only for the moment but to last going forward and with that I'm going to tag it on to Sarnita thank you Justin and first I want to say thank you for GIA for organizing this panel I've been influenced by my colleagues here either indirectly because I follow their work like the justice funders or directly as I've had the opportunity to partner with them like Randy as a fellow GIA board member and co-chair of the racial equity committee with me or Justin who along with his colleague Barbary Cook at Dragonfly Partners worked directly with the Dodge Foundation to develop our theories of change and equity rubric I think we all bring a different perspective to this work in the topic and while Dodge has been working on its transformation for several years it's been largely an internal process and as we move our work work toward a more equitable New Jersey I think it's important that we begin to share out our journey although using the term journey is not my favorite because it was not a meandering walk without focus or a goal I like to think of it more as an agenda with specific things to do and accomplish and I think it's important to share this transformation story and I want to underscore that it is very much a work in progress and while we have a longer way to go and much more work to do I think it demonstrates the pace and the reality of change while we all have a sense of urgency and many of us more than others and while we would all like to accelerate our efforts we may be in fact in that moment now but what I'm really clear about is that the work that the foundation has been engaged in over the last four to five years has positioned us to pivot in response to COVID-19 and given us the context for the change and shifted the conversation internally and externally I'll begin by saying that the journey has a bit easy but importantly it has been both a staff and board endeavor and we have been learning and experimenting and engaging together so this slide sort of condenses all of the work that we've been doing over the last 45 years into one page and for quick reference but some of the inflection points on our equity journey I will revisit so the foundation was established in 1974 it began its work by supporting local leaders across a number of program areas and has almost from the very beginning supported the arts education and environment the foundation has had only four presidents since its founding and has evolved over time to meet the needs of the time the foundation has done a lot of good work over the years and created a strong technical assistance program for grantees to help them build their boards strengthen financial oversight and leadership and establish North America's largest board chief festival every other year in Newark and the foundation has also been there for New Jersey non-profits after 9-11 the financial collapse of 2008 and supporting the recovery after Hurricane Sandy and we are once again facing new challenges related to COVID-19 as a statewide funder Dodge has had many successes in its program and focus areas and was doing good work but we had an inflection point in late 2015 early 2016 where it was time to reflect and recommit to a longer term existence and with fluctuating financial returns we began to examine if we were having the greatest impact were we serving the communities most in need and was our support equitable we began our work with the intercultural development inventory the IDI because it's a tool that helps individuals and organizations understand their cultural competency along the spectrum from denial to adaptation I had used the IDI and several other organizations and I think it's a good tool to help people get a baseline understanding of concepts terminology regarding race and culture and it's scientific so people feel relatively comfortable with it and my experience is very much a conversation starter and Dodge senior staff took the IDI then later the board and the entire staff a lot of our initial learning was based on these concepts and really helped the organization begin to examine ideas biases and helped us understand and chart a path forward that eventually led to significant changes the work has been incremental and as we move toward an intercultural mindset the organization began to have different conversations we began to understand where we were on the spectrum and that the distinction between minimization treating everyone the same and adaptation that requires not only knowledge but behavior change was vast and we also doubled down on the question of equity this work took a number of years numerous partners and eventually led us to a new strategic plan mission vision and values for the foundation we committed to creating the conditions for an equitable New Jersey throughout program programmatic lenses arts education environment informed communities and poetry and acknowledged that the historical institutional and structural impediments that contributed to some communities in New Jersey having the worst outcomes in every quality of life indicator and in fact those were communities of color we grounded our way forward in our values as you see here collaboration learning respect equity and stewardship and our new strategic plan the work of the strategic plan was organizational wide with internal external programmatic and financial goals and as we began to operationalize our work we partnered with Justin and dragonfly partners to help us develop our program theories of change off-centering equity and focusing on communities of color the program teams are created visual representations of our theories of change this is not actually the one I used for the arts but this image has become important to me over the last few weeks so I swapped it for today it fits because our work in the arts will become much more community and grassroots based and this image reminds me that people are making art and making statements and making beauty in their communities all the time working with Justin and Barbary really led us to a deeper interrogation of how we do our work how we move forward and how we prioritize the people and communities we want to partner with for change after we completed the theories of change we wanted to create a framework and tools to help not only us but grantees and others to better understand our new direction have language to address our work and even to use as a guide post to move toward a more equitable organization and eventually sector we have also developed a staff accountability rubric to hold program directors accountable to the framework and experimenting with how to operate operationalize it for the whole staff the dodge equity framework is represented in this infographic and supports a much more detailed rubric with these seven lenses that we are using to help make grant decisions is one tool is a way to have conversations and it gives us the opportunity to ground our work and our values as we shift our resources the framework has seven interconnected focus areas including three internal factors and three external factors all connected to resources and access we have plans to roll out the framework and the rubric with large and small convening but in the wake of the pandemic we started to share with colleagues some grantees and a number of the pool funds that have been established in New Jersey after the pandemic and that the foundation has contributed we've also used it to guide our rapid response grants to existing grantees relative to COVID-19 and working with organizations that were led by people of color and or serving majority people of color so a few of the areas that we've been getting the most questions about are the staff and board diversity and we felt it was important to put a stake in the ground as a goal post that the majority of the staff and board of organizations be people of color the focus of this measure is not to count the people but that the people count and the framework as a whole goes for the beyond diversity and allows us to dig deeper into how systems uphold dominant culture another area of interest is the equity mindset and this is about developing a culture of learning for example Dodge has made measurable progress over the last four to five years as a board and staff we've developed a new strategic plan assess where we are as individuals and as an organization regarding our cultural competence have factor research and learning into our theories of change have attended undoing racism and other training and how now we're shifting our work and our resources the other idea that is interesting to those that we shared it with is the systems impact area and this is a way for particularly white led organizations to reflect on how they're using their power and influence to benefit people of color communities and all of this leads to the access to resources and this category really takes into consideration organizations relationship with the foundation over time and how we are working directly with POC led organizations in their early stages of their life cycle and beyond so as an organization I believe that the work the foundation has been engaged in gave us great clarity and credibility and context in response to COVID-19 and what we will be what we what we will be regarding the reorganization of the nonprofit sector and as an organization I'm confident that the conversations we're having internally and externally are much different than prior conversations during other catastrophic times I believe COVID-19 has affirmed what we have been learning and interrogating that the systems don't work for all equitably and that we can and have to ask ourselves new questions and engage with new partners in new ways and with that I will turn it over to my colleague Thank you so much, Sharneeta and thank you to all of the presenters today it's really a huge honor to share space with with all of them really really luminaries in our in our space I also want to echo the thanks to grant makers in the arts for holding this space for us today and in particular GIA has been such a powerful space of learning for me over the years I just want to name the racial equity work led by Justin Lang, Maureen Knight, Denise Brown, Angelique Power, Janet Brown, Lulani Arquette some folks who really helped me grow and learn around what racial equity and racial justice can mean and I just value that GIA continues to prioritize this space also want to acknowledge that we here on the West Coast also are on Indigenous land in Seattle we're on the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people still unceded territory and still still unjust and it's in the context of all of that that we think about reimagining systems for justice and for the purposes of today I want to talk about sort of what civic reimagination for justice can be as a government agency that also exists in the arts philanthropy space I think we are duly complicit in structures of white supremacy and structural racism and I think we have a responsibility to work to dismantle those systems and I think that that involves the act of reimagination I have said you've heard me on any webinars before that the Office of Arts and Culture was chartered in 1971 during the worst recession in Seattle's history when Boeing laid off 65% of its workforce and there was a billboard next to Boeing Field that said will the last person out of Seattle please turn out the light the mayor in 1971 was asked why you would form a local art agency in the context of such a recession and he said because you have to give people hope and though the context and the time is different I think the need for hope and imagination is probably more urgent now than it's ever been in my life I want to talk a little bit about what we learned and the implications of that for recovery and reimagination I want to walk through the sort of three phases of what COVID did how it landed how it impacted and the opportunities that presented in our community and then dig a little deeper into the civic reimagination idea and what that means for our work going forward as was said by both Justin and Sharnita and I think is clear to most folks COVID-19 was an accelerant it amplified the structural inequity and the structural racism that was already here and I think that that has only been more reinforced the events of the last three weeks and I think that the urgency of the moment has become even more acute Sharnita spoke to the moment that we are in and I think it is evident as evidenced by this ground plane mural that the city of DC did overnight to send a message around their values it is also worth noting that the organizers in DC painted their own mural that said deep on the police not so far from this mural and I think that gets to the what I call the comfort with discomfort that Justin spoke about this is for us to fundamentally change our work it is going to require to shift our practice and that is not going to be easy or comfortable but there has been this conversation as I have been in spaces for the last three months about what is building back mean are we going back to where we were in January 2020 or are we fundamentally reimagining and building back better and I really think we have the opportunity and the responsibility to reimagine these systems a huge part of that as Justin I think outlined really really well is the questions of governance and who decides who decides so much of our grant making practice is about who is in the panel room and I think we need to meaningful the center BIPOC voices we need to seed some governance and some power in a meaningful way to those communities and we need to put our resources where our mouth is we might be past the time for training and statements that might be time for action and investments and I think what that means to recovery is reimagining our field we have had success as a practice in the city of Seattle utilizing racial equity tool kits to center communities of color in particular BIPOC communities for how resources will be distributed I think this should go beyond programmatic interventions and really be about systems design and I'll talk about what some of those systems are a little bit later we know that government can't decide this for people that it has to it has to create this with people we have to honor what has been asked for in the past but we also have to bring community to the table bring BIPOC community specifically to the table so they can help create the systems and the changes on their own terms that will be impacting their lives and I think going back to the status quo is not an option so there were really three periods of time that impacted the cultural sector and the city and I'll spend a little bit of time on each of them March was really about the immediate response the short-term relief work April was really about seeing artists really as the belonging strategy for the city and really lifting up the way that community came together to look out for each other and then May is when we started to look to the future and really think about resilience and recovery in a structural way so in March well in February on February 26th the first case of COVID in the United States was reported in Seattle on February 29th the first death from COVID was reported in Seattle by March 9th we were closing down events over 500 and by March 16th we had closed everything and that had a massive impact as we all know on the cultural sector on individual artists and on cultural organizations we partnered with the Luminary Artist and author Ijoma Oluo to support her Artist Relief Fund for $50,000 we also invested in Artist Trust another $50,000 to help individual artists who are being impacted we I think were the first local arts agency to do a stabilization fund a relief fund and we did this not by asking people to apply but literally by amending people contracts and just giving them more money that was both wonderful in its responsiveness and also is something for us to think about going forward in terms of its structural analysis we also were able to partner with Seattle Center and the parks department and offer rent reduction to a number of organizations all told we wound up putting about $1.8 million into the sector through those different interventions I just want to lift up the Artist Relief Fund from Ijoma because it raised $620,000 which is incredible and also because it launched on March 9th they did not wait for the full impact of COVID they did not get trapped in process BIPOC artists went ahead and stood up a process by which they took care of not themselves but everyone around them and I think that that's been a powerful beacon as we've thought about the reimagination space in April we really started to see the work that local communities local artists local cultural workers were doing in community and we wanted to lift that up we also recognize there was this unanticipated consequence of everybody sheltering in place for weeks and months which is that there's there's a real mental health impact of that so how could we support and resource our creative community to foster belonging and social cohesion as we experience this isolation and how can we how can we break the sort of feelings of isolation while we're physically forced to be a part we were really intentional to center BIPOC community efforts through this work there's a website settledtogether.org which you can go to it highlights a lot of the different sort of mutual aid efforts that are happening in our community it also highlights arts and culture interventions that are happening some that the city led like like this public art comes to your front yard campaign where we hired 10 artists of color to produce pro-social yard signs that helped us spread messages about public health information and also just about belonging and non-sanctioned events like all the incredible murals that came up all over the city we wanted to support both formal and informal work and we wanted to lift up the incredible work that our cultural sector was doing and then we started to turn our focus from relief to recovery we formed a community resilience sub-cabinet which had sort of three areas that it was focused on economic recovery civic reimagination and community support and I'll talk a little bit about what those mean but at the base of all of this we are trying to reimagine a city that is driven by a commitment to racial equity climate justice creativity and culture in all of the policy and systems change work that we want to do we have to center BIPOC communities and we have to have them at the table to design the interventions when we're talking about an economic recovery we're looking at the roadmap to an inclusive creative economy that we constructed last year we're talking about a workers recovery we're looking at the role of labor and how do we protect vulnerable contract and gig workers we can't just we can't just put people back to work we have to put people back to work in a better system and it's inherently challenging in an extractive system like capitalism to think about liberatory structures but what are the ways that we can create more just economies and more just systems of work there's a lot of interesting work that we've been fortunate to be doing around community wealth building and I think when when Justin talks about the images of our downtown as sort of the the tributes to white supremacy I don't think we can kid ourselves about where resources haven't haven't been invested historically from a government standpoint I think we have to get a lot more aggressive about the contribution of land and resources and power in a way that we haven't done in the past and there's some really great work emerging we've had an equitable development initiative for a number of years that's really community driven we've talked we've talked about how to center cultural space and cultural spaces in the hands of community and we're trying to move wealth to communities at scale and that's going to be a huge priority digital equity and the digital divide not only we're so clear as a determinant of who would be successful in the last three months and who wouldn't but it also is such an underpinning of what the future of work and the future of the economy is going to be we have to ensure that everyone has access to the internet to broadband we have to ensure that everyone has access to the digital tools that are required to be able to work in our future and so digital equity is going to be a citywide sort of civic priority and then public works is a really interesting space but everything from a green new deal to a WPA style program as we as a city and as a country are staring down unemployment that is pretty unprecedented we're going to have to get pretty ambitious with what we're willing to do as government and one of the initiatives that we've been sort of sculpting in collaboration with a lot of other departments and community partners we call the creative hope initiative which aims to center BIPOC artists and cultural organizations both cultural workers and culinary workers and invest in them to reimagine some of these systems going forward they can either do short-term mitigation social cohesion and belonging work or they could do sort of new system reimagination but the idea is to invest in them directly both to mitigate the economic harm that was done to this sector and to these communities also to engage them in their talent and brilliance for meeting immediate community needs as we're sheltered in place and as a down payment for the community that we want to build going forward this is a picture of what is now known as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone or the Capitol Hill Occupied Protests this is this was a really hard moment for our city and it illuminated so much about what is wrong and I'm proud to say that as violent as this picture appears to be at the precipice of this is a very peaceful space now it is complex and it has its own challenges but we're in a moment where this is the work that we have to do civic reimagination is not a luxury or an option it is a necessity and the events of the last three weeks took the urgency that already existed over the last three months and the last 400 years and made them so evident you know we know that change will only move at the speed of trust and we know that it's going to take it's going to take time and we're going to have to live in our discomfort but we are committed as a city and as an arts agency to leaning into this work the window for for really dramatic policy change in this city and in this country has never been this significant and I think it is incumbent on all of us to rise to the moment and I know I can count on GIA to be a partner in that work and I so appreciate all of you spending this time with us today so thank you and I will move us to the Q and A All right can everyone hear me? Yeah you sound great, Sherwin All right well special thanks to our presenters that was fantastic Dana getting folks to begin to begin to embody putting theory into practice through your closing exercise I think offered an iota of the percentage of discomfort that one most may feel when transitioning into more justice funding and your points Justin about the discussion of language when we call out black or indigenous organizations but don't name white ones I think that was a great point and I know folks also want to see more about the the economy cycle diagram so we'll be sure to send that out to folks who are on the webinar and registered we'll make sure that you have that Sharnita's your presentation was great as well and when you went into the developmental inventory diagram and you spoke about the minimization stage through adaptation I immediately thought of the equity versus equality conversation and that key being building knowledge in order to be adaptive so I thought that was great and then finally Randy not rebuilding but building better understanding decisions around who decides and all of the interventions that are happening in Seattle right now just because I mean you were here with us at the beginning of the COVID-19 response programming a few months ago so it's nice to see how things have changed and progressed and so on that note we'll we'll transition over to Q&A I see that some of you have begun entering your questions that's great please be specific about who the question is for when you enter your question into the Q&A box to the bottom of your screen and we'll go ahead and kick it off and so Justin I'll start with you someone asks a question actually immediately after your presentation so this person first thanks you for bringing up accountability and and says there've been a lot of solidarity statements from different arts organizations in reaction to racial equity can you talk a little bit more about what this would look like ideally in terms of arts and in terms of arts organizations Sherwin is that being asked I'm sorry Sherwin I said is that about arts organizations is that the question okay yeah you know I'm I'm not certain I haven't I guess you know I've seen a lot of criticism of the statement and I think the last thing I saw someone talking about was just around you know we're tired of the statements I think the key piece of it would be you know one is you know apology you know being accountable and clear about how the arts are participating in this in terms of narratives that are being created and acknowledging that and the other part I think is redress you know so what is the commitment and what is the the standard that is being used so that there is some way to say this is what we define as accountability and this is how you can assess that I think one of the things that you sort of take away from the people's institute training is this idea that there has to be some other side in anti-racist work if it is not some other if you don't establish some way of measuring and showing it the power is being redistributed in some way that you could have some penalty for not doing what you're say you're going to do to me those are some important principles that you could use to to assess statements and and to develop them it's like apology and redress thank you and speaking of policy I actually want to kick it over to you Randy what policy changes could be enacted to advance racial justice well I was having this conversation with Angie Kim earlier in the week but maybe last week because I can't tell time anymore because it's a flat circle but you know we've in this system of capital campaigns and endowments and and philanthropy we've created an environment wherein we ask BIPOC communities and cultural institutions to really overextend themselves to raise money to buy buildings in neighborhoods they've largely been pushed out of by displacement and gentrification forces we make them play this strange capitalist game that has already done all this harm to their communities one policy change is we could just accept that we're going to seed property building seed ownership to communities that have been impacted by in our case the actions of government for example so that's one example another is things like a job guarantee that's focused on those most impacted either by COVID or by structural racism in many cases it's the same thing but we actually have the data that says both who's been historically under invested and who's been impacted disproportionately by this at every other crisis in our nation's history and we can prioritize you know anything from a UBI to a job guarantee program to help those folks get back to a living wage we can build economic policy and land use policy and make financial decisions through a policy lens that could look very different than what we're doing now it's just a decision that we have to make as policymakers so there's a couple of examples great thank you the next question is for you Sharnita we've got a lot of questions coming in here so thank you all for being patient so what processes or tools did you use to level power structures within staff and board in order to successfully do this work together as a united front that is a really excellent question because it really evolved over over time so as I said we sort of started with some baselines sort of cultural competency learning and understanding which really over time led to much deeper conversations conversations about race about racial equity about power and I will say specifically the work that we did with the Interactive Institute for social change who helped us with our strategic plan sort of really started to move us into the conversation around understanding race and power structures etc so that was over a period of time so it's been very incremental I will say and that sort of prepared us for the work that we then moved into with Dustin and Barbary that really sort of forced us to really interrogate those systems even more at a different level and I will say that you know we're still navigating those things but certainly we spent a lot of time educating ourselves as I said many of us attended the Undoing Racism Workshop there were many opportunities to do deeper learning and understanding and as you can see Justin has a great cadre of books and resources so he certainly shared those with us and it really took us in a different sort of trajectory of learning and then again we had to plot our own journey so creating our equity framework and our equity rubric was really our attempt at creating tools that made sense to the foundation and the systems that we're operating in because it's not a one-size-fits-all endeavor and again encouraging additional learning additional inquiry and so now we have the equity framework and the equity rubric for our grantees but as I mentioned we also created a framework for program staff because we started this work at the program level it will expand to the entire organization board and staff that's great and I love that you called out the fact that a lot of this work is not one-size-fits-all and so you created your structure based on sort of what you are working with and what's happening in your foundation and I think that a lot of folks can continue to model after what you're doing while of course keeping in mind that everyone is starting at a different point so that's important to keep in mind and so I'd like to kick this next question off over to Dana and after Dana you respond I I believe the register the attendee or participant was is interested in hearing from other folks as well and so the question or the individual says I think the idea of the productive disequilibrium as the ideal tension point for learning that results in anti-racist accountability and change is very important I'm curious if the speakers can describe what the creative disequilibrium looks like for them at this moment from their respective leadership physicians This is Dana thank you for that question so without having more of a context about the origins for creative disequilibrium I will say that I think this moment or these moments have been incredible opportunities to leverage change inside of our organizations with respect to culture right so I think earlier in my presentation I talked about how policy changes that created a tech shelter for philanthropy were then codified and informed by the corporations by banking by academia and now I think we're at a moment where it's both the opportunity for us in philanthropy as both Justin and Randy have highlighted for us to really reimagine how we can then re-center those who've been historically disinvested in into our processes so I think at some level on the grant making side this could look like how do we actually codify processes that don't require a lot of bureaucracy at the endowment level how do we actually codify giving more out now at the grant making strategy and decision making level how do we actually de-center the decision making within our philanthropy and actually engage our communities in that process so I think actually this moment is really a big opportunity for us to push hard for some of the changes that we know need to be made and then work to codify those great if anyone else wants to add on to that I did get another question about what are the thoughts of folks who are working at foundations on spending down endowments and we at GIA have also recently been having conversations about what the field is saying about going beyond the 5% requirement of spending and grant giving so if anyone has any other any presenters have any other thoughts before we move on I know multiple folks are interested in hearing but if not we can keep responding to other questions I mean I'll say I think we want I think is is just actually even acknowledging to myself and then saying you know yeah we actually we don't want parts planned to be in the future you know and just saying like let's name that and just start to really kind of think through what that would be like start making it more of a public conversation being inspired by the abolished police discussion but I think it's really been inspiring to see again this idea of like in a crisis people pick up the ideas around the floor and I think another one is is just to again to start to participate in conversation in in community that's like trying to rethink that relationship and and so I think those are a couple um you know that I would offer thank you and this next question comes from one of our participants for for you Justin and Randy and the participant says in the spirit of universal justice should gia be advocating for healthcare for all and universal basic income wouldn't these give by poc communities more agency over their own destiny rather than their excuse me rather than having to wait for philanthropy to come to their aid so what do you think that gia should be advocating for for Justin and Randy uh yeah thank you I mean I think it's a really interesting question I I mean if we're talking about fundamental policy change that could be transformational you know healthcare as a human right and a universal basic income are are are really powerful interventions I think I don't I don't know if that is a space that makes sense for gia to weigh in on although I think that would be a conversation that we could have as the board and that we could have with our membership and I do think that by poc communities potentially would benefit from that I mean everybody would benefit from having healthcare and everybody would benefit from having universal basic income but I think it's about how it's designed and implemented and who is at the table to design and implement it because my fear with those systems with any system is that it's designed by the same people that have been designing systems for a very long time and we would not get to different outcomes because we would be vulnerable to the same biases and the same sort of dominant culture defaults around doing what we think is best for people so I think gia would really want to lean hard on self-determination more than on a particular public policy intervention that's just my read I haven't obviously spoken to any of my board colleagues about that or or any staff Yeah I would just add I think you know with the idea of a critical race lens to it that to be skeptical or critical about universal frames and that that they may have this idea of like we're going to remove bias but with so much bias I think we need reparatory frames and so I think with and I think particularly if gia was looking at reparatory frames around culture that could really be its location and then they might influence a bunch of other systems I do think that gia would have some challenges regarding all the boards that are involved and that's what I saw you know in the past but at least if it stayed in its lane and it and it talks about reparation and it talks about healing and some other frameworks maybe that could also be another way to employ Well thank you for that for that perspective especially as a staff member of gia we are continuing to to explore other ways of advocating for justice and intersectional arts and culture fields and so that is helpful feedback and I know we'll continue that conversation so no worries really so Sharnita I kind of want to go back to you and because when you talked about your framework you would put it together you and the Dodd Foundation had put it together before COVID-19 sort of took over the nation slash world so you had to make some adjustments and you sort of mentioned that in your presentation but can you go a little bit deeper into it and and I want us to to revisit this just because I know folks are still while many people are in recovery phase a lot of people are still in response phase or response mode and so if you could offer a little bit more about how you adjusted in certain things that you had to keep in mind that you wouldn't have had to if COVID-19 wasn't a part of the equation so I think a couple of things and as I mentioned sort of we were on a trajectory there was a lot of learning that had to happen there were a lot of conversations that we needed to have that we kind of weren't having and one of them really was around we did quite a bit of research and just looking at you know your zip code should just not determine the kind of life that you have and basically you know anecdotally we realized that but looking at the research we understood across all of the indicators for health for education for employment all of those things the black and brown communities in New Jersey were not doing well at all and the wealth gap is so severe the average black family in New Jersey has a net worth of $5,000 and the average net worth of a white family in New Jersey is upwards of $200,000 so those are just things I don't know that we have been really thinking about or talking about so it was a fair amount of educating ourselves and the board and to a degree the grantees so this process as I said sort of got us to the place where we have these theories of change that actually name these communities that talk about the structural and historical barriers and COVID sort of just laid bare these things that not that we didn't necessarily know but that we weren't necessarily talking about in a particular way so there were there I believe that the number in New Jersey is over 12,000 deaths I may be exaggerating that but it's still a large number so this community has been impacted in the state has been impacted in tremendous ways as everyone else in the country but again we were prepared to have these conversations because of the work that we have been doing leading up to it and then when it came time to really think about how are we gonna who are we gonna support and how are we gonna support them we were able to use our equity framework to say we know the communities of color are gonna be additionally challenged to respond to all of the needs of their community so when we made these rapid response grants we were able to to use the framework to think about the organizations that we were gonna support in that way and also with the number of pooled funds that have been established for emergency support around food assistance health rent rental assistance all those sorts of things we were able to share the framework with our grantee partners as well as other funders to help them really think about how are they gonna disperse these dollars and I believe over time is certainly going to create an opportunity for us to continue this conversation but certainly on a larger scale and with other funders and the nonprofit sector in the state so I think as I said it's sort of been incremental and built upon itself but we were ready to sort of understand the gravity and the impact on these communities because we had done the work previously thank you thank you all right so our next question to all panelists do you see a way that explicit that explicitly by POC non-profits can flip the script and engage in ways of fundraising that allow them for more agency without depending on the excuse me everyone bureaucracies of established foundations to create EIDA granting programs so all can respond I'll just say that what many of us didn't that specifically does a lot of general operating grant making anyway but I think the speed and what sort of philanthropy dropped those barriers allowed project grants to be shifted into general operating grants I think Randy may have mentioned that there were there were no application processes for some grants the same with our rapid response grant so I think that we learned that we can be nimble and that maybe we need to re-examine why we have those systems in place in the first place so and I think that that was sort of what was happening across the country as many foundations were making really innovating and iterating on a dime to get resources to the communities that needed them so I think we have this as an example of we did this and you know nothing sort of imploded so it's possible to do I guess I would I totally agree with what Sharnita said and I think we learned institutionally through COVID that we in fact can change quickly we can adapt we can move particularly thinking about government bureaucracy and a speed much faster than we thought was possible and that speed was only matched by how quickly it turns out we can move in this moment that we're in and I think you've seen incredible reforms and policy change happen as a result of the calls for justice across the country and you know I would offer that that collective organizing model the organizing that we're seeing happen in communities across the country is accelerating the policy change window in a way that I've never personally seen so you know the degree to which BIPOC cultural workers or cultural organizers can work together and call for changes we know that the institutions can change and we know that with enough pressure they will so I think those are both things that that seem like opportunities from my vantage awesome all right so we've got another question that sort of pivots us to looking toward the rural sort of parts of the country and the person asks does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions on initiating and implementing these structural or systemic changes in rural areas are there key differences you'd see in approaching change either in government arts institutions higher education funding etc and they say whoever is whoever's comfortable speaking to this please do in rural we'll hold that question then for post the webinar where we can get a little bit more clarity on that and so for our next question this is going to you Dana part of your presentation included a quote from evram x kendi and it's it's definitely relevant now and even before now and so just thinking about white supremacy and so how is justice funders thinking about the connection between being an anti-racist an anti-capitalist and your work in philanthropy thanks well I think as Justin highlighted in his presentation racial capitalism is reinforced by the well by philanthropy and in our economy in general and I would say is really notable in the practice of how our philanthropies invest nearly 95 percent of their assets in the market economy to fund the very industries that harm black and brown communities such as the prison and military industrial complexes so in thinking about you know what it means to not only have anti-racist but also anti-capitalist practices I think it would really mean for our foundations looking at how do we and divest our endowments from industries like prison and military money bail predatory lending speculative real estate corporations that exploit low wage workers and then think about how we're reinvesting that capital in local and regional economic development projects that build shared prosperity in black indigenous and POC communities I think Randy had some great examples from the Seattle community I would also say that for the question proceeding about rural areas how are our indigenous territories and their work to govern and steward their lands lessons for all of us so those are some of the ways in which I think thinking about the connection between being anti-racist and anti-capitalist are some of the ways that justice funders is now thinking about that question thanks Sherilyn great and no problem so that was fantastic we've actually come to the end of our our webinar really flew by today I would say but I do want to thank our presenters Dana, Justin, Sharneeta and Randy for your incredible presentations and for speaking about really speaking to sort of like what's been what's been happening forever but like how now more than ever is such an important time for everyone to to move and to act and to respond so that we can build better and toward what a world and philanthropic sector that we would imagine and so for everyone who is wondering and who has asked today's presentation has been recorded and you will be receiving a link to the recorded file as well as a presentation slides in the next few days we also invite you to take a brief survey that we will share immediately following the webinars because we would like to know what you thought we will continue sharing COVID-19 response information and resources on our website we hope you will visit and keep the conversation going on how we can reimagine the future of philanthropy while ensuring racial equity is and remains centered if you have further questions feel free to reach out to me Sherilyn Sealy and thank you so much for joining us have a great day everyone