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This third session of the Foundations of Racial Equity Series focuses on the importance of healing justice as a strategy, framework, and way of being within philanthropic institutions. The session will focus on internal organizational practices and external opportunities for philanthropy to resource healing justice strategies.
The Tax Equity Funders Network, Northern California Grantmakers, the Asset Funders Network of the Bay Area, and the League of California Community Foundations are hosting a three-part virtual learning and discussion series for California funders on improving economic security, wealth-building opportunities, and equity for low-income Californians through the tax code. This series, sponsored by Blue Shield of California Foundation, is informed by our recent scan of the CA tax credit ecosystem, and responds to California charitable foundations’ interest in learning about and addressing the challenges faced by low-income Californians at tax time and the potential to use tax systems to improve equity.
The COVID-19 vaccine will help keep communities healthy and safe and holds promise to bring an end to the pandemic that has had the most severe impacts on Black, Latinx, Indigenous, AAPI, immigrant, and low-income people. Systemic racism created the conditions that put people of color at greater risk of contracting COVID-19 and experiencing more severe health outcomes, and despite this urgency, California’s vaccination effort so far has fallen short of equity goals. We must reach and authentically engage local communities to remove barriers to access and address concerns to increase vaccine acceptance.
All children deserve to have access to a quality education. They deserve to feel safe and supported in a place that exists to prepare them for their futures. Yet, for Black youth and other youth of color, this is far from the reality. Every day, Black children and other youth of color, some as young as six are being pushed out of classrooms and schools because of deep racial profiling. Across the country, Black high school students are twice as likely to be suspended as white students. In Oakland, while Black youth made up 26 percent of the Oakland Unified School District’s enrollment, they represented 73 percent of arrests. This vicious cycle continues to fuel pathways to prison and confinement, where Black youth are consistently over-represented, which creates additional barriers for our young people to realize and achieve their full potential.
Drumroll please, for our newest team member Huong Nguyen-Yap, who as the Northern California Grantmakers’ first Vice President of Equity and Justice will be accelerating racial equity efforts not only for NCG but for the philanthropic field.
I’ll be honest: I’ve been putting off answering your question “How do foundation leaders stay clear-eyed in this moment?” As I sit to write, our Northern California skies are hazy with wildfire smoke. It strikes me as a metaphor for this moment, 19 months into COVID, when our visions of a post-pandemic future are shifting yet again. I definitely don’t feel clear-eyed.
These past months, we've found ourselves returning to the same question: are our plans still serving their purpose or is there a greater opportunity made possible by the crises in which we find ourselves? We asked NCG's board, staff, and membership to weigh-in on how they're balancing this question. We'll publish their reflections in the months to come in this series on persistence and adaptivity. Glen Galaich of the Stupski Foundation kicks us off with insights, confessions from his consulting years, and a look at what he’s paying special attention to right now