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Achieving racial equity and sustaining a viable democracy go hand in hand. NCG defines democracy as the processes, systems, and structures for historically marginalized and underrepresented community members to participate in a political system that fulfills the promise of an equitable multi-racial society. Northern California is a region that can model this approach, ensuring that people of color and other communities historically underrepresented and marginalized in our political process fully engage in the democratic process.
As the political economy ebbs and flows, California finds itself dealing with significant budget deficits more frequently, which ultimately impacts our state’s most historically marginalized residents. Cuts to important programs impacting housing and homelessness, the social safety net, climate resiliency programs and much more have a disproportionate and adverse effect on women and children, low-income families, rural communities, and neighborhoods of color. Nonprofit and direct service organizations often see an uptick in their clients during economic downturns and are compelled to fill the gap without augmentation in funding and resources.
Climate change is here to stay. Although what’s needed seems endless as the impacts will worsen in the coming years, I am hopeful. Since joining the sector four years ago, I have seen an increasing number of funders exploring new ways to address climate change.
This is a governance moment. We can master governing for all people by bringing a racial equity consciousness to every aspect of how government does business. We have an unprecedented opportunity to strengthen our democracy by fully activating our multiracial population and building a nation where everyone participates, prospers, and reaches their full potential.
Are you struggling to understand how your role as a white person in the philanthropic space remains critical to advancing transformational change and moving toward a future in which race is not a predictor of security, opportunity, access to resources, and life outcomes? This series may be for you.
We will explore the ABFE approach to grantmaking with a racial equity lens. ABFE's framework, analysis, and tools provide opportunities for grantmakers to support Black communities, and, more broadly, our greater society. ABFE has created a set of tools that reduce gaps in racial disparities facing Blacks in the United States. By centering systemic anti-Black racism within an intersectional framework through which we understand the social, economic, historical, and cultural dimensions of human life, we can conduct grantmaking practices that address inequities across communities.
The Bay Area Homelessness Funders Network provides philanthropy a space for strategic thinking and intersectional opportunities for collective action. Learn more about engaging with the network here.