Читать книгу Achieving Excellence in Fundraising - Группа авторов - Страница 49

Contemporary society perceives deep disparities and bias in the world's economic, political, and social systems (Edelman 2020), with calls for those in power to combat structural inequities, including within the voluntary sector. Ford Foundation President Darren Walker (2019) urges philanthropists to use their capital to address systemic imbalances that create the need for charity over giving to institutions that support their privilege. Grantmaker Edgar Villanueva (2018) favors dismantling colonialist structures inherent in the foundation world by utilizing Indigenous customs that share power and foster participatory decision‐making around wealth redistribution. Poet, scholar, and institutional philanthropist Elizabeth Alexander has refocused the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation from conventional arts and humanities funding to social justice initiatives that support community libraries, reading and literacy programs, and educational opportunities for the incarcerated (Florsheim 2020).

Applying social justice perspectives to nonprofit leadership and fundraising means generating new resources that offer the potential to succeed to those lacking opportunity. It means building inclusive workplaces with diverse boards and staff that reflect regional demographics and communities served. It means pursuing equity‐based prospect research and cultivation programs that prioritize women and people of color alongside traditional white male corporate donors. It means retooling the annual fund as a catalyst for community building. When fundraising and philanthropy is shared by many, “… collective action enables people to achieve results through building equal and mutually‐supportive relationships” that advance organizations and causes (Klein 2016, 3).

The field of fundraising has long taught that philanthropy is a donor‐directed choice, motivated by the interests and intentions of the giver. The astute fundraiser finds the fit between organizational need and donor passion. How might fundraising change to enable justice‐focused philanthropy? What if fundraisers are also taught to be beneficiary‐directed, helping donors use their privilege to focus philanthropy on the root causes of inequity and its symptoms? Here, the lessons are about humility, empathy, listening, learning, deep community engagement, and trusted partnership.

Community‐Centric Fundraising, guided by leaders of color and their allies, offers these core principles of socially‐just fundraising practice:

1 Fundraising must be grounded in race, equity, and social justice.

2 The collective community is more important than individual organizational missions.

3 Nonprofits are generous with and mutually supportive of one another.

4 All who engage in strengthening the community are equally valued, whether staff, donor, board member, or volunteer.

5 Time is valued equally as money.

6 Donors are treated as partners, and this means being transparent, assuming the best intentions, and occasionally having difficult conversations.

7 Collaborative voluntary actions foster a sense of belonging, not othering.

8 Everyone personally benefits from engaging in the work of social justice – it is not just charity and compassion.

9 Social justice work is holistic and transformative, not transactional.

10 Healing and liberation require a commitment to economic justice (Community‐Centric Fundraising 2021).

Reorienting fundraising from donor‐centered to community‐centered encourages power sharing in philanthropic relationships in ways that foster racial and economic justice. The authors propose the following “Beneficiary Bill of Rights” (see Exhibit 2.1) to ensure that the recipients of benevolence have agency and are active participants in collective community enrichment.