Akilah S. Wallace [Starting at 04:39]: I will share a little bit about the story of HERitage Giving Fund. HERitage is a Black women’s giving circle based out of the North Texas region. We’ll go through some basic framework around what is lived experience, the importance of centering community voice, and then we’ll go into where to instill lived experience in your work.

So a little bit about HERitage. So in 2017. The HERitage Giving Fund was formalized as a donor advised fund originally at the Dallas Women’s Foundation, now called the Texas Women’s Foundation. It’s important to note how we came to be. I was working at the foundation, and ultimately I had a lens, and I was able to see that there were a lot of Black women who were being cultivated for engagement with the sector. I was in the community as a young professional with the Urban League and often people were like, “So who do you work for? What is philanthropy? What is this even about, foundations?”

And so, being able to be a voice in those spaces, but also recognizing from a grantmaking standpoint that I knew of a lot of smaller grassroots [organizations] and nonprofits that were led by Black women and many of them just weren’t aware of how to get in for funding opportunities. And so through that lens and through the experience that I was able to see, not only as a staff person, but as a community member, I realized that there was a void. And so I reached out to two of my mentors, one Dr. Froswa’ Booker-Drew, the other Dr. Halima Leak Francis, both who have been volunteers with the foundations, or in the grant making committees in other capacities. I said, hey, would you join me in really addressing what we saw as not only a gap, but a tremendous opportunity to really impact inequities in philanthropy, and then giving for Black women’s work in the North Texas area, now specifically the Dallas/Fort Worth region.

So the mission of HERitage, when founded, was to encourage philanthropy in the Black community, and to contribute in a strategic and meaningful way, and to bring a new source of funding to nonprofit organizations, specifically those that were serving majority Black women and girls, initially throughout North Texas, and then, more recently, we’ve expanded our efforts to grow throughout the state. There you can see a variety of pictures of our wonderful members to date since 2017.

We are represented by active and inactive members who come along with the majority of about 60, almost 70 individual women, and collectively, we’ve awarded over $100,000 to 14 different organizations in the North Texas area. So that’s a little bit about us.

So now I want to jump into how our lived experiences showed up in the work, and most importantly, why that’s important.

Tyeshia Wilson: But before we even jump into the definitions and the framing, I do want to give credit to some of the resources that we pulled together for our content today, especially like the United Way for Southeastern Michigan and Detroit Future City. They had some good standard language that we felt was relevant and was very useful for our conversation today.

We feel that just a lot of this is lived experience, right? All this conversation is helpful to our collective efforts to just really help us all to advance equity within our giving circles.

So what is lived experience? Lived experience describes the expertise that comes from a person’s past or present experiences. This level of expertise provides context to a given issue.

Now people with lived experiences are also called context experts, and so lived experiences make individuals distinctively equipped to understand the unique challenges of their communities, and therefore what is needed to make resources and processes more equitable. That’s the standard definition.

But what is most important here is, in addition to the definition, why does it matter? Why do you care, right? And this perspective matters. Our lived experiences matter for so many reasons.

The importance of lived experiences goes deeper than demographics. It is truly about real boots on the ground, ground knowledge about the work that the organization is doing from the perspective of the individuals, from the people that are living in the community, and that [the giving circle] seeks to serve. So the truth is that only someone who has truly been through an experience knows the nuances and the complexities that are involved, and with dealing with them, right?

And so finding solutions for lasting change requires a very robust and deep understanding of current challenges and opportunities which can be fully achieved through no other way than the ongoing input, collaboration, and investment of the people that are closest to the issues, like our friends at the Community Investment Network. They always say it: Community knows what community needs.

And so this is very important to us as funders, important for boards, policymakers. Our work as giving circle advocates to make sure that we are being diverse, and that we are including the voices of the people who have been through experiences that are different from each other as much as possible. That’s why it’s important.

This perspective, here in philanthropy, we’ve got to speak to truth, to power, right? Because that’s exactly what this space is for.

Philanthropy really has not always gotten it right in terms of bringing in the voices of those with lived experiences. They just haven’t, and also in terms of just investing and collaborating with those that have that are closest to the issue.

As a matter of fact, the sector really has a very major diversity problem. Look at these statistics: 92% of CEOs at the foundations, 89% of executives on foundation boards, 81% of management for financial services, 86% of venture capital investors. Yeah, all these are big, juicy numbers, and they are all white.

And so, because of this diversity issue–and I’ll just say, that’s a lot of funding. That’s a lot of people that hold a lot of wealth and resources for the communities that need it.

Now this diversity issue is a problem for sure, because the resources are not going to where they need to go, they’re not going to communities of color, or there’s some barriers that are getting in the way of the money flowing. The latest research actually shows that there’s only about 8 to 9% of grantmaking from foundations that goes into communities of color. So in order for us to really affect long-term and sustainable movement toward equity in philanthropy, which is what we want, we have to start with the issues like this–racism in philanthropy, saying it plain–systemic issues must be acknowledged and solutions must address the underlying biases and the power dynamics that we are really trying to break down through our work within giving circles.

Lived experience within the ecosystem of philanthropy. Our work needs to rest on the understanding of proximate philanthropy, and that is just saying that lived experiences are valuable and are valuable expertise. As a matter of fact, a key component of this equity work is really us being intentional about valuing and incorporating community voice into our grantmaking. That has to happen. Otherwise, if we don’t, then we’re just perpetuating the very inequities and such, or just the whiteness of philanthropy that I just talked about.

But by better centering our lived experience into, not only in our grantmaking, but our operations as well. Akilah is going to talk a little bit about that. But if we center our lived experience in the operational and the grantmaking processes of philanthropy, then we are equipped to strengthen community agency. We can really break down some power to disrupt some systems of oppression that hinder people’s capacity for reaching their economic prosperity.

And that’s very important in itself, because there is no way that we can even effectively center lived experiences in our work as giving circle leaders and members, and really as funders. There’s no way that we can do that without first acknowledging and having a better and deeper understanding of the systemic issues that those with lived experiences are facing.

And so I pulled some data here, some national data about what’s happening here in the US, on our home ground. Y’all, there’s over 121 million households in the US, over 51 million people who cannot afford basic necessities. Now when I say basic necessities, that’s childcare, that’s food, that’s transportation, that’s medication, that’s health care, a smartphone, just basic necessities, including 16 million people that are living in poverty, right?

We have about 35 million people that are asset-limited individuals, what they call Asset-Limited, Income Constrained, Employed individuals, or ALICE individuals. And COVID only disrupted that even more so. It further enhanced the disparities, and the systemic issues that we’re trying to solve within our giving circles which only reduces the opportunity for advancement, for so many of our neighbors and people.

And so these inequities – They’re all very complex issues, right? And they’re deeply rooted in legacies of oppression and discrimination that can be used to permeate all facets of our society.  And so we as funders across the world, we are doing it. We’re working to address systemic inequities through our grantmaking, so that we can really reduce these barriers, especially the ones that we’re seeing within philanthropy, and so it’s very important we talk about these issues.

These individuals, I was in these statistics at one point in my life, right? And so these are our members. These are your giving circle members. These are our friends. These are our neighbors. These are kids, teachers, frontline workers who really are out here.

It’s very important for us, their experiences are so very relevant, and they matter, and they should be incorporated. And so all of our programming grants are intended to serve them, and we can’t even talk about the national, systemic issues that we see all across the US. But here, me and Akilah, we’re both in Dallas–she’s from Ohio, but has been here for quite some time. We are working by our work in HERitage to address a lot of issues here in Dallas.

As Bryan Stevenson, I love him, so accurately said, “If you really want to create change, then get proximate.”

A lot of us are working within our circle to address local issues. So being understanding about local issues matters. And so I pulled some data even from my own city. Dallas is a Tale of Two Cities. We’re segregated by race and income. More than 30% of Dallas children live in poverty, which is higher than almost any other large urban city. Of these, over 43% of individuals and 38% of families in Dallas County are in the ALICE population. Hispanic people in Dallas County definitely have a different experience.

I live in southern Dallas, where those communities reside mostly, and the median income is less than 60% of the median income of our white and Asian residents. And so these issues all matter. Local issues matter because again, it’s understanding of these issues is really why, as Akilah mentioned in the story of HERitage, it’s just the concept and inception of why we even started our circle.

A lot of our members’ lived experience shaped our program, our services and things like that. Their experiences shape our program and services as we are seeking to address those issues, even here in Dallas. So that being said, we’ve got to understand those lived experiences. We have to understand the data and get rooted into the issues.

But our goal as funders is very clear, and if we stick with our fundamental goal of grant making, is basically to support the ability of nonprofits and some amazing community-based organizations and individuals to make progress on complex issues. That is only going to happen if we better design our activities within our giving circles, and form solutions that really close the systemic gaps and drive opportunities for us all to thrive.

And so now is the time, right? We’re having this conversation today with how we’re going to do better, and how we can bring in some voices to better lift our efforts, to become more equitable. Now is the time for us, all of us, to redefine grant-making approaches, to better address the needs of our community members by incorporating those lived experiences and understanding the issues, and bringing all of that into how we award grants, and also how we form our decision-making abilities around those processes.

And if we do not approach this work through the lens, and by bringing on those with lived experiences then yeah, we would just be further harming ourselves and not investing resources into areas that really need it the most. We will be basically reinforcing racial inequities, and also the racial philanthropy gap, because there are many gaps there. And also, we wouldn’t be able to truly address the needs of our community members and in the long term sustain recovery.

We all are trying to make our communities fuller, more just, better. It’s just going to be harder to recover from.

And so where’s the good news? Giving circles are the good news! Right?

We are very, very equipped to really send our community a voice at this moment, by centering on new and diverse voices into our work. And as I mentioned, our work rests on the understanding that lived experience is valuable experience for the social change that we’re trying to address. So as philanthropic leaders, and as human beings living in this very socio-political, historic moment, we all know that the world is at this unique moment, in the middle of COVID and the attacks on democracy. We’re looking for a way to rebuild in a better way.

The philanthropic sector is smack in the middle of this deep introspection, right? We’re trying to think about ways and how we can really leverage civic engagement, and shift power, and break down privilege, and drive impact and results, and all of that reporting is being challenged and changed, which is exciting.

And our local community and social sector contexts are also really changing with these new issues emerging. Some of them I address and more community members are seeking to engage.

And so, as you really think about your own giving circle, I hope that you would think about your own strategic planning, your processes, your leadership change, and take a deep dive look into how you can bring in more diverse voices, and how you can embed equity into your work.

With that, we have some guiding principles to get us started.

We have some guiding principles that we can use to lean in and to center our lived experiences into our work.

Some of these are probably familiar with y’all. If you know anything about trust-based philanthropy, you have seen some of these, but they are very good principles and practices that really help us to better authentically engage in a more intentional way. They are built and grounded and based on relationships and based on mutual respect and trust and valuing one another.

There are 5 guiding principles. These principles can really, really help shape some of our events, some of our equity work, and allow us to build more mutually accountable relationships.

So the first one is just being more inclusive. Right? Being genuinely inclusive. I won’t break down each one right now, because Akilah is going to unpack each of the principles in terms of operations, and how we can see them in our grant making, as well.

But the first one is being more inclusive. We know that work being more genuine and inclusive requires a lot of listening. And we can do more of that, especially as it relates to bringing in the lived experiences of our members.

The other principles include highlighting the strengths of the community; being more open, transparent, and responsive; soliciting and acting on feedback; and being aware of your own biases. Be aware of your own biases before engaging to reduce the chance of groups and individuals who have been historically left out of funding, and also out of the conversation and the decision-making process. I’m going to stop there and turn it back to Akilah.

Akilah S. Wallace: Wonderful. Thank you, Ty. That was really powerful information that I hope everyone begins to lean into as you’re thinking about either your existing giving circle or a giving circle that you’re thinking about founding.

So, how do we turn these principles into action? First I want to note that it’s important to think about your origin story. And for me, it was about, who do we want to model as a giving circle, and who was our target audience for membership?

I want to acknowledge the amazing work in the history of those who were the founders and leaders of the Black giving circle movement well before HERitage came on the scene in 2017.  There was intentional conversation and research that I did with the Communities In Action Network, over a key list, so that we can, in real time, place where we can instill these five principles into our lived experiences and into the work of our giving circle.

As well as with Ebony Cooper Johnson, who was with the Young, Black, and Giving Back Institute. I went to her summit back in 2016. I had conversations with Valaida Fullwood, with Black Philanthropy Month. There were key individuals who I was introduced to, who I was able to learn and grow from.

I challenge you all to think about who’s within your community or in other relationships that you can gain by way of this network and space, to begin to model what others are doing.

Because nothing’s new under the sun, right? So connect with others, as well as think about your target audience.

What was important and intentional of HERitage is that our founding members, the majority of them, worked in the nonprofit sector directly as staff. We were already voices and leaders in the sector by way of their board or committee membership, so we already had a very specific perspective and lens around who we wanted to serve, how and why, based on our lived experience as leaders in the community and in the sector.

I understand that may be different for other giving circles, but I just want to elevate how that uniqueness, of how that contributed to the rest of how we formed, and then about wanting to intentionally address racial inequities.

Giving circle operations and grant-making processes understandably vary from circle to circle, and that’s why the lived experience should be incorporated into both your organizational values and your operations, as well as within grant-making processes. Doing this helps ensure that community voice is central and integrated, and that shows up in the way of which you’re co-designing.

There’s the co-designing of your operations. The formalities of the who, where, when, how, and why, and then also the power sharing that’s in the grant-making processes of your giving circle. That’s going to vary: some people may do formal applications, others may, say, submit videos, or send pictures, or do a live interview. So that’s going to be really important, because both of these activities involve people with lived experiences, generally, those who are on the front lines of the work, and those who are more intimately involved in the potential that you have as a giving circle.

For some proven engagement tactics, these are some key engagement areas.

Looking at the call design of the giving circle, in short, did you think about the ways that your members will be involved in the decision making, in all your various systems and processes? And the way that they can be an asset to the community, and those that you’re seeking to partner with, whether that’s through the potential of who you’re hoping to provide funding to, and/or who just wants to see you as a community resource and as a funding partner, and how they can show up, and whether you’re providing additional advising and consulting.

Recognize that this is a two-way exchange. It strengthens your peer trust and relationships, and contributes to sustainable activities and initiatives. Community voices with lived experiences should be involved throughout the processes, and their input is integrated into your plans.

How this showed up for HERitage, again, I’ve noticed that many of our members were leaders in this nonprofit sector already. So in conversations with our programs team, as we were coming out of 2019, they were talking about, well, how can we be more intentional in the ways we elevate our grantees?

Because we’d already gone through one year of grant-making, and we saw the type of applications, the diversity of organizations, many of those that were volunteer-led or just a staff of one, and in comparison to some other organizations that may have had more resources. It’s important to know that our processes, with that, not only did we focus on Black women-led nonprofits, their operating budgets couldn’t exceed $500,000. We wanted to be very intentional in addressing a population group within the sector, who often were being overlooked, or just due to a variety of reasons didn’t have access to more funding opportunities.

But back to the membership. So what you’re looking at here on this slide is that we had members who worked in the sector at various levels, who said, hey, for programming, we want to help strengthen the type of applications that we’re seeing and even outside of that, we want to strengthen the community as a whole, and specifically those nonprofits that were led by Black women.

So we put together a series and I mean, really it was perfect timing, and it was really vital because we launched this in the beginning of 2020. It started in 2020 and then went through all of 2021, where our different members brought their expertise. They curated their own sessions, like one-hour webinars, advice for startup nonprofits, conversations around how to access more money, and that was because of the type of membership that we had.

We were able to utilize their lived experience as people in the sector and thus, recognizing that,  working in nonprofits oftentimes the difference between those that are able to scale and build capacity really was about their ability to access funding. Even with how we partnered with a couple of other organizations last month for addressing fire boards, because we knew as Black women that’s a major issue. Or health concerns for us. So we wanted to elevate our voice, to get behind that particular issue.

These are just examples of the way that you think about your members. If you recognize that many of your members work in finance, financial institutions, or banking, or they’re entrepreneurs–it doesn’t have to be in the sector. Lean into what are your gifts, what resources and knowledge and information do you have access to?

That could be beneficial to the community that you seek to serve and be in partnership with. So go think outside the box and the ways that you can really begin to build those relationships.

Looking at, again, this principle of practice around operations.

As you go deeper into the membership base and the leadership structure, look internally to understand how your circle demographics reflect the community you serve. Often, a giving circle may start, I know for me my initial conversations were with people I had relationships with, or that I knew already. So I started having one-on-ones and getting a feel for, what are your interests, and seeing whether or not there was an alignment for the calls that we wanted to have. For others, again that’s likely how your giving circle started, with those closest to you. But also take a look within yourself, and the intentionality of what you believe, what is your giving circle’s mission envisioned to be, and what does diversity look like?

And again diversity could be based on race. It could be on age. We wanted to make sure that as we looked at creating a pipeline of younger Black philanthropists seeing themselves in this sector, we intentionally went and had conversations with younger women. We knew we needed the women who have been in the industry, and have been serving on boards and were very prominent, and everyone knew about them, and they were doing tremendous work, and we respected it and admired them.

But also for myself–at the time I was in my mid thirties, and I went, wait a minute. I don’t see many of me, or my age group or even younger. And how do we prepare them to take on the responsibility of ensuring that their voice is contributing to the community?

So looking at diversity and then shortly, that shows up in your leadership as well. Your mission statement is a solidarity statement. Make sure you have that, but make a commitment to incorporating lived experiences in your strategic priorities with your mission statement and/or organizational values. We were very explicit about who we were wanting to prioritize, and that was Black women and Black girls.

The focus area of the circle: is equity and inclusion listed as a value of your giving circle? As well as thinking about, are you focusing on issues that correspond with member lived experiences or interests? Are you talking to each other? Are you surveying each other, together? Because it could vary, your interests and deciding, this is what we want to focus on.

So is it based on your membership? Or if it’s not about what the membership has direct experiences with, and you say, well, we feel as though through the research, or we know in our particular community that housing insecurity is an issue, are you going and making sure that you’re having conversations directly with those who are most impacted, first? And building your decisions around your operations and systems based on what they said they want and need, not the assumptions that you may have about any one particular community.

So again, being generally inclusive requires listening with intention and attention and ensuring that you’re addressing concerns in ways that are relevant to the community and in framing engagement in terms of shared values and opportunity and cultivating a sense of belonging.

Again, highlight the strength of the community organization rather than its needs. This process can be known as asset mapping. A dear friend and our co-founder Dr. Froswa’ Booker-Drew, who is an expert on social capital, looking at how well your giving circle can help to unlock and activate, to meet the full potential of community spaces and community leaders and build partners that already exist, that can help support ongoing engagement for your giving circle.

And that shows up in your programs and events. It shows up in your marketing and branding. How are you making a decision? Are you wanting to be an advocate? Are you going to be there to help celebrate and share the stories of your members as well as your grantee partners on your platforms?

That’s been a major piece for HERitage, and how we’ve been able to grow and really build an establishment, even when we took a break. For 2022, we had our members who had been directly impacted significantly, as everyone, by the pandemic, but being that we were majority Black women, there were other layers in the ways that trauma has shown up, the level of loss that many of us had experienced. We took the year off, but what was able to sustain us was our ongoing marketing and branding, and making sure we continue to share the stories of our grantee partners as well as our members who are continuing to push and do a lot of tremendous work in the community.

And then partnerships: establish genuine relationships with existing organizations who are doing the work as they relate to your focus area partner. Connect with them. Learn, what are you doing? Where are you? Just discovering our opportunities that we could pay attention to.

Your giving circle could be intentionally working to address again, not making assumptions, but having conversation and building relationships, so that the lived experiences of those who are closest to the pain, who are closest to the issues, who have varied perspectives and expertise on the solutions, that their voices are being integrated into your work, and then you get increased coordination, communication, and engagement with those community-based organizations.

So another key element to this work is power sharing. How does that show up in your giving circle’s decision-making work? And that includes collaborating, agenda-setting, and decision-making within our giving circles. Be honest. There were moments where we had our founding officers and as much as we were like hey, we want everybody to be included in decision making around what we do, how we do it, and what our program looks like, and we had developed various committees. We realized that there were some who were looking to us to provide that level of guidance.

We were trying to be equitable in the power sharing, but others were kind of looking at us to lead in a certain way. So to have evaluations around, what does power look like within your giving circle, as well as how that shows up in the dynamic between you and the community that you’re working directly with.

Tyeshia Wilson: Akilah, I’m going to jump in here real quick on this one because I think when we think about what power sharing looks like, there are two giving circles that are doing really, really awesome work in terms of setting the standard for that. One of them is the LUNAR Project, a community building and investment circle for Asian-Americans to support the movement for Black and indigenous led liberation.

They do this primarily through their transformational learning and community building. They do this through their twelve weeks. They have 12-week cohort programming, where they have a lot of the Asian American members get together to learn about race and racism, and they pool their resources. They have a very rich solidarity funding framework that really embraces the ways in which Asian-American and Black and indigenous community histories and struggles are interconnected.

I really like the LUNAR Project, and I encourage you to check them out because they’re just there. They’re getting it right in terms of transformational solidarity and power sharing.

The other circle is Radfund. Radfund is doing some amazing work as well. They’re a giving circle based in Brooklyn, and they are a group of friends that are united in love of dancing and commitment to liberation. They support those directly affected by the threats and oppressions that they work to correct. Just a lot of their work is rooted again, similar to LUNAR, in solidarity, and standing firm, and bringing in the lived experiences of their communities that don’t look like them, but they stand in solidarity.

I just think that they’re both just amazing, really cool giving circles, that are doing the work of power sharing.

Akilah S. Wallace: So centering community voice throughout the grant making process creates this opportunity to combat power imbalances among foundations and nonprofits and people with lived experience.

And here, you’ll see some quotes, by way of a resource from the United Way that speaks to how those of us on the funding side are beginning to challenge ourselves and say, hmm! How am I going about this? Is this what is best for the community that I see, to serve? Is it what’s best for us and our membership? Does it allow us to be truth-tellers? Is it true to ourselves, and ultimately to the goals that we hope to reach by way of our collective giving and impact?

This shift in grantmaking shares power with context experts, giving them agency to change systems and produce more equitable outcomes in their community. As funders, giving circles should instill lived experience throughout the entire grant-making process, which includes three primary stages: your pre-grant work, your grantmaking, and then also the post-grant work. And also evaluation, self evaluation as well as the evaluation of the organizations and the impact of your giving to them.

And at each of these stages there’s an opportunity to lean into the guiding principles of incorporating good lived experiences as members and those who are a part of the organizations that you’re serving but which can inform outcomes, funding priorities, distribution plans and overall impacts.

So again, leaning more into the grantmaking – and how does this show up? How do we turn these principles into action on the grantmaking side?

Make sure that you’re spending time in the community that you’re seeking to serve and establishing true, genuine, authentic relationships and bridging connections. It isn’t right for you to say, hey, I’m going to address human trafficking, but you haven’t taken the time to do your research.

But also align with those who may have had direct experiences. Understanding the laws and policies that may be in your region. We’re learning here, in the state of Texas, they’re fighting to ensure that, I believe there’s maybe some recent changes, to ensure that if a woman is arrested for human trafficking – well, more that they don’t get arrested for human trafficking, right?

That they recognize that they’re the victim, and that they’re not out here intentionally wanting to break the law, that they’re in a situation where it is a shift in power, and that they’re not in control and so they shouldn’t be penalized for that. They are the ones who need to be rescued, and not continue to be treated as a victim.

But it’s knowing and understanding that, taking the time to go and connect with the justice system, understanding how this particular issue shows up within that pipeline. What type of policies exist locally and statewide? It takes that level of building relationships and connections across a variety of sectors to be able to do that.

So again, do your research. Call and reach out to organizations and leaders in the community. Get to know the executive directors of organizations that you’re inquiring about, or, have an interest in getting a better understanding of not only the work that they do, but how they go about doing that work.

And especially with those that are smaller and newer, I just want to elevate that you need to be sensitive about how you go about doing that, though. Because often, again, you’re in a power dynamic where you’re seen as the funder. So, if and when you’re reaching out, there may be an assumption that oh, okay, you’re reaching out because there’s a stronger likelihood that I’m going to be considered for funding! So just be aware of that and be mindful of the way in which you do have that level of engagement as well as the way it was communicated, so it doesn’t appear as though you’re coming to extract information and resources from those entities, and then they never hear from you again.

So again, make sure it’s about building relationships and attention. I am finding ways to, whether it’s through potential funding or some other outlet, that you can support them. Maybe it’s helping to leverage, and connecting them to other resources, that you keep in mind that power dynamic.

You want to own the work of uncovering and addressing your biases, and proactively, meet people where they are, rather than expecting them to always come to you. So that’s self explanatory, as well as embrace humility and solidarity.

And I just want to note this, as you’re looking at applications, sometimes it comes up that some people can write much better than others, or they’ve been able to pay a grantwriter, an establishment, right? Or they have a development person on staff, in comparison to a one-person show and it’s a volunteer. Be very intentional thinking about how you are mindful of that, and whatever your grant making application process is, and making determinations around who is considered to be eligible to receive funding from you.

Next, on that post grantmaking cycle, or a part of the cycle, have an inclusive and diverse review committee that includes people with lived experience examining and diversifying your sourcing channels. Reach out to racial equity experts, scan conference attendees, and use resources created by movement organizations. Engage people with lived experience in the development of their grant opportunities.

Hopefully, that shows up by way of your membership. Evaluate your grant principles or pipelines to ensure that unfamiliar or grassroots groups have access. So again, don’t make excuses. “I don’t know where they’re at!” Figure it out! Connect with other BIPOC businesses and organizations: the Black MBAs, the Urban League, the NAACP. There are so many different options in a variety of communities. Reach out, build relationships with them, and then they can be resources for you as well.

Offer responsive and adaptive non-monetary support as well. You want to sort of just open this transparency and responsiveness, again on that on the back end of your funding. Pay attention to who is receiving your funds most often. Track your data. Have policies in place regarding  how many times a certain organization can qualify to get recurring funding. You want to ensure that equity shows up in the ways that certain groups [get funded]. Yes, their application is always strong. It’s great, wonderful leadership.

But also, how are you reducing the opportunity for someone else to get the resources from you that could leverage them and help them to grow? And increase their ability to access or to improve in their systems and operations. Treating your grantees of color as partners will help empower them to do their best work. If your grantees are not meeting targets, ask questions to understand why. Be clear about your expectations, and give feedback with time to resolve it.

That’s a key piece, give them time to work and possibly resolve it. Assess previous grantmaking efforts to identify gaps and improve your grantmaking. We’re doing that at HERitage. We recognize that one particular part of our process, we’re doing kind of like our voting day, how there were some inequities in the way. If some members who went and did site visits, if they weren’t present on voting day–they gave their pre-information and scoring information, but when it came down to those who were in person, and we were kind of vying for who we really wanted to push and elevate, to ensure they got awarded–there was an inequity for those who, if they weren’t physically there, to go hard for their organization, then it was an unfair power dynamic.

We’re working on ways to address that. So these are just different ways, in short, from all elements of your grant making, that you are embodying the lived experiences and working to address inequities in it.

Tyeshia Wilson: We sure hope this has been helpful to you. Now, Akilah and I are going to be back for round two. We don’t have time for a Q&A today, but we want you all to come back for our next session. We really want to hear from you. Based on what we shared today and your own heart and what happened for you, if you have any questions, or even just a thought or a comment, please let us know.

In part two of our conversation, we’re going to dig deeper into more actionable steps and ways we can better incorporate our own lived experiences and the lived experiences of others into our work.

And so with that, we just want to thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you!  We really appreciate spending our time with you all today and encourage you all to take care of yourself. Love on one another and stay with your foot on the gas.