William Jackson Harper: “…Survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” – Audre Lorde
Elz: we can’t use traditional philanthropic practices to break down all of the systems of oppression that exist for us.
Maureen: North Star Fund Deputy Director, Elz Cuya Jones.
Elz: We have to do things differently. So, for our community, and in order to grow it, we know that we have to ask for money in different ways. We know that we need to support things that we’re not used to supporting because it’s not going to change if we keep supporting this idea of the white and the wealthy and the powerful are the ones that are going to fix this mess when they’re the ones who created it.
Risa: A Guide to Freedom: A North Star Fund Podcast
Maureen: Episode Two: The Master’s House
Risa: Don’t be nervous because this is all on us to do a great job. And we already know you’re great and incredibly impressive.
[KOFO LAUGHS]
Risa: So you just have to be yourself and all the pressure is on us.
Kofo: Great.
Risa: You can’t mess up. We can mess up.
Kofo: Great.
Maureen: Now I’m nervous. Seriously. I’m nervous. Even before this conversation we had with Kofo Anifalaje, North Star Fund’s development director, I was nervous the moment we got the call from North Star Fund to create this podcast.
Risa: How are we supposed to talk about the work North Star does when we aren’t even in that world?
Maureen: We’re not activists or advocates or accomplices.
Risa: I think I’m an ally?
Maureen: I’m not even a reporter.
Risa: I am a reporter, and I still have imposter syndrome.
Maureen: I’m just a Filipina girl from Michigan who likes to tell stories about people who don’t feel like their stories are worthwhile. Because, after feeling alienated and erased in the midwest, I came to a place with a lot more people like me: New York City.
Risa: But the nervousness that you talked about comes from feeling not good enough. From feeling like there’s this version of what we’re supposed to be, and until we become that version, we don’t deserve to be heard or to take up space or, god forbid, to have a seat at the table. Because our version of the people who are seated at that table don’t look or act anything like… well…like us.
Maureen: But despite that, here we are. Mired in the complicated world of philanthropy. The task is upon us. And, worthy or not, we’ve got a job to do. And for us to start wrapping our mind around philanthropy, and, as Elz and Jenn brought up in the last episode, the decolonization and democratization of it – we’ve got to start with the founding of this country.
Edgar: So, the idea of a colonizing virus is really described in the dynamics of colonization which we know 500 years ago when colonization began in this country,
Maureen: I found this interview on a frantic late night google binge typing in “North Star Fund” and “decolonizing philanthropy.”
Edgar: It was fueled by a desire to exploit, to dominate, to separate, all with the goal of accumulating wealth and creating division between the haves and the have-nots.
Maureen: Edgar Villanueva, one of North Star’s 40 for 40 and writer of the book, Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance. This was recorded live in 2018 from a North Star Fund-hosted event in Kingston, NY. Edgar was in conversation with Mayra Hidalgo Salazar.
Edgar: So this history of colonization is still in the DNA of our country. It lives in our cells, it lives in our bodies. It lives in the way we are programmed to think. It shows up in our policies, in our systems. So those dynamics show up even in the most well meaning places, like non profit organizations, even in philanthropy. The way that it shows up in philanthropy especially, when you think of our sector, there’s a lot of concentrated wealth, power and privledge. Right? We have a diversity issue,we have a representation issue, that foundation dollars are going to white led orgs, we see only 7-8% donation dollars going to POC. So if we don’t question that we are in essence contributing to that issue of separate and division. Creating a larger gap between the haves and the have-nots.
Maureen: I’m sorry, did he say only 7-8% of donation dollars go to POCs?! That is some shi-
Risa: No swearing, Incredible Hulk.
Maureen: Sorry.
Risa: Let’s talk to Executive Director Jennifer Ching about what traditional philanthropy looks like.
Jenn: When people think about a foundation, usually they picture a, you know, a wood paneled room where there’s a conference table and a bunch of people in suits sitting around it. They are making gifts. So it’s rooted in generosity. But a lot of times what we think about giving, it’s like rooted in these like celebratory individual acts of generosity. And they’re almost always about what the giver wants. But North Star Fund approaches this world a little bit differently. We are asking people to think beyond your individual acts of generosity. And we’re asking philanthropy to think beyond the traditional model of a foundation with a big endowment, just deciding where to allocate their resources based on the issues that, you know, they are determined to be the most important.
What we ask instead is what would the world look like if we used money and resources to actually be a part of transformative change? What would the world look like if we returned money into the hands of organizers, community leaders who have been fighting for change, you know, for generations and who have been building movements deeply under-resourced and in some ways directly undermined by the acts of philanthropy writ large for all of America’s history.
Maureen: Well, because I did an anxiety filled middle-of-the-night deep dive about the history of philanthropy, I did come to understand that these questions around the intention and effectiveness of American philanthropy have been around since its beginnings, when business magnates like Rockefeller and Carnegie created their foundations. To dive further, let’s speak to someone about how these foundations were set up in the first place.
Risa: Would you mind just giving your name and telling us a little bit about your role at North Star Fund, please?
Jillian: My name is Jillian White and I am the donor organizer at North Star Fund. A lot of people don’t really know the origins of philanthropy and traditional philanthropy is actually not set up in a way where the money is distributed. It actually is set up in a way where most money is just put into accounts and it’s held there and it gains interest and it just becomes more and more money. And a very limited amount of that money gets put back into the world or gets redistributed. So what sets North Star apart is that as a community foundation, we have a very, very clear mandate to turn that money around and redistribute it to the community. In particular, North Star Fund is focused on grassroots organizing and that also really sets us apart. I think it’s about two percent of funds in philanthropy actually go to social change work, to social justice work. And within that, it’s an even smaller fraction that’s really supporting organizing work. So I think of North Star as being an organization that really is intervening at multiple levels into how traditional philanthropy operates. Also, I’ll just say that, you know, I’ve never been at an organization that has been led by women of color within philanthropy.
Jillian: When you ask someone who do you think works in philanthropy or who is philanthropy referring to? The picture that they get in their head most likely is like of older white men with wealth. Right? And then we look at our city and we’re like who’s in our city? We know our city is diverse. We know that our city is not just old white men with money. And so, for me, when I think of it, it’s like I want our giving community to reflect the people that live here. We should all have a say in the work that’s going to lead us. We should all, like, invest in these strategies. We should all invest in our movements.
Risa: So it sounds like it hasn’t changed much since Rockefeller and Carnegie’s time.
Maureen: Well, since their founding, progressive scholars and activists have been questioning the validity of philanthropic institutions. Outspoken feminist writer Cornelia J. Cannon cautioned against them, stating “The philanthropists serve unconsciously as a bulwark of the status quo, for whose defects they are ready and eager to apply palliatives… They are the great menders and patchers-up of society, not the surgeons who cut deep into the festering sore and scrape the bone.”
Risa: My basic understanding of traditional philanthropy is that the same types of people who have always held the power and wealth continue to hold the power and wealth. They hoard money, then release little drops of funding to issues that they feel are worthy to be “solved”.
Maureen: That’s what I’m getting.
Risa: Ok, now that I feel clear about what traditional philanthropy is, please god tell me North Star Fund does it differently.
Maureen: And how Community Funding Committees work. And who are their grantees? And how do the grantees feel about this process versus traditional ways of applying for and receiving grants?
Risa: Maureen, one thing at a time!
Maureen: I’m sorry. My anxiety and anger vacillate!
Risa: Executive Director Jennifer Ching:
Jenn: We do not funnel into a specific project that then our staff, you know, solicits applications and then we decide where the money should go. Instead, what happens at North Star Fund is when people give to us, we move those dollars into the hands of what we call Community Funding Committees. And our three Community Funding Committees, one which operates in New York City, one which operates in the Hudson Valley and one which operates our Let Us Breathe fund, which is specifically for Black-led organizing around issues of police reform, state violence and structural racism. These committees then decide where the money goes. So the members of the committee, all of whom are volunteers and themselves organizers working daily on a range of issues, are really leading our grant making within our foundation. And I think that’s very – it’s a particularly important model that I that I hope folks understand it takes a lot of facilitation and coordination and community building on our end to try to establish and build avenues of trust and to engage people to make these very complicated decisions, particularly around limited resources, so that we can best support emerging grassroots organizing in New York.
Maureen: So these Community Funding Committees, how are these volunteers – the organizers, the people on the ground, the people in the communities – better suited to make these decisions as opposed to the people working in the philanthropic world?
Risa: Here’s Kofo, who you met at the beginning of this episode, the Development Director at North Star Fund:
Kofo: Our approach is something that we call activist led grant making. It’s becoming, in vogue now to talk about it. A lot of people refer to it as participatory grant making. We call it our CFC, our Community Funding Committee. They’re really the leaders of the organization. And I think that, outside of just, you know, what I shared with you about activist-led grant making, thinking about it a little bit deeper. I think what makes North Star fund unique is that we are challenging power and we center our work in support of challenging power and repositioning power.
Gabriela: I wish that foundations will be less intimidating.
Risa: That’s an understatement.
Gabriela: My name is Gabriella Quintanilla and I am the Hudson Valley program coordinator here at Northstar Fund.
Risa: Here Gabriela shares with us the experience as a grantee of the complicated, bureaucratic, and oftentimes closed-door world of traditional philanthropy.
Gabriela: I wish their foundations would be more open and more relational in a way to, you know, having a meeting with a grantee or creating structures. You know, one foundation with another, with another in which they say, “OK, we’ve been funding this group now for five years. We can no longer fund them. Here is an overview of this group. You know, would you consider funding them? Can I introduce you to the ED at this organization and like help set up this meeting so that the grantees can continue to walk through this world?” I wish there was more of like a system in place to walk new grantees to the world of philanthropy and so that they can feel more comfortable asking for money. It’s a very hard thing to do, especially when you come from a background of having no resources.
Risa: How does NSF help grantees navigate this super intimidating world of philanthropy?
Catherine: My name is Catherine Eusebio. I’m the program officer for North Star Fund, which means that I am responsible for shepherding our grant making work for New York City and the Hudson Valley. When I think about how traditional philanthropy is set up, it does not have the interests of low income people of color in mind necessarily. And how I think about my approach now as a person who shepherding or has a gatekeeping role over money, I think about how I can use my role to make resources more available to grassroots groups, especially groups that don’t have access to these kinds of resources. And so that may mean having lots of phone conversations with first time grant seekers, people like my parents who may not even be familiar with how to submit an application or how to write a mission statement and I think about how I can break down those barriers for people who maybe afraid to approach institutions for money.
Risa: How, then, do the grantmakers at North Star Fund walk grantees through the process of applying for grants so it doesn’t feel so daunting?
Catherine: So for new applicants or first time applicants, I have a lot of hours dedicated to walking them through the process. And once they become North Star Fund grantees, we also devote a lot of time to supporting their organization’s success. That could be in the form of workshops and trainings. It could be in the form of one on one technical assistance. And it could also mean us bridging the relationship between them to other funders who may be interested in their work.
Maureen: But they still have to answer to the people giving the money, right? On another 3am rabbit hole researching donors…
Risa: Maureen, get some sleep.
Maureen: After this podcast. I was reading about the power donors can hold over organizations
Risa: Ok, first thing’s first: let’s find out if and how North Star Fund balances the dynamics of their grantees and their donors.
Kofo: North Star Fund, just to our bones, we really feel accountable to our grantee groups.
Maureen: Kofo Anifalaje.
Kofo: And I think that’s different for some other organizations who feel more accountable to their donor base as a fundraiser right, everything that I say to a donor always centers our grantees. I always have to, you know, be sure that I communicate that a donor making a gift to North Star fund means that they are sort of handing over power and they’re handing over the power that many of them are very used to maintaining, especially when it comes to money. And, you know, giving away money. And so with North Star Fund, when donors make gifts to us, part of that gift is part of the making that gift is them joining us in the deconstruction of power, in money and how that rules our city.
Jillian: There is philanthropy with a big capital P.
Risa: Jillian White.
Jillian: There’s a whole body of work. There are all of these legacies and lineages of giving that don’t get categorized as philanthropy but are so important for us to uplift right. So, long before there were foundations that cared about black liberation, black people were finding the coins and finding the resources needed to free ourselves. And so we’ve done it before and like, we can do it again.
North Star Fund, I think, is an organization that is committed to changing the face and and changing the shape of philanthropy. It’s all about this lineage that we come from of redistributing what we have to sharing what we have in order to see our community thrive. To see us get a little bit freer and freer. And so as much as we welcome in folks with a lot of wealth and a lot of access to resources, we’re also lifting up people of color, working class people, poor folks, and really saying, like, you all have a voice, too, like we all have a voice and all of us are welcome in this movement. It’s not just capital P philanthropy.
Maureen: I appreciate that invitation into this world.
Risa: Especially because philanthropy can feel like such an elite world.
Maureen: But social justice shouldn’t feel that way. How do we choose to hold power? How do we continue this lineage of supporting one another against systems that oppress us? How do we choose to invest our time and money and privilege to create a world that values all of us?
Risa: I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and topple those mahogany paneled rooms filled with colonizers.
Maureen: I like the enthusiasm, but we can’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. The baby being both Carnegie and Rockefeller.
Margie: So I want to give a shout out to the fact that there are a lot of really good people in traditional philanthropy, too.
Maureen: This is Marjorie Fine, the Board Chair at North Star Fund.
Margie: Who are trying to figure out from the inside how to give to social justice organizations, how to describe advocacy and organizing as just as important as service and research to making a difference in the world, and to making it as easy as possible for groups to get money.
Risa: Okay, fiiiine. We can’t just condemn all traditional institutions.
Maureen: But Margie understands, just as we’ve learned, we are the keys to fixing a broken philanthropic system. We have to sit at that teak and marble table in that hard to reach ivory tower, and say, “We are the solution.”
Margie: I think what North Star does is it puts into the hands of the communities the ability to go and interview the group. So you’re seen by somebody who’s going through similar things to what you’re doing and the strategies that we’re making to make that happen. So it’s not just having a program officer, it’s having community members who do this work as well. North Star stays with groups for a long time. So if you’ve done you’re doing really good work in a community and you haven’t finished the problem in four years, North Star doesn’t just say go away. It keeps supporting that organization. North Star staff go out of their way to introduce North Star grantees to other funders who can also make grants to them, sometimes even larger grants to them and to make sure that they know them.
And North Star is a terrific communicator to other foundations about you can do this work too. You can support organizing in the Hudson Valley and in New York City. Come on in. The water’s fine.
Interruption of Sirens/Hospital Noises
Dr. Fauci: This is where we are right now with the coronavirus, and then just getting back to last… many times and I’ll repeat it: the worst is yet ahead for us. It is how we respond to that challenge that’s going to determine what the ultimate endpoint will be.
Maureen: Ugh. I was just starting to feel less nervous.
Risa: And then the world broke.
Maureen: Thanks so much for listening. If you’d like to learn more about NSF and the incredible work they do, please go to www.northstarfund.org. We’d like to give a special thanks to Jennifer Ching, Kathleen Pequeño and Angbeen Saleem for their guidance and support in creating this podcast, and to all of our interviewees – Jillian White, Adrienne Wong, Kesi Foster, Margie Fine, Catherine Eusebio, Gabriela Quintanilla, Kofo Anifalaje, and Elz Cuya Jones. For additional audio, we’d like to thank Edgar Villanueva, Radio Kingston, Walter Hergt, the Release Aging People in Prison Campaign, Damayan, Adhikaar, Right to Counsel, Worker Justice for NYC, and Public News Service. For lending his immense talent (and dulcet tones): a huge thanks to William Jackson Harper. We’d also like to thank our magician of an audio technician/editor/sound mixer Dan Crowley.
The North Star Fund podcast was created by Maureen Sebastian and Risa Sarachan, and produced by Maureen Sebastian and North Star Fund.