Forging New Partnerships as Part of Our Equity Transformation

We all want to live in a country where we are seen, where our values are understood, and where our communities are set up to flourish. Philanthropy brings the unique, if complicated, ability to be a catalyst for creating the conditions to make this possible.

But sometimes our role as a funder can keep us from listening to and following the wisdom of community leaders who are closest to solutions. Our commitment to dismantling structural racism is new, and we have much to learn from those who have been experiencing its effects for too long.

We are explicitly—but not exclusively—focused on racism as a root cause of health inequities in America for a few reasons. Racism is deep and persistent, and it intensifies ableism, transphobia, homophobia, and anti-immigrant sentiments. The stress of racism is directly responsible for the ongoing Black maternal health crisis in this country. Entrenched racism manifests itself in many harmful ways, including the attacks on equity that last year’s Supreme Court decision on affirmative action has enabled.

Over the past three years, we have partnered with 13 organizations working in communities most impacted by health inequities through our Equity and Social Justice Relationship (ESJR) cohort, which comprises the following organizations that receive general operating support from RWJF: 

• American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD)
• Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC)
  
• Climate Justice Alliance (CJA)
  
• Faith in Action
  
• NDN Collective
  
• National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF)
  
• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
  
• National Immigration Law Center (NILC)
  
• National LGBTQ Task Force
  
• Sins Invalid
  
• Transgender Law Center
  
• Unidos US
  
• United We Dream
  

We created the cohort to listen to and prioritize the voices of leaders on the frontlines of social change, understanding that an essential part of our equity transformation is deepening our relationships with, and our accountability to, racial and health equity leaders.

We also wanted to shift RWJF’s practices to make them more equitable, through embracing the values of trust-based philanthropy—best practices to advance equity throughout the nonprofit sector that require funders to offer support to grantees beyond writing checks.

As a Black woman New Jersey native and a disabled Black man from South Carolina, we have experienced firsthand the structural barriers that block equal opportunity for health and wellbeing. Our experiences being part of marginalized communities, while we work to understand how those identities affect each other, is important to dismantling ableism and racism. We also know that it is the communities closest to the problems who have the expertise to create lasting solutions.

Our country’s systems, laws and social practices were built intentionally to exclude historically marginalized groups from opportunity. Working with community leaders in the ESJR cohort, we believe we can reimagine a better future. Together, we must work across our issue areas, rather than stay stuck in siloes. We have to think outside of grant cycles and strive for long-term solutions. And we have to continue investing in building the power of those most affected by barriers to health and opportunity as we collaborate with them to lift those obstacles. Working together, we can lift those barriers more effectively than any one of our organizations can do on its own.

Building tools—together—to support sustainable social change

We held our two-day in-person convening at the Friends Center: The Quaker Hub for Peace and Justice in downtown Philadelphia with these intentions in mind. Cara Page, co-author of Healing Justice Lineages, offered the group strategies and tools for considering healing justice as a political strategy.

We learned new tools for individual and collective response to crisis and change. And we began building alignment across our strategies to advance social justice and health equity, particularly within communities of color.

Leaders in the ESJR cohort named the important tensions and battles they each face, particularly during an intense election year. Far fewer funders prioritize race or equity than they did during 2020, which has left members of the cohort scrambling for resources, anxious and experiencing staff burnout. Some leaders expressed collective grief, a lack of psychological and physical safety, and heightened generational conflict within their organizations.

RWJF acknowledged with humility and transparency that our current ways of being and responding to the challenges of grantees don’t always meet the moment, but we are trying. We aim to support the inclusive mission of each ESJR cohort member by strengthening key areas that will help expand the impact of social justice organizations. That includes our intention to build internal supports and continue to identify areas of collaboration.  

We also learned how RWJF can continue to shift our grantmaking processes to make our funding more effective. It was an honor to listen deeply to partners doing the hard work of operating explicitly at the intersections of disability, climate, LGBTQIA+ identity, immigration and racial justice issues.

Embracing a future of transformation

As action-oriented people, we’re tempted to report that we solved all the problems everyone brought to the table when we gathered in person. But the truth is, our work with the ESJR cohort is one step toward transforming the way we think about health and who is deserving of the dignity of being well in our lifetime. We still don’t have it all figured out, but we also were reminded of the power of embracing, in the words of United We Dream’s executive director Greisa Martinez Rosas, a spirit of “joyful rebellion.”

The convergence of COVID-19 and the murder of George Floyd and too many others underscore how painfully important it is for us to translate words of solidarity into long-term action. Amid loud and pressing calls for justice, there has also been a valid concern that these events, despite how terrible they were, still would not motivate positive change. Even though those moments have passed, we can’t just move on. And we shouldn’t. There is much more work ahead of us to pave the way together to realize a nation where health is not a privilege, but a right.