Impact Investing Venture Launches To Do Good And Make Money

The Push For More Accountability and Alignment In Philanthropy

Giving Compass' Take: • The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy published some reflections from the Just Transition Forum about making sure the sector is emphasizing more accountability. • What should funders do? The article concludes with a call for more peer support, organization and resource access in efforts to develop more respectful relationships with grassroots groups when it comes to community-led equitable grantmaking. • More knowledge always helps as well. Here are five orgs devoted to closing the racial gap. What does accountability in philanthropy look like today? This was a particularly salient question at the Just Transition Forum, a powerful cross-sector convening hosted by the Building Equity and Alignment (BEA) for Impact Initiative in Jackson, Mississippi, in February. The BEA “brings together dynamic grassroots organizing groups, effective national green organizations and innovators in philanthropy to advance the progress of the environmental movement towards a just transition and directly confront powerful polluters.” ... We discussed philanthropy’s current realities, how we show up and what we bring to the movement. Accountability was a prominent theme: We named that we operate in a sector that has few mechanisms for accountability and transparency, and identified a need to push for structures that support and move philanthropy towards “true accountability.” ... Today, mainstream grantmakers still hold enormous power, privilege and gatekeeping abilities, isolating them from the inequities and injustices experienced at the grassroots. With no “natural predators” beyond the IRS and tax policy in the United States, and ongoing sector disagreement over the fact that foundation dollars are partially public dollars, it’s no wonder that this challenge continues to plague the sector. Reflecting on this same report in 2013, our president Aaron Dorfman wrote, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” But philanthropy can and must move beyond upwards accountability to boards, donors and founders, and operationalize accountability downwards to nonprofit partners and communities.