Borealis Philanthropy’s Racial Equity to Accelerate Change (REACH) Fund and Research Action Design (RAD) are honored to put forward the wisdom of racial equity practitioners in Meeting the Moment, Keeping the Momentum: Stories of Racial Equity and Liberatory Practices from the Field.

Through narrative and five in-depth case studies, this new publication offers tangible guidance on how organizations working for social change can implement practices to foster an equitable culture within their own workplaces, and across the broader movement ecosystem. The report lifts and explores the complex realities of truly transformative work, covering practices related to inclusive governance, field building, holistic healing, political education, and more.

We invite you to dig into the wisdom and insights shared throughout this report, which we hope sharpen your understanding of this tender work, and deepen your resolve to advancing racial equity within and beyond your own institution.

In this report, REACH cohort partners and their clients emphasize the foundational liberatory practices of inner transformation to mirror the change we want to see in the world and the decolonization of the nonprofit and philanthropic industrial complex. They also lift up political education, inclusive governance, healing engagements, and field building as liberatory practices central to the long term success of their work. The report offers several case studies on these topics, illustrating the hard and challenging work of racial equity, the complex and nuanced ways practitioners and their clients collaborate, and the rewards from alignment and progress.

Recent political developments have created an opening and a public awareness of racial equity discourse, but perhaps because of unrealistic expectations about progress and outcomes, this window is showing some signs of closing. Without deep alignment and collective organizing and advocacy among the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors, we will continue to risk fatigue, complacency, and further backlash. Racial equity practitioners are often the preventive glue in this ecosystem. To counter pushback from more resourced oppositions, practitioners have to be innovative, rigorous, and accountable. There is also a need to create networked relationships among practitioners to articulate, refine, and amplify liberatory practices.

But this report is also intended for other actors in the movement building ecosystem. For funders, meeting this moment requires critically examining power dynamics in philanthropy and building authentic trust with those on the front lines. For nonprofit organizations, this report shows that vulnerability, transparency, inclusiveness, and liberation are possible even within the constraints of the nonprofit sector. But transformation is complex and only within reach if it is rooted in courageous conversations, justice, and healing. We hope this report will help our different audiences to not only seize this opening and stay the course, but also double down on our commitment to the work and inspire moral leadership and imagination.

Read the full article about racial equity at Borealis Philanthropy | Research Action Design.