I’m working at home when I receive an email from the Membership Engagement Director of a nationally known philanthropic association. I’ll call them PHIL for short. It’s an invitation for myself and a second Quixote Foundation board member to join their community. At the end of the second sentence, I pause. Then reread it: “PHIL is continuing to evolve and deepen our focus on racial equity and we’re looking forward to the new CEO bringing passion and focus in this work. There is much to do, and I’m enthusiastic about the direction we’re heading.”

This is great! This mostly white and highly privileged organization is stating explicitly their intent to do serious work around race and inclusion. But wait a second. I don’t see the third and final member of the Quixote board included in this invitation. No, there’s no mention of June Wilson, Quixote’s African American Executive Director. She’s also our third and final board member in our management triad.

This situation I realized, isn’t only about one person’s assumptions. It also isn’t only about race. It’s about a field that ostensibly funds change in the world, yet often excludes people based on the problematic (and often prejudicial) assumptions of whether or not that person has money to give, controls the money to give, or plays a direct role in those decisions regarding said funders’ control, possession, and/or access to financial resources.

The problem with efficient assumptions, unconscious or conscious, is they often lead to inefficient results. In this instance, for example, PHIL is passing up an opportunity to racially diversify their membership.  For any mostly-white philanthropic organization such as PHIL, it will take deep work to re-imagine their strategies to becoming an entity operating by Diversity and Inclusion (DEI) principles.

Read the full article about diversity and inclusion practice in philanthropy by Lenore Hanisch at The National Center for Family Philanthropy. 

To read more by NCFP, check out their Family Philanthropy magazine on Giving Compass.