Giving Compass' Take:

• Writing for Justice Funders, Rini Banerjee at the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation discusses her background advocating for women's and LGBTQ+ rights and urges philanthropy to unlock its vast wealth to create a fairer economy.

• Now it's up to us to answer the call! What are impact philanthropists doing to distribute funds to the people who need them the most? How can our grantmaking be more mission aligned?

• Here's why rising up for social justice will also create a better democracy. 

In the early 1990s, I was a junior financial analyst for Citibank. I just graduated with a Bachelors degree from New York University, Stern School of Business and was ready to hit Wall Street. Back then there was no impact investing field, no Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing and no conversations on how extractive financial practices enable deep poverty and inequity. I didn’t last that long in my job. I needed and wanted to work in a field that actually creates long-term systemic impact that stays accountable to the communities they aim to serve.

The last eighteen years, I have been working in the social justice philanthropic field and have done significant donor organizing to push the needle in funding women, girls, and LGBT rights in the U.S and globally. Most of the institutions I have worked at have tried to do their grantmaking with integrity and accountability.

The progress has been slow and steady to unlock more funding for social justice organizations to do the deep work of ending structural injustices. But it is now time for philanthropic institutions to look internally and at their endowments where 95% of its wealth is locked up, and unleash its potential towards a more generative, sustainable, and just economy.

Read the full article about unleashing the power of the 95 percent by Rini Banerjee at the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation (via Justice Funders).