Giving Compass' Take:

• Blue Avocado discusses the changes we can make to practices in the nonprofit world to better support shared equity goals and priorities. What's holding us back?

• It boils down to fear. Organizations are apprehensive of harming their reputation or overhauling their system. But the upshot here is that we must put all that aside in order to advance social progress.

• Here's more on what grantmaking for racial equity really means.

Fear is stopping us from changing practices that we know are bad, and it’s frustrating and obviously limiting what we can achieve as a philanthropic sector. But when it comes to the equity work, this inability or unwillingness to address the need to change our practices has devastating human consequences.

Nonprofit Finance Fund’s 2018 State of the Nonprofit Sector report revealed that 65% of nonprofits serving low-income communities could not meet the demand for services. Immigrants are denied access to legal aid, formerly incarcerated are denied access to jobs, and students seeking special education services are turned away. Leaders at Cleveland’s City Mission report that the number of homeless women and children being turned away at local shelters has reached epidemic levels. Every night City Mission has had to tell 80 to 100 homeless women and children that they have no room for them.

Nonprofits are cutting programs, reducing staff, and turning people away because we are afraid to look bad and to actually talk to one another, and that is simply unacceptable. There is a real and very human cost to be paid unless we as a sector are willing to face our fears and change how we fund, change how we work, and end the culture of scarcity that is plaguing the sector.

Read the full article about breaking the rules for the sake of equity by David Greco at Blue Avocado.