As a relatively new entrant to philanthropy, I was recently asked about my attraction to and assessment of the field. Uncharacteristically, I found it challenging to articulate a response. Days later, accompanied by my Grantmakers in Health board colleagues, I visited, for the second time, the National Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama — two places every American should experience. These experiences evoked great clarity about the challenge of my response to that seemingly simple question.

In revisiting the gripping truths masterfully conveyed at the museums, I struggled to read the exhibits through a continual flow of tears. I asked myself why I was crying when these were truths I’ve known for years, and are realities of our history I frequently speak about in discussing their impact on present injustice. This intense emotion caught me by surprise, but I opted to treat myself with tenderness and care. It didn’t matter that I knew much of the information and stories because knowledge does not bar pain, nor does it necessarily translate to responsibility for what is known.

In those moments of silent homage to the resilient legacies of extracted, enslaved, and systemically oppressed people, that spaciousness gave way to clarity.

I serve as a philanthropic leader who shares an ancestral identity with people whose vital contributions created and scaled disproportionately held wealth and shaped our country’s economy — a financial system they were systematically excluded from. I reconcile the paradox between these identities by pursuing accountable stewardship. This is, in part, my attraction to philanthropy. My assessment of philanthropy, however, as a relatively new entrant into the field, examines the other side of the same shiny coin: the absence of accountability. Accountability is a mandate imposed upon other sectors and a concept that is, at worst, noticeably missing, or, at best, barely discussed in philanthropic discourse.

Philanthropy is unbossed, unbothered by, and untethered to government, corporate shareholders, or regulatory entities, save for IRS rules. Simultaneously, philanthropy is uniquely positioned to take the biggest risks and make the boldest efforts to catalyze and facilitate repair of injustices and support the self-determination of resilient and resourceful communities who have borne the brunt of systemic extraction and oppression — if philanthropy so chooses.

The woke philanthropic waves swept over the shores of racial equity work with tsunami-like strength since 2020, and we are now experiencing a retreat to a safer shoreline. Many foundations calculate the long-term implications and risks of their work within a vitriolic sociopolitical context and instead pursue pluralism and safety at the expense of equity and justice. Yet, the benefit and challenge of philanthropic freedom requires us to thoughtfully interrogate the purpose and meaning of philanthropy — the love of humanity — and step into our sector’s accountability to rebalance capital and resources through reparative investments in service to equity, fairness, and justice.

If philanthropy truly aims to live up to our origin and purpose, the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. are instructive. “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”

Read the full article about accountability by Qiana Thomason at The Center for Effective Philanthropy.