Each summer on Martha’s Vineyard, leaders of color working in philanthropy across the United States gather to strategize, to vision, and to be in community with one another on an island where Black families have been vacationing since the 1800s. The increasing numbers of people of color in these leadership positions has been a visible sign of the sector’s growth spurt towards equitable philanthropy.

At this past summer’s gathering, Amardeep Singh, vice president of programs at Proteus Fund, a funder collaborative that supports movements to advance justice, equity, and inclusive democracy, shared a vision that sticks with you. “We need to develop a culture that is not weighted by where we’ve been, but liberated by where we are going,” offered Singh, who as an activist in the wake of 9/11 co-founded The Sikh Coalition, which is now the largest Sikh civil rights organization in the country and highly committed to equitable philanthropy. “What would it mean if our American identity was not bound by a shared past, or desire for a shared past, but a shared destination—a shared future.”

The multiracial, multiethnic group of about 50 people—including heads of family foundations, institutional philanthropy, funder collaboratives and intermediaries, donor organizers, and advisors to wealthy donors—nodded and snapped in support. A society anchored by a shared future is a powerful re-orientation for the nation, including a future centered around equitable philanthropy. For one, it becomes hard to imagine underinvestment in communities of color continues. But as the crowd’s chatter quickly made clear, focusing on a shared future also requires a level of innovation and imagination to redefine society’s notion of well-being by raising the bar for everyone rather than closing gaps to reach current levels of well-being that are too often still lacking.

This is a taste of the new vanguard of equitable philanthropy—leaders of color who are helping to redefine what good philanthropy means. In our 2022 SSIR article, “What Everyone Can Learn From Leaders of Color,” we documented the assets and skills that leaders of color bring, because of their identity, that make them highly effective leaders and critical to social change. These assets go beyond experiences of oppression or marginalization to include the connection, meaning, and joy these leaders can draw on from their respective cultures and communities. In short, the sector needs to think about what could be gained if the assets of leaders of color were truly recognized. Now, the continuation of that work is to learn from those leaders, to see and understand what philanthropy looks like when those assets are leveraged. Doing so reveals models that all funders can follow in their pursuit of equitable philanthropy.

Read the full article about equitable philanthropy by Darren Isom, Cora Daniels, and Lyell Sakaue at Stanford Social Innovation Review.