Social Justice and a Relevant Philanthropic Sector (Part 6)

Miles Wilson is a philanthropic professional with nearly 30 years of experience supporting the U.S. social sector as well as past efforts in Northern Ireland, the Netherlands, and South Africa. Miles’ work has covered a broad spectrum of core social sector activities, and he currently serves as the Deputy Director of Education Grantmaking at Ascendium Education Group. Miles was most recently a Senior Fellow with the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions. This feature,

Social Justice and a Relevant Philanthropic Sector, is the final in a six-part series of blog posts about his experiences in philanthropy. A version of this blog series is running on the Center for Effective Philanthropy website. Access the entire six-part series here. For foundations that care about advancing a more just and equitable society, simply fixing the internal operations of foundations is not enough. The next step is to begin or increase foundation giving through a long-term commitment of granting dollars to nonprofit organizations that are at the center of local and national efforts to advance social justice. The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy defines social justice philanthropy as “funding intended to benefit underserved communities” and “funding whose explicit goal is long-term systemic change.” Effective social justice grantmaking is not only an attempt to make right the historic injustices but also to dismantle the underlying system and structures that produce and reinforce injustice in the first place. Involvement in social justice funding is a long-term endeavor that requires foundations to commit to this work as part of its mission and to perform it based on effective social justice grantmaking approaches. In his article, “The Case for Using a Social Justice Lens in Grantmaking,” Michael Seltzer describes the characteristics of an effective social justice grantmaking framework as the following:

a focus on root causes of inequity rather than symptoms
a striving for lasting systemic and institutional change
the use of a combination of tactics such as policy advocacy, grassroots organizing, litigation, and communications that together are more likely to yield enduring results
the strengthening and empowering of disadvantaged and vulnerable populations to advocate on their own behalf