Foundations: The Enablers of Faux Justice, Part II of III
Our class experiences in the creation and operation of the Inspire Up Foundation show that the intentional efforts to mitigate the challenges around elite interests and undemocratic internal structures, which are inherent in foundation work, can be established. However Inspire Up also reinforces the problematic nature of foundations in terms of biased processing, lack of community input into the distribution of capital, and overall accountability. Despite our efforts as a Board to eliminate internal power structures and foster inclusion, internal processes within the Inspire Up Foundation exist within the larger problematic structure of foundation-driven justice as biased and inherently based on competition. This was reaffirmed by the foundation’s inability to integrate holistic community input into mission creation, equally present our grant opportunity to nonprofits in our region, and implement less structured or non-competition based processes for evaluation.
In setting the groundwork for the processes of our foundation the Board group unanimously decided to craft the decision making process to include as many voices as possible. We did this by requiring full class consensus, rotating facilitators, and anonymous feedback loops. Despite creating a structure of horizontal leadership for our internal processes, the inherent nature of foundations externally is to exist as gatekeepers of capital to be distributed top-down to organizations. This horizontal structure of continuous feedback and meeting of needs therefore cannot be replicated externally. The rigorous integration of full community input, equal and in-depth discussion not centered on competition but on collaboration, and unanimous community decision making about the distribution of foundation-kept capital is unable to occur utilizing the current structure of operations that foundations have. Since foundations do not exist in a vacuum, even those who establish democratic, bias-mitigation, and collaborative structures exist under a larger operating requirement to engage in capital distribution in ways that are based in competition and elitist decision implementation.
The result is that even in a class where internal collaboration and feedback are created as cornerstones, a foundation like Inspire Up is void of comprehensive community input, is biased in its organizational outreach, and is rooted in unfair competition. The mission of Inspire Up, like that of many other foundations, was crafted according to the personal interests of class attendees around a specific social issue that we - not the community - deemed important. Then, to advertise our Request for Proposals (RFP) we circulated the document online through various social media platforms and a website. However, we also directly sent our RFP to organizations pre-selected by students as potential fits for the grant; this process reinforces the cherry-picking and biased process of capital distribution to a small pool of potentially fit but not fully representative community organizations by foundation members. Finally, for the grant selection process our class has crafted a ranking system that will be used in two rounds of review (out of three) for eliminating grants. This quantitative approach rejects the importance of community voice by rating each section of a written document instead of integrating individual site visits, phone conversations with program directors, or - most critically - interviews with program beneficiaries and community members, as measures of program ability to serve. Grants that are potentially serving high rates of community justice but do not have the capacity to craft a perfect WRAG form will be neglected by this process.
Despite the integration of consistent feedback from our larger Capstone class in the processes of equalizing internal power structures and fostering collaboration, the Inspire Up Foundation falls into some of the same complex pitfalls as larger foundations in the field. The efforts of our Capstone class to intentionally mitigate the potential for these injustices demonstrates how even the most well meaning foundations - when they exist within the larger structures of community neglect, bias, and competition that foundations thrive within - face barriers to truly serving community needs. In recognizing this trend within the Inspire Up Foundation, in steep parallel with the field at large, it is necessary to think of alternatives for structuring foundations that more closely foster community-driven processes for serving justice.
