This story is part of the Future of Good editorial fellowship covering the social impact world’s rapidly changing funding models, supported by Community Foundations of Canada and United Way Centraide Canada.

The disbursement quota debate has been a hot topic for social sector nerds, lobbyists and the executive directors of larger organizations. But even if the federal government raises the rate, many believe that significant changes are required for more funds to flow to Black and Indigenous-led initiatives. 

Future of Good interviewed six experienced racial justice grantmakers for their policy and programmatic advice. Some suggestions, by this stage, are well known: a desire for grantors to be able to fund non-qualified donees; a hunger for the government to require funders to collect race-based, disaggregated data; and a demand for a sectoral shift toward trust-based philanthropy

But other suggestions were less common. In this report, we focused on those suggestions. 

Advice for the Government of Canada

1) If granting to Black and Indigenous groups stays low, mandate it

Research has shown that Black and Indigenous-led initiatives get far less granting dollars than would be warranted by population distribution. To combat this under-funding, Orville Wallace, head of programs at Prince’s Trust Canada, believes it’s high time the federal government required funders to commit at least 1 percent of their required 3.5 percent disbursement to fund initiatives for Black, Indigenous and other racialized people. Foundations needn’t change their mandate, he says, but rather would be required to dedicate a funding stream toward supporting projects focused on this target group. 

“Racism is something that’s not going to go away. It’s a social cancer,” says Wallace. “We’re looking at generations of reparations, and that’s just the start.” 

With this approach, for instance, existing childcare funders could offer new grants that target Black and Indigenous communities; arts foundations could create new opera and dance programs for racialized groups; and foundations that grant out to big dollars to hospitals could redirect a portion of funds toward health clinics in predominantly Black communities. 

While the federal government has never implemented a donation mandate of this kind, governments certainly use policies of this kind to direct corporate behaviour. For instance, Toronto recently passed an inclusionary zoning policy, which requires for-profit real estate developers to offer a block of affordable housing units in select developments. Similarly, the federal government announced in June 2021, that it will require automakers to sell exclusively zero-emissions cars and passenger trucks by 2035. These two policies constrain the choices of real estate developers and car manufacturers alike in order to achieve the government’s social priorities. 

Wallace believes that such a policy in the philanthropic sector would help to turn the tide on hundreds of years of funding inequities. He also believes it would create a positive ripple effect through the operations of Canadian foundations, pushing funders to diversify their leadership, programs and operations in order to meet the needs of their new constituents. 

Others agree with the need to drive more funds to Black and Indigenous-led groups, but say that a federal requirement might not work. “Changing a percentage does not change the requirement to be in relationship in a good way,” says Anna Willats, board member with the Groundswell Fund, an initiative that provides funding to support social movements across Ontario, with a focus on Black and Indigenous-led initiatives. “There has to be the will to do that,” she says. 

Rather than implement a requirement, others would like the government to incentivize funders to increase their disbursements to Indigenous and Black-led groups. The Justice Fund, an organisation that supports youth in conflict with the law, has called on the federal government to provide matching incentives to foundations that transfer up to 3.5 percent of their capital assets to Black or Indigenous-led (and Black and Indigenous-serving) public foundations. 

Such a policy could create a big impact in a hurry. In March 2021, the Laidlaw and Inspirit Foundations committed to donate $3.85 million to the Foundation for Black Communities — a sum that could have grown to nearly $8 million with a government funding match. 

Advice for grantmakers and philanthropic organizations

2) Move way beyond per capita board representation

At many philanthropic organizations, having one Black person and one Indigenous person on the board is seen as enough, says Janine Manning, board chair of the Laidlaw Foundation. These foundations, she says, may appoint according to population demographics. (The 2016 census identified that in Canada, 6 percent of the population is Indigenous and 4 percent are Black). 

But stacking a committee in this way is “flawed logic” she says. “Population is one thing but need is another. If 90 percent of indigenous people in Toronto are living in poverty, putting one Indigenous person on your board, who likely doesn’t have lived experience with poverty, is not representative.” (Research conducted by Social Planning Toronto has found that 84 percent of Indigenous families with children in Toronto live in poverty). 

In addition, Manning encourages funders to make liberal use of paid advisory committees — and to take their advice seriously. In Canada, it’s illegal for board members to be compensated, but advisors can be provided with honoraria or paid for their time. This can make participation possible for people who otherwise might not be able to participate in a volunteer capacity.  

The Ontario Indigenous Youth Partnership Project uses this strategy. The initiative, which grants to support Ontario indigenous youth ceremony, food sovereignty, healing, and community work, is guided by a group of Indigenous youth advisors. Youth are provided with honoraria and their input is valued. Youth review and recommend all grants, and provide key advice to Thea Belanger, the project’s director. 

“They tell me what they’re hearing and what they’re seeing…They’re the experts,” she says. 

OIYPP is a project on MakeWay shared platform, and also relies on the work of a volunteer steering committee. 

3) Use your granting to drive representation in your grantees

But it’s not just funders who need to diversify their boards, leaders say. Charities and non-profits also need to be doing this work; and funders can help to accelerate this shift, says Ikem Opara, the director of partnerships with the Rideau Hall Foundation.

Opara suggests that during their application process, funders can ask grantees for information about leadership diversity. Applicants to Ontario Trillium Foundation’s Resilient Communities Fund, for instance, were asked in their grant application whether the organization’s leadership reflects the “lived experience or cultural identities of the communities served” by the organization’s programs. The question was for data collection only, suggesting that it did not factor into the fund’s decision-making, but it sent a strong signal to the fund’s applicants about OTF’s priorities. 

If funders ask for leadership diversity data, or make a decision to fund only Black or Indigenous-led groups, Opara says that it’s important that they be transparent with the public about their motivations. “Having those conversations out in the open helps, so that people can learn from them. And it allows people to think — to see that you are thinking critically about your identity and how you show up in community,” he says.  

4) Grant to Indigenous and Black-led foundations and ‘re-granting’ funds 

Across the country, Indigenous and Black leaders are increasingly developing foundations and re-granting funds, which accept donations from organizations and individuals, and re-grant to support grassroots groups in their own communities. These initiatives — like the Ulnooweg Indigenous Communities Foundation on the east coast, and the Arctic Indigenous Fund in the north — are governed and staffed by Black and Indigenous leaders and tightly connected to local communities, enabling them to be nimble and responsive to community needs. 

Belanger encourages non-Black and Indigenous foundations to consider offering large donations directly to these initiatives, rather than starting their own, in-house funding programs from scratch. “What’s always looked over is the fact that there are already existing small grassroots organizations that have been doing this work who are already established and community have already built those relationships,” she says. When seeking to fund Indigenous and Black communities, Belanger suggests that funders look to what exists already. 

For its part, OIYPP is keen to increase its funding to support Indigenous youth across Ontario, but has been constrained by donations. In 2021, the initiative was able to provide about $100,000 in donations to support their community — a sizable sum, but far lower than the budget of many small Canadian foundations. 

Belanger says that grassroots initiatives are often constrained by funder expectations of “whether smaller programs can handle” larger amounts of funding. She encourages funders to let go of this distrust, building relationships with Indigenous foundations and re-granting funds and redistributing their wealth.  

5) Work in collaboratives and support funder learning journeys

Fifteen years ago, a group of predominantly southern grantmakers was keen to support communities in the Arctic. But they weren’t sure where to start, didn’t want to duplicate other funder’s efforts, and wanted to learn together. So they formed the Arctic Funders Collaborative (AFC), a joint initiative that aims to advance land and water stewardship, capacity building for Indigenous peoples, and community and cultural well-being in the Arctic. 

Today, the AFC has 14 funding partners, including the Novo Foundation, Metcalf Foundation and Lush Cosmetics foundation, whose representatives sit on the AFC’s steering committee. “You can think of them as being on this learning journey on how to be better grant makers in the Arctic,” says Liz Liske, director of the AFC. 

To support this journey, the AFC has recently established a cultural advisor role — Indigenous people from across the arctic region who can guide AFC’s funder members in their work and support the group’s governance. The advisor role is key, says Liske, because it builds relationships between funders and Indigenous people in the north. “This is probably the longest relationship that they’re going to have with an individual from the Arctic,” she says, stressing the need to move away from transaction funding relationships toward longer-term relationships rooted in mutual respect. 

Advice for grassroots initiatives

6) Make the time to engage in policy conversations

For front-line non-profits, collaboratives and charities, carving out time to engage in policy advocacy can be tough, says Opara, but it’s essential. “If you were an electrician, it’d be important for you to keep up to date about what has changed in the code for wiring a house. It changes every couple of years, right?” he says.

Opara points to the example of Liban Abokor, the executive director of Youth Leaps, a non-profit focused on Black youth empowerment. In 2020, Abokor was a member of the working group that established the Foundation for Black communities, a public foundation that supports Black Canadians to thrive. In response to the working group’s lobbying, the federal government pledged $200 million to seed a Black-led philanthropic fund — a commitment that has not yet been realised. And three Canadian foundations have pledged $4.85 million to support the foundation. 

Opara encourages charitable sector workers to treat this policy engagement as essential professional development work — making time to learn about the changes and getting involved through consultations, advisory bodies, and sector tables. 

“These conversations can seem completely esoteric and outside of their sphere of influence, but it impacts them in a very direct or even indirect and very significant manner,” he says. 

7) Build awareness about the need for donors to give without expecting a tax receipt

For grassroots and non-profit groups, not being able to provide donors with a tax receipt can be a major barrier in securing donations. Janine Manning says that charitable tax receipts have helped to socially condition donors “that if you give, you’ll receive.” She believes that this needs to change. 

Manning encourages grassroots and non-profit groups to ask donors to give without the expectation of a charitable tax receipt. “The concept of mutual aid is not new,” she says. 

This is the approach used by Resource Movement, an initiative that engages young people with class privilege to support social justice movements. For the last three years, the group has hosted ‘giving circles’ — initiatives that engage members to fundraise their own networks in support of the Groundswell Fund. One key part of the fundraising training for giving circle members has been an encouragement to talk openly with their communities about the fact that Groundswell does not offer charitable tax receipts, and to explain why. In this training, members come to understand that not being a charity allows Groundswell to fund political movement groups whose work would be constrained if it needed to fall within the bounds of an acceptable charitable activity. 

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