Vancouver Foundation is prioritizing justice over charity in 2021. Here’s why.

Author Dara Parker
Dara Parker, vice president of grants and community initiatives, writes about how the foundation is changing its processes to centre equity-denied groups

Why It Matters

As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.”

var TRINITY_TTS_WP_CONFIG = {"cleanText":"Vancouver Foundation is prioritizing justice over charity in 2021. Here\u2019s why.. I was drawn to join Vancouver Foundation in 2019 because of its bold choice to invest in systems change. Having spent 20 years working in the non-profit sector, I understood that we needed to address root causes to achieve the change we hoped to see in the world, and that funders needed to support this work. I also recognized that this was inherently risky and would require philanthropists to shift their expectations of measurable outputs in short time-periods (e.g. number of meals\/children\/trees served). I was impressed that Vancouver Foundation was doing just that.\u00a0 However systems are \u2018sticky\u2019 as noted in this report, and good intentions do not always lea

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