MacArthur President John Palfrey shares an evaluation of our Equitable Recovery Initiative with innovative and rapid grantmaking that aimed to share power.
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic, racial injustice, and economic instability converged, and at MacArthur, we responded with our $125 million Equitable Recovery Initiative. This one-time initiative offered a way to quickly mobilize resources to support organizations as they worked to combat structural racism, inequality, and COVID-19.
Because we approached this initiative so differently from our typical programmatic grantmaking, we have worked to learn from and share our experience. Our Evaluation and Learning partner, Creative Research Solutions, has some new learnings from their evaluation of the initiative, including insights about how we engaged new voices, sought to build trust, and balanced urgency within an inclusive participatory process.
Bringing in New Voices
With the Equitable Recovery Initiative, we had the opportunity to improve critical systems communities need to thrive. We knew that to do so effectively, we must understand community needs by leaning on both Staff knowledge and the expertise of people outside the Foundation.
Seventy-nine MacArthur Staff innovated and collaborated in unprecedented ways on this initiative. Our Staff exemplified our values in this work: Creativity; Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI); Empathy; Integrity; and Learning.
I am especially proud of how Staff lived up to our commitment to be a learning organization.
I am especially proud of how Staff lived up to our commitment to be a learning organization. Staff with no previous grantmaking experience embraced the opportunity to demystify our grantmaking. Staff engaged with grantees in ways that reduced burden on their time and established authentic relationships.
One Staff member participating in the Equitable Recovery Initiative described the experience this way: “We were doing something sort of new, unusual, and somewhat unprecedented for us in light of the current situation in the world, the dual pandemic of COVID, racial injustice, and the work that needs to be done there.”
Our external advisors, who were from outside our established networks, provided critical new perspectives that helped us better understand communities and their needs. Thanks to the work of our external advisors and Staff, a total of 63 percent of Equitable Recovery grantee organizations were first-time MacArthur grant recipients.
Together, we were able to deliver a more representative package of grants, based on the strengths, skills, and lived experiences of each Staff member, external advisor, and grantee who was a part of this initiative.
Building Trust
Trust was at the heart of the Equitable Recovery Initiative, and it was expressed in several ways.
We engaged in participatory grantmaking during the initiative with the intent to shift power, reflect trust, and disrupt traditional philanthropic practices. Feedback from the evaluation indicate that Staff and external advisors had mostly positive experiences with the processes in which they were involved.
“MacArthur trusted us as their grantee to steward the money in a way that was best for our organization.”
We trust our grantees to know what is best for their organizations and their communities. We reflected that trust, in part, through the type of support we provided. Sixty-five percent of the grants in the Equitable Recovery Initiative were general operating support or flexible spending, which enabled grantees to determine how to direct these funds within their organizations and communities.
“MacArthur trusted us as their grantee to steward the money in a way that was best for our organization,” one grantee said.
Centering grantee voices and experiences was a key driver in the Equitable Recovery Initiative. We aimed to support grantee organizational health, build resiliency, and stabilize their ability to sustain operations. As a one-time initiative, we were limited in the amount of financial support we could provide to grantee organizations. From the evaluation, we heard from grantees that we should explore further ways to support grantee sustainability and stay in partnership with these organizations. Some are now supported by the Foundation through other areas of grantmaking.
Balancing Urgency and Participatory Processes
We knew we were not going to get everything right, but we wanted to use our power and resources to act.
When we launched this initiative, we knew we were not going to get everything right, but we wanted to use our power and resources to act. We did not have time for the methodical planning and strategy development that typically accompanies our grantmaking. Instead, we prioritized urgency and learned helpful lessons.
While Staff had an overwhelmingly positive experience designing and implementing the initiative, there were challenges along the way, in no small part due to the rapid way we worked. Staff faced new demands on their time, responded to shifting roles and expectations, and worked towards organizational culture change. Feedback from Staff about this experience is helping to shape current initiatives and ways of working, such as our ongoing participatory grantmaking and how we engage advisors internally and externally.
Some external advisors recommended greater clarity at the outset of the initiative about decision-making and increased representation of Indigenous, Latinx, and non-U.S.-based advisors. Their recommendations align with our commitment to DEI in our work. We are proud that a majority of the Equitable Recovery Initiative grants went to people of color-led and people of color-centered organizations, and we are committed to doing more to live our DEI value.
Practicing Continuous Learning: What’s Next?
As part of our Just Imperative, we are consistently asking ourselves what it means to equitably allocate philanthropic resources. Based on feedback, we are cautiously hopeful that the Equitable Recovery Initiative was effective in responding to the needs of grantees and the communities we served in 2020.
One way we can grow is by modeling vulnerability, including offering learnings on where we got it right and where we could have done better. We will continue work to reduce the burden of our grantmaking processes on grantees and consider whether parts of our emergency response should become established practices in our everyday work. As we do so, we will be intentional about how we use our voice, privilege, and resources to shift narratives and provoke systemic change.
