The Chronicle of Philanthropy: My organization, Nonprofit Finance Fund, has for decades urged grant makers to take financial analysis seriously when figuring out which grantees to support and how to support them. We believe that is still an imperative. But we also now recognize that colorblind financial analysis too often unintentionally exacerbates racial inequality and ends up hurting the nonprofits who can do the most good in advancing justice.
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I love that this article addresses the importance of being equitable and not just looking to be equal. People of power need to have this outlook more often in order to be more equitable and get more diverse people and support diversity. All of the better reasons are great at showing how to be equitable because the article frames what is preventing minority-run companies from getting the funding that they need. They also change the requirements from being passive set in stone solutions to allow for companies to show how they would actively manage a problem. This doesn’t just allow for equitable analysis it also allows to see how a healthy company operates. An unhealthy or unsuccessful company would fail at creating viable solutions. I think what is really great about the better ideas that the author of the article and CEO of Nonprofit Finance Fund, Antony Bugg-Levine, provides is that all of the better ideas can also be put on an objective scale. This takes the subjectivity out of the assessments of grant proposals that are helpful in ‘color-blind’ assessments. For example, looking at the in-kind services of the board can be given a money amount and looked at when examining the amount of money that an organization has. This article is great but fails to fully look at the barriers in good granting writing.
This article does a really incredible job of discussing equality without discounting the community of people they are addressing. As a white person, who grew up in a very white community for a while I did not understand why saying you are “color-blind” is a problem until a very good friend of mine who is of color explained her personal issues with that statement. Going forward, my mindset was completely changed. She described to me that by using the term color blind, it strips away a huge part of a person identity and discounts the hardships that people of color have faced historically. This article brings up that when this color blind policy is employed, it actually does more harm than good by making it more difficult for people to actually get grants and funding. The steps that they employ to ensure racial equality are important and is setting the tone for the future.
The idea of “color blindness” sound like a decent one on the surface, but too often, it just becomes an excuse for white people to ignore people of color and discount their work, especially when it may come from a disadvantaged position in relation to those whose work is supported by their inherent privilege. “Color blindness” also discounts and ignores an important part of peoples’ identities, and the historical and ingrained discrimination POC have been at the brunt of for ages. This article does a fantastic job of laying out actionable advice for being more conscientious of the circumstances behind projects and people applying for grants, and how to take that into account when reviewing grant applications. It is a conscious approach to looking not just at the numbers of a company, but at its background and non-monetary resources, which also can help really see if a company is healthy and functioning well.
This article hones in on being an advocate of diversity, versus being a company that just tries to fall on the safe side of the industry. One of the most evident parts of reading this article is that clearly shows their steps in which they're taking to make their company a more diverse place that does more than just hire token employees. Companies that are traditionally white and standard are more likely to succeed, and thats simply the model thats been set up by employers and has been perpetuated by the industry. What makes a successful company isn't necessarily the person who runs it or the brain behind the company, but the message that it sends, the people they hire. Especially in today's day and age, creating an active awareness for equity and diversity in companies and in the workplace is highly important to the social furthering of all industries everywhere.
This article is so important. I actually sent this to my mom. She works in Development for the Girl Scouts of Southeast Florida and just reading and approving grants and donations is her dream job. I think it's really interesting to hear this from the perspective of those who read and accept grant requests because I grew up with my mom, who writes the grant requests. I think pushing the idea of color blindness is counter-productive, but is a natural idealogical progression for our society. Color blindness is something very natural for white people because it allows us to STILL not talk about race in the way that we need to, but pretend that we're advocating for equality, but in reality, we're advocating for stagnation. If we do nothing and ignore race, everything will be at a standstill, just like it is now. When what we're discussing is monetary assistance to marginalized groups, color blindness is simply not an option. If you decide to be "color blind" in the context of grant proposals, it would make it impossible for companies specifically working for the interests of people of color to have their grants accepted.
I think that White America is almost obsessed with being “colour blind”. To a lot of people, it’s an easy, superficial way to essentially say “I’m not racist!” Almost the new “but my friend is black!”, being “colour blind” is a way for people to shirk the responsibility of acknowledging the power differential mostly shown between people of colour and white people. This article does a good job of laying out a course of action for being more mindful when looking at and choosing grant applications and their applicants. “Colour blindness”, however, has become exceptionally passive. I have found that many (mostly white) people brag on how they were raised - or how they raised their children - to be “colour blind”, exempting them - whether knowingly or not - from any moral complications relating to race or ethnicity despite obvious preconceived notions on a societal level about race and ethnicity that have become societally internalised.
'Colour blind is a term I have always heard a lot but is also always followed by why it is problematic and should not be used both as a phrase and as a mindset. It reminds me a lot of a comic I see often in diversity and inclusion sessions and articles of three people standing behind a fence watching a baseball game. The three people are different heights, allowing one to see easily, one to be slightly too low to really see anything, and one that barely reaches halfway up and cannot see at all. The second panel of the comic is each of these people standing on the same sized box, which giver person 1 an advantage they didn't need, allows person 2 to see well, and still does not allow person 3 to see. This to me very much represents what happens when people use a "colour blind" mindset, they do not recognize other systematic issues that are in play and do not react accordingly. It is crucial to see and recognize all aspects and take all into account, not just pretending they don't exist.
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