2020 was a year unlike any other in my lifetime, and I have been through growing up during the 60’s civil rights struggle, the anti-war movement of the 60’s and 70’s, being in NYC for 9/11 and grappling with the massive economic impact of the 2008 recession.
And now, I must bear not just the same personal impacts of 2020 (continuing into 2021) that everyone else is grappling with, but also the burden, privilege and responsibility of determining how Bonfils-Stanton Foundation can most effectively deploy its resources to respond.
We have talked about it in some previous communications, but as we turn the corner into 2021, with the impact of COVID still very present, and the work of fighting racism ever present, I thought it might be helpful to reflect on what we have been doing, what I have been thinking, and where we are going.
New Space
A couple of years ago the Foundation had decided that our longtime home in the Daniels & Fisher Tower on the 16th Street Mall was no longer serving us well and we embarked on a plan to move. The layout of the space was challenging and offered limited flexibility for convening. Also, by literally being in a tower with locked floors it conveyed an aura of privilege that was not aligned with our values. We located a space at 1033 Santa Fe Drive, in the heart of both Denver’s Art District on Santa Fe, and the La Alma/Lincoln Park neighborhood. With significantly more flexible space we can host many more gatherings, as well as accommodate additional staff and interns. Our new neighbors include SCFD, Colorado Ballet, Youth on Record, Museo de las Americas, Center for Visual Arts and Su Teatro. You can learn more about the space and the wonderful selection of work by local artists that fills the space here. Of course, after all the excitement of creating our space and moving in on March 2, we were forced to close the office on March 16th for several months due to COVID.
We know that this will pass and look forward to welcoming the community into our new home to visit, and to take advantage of it as a community resource.
COVID Funding Response
Immediate grant support: Literally our last act before shutting down our office in March 2020 was pushing out immediate checks to every organization we had provided funding to in the prior 18 months – payments were equal to 10% of their most recent grant – no application, no final report, we simply sent out emergency relief right away, which was approved by the Board via a Zoom meeting. This amounted to about $150,000 in grants.
A commitment to double grantmaking, if needed: At our April 2020 Board meeting, the Board approved committing up to an additional $3 million towards COVID relief, essentially committing to double our grantmaking and because we have a July 1-June 30 fiscal year, this funding would be split over two fiscal years.
Launch COVID-19 Arts & Culture Relief Fund: It became clear that in the Denver metro area there was no dedicated relief fund for cultural organizations. We committed $1 million towards launching such a fund and reached out to The Denver Foundation to partner with us to manage the fund, as well as donate to it. An array of additional donors also supported the fund, including many individuals at amounts both large and small (ranging from $25 to $50,000), and institutional donors such as Denver Arts & Venues, Gates Family Foundation, Rose Community Foundation, Colorado Health Foundation and PNC Bank. In the end, a total of about $1 million in additional funding allowed over $2 million to be granted over two cycles, one in 2020, and another in early 2021.
Augmented ongoing grantmaking process: In our ongoing grantmaking to cultural groups, the impact of COVID has become an important review criteria, and this has led to many grantees benefiting from increased grant awards. We have also offered some groups on multi-year funding to accelerate their future grant payments to help with immediate challenges, while continuing our commitment to support them in the future. Many of our grantees are already on multi-year general operating support, making this flexibility especially important. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been granted as additional COVID relief through this process, and this will continue through 2021.
Loosened application and reporting requirements: In response to a passionate call for action from Jami Duffy, one of our Livingston Fellows and Executive Director of grantee Youth on Record, we evaluated whether we could also help by significantly reducing “red-tape” during this challenging time. Through the end of 2021 we are significantly streamlining application and reporting requirements for general operating support grantees, as well as project support grantees we have been consistently supporting for several years.
Shift in Arts in Society: As one of the lead contributors to the Arts in Society grant program administered by RedLine, we participated in discussions with our funding partners and RedLine to take two immediate actions: 1) for 2020 grantees that were awarded in April, to recognize the impact of COVID by being as flexible as needed about shifting timelines, pivots towards virtual or whatever was needed for their project to respond to COVID; 2) for the 2021 program which normally would have been awarded in April of 2021, to have all funders accelerate the contributions to summer of 2020 and do a streamlined 2021 grant award process that would result in these critically needed funds – roughly $500,000 – being granted in fall of 2020 instead, again being especially open to projects that responded to the challenges of COVID.
Racial Justice Response
Inclusive Community Micro-grants: Starting in 2019, we began a process of connecting with smaller cultural organizations in the region that specifically serve and are led by BIPOC people or other historically marginalized people. We had historically not funded these groups. This began with facilitated conversations led by a BIPOC consultant to learn what their needs and issues were. It led to the creation of a new grantmaking program designed to quickly get some funding out to many of these groups. We invited all of the organizations we had identified to apply for these funds, of which 20 applied, and had initially intended to choose 10 through a competitive process to be awarded $5,000 each. In light of both COVID and our commitment to addressing inequity in cultural funding, we decided to award every applicant, doubling our commitment from $50,000 to $100,000. Even though for us the grant amounts were small, for many of these groups these grants may have been their first foundation grant or their largest. At our January 2021 board meeting we committed to continuing support in 2021 for all these organizations.
Comprehensive anti-racism organizational training and consulting: The Foundation had already created (in 2018) a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee of the Board of directors, which in turn had worked to develop a newly integrated Board-approved Mission, Vision and Values Statement that reflected our equity values. In 2019 we had developed a draft RFP for a consultant to work with us to address board and staff training, assess institutional systems and documents and make recommendations on how the Foundation could more effectively address anti-racism work. In 2020 that RFP was finalized and distributed with The Gemini Group being retained to do this work. They began their work in fall of 2020, and it will continue through mid-2021. In addition, outside the scope of the work with Gemini, the entire staff participated in the intensive “Undoing Structural Racism” training of the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond.
Call for action from our Livingston Fellows: In spring of 2020 a group of our Livingston Fellows brought to the Foundation’s attention what they felt was a legacy of White supremacy in the Fellowship program and by extension the Foundation itself. We took these issues very seriously and they were immediately shared with the Board. Some of the calls for action, such as the need for a comprehensive anti-racism assessment and training scope, were already underway. But this call for action also challenged us to self-reflect and to find ways to do better and address the instances of pain and disappointment that were shared. It became clear there were several interlocking rifts or disconnects that needed to be addressed:
- We had made the classic mistake of addressing diversity without addressing equity and inclusion in the Fellowship program. The percentage of Fellows who are BIPOC had gone from 20% in the first ten years of the program, to 50% over the past seven (80% of the 2020 class). This was the result of an elimination of “gatekeepers” in the nominations process, changing the make-up of the selection panel, and loosening an earlier emphasis on selecting leaders from larger organizations. But systems, procedures and policies were not changed to create a more inclusive community for the BIPOC Fellows.
- Some of this was the result of limited staff capacity. The program had not had a dedicated senior Foundation staff-person to manage the program, which worked in the early years when the program was new and small, but as the program had grown, the need for someone to be focused on these issues had become apparent. So, one immediate response was to create a new senior staff position charged with managing the Fellowship program. That position was filled in fall of 2020 with Chrissy Deal.
- We listened – even prior to Chrissy’s hire, we convened two facilitated (Zoom) conversations with Fellows, one specifically for BIPOC Fellows, and one for all Fellows that was largely attended by the White Fellows. Since the initial call for action had been raised by three Fellows, this listening process helped us gain a deeper understanding of the experiences of more of the Fellows, and helped them share with one another. Since Chrissy’s joining the staff, she has been having one-on-one conversations with all Fellows, and will be assessing all aspects of the program to see how we can operate it in a more equitable manner reflective of our values and also embracing the perspective that the capacity to address equity and racism should be a core competency of all leaders, and therefore a more integral part of the program.
- One issue that surfaced was related to the Foundation’s evolution about eight years ago into being exclusively an arts funder, while preserving the Fellowship program as serving leaders from all nonprofit sectors. Fellows from arts organizations, including BIPOC Fellows, were well-informed about the Foundation’s significant strides in more equitably supporting BIPOC arts organizations and being a champion around anti-racism work in the arts. But Fellows from non-arts organizations did not have a grantee relationship with the Foundation beyond their Fellowship and were much less aware of this work. We realized we needed to do a better job of communicating our values and actions around being anti-racist, that there are two related issues: continuing to make needed changes, but also telling the story of what we are doing, to the Fellows and beyond.
- Taking immediate steps responding to the call for racial justice through grantmaking. As an arts grantmaker we thought deeply about what shape such action might take, but we also felt (and this was reinforced by the Fellows) that if the Fellowship program was something we were committed to, part of our response needed to be about supporting the Black and Brown leaders we were already invested in. We committed to funding the organizations being led by five Black Fellows immediately at $10,000 each for a total of $50,000. In addition, we committed to doing the same for five more BIPOC Fellows in 2021 and 2022, for a total commitment of $150,000. (This represents all 15 BIPOC Fellows currently in leadership roles at Colorado nonprofit organizations – some Fellows over time had moved out of the state, transitioned to government or the private sector.)
Other racial justice grantmaking: We realized there many opportunities in how the arts were being engaged in the fight for racial justice in our community (as well as some projects more specifically linked to COVID response) and that these often required small amounts of funding with quick action. We already had an existing staff-level grant program that allows for grants of up to $4,000 without Board approval and with a very streamlined process. We were finding that the Board-approved funding allocation for this program was being quickly exhausted, so the Board agreed to double the funding from $30,000 to $60,000. This allowed such grants as:
- Support for the Anti-Racist Club under John Futrell’s leadership to launch a program that involved community created anti-racism posters, a mural painted by Thomas “Detour” Evans at RedLine, display of the posters on fencing at Civic Center Park and a celebration event in the park incorporating spoken word.
- Support for community dialogue events connected to the Carne y Arena virtual reality installation by filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu that deeply explores issues of immigrants and refugees.
- Support for the Arts Through it All campaign which encouraged the public during the holiday season to “Give the Gift of the Arts.”
- Support for the African American Film Festival: The Color of Conversation
- Support for the development of a business plan for the Colorado Black Arts Movement as part of the Montbello FreshLo Hub.
Actions already taken to address enhanced equity in grantmaking:
- Established a grant cap of $60,000. This was designed to prevent grants to the very largest organizations from making up a growing percentage of our grantmaking. It is being phased in over time for those groups that were already over the cap. It was important to us that we continue to be able to support these groups, but also recognize that as a small foundation, some trimming of the grants to the largest organizations was needed to expand capacity to add smaller BIPOC organizations to our grant roster.
- Reduce large capital grants to the biggest organizations: It became clear that even though we did not provide operating support to groups like the Denver Art Museum or Denver Botanic Gardens, that collectively our periodic very large, multi-year commitments to capital projects were making up a third of our grantmaking capacity. As worthy as these projects are, given our limited size and that these institutions have enhanced access to other private and public support, we have decided that going forward capital grants will be prioritized for smaller and BIPOC organizations and BIPOC-serving facilities where our funds can be more impactful. Examples of this are capital grants that have recently gone to support: a new home for Wonderbound, support for Cleo Parker Robinson Dance’s capital project, the new home for Lighthouse Writers Workshop, support for the new KUVO live performance studio, and to support the purchase of an FM signal/translator for The Drop, the new Hip-hop and R&B community station launched under the aegis of KUVO.
- Support for Community ACTS Fund: This new initiative is funded through contributions by Tier 1 SCFD organizations and is directed at supporting Tier 3 organizations explicitly led by or serving BIPOC or other historically marginalized communities. We provided $50,000 towards this effort, with a commitment to watch its operation and potentially provide additional future support. In response to the COVID pressures on these organizations, we also allowed Community ACTS Fund to redirect our funds – which had been targeted to capacity building for funded organizations, to be reallocated as needed.
- Trim support for small classical music organizations: It has become evident that our roster of grantees has several relatively small arts groups dedicated to various classical “Eurocentric” musical art forms. All these groups are worthy, but again relative to audiences, communities served and our goals to be more equitable, we are trimming funding to these groups collectively by half over time.
Awards Program
Our annual Awards Program – the 35th – was by virtue of necessity held virtually, which turned out in many ways to be a blessing in disguise. As with many of our supported cultural groups, we learned that the pivot to virtual, while losing the human face-to-face interaction, also allowed the event to be more accessible than ever. We were able to accommodate as many people as wanted to attend, and we had friends and family of the honorees attending from many places around the country. And even though much of the virtual event was pre-recorded, the live chat created a true sense of community. You can experience the entire virtual event here, and we also have separately made available the powerful land acknowledgement performance art piece created by artist Gregg Deal as well as the videos created for each of our honorees: Marcela de la Mar , Jeremy and Susan Shamos , Catherine O’Neill Thorn and Ed Dwight.
While not publicly announced at the November event, we are re-thinking the Awards Program to determine if it continues to provide the value and impact originally intended when it first began in 1984. Current thinking is to continue with the Artist Award in some form, as it seems this type of award, along with its substantial cash prize, is not being done by anyone in our community, and it would help elevate the arts and artists in our state. Stay tuned!
Next Steps – 2021
New grant initiatives: In 2021 we anticipate launching two new grant initiatives that have already been approved by our Board, both of which are related to racial and social justice. These names are not finalized – just placeholders – and include:
- Creative Community Development – this program will select two different historically BIPOC neighborhoods in Denver, at least one of which will be Black. We will provide each community with a three-year $90,000 grant ($30,000/year) towards integrating the arts and creative enterprise into a systemic effort to preserve and celebrate the unique culture and heritage of the community. Our hope is to partner with one or more other funders, so our commitment would be augmented by other support. This could be neighborhoods like Westwood, Five Points, Montbello, La Alma/Lincoln Park, etc.
- Imagining a Just Denver – modeled on a program recently launched in Oakland CA, this initiative would, through a competitive inclusive process award $25,000 each to five artists of any discipline who would create works of art that would do exactly what the title of the program says – uses their art and creativity to imagine a Denver that is truly just. What would justice look like? What would need to change? How do we make that vision manifest through visual art, dance, music, theatre, poetry, film, etc.? We will evaluate the program after the first year.
Impact investing
The Foundation has committed to embrace aligning our investments with our values – to ensure that over time, the full force of our corpus is assessed through a mission and equity lens, while still striving to achieve market returns. This will involve:
- Ensuring we have an investment advisor with capacity to guide us in this work.
- Embedding an equity lens in our advisor, managers and investment selections.
- Applying ESG screening (environmental, social, governance) to our corpus to ensure we invest in funds are that are aligned with Foundation values.
- Exploring opportunities for mission aligned investments up to (as currently authorized by the Board) 8% of our total corpus. This would include both program related investments (PRIs) – below market loans made to initiatives directly aligned with our programmatic objectives , as well as investments at or approaching market rate targeting the broader creative economy.
This process is still in development so more information will be shared as available.
Livingston Fellowship Program
With Chrissy Deal now on board and leading our efforts to refine, adapt and grow the program so it evolves to respond to the changes in our society and our understanding of leadership, it is likely that the program will see some changes in 2021. Any adjustments will be informed by Fellows’ experiences and guided by our commitment to embrace our equity values more effectively. We will move deliberately, engaging in conversation to listen, learn, reckon with harms done, heal, and build community in the process.
And on a personal note, I will continue to learn and grow, to act with humility, but with purpose and conviction that if our society, if Denver, if philanthropy, is to change, to do our best to cleanse a legacy of White privilege, of racism (both subtle and overt) then I must be a part of that change. We need more BIPOC leaders in philanthropy and in the arts, but we also need White leaders to be willing to stand up, to be that voice in the room so that BIPOC people who are exhausted in this fight do not always have to be the one to speak up. This is complicated and nuanced work because sometimes we DO need to shut up, listen and sit back while BIPOC people lead. It is not always easy to determine when to raise our voice as White leaders and when to be silent. We (I) will make mistakes, will stumble, will feel like we are failing, or even be told by others we are failing, not doing enough, not moving fast enough. I (we) need to (as is becoming a truism in this work) “get comfortable with being uncomfortable.” Whatever discomfort we must grapple with still pales in comparison with what Black and Brown people live with every day and have for generations.
Yet, I enter 2021 with some optimism and joy, that we are seeing a way past the worst of the pandemic, bringing a time when we can once again come together “in real life” as a community, enjoying the arts and one another’s company, giving and receiving hugs and high-fives. And it feels like the move towards a more just and equitable society is not a passing phase, but a sea change in our society. As Dr. King said, “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
This piece was originally written for and posted on the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation website.
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