To our EGA Community,
This spring we are not just witnessing the devastating disproportionate impact of the ongoing pandemic on Black and Brown lives in America, but are reeling from America’s “Two Deadly Viruses”, Racism and Coronavirus.” Our hearts are breaking and we are outraged as we witness the senseless, racist violence and police brutality that have taken the lives of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and too many Black lives today and in the history of the United States.
Here in New York, last week’s threat against Christian Cooper who was #BirdingWhileBlack in Central Park opened eyes to the racism and violence against people of color in parks and green space. We acknowledge that structural racism and white supremacy, long a part of the environmental movement, is not just our past, but is alive and needs to be called out today and tomorrow to advance toward a more just future. Everything is interconnected, both the crisis and the solutions.
A Call for Justice
We stand with those who are demonstrating to demand accountability and justice and acknowledge the pain and suffering of loss and injustice that the Black community is directly confronting. We are listening and bearing witness.
A Commitment to Change, and a Call for Action
We commit to continue our own evolution as an organization and a community on inclusion and racial equity - which we are addressing on several parallel tracks, as a board and team and membership. In the coming months, we will finalize a racial equity commitment as a part of our strategic framework refresh. We are reviewing all of our programming and future planning to institutionalize racial equity into the fabric of our organization, from our gatherings to our research to how we help our members keep advancing on this path to our own individual consciousness. Making visible the invisible is part of that work.
In that vein, today we are launching the new Tracking the Field searchable database which will allow members to search grantee organizations and their peer foundations to view the demographic data of the staff of these organizations alongside a checklist of where these organizations are in their racial equity journeys. The aim of this project to more deeply understand the funding landscape of health and justice grantmaking as well as organization racial demographic data, and is implemented in partnership with the Health and Environmental Funders Network.
The power of this tool starts with the quality of the data, so please take a moment and update your organization’s demographics and equity practices through your Nonprofit Profile on GuideStar and encourage your grantees to do the same. This soft launch today is just the beginning, however. We share the call to action to make visible data that wasn’t available before. EGA makes the concrete commitment to help our membership understand the funding landscape and what funding is going to people of color led organizations and supporting those communities that are the most marginalized.
We amplify Funders for Justice’s resources to listen, learn, and take action, and the calls from those in Minneapolis and across the country to support organizations who are fighting systemic racism and demanding justice in this time, including:
- George Floyd Memorial Fund
- I Run With Maud, Justice for Ahmaud Arbery Fundraiser
- Black Visions Collective
- Reclaim the Block
- National Bail Out Fund
- Campaign Zero
- Black Lives Matter
We are also committed to sharing EGA member statements and messages from the philanthropic field in support of Black lives. Click here to view our blog post featuring reflections. As more messages are shared, we will continue to compile responses in an updated list below.
The EGA Board and team
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