Grantees’ Open Letter Accuses Grant Maker of Bias and Lack of Transparency

Artist Satpreet Kahlon got an unwelcome surprise when she checked her email in early June. Far from learning whether she was one of at least eight local artists to receive a $10,000 Fellowship Award from the Artist Trust, she instead found out that the Seattle nonprofit would not be awarding the grants this year.

In the email to applicants, Artist Trust program director Brian McGuigan explained that the grant-making charity was short on cash after canceling its March fundraising auction due to the coronavirus outbreak. That event typically raises more than $500,000.

“While our fundraising during the pandemic has been strong, this support is restricted to our relief efforts, helping artists whose livelihoods have been threatened by Covid-19 with financial support and resources,” McGuigan wrote in the email. “We believe this is the most important work we can do for artists right now.”

The relief grants of $500 to $5,000 have helped artists during a time of acute need. To date, the nonprofit has awarded $650,000 to 390 artists, according to board secretary Mariella Luz. Three-quarters of those funds went to artists who are Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, she says.

But Kahlon was dissatisified with that explanation and wondered how Artist Trust arrived at its decision. Emergency grants alone can’t keep artists afloat, she wrote in a Facebook post after she learned about the suspended Fellowship Awards. “To take away $80,000 from local artists at a time when so many of us have lost our livelihoods due to Covid-19, when Black artists are going through so much MORE trauma, and are deserving of even more support than usual, is perplexing to me,” she wrote.

Kahlon worried that pulling these funds would disproportionately impact artists of color.

“Both the decision and the lack of transparency around the decision-making process remind me of the things I dislike most about the nonprofit industrial complex: They forget that they have to continuously earn the trust and support of the communities they are supposed to serve; it’s not the other way around,” she wrote.

Kahlon, a sculptor, had previously won grants from the Artist Trust. In 2016, she received $1,500 and this year a $1,000 pandemic-relief grant. She also graduated from one of the nonprofit’s professional-development programs in 2016.

That existing relationship made her hesitate to share her reaction online.

“I rely on grant makers like Artist Trust for probably 30 to 40 percent of my wages every year,” she says. “I was afraid of publicly voicing my disappointment and skepticism about their processes.”

When Kahlon did post on Facebook, she quickly heard from other artists and former Artist Trust employees who shared their own negative experiences with the grant maker. While many examples of grantee discontent with grant makers have usually been confined to whisper networks, these artists decided to make their concerns public in an open letter.

The letter condemns the Artist Trust’s handling of this year’s Fellowship and Arts Innovator grant cycles and accuses the institution of creating “a misogynistic and toxic work environment.” It asks that the grant maker follow its standard protocol for distributing the merit grants this year. It also asks that the group transform its culture and operations — committing to anti-racist practices, incorporating community input throughout its governance, and including Black and Indigenous artists and leaders in the heart of its mission.

It’s uncommon for grantees like Kahlon to speak out against a grant maker’s practices — and there’s good reason why, experts say. But with the media spotlight on protests for racial justice throughout the country, some say they expect to see more grantees making public critiques in the future. Already, the open letter has spurred change at the Artist Trust.

‘The Silence Is No More’

There has long been an imbalance of power in philanthropy, but it hasn’t historically been subject to much public criticism, says Angelique Grant, a vice president at the Aspen Leadership Group. “People are going to speak out now because of where we are globally,” she says. “The silence is no more.”

The #MeToo Movement’s exposure of inappropriate sexual behavior by powerful figures in many industries helped grease the wheels for the current reckoning with how some of those in power are impeding racial justice, she says. “Now everyone’s really wanting to have the conversation.”

In the case of the Artist Trust, that includes grantees. In general, however, philanthropy provides few avenues for grantees to make their grievances known. Lisa Ranghelli, senior director of evaluation and learning at the National Committee for Responsible Philanthropy, says the current calls for racial justice may help grantees gain a louder voice in the grant-making process.

“All of these movements are helping people to feel more emboldened and also to feel that enough is enough,” Ranghelli said. “The slogan is silence equals violence, that when we don’t speak up and we continue to let these harms happen, we’re just as complicit and we’re aiding these institutions to continue to operate in ways that are harmful.”

Grant makers have “historically set the rules of the game,” says Katie Leonberger, chief executive of the nonprofit consulting firm Community Resource Exchange. “The nonprofit’s choice is to engage in said game, give feedback on said game, or not engage.”

Over the last few years, however, more grantees have decided to risk critiquing their funders. Through individual and collective statements and actions, nonprofits have spoken out about practices by big grant makers including the Charles Stewart Mott, MacArthur, Kellogg, Rockefeller, and Walmart foundations.

Often these critiques of grant makers are operational. While philanthropy aims to do good, its structure is exploitative, says Edgar Villanueva, author of Decolonizing Wealth.

In his book, Villanueva draws a straight line from colonialism, slavery, and land grabs to today’s philanthropic dynamic where cash-strapped charities — which often serve beneficiaries of color — compete for gifts from a handful of well-off donors, who are overwhelmingly white.

In a 2018 interview with the Chronicle, Villanueva posed three questions to the fields of philanthropy and finance: “(1) Who’s making decisions around who gets the resources? (2) Where’s that money going? (3) Who is actually the end beneficiary of those resources?”

Other philanthropic leaders and academic researchers have noted how philanthropy’s haves-and-have-nots attitude influences who gets funding, how that funding is distributed, and how grantees and fundraisers are treated.

“It’s important when you think about the power dynamics, to think about the systemic issues that led to one party having a lot of resources and others who are underresourced, seeking to access those resources,” said Ranghelli.

Grant makers’ lack of diverse leadership, for example, affects how funds are distributed and can disillusion grantees and nonprofit leaders of color. At the forefront of the critique of the Artist Trust is the lack representation of people of color and artists among the foundation’s leaders and on its board. The 17-person board includes four people of color, according to Luz, the board secretary.

In response to the letter, the foundation has pledged to establish a racial-equity committee on its board. Nine trustees have joined that committee, along with a group of the nonprofit’s employees and community members, Luz wrote in an email. But one writer who helped organize the open letter, Shin Yu Pai, says the makeup of this committee matters.

“Is that committee coming out of existing board members? How are you recruiting?” Pai asks, noting that nonprofits often fill their boards with donors who can make large financial contributions. As racial and wealth inequality have long been fused together, a focus on big gifts can keep boards largely white.

“What does that say about people from communities of color who hold a different knowledge and expertise? And you’re going to place that burden of them — doing this diversity consulting for you, not compensating them and asking them to contribute to your organization’s financial health?” Pai said.

In an email, Luz wrote that she hopes the board will soon agree on a system to compensate community members for their contributions to these efforts. She also added that the Artist Trust will begin accepting applications for new board members this fall. “This is something that has been in the works for several months as we’ve been trying to get a better geographic, economic and demographic range of folks to the board,” she wrote.

Last year, the consulting firm Emergent Pathways released findings from a survey of Black-led charities and interviews with Black nonprofit executives. The results showed a grant-making dynamic akin to redlining, the racist policies that enforced housing segregation.

In interviews, Black nonprofit leaders underscored grant makers’ lack of awareness about their work. The study notes that an absence of diversity and inclusion within those institutions contributes to grant makers’ narrow view of philanthropy.

Among the 91 percent of charities in the study that said they received foundation grants, 65 percent said those grants constituted the bulk of their yearly revenue. However, those grants were not sizable. Just 8 of 65 charities said they had won a foundation grant of $100,000 or more.

Even gathering this data on funding disparities was a challenge, according to the report. A handful of survey participants “expressed concerns about the physical safety of themselves, their respective staff, board, and supporters; digital and intellectual safety concerns that could cripple their abilities to function effectively; and fears of losing existing and/or future opportunities for funding due to sharing their data and experiences.”

Bomani Johnson, who founded Emergent Pathways, says it isn’t typical for studies to name the actors who reinforce the inequities they uncover in philanthropy.

“That’s because of the fear of being ostracized or just cut off,” Johnson said. “That’s a reality that institutional philanthropy can change, but they can only do it by working in concert with communities.”

‘We’re All Risking a Lot’

As Kahlon and other disillusioned former grantees and employees discussed how to air their grievances with the Artist Trust, it quickly became clear that discontent had been simmering for some time. Another incident earlier this year prompted others to step forward.

Artist Anida Yoeu Ali served as a judge for this year’s $25,000 Arts Innovator Award, the grant maker’s most distinguished prize. Ali and her fellow judges spent months reviewing 127 applications, interviewing candidates, and selecting finalists and two award winners. But when the panel of judges — all but one of whom are people of color — sent its recommendations to the majority white board, the trustees rejected them, claiming that a judge had an undisclosed relationship with one of the winners.

Ali says she was the judge who had that connection, but it was tenuous and she disclosed it. (Her husband was once a cinematographer for a film directed by one of the chosen winners.) After other judges joined Ali in pushing back against the board’s decision, the trustees changed their position and sent a letter of apology to the judges. But they did not immediately award the prizes to the panel’s chosen winners.

That angered Ali, who says she and her husband took a risk in critiquing the grant maker. “We really considered greatly what this implies for us to go so public and to be named as part of the situation,” she said. “We realized that we will now most likely never have a fair opportunity to go after any further funding in this region, and that is huge for us as artists.”

Pai, the writer who judged the 2014 and 2020 Arts Innovator Awards, was similarly dissatisfied with the grant maker’s response.

“There were so many unanswered questions about why the organization made the decision to throw out the recommendations of the jury and why the board decided to just disregard what the people of color jurors were saying to them about the flaws in the process,” she said.

Pai received a $1,500 grant from the nonprofit in 2015. Along with Ali, Kahlon, and other former grantees and employees, Pai co-wrote the open letter in response to the Artist Trust’s recent decisions.

“We’re all risking a lot — anyone who signed onto the letter, but especially us as co-organizers — we’re risking a lot in terms of our regional relationships and careers,” Kahlon says.

She notes that it is precisely because the Artist Trust is such a heavy-hitter in the region’s arts community that she and her co-signers believed it was necessary to write the open letter.

“We are not the East Coast,” she said. “There is not a diverse range of places you can go to apply for money and get opportunity.” Receiving an award from the Artist Trust is a way that local artists validate and sustain their careers, she said.

Even so, the more than 400 signatories pledged to abstain from applying for grants and participating in fundraising drives, prize juries, professional-development programs, and other Artist Trust activities until the group publicly responded and outlined its plan to address the letter’s demands.

Commitment to Action

After receiving the letter, the nonprofit’s leaders apologized in a letter of their own, posted on the Artist Trust website. “We see how the patterns of our actions have cooperated with, or even re-enacted, systems of oppression,” the letter reads.

The leaders committed to a series of actions including holding public forums facilitated by paid people of color, establishing a racial-equity committee on the nonprofit’s board, and auditing its grant-making processes and internal culture. The charity has also clarified that it will resume its merit grant making later this year.

On July 25, the board unanimously voted to approve the Arts Innovator Award winners and finalists whom the judges selected in February. The winners will officially be announced next week. The board sent an apology to finalists and judges in an email newsletter. The board is also contracting with an outside investigator to audit the decision-making process for this year’s merit grants and plans to publish the findings.

The board pledged to distribute this year’s Fellowship Awards in February 2021. Work to begin an equity audit is underway, but those efforts have been hamstrung by negotiations over whether and how community members will be paid for their contributions to the process. “I’m hopeful that funding structures will be approved before our September board meeting,” Luz wrote in an email.

There have been staffing changes as well. The group’s chief executive, Shannon Halberstadt, is now on leave, according to Kristina Goetz, the development director. McGuigan, the program director, is on administrative leave and is undergoing a human-resources investigation, according to Luz.

‘Awareness to Action’

While the letter from grantees, associates, and former staff members has moved the Artist Trust to pledge to transform its culture, experts say that it is imperative that all nonprofits proactively advance a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

“The major issues tackled by the nonprofit sector are structurally shaped by race, by class, by gender, and other factors,” says Leonberger of Community Resource Exchange. “As an organization, you’ve got to be considering how you are addressing those factors from a diversity, equity, and inclusion lens as you do your work and as you operate internally. If you’re actually not living up to those values, then you are not going to be as effective as you need to be to achieve your mission.”

Often, however, organizations overestimate how included those they serve and employ really feel in the mission. A diversity audit can help bring those true feelings to light, says Grant at the Aspen Leadership Group.

Grant leads these audits and says it’s essential that nonprofits focus on equity and inclusion — not just diversity. “If you have an organization [where] no one feels included or a sense of belonging or wanting to be there, it doesn’t matter how diverse you are,” she said.

It helps to have a third-party facilitate conversations with employees and illuminate features of the organization’s culture. Peer organizations can also be useful guides in this process, she says.

“Once you’ve identified whatever the obstacles are, it sets you up for moving from awareness to action,” Grant said.

In the best cases, organizations would incorporate a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion into every facet of the organization. That can include asking grant applicants about how their work advances those goals or changing the organization’s board election cycle to reach a broader pool of candidates. Communicating frequently, awarding multiyear grants, and cutting down on paperwork requirements helps demonstrate trust in grantees, too.

“Until there’s true partnership and equity between the funder and the grantee, no one could be able to avail of all that both sides of this relationship have to offer,” said Leonberger.

Grant and Ranghelli stress that achieving that sense of partnership takes time. “That often means figuring out what are you going to slow down or take off people’s plates to really do the work, to really dig in. You can’t just add this on top of everybody’s existing work,” Ranghelli said.

Demonstrating a sincere commitment to doing that work is essential to building trust with grantees, she adds.

“There’s a lot out there about how to build effective, authentic, honest relationships,” Ranghelli said. “There’s sort of no excuse why foundations can’t do it.”

Ali and others who signed the open letter to the Artist Trust are watching the group’s next moves closely. The backdrop of continued protests for racial justice underscores the need for a meaningful response from the grant maker, Ali says. She and others who signed the letter want to see progress — not just promises — from the Artist Trust.

“They are really at a critical juncture,” Ali said. “They really can be an example, if they want to be, of how to do this with community involvement and with a serious look at restructuring at the scale that’s really going to make this equitable and prosperous moving forward, to regain the trust of the bigger community.”

Alex Daniels contributed to this article.