Kresge and Hewlett Pour Another $45 Million Into Racial Equity

The Hewlett and Kresge foundations this week announced multimillion-dollar packages of grants to groups working to address racial equity, adding to the multibillion-dollar response from philanthropy that has materialized since the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in May.

Hewlett awarded a total of $15 million in grants to 15 groups that work in a variety of areas including health care, the arts, and community organizing, each with the purpose of fighting anti-Black racism and building Black people’s political power. Kresge announced a $30 million commitment over three years, split among racial-justice groups in Detroit, Fresno, Calif., Memphis, and New Orleans and national civil-rights organizations.

Kresge waited nearly six months after the mass demonstrations against police brutality to make the grants so it could determine how to make the biggest difference, says Rip Rapson, the foundation’s president. The foundation decided to concentrate its support in four cities so it could monitor progress.

“There was a huge temptation to get right in the mix when everybody else was sort of making these big honking commitments, which were wonderful and astounding, but they weren’t grounded in specific grants into places that you could actually trace,” Rapson said. “We’d like to be able to show where every dollar is going.”

Most of the money, about $23 million, will go in the form of three-year general operating support grants to more than three dozen grassroots organizations that represent and serve people of color. They include Hmong Innovating Politics in Fresno; Brothers Empowered to Teach in New Orleans; the Refugee Empowerment Program in Memphis; and Black Family Development in Detroit.

The remaining $7 million will be distributed among 13 national civil-rights organizations, including the Black Trans Fund, Mijente Support Committee, and Southeast Asia Resource Action Center.

Rapson says Kresge’s intention is to imitate the path to success that conservative philanthropy took in nurturing the conservative movement. Over the past several decades right-leaning foundations supported a full range of efforts including leadership development, communications efforts, policy research, and the ability of smaller organizations to hire additional staff. By linking grassroots organizations to national players, Rapson hopes to help smaller groups become more formidable advocates.

“The broad intention is to begin building more of a complete system of racial justice,” Rapson says.

Kenyatta Stephens, chief executive of Black Family Development, says she is excited to share and learn from the “community of practice” created by the connections between national and local groups.

Black Family Development, she says, has already benefited from its relationship with the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, a program run by the Obama Foundation. For years, Black Family Development and other groups that work with young Black men have been able to track the costs associated with Black boys entering the criminal-justice system or receiving government support.

With the help of the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, Stephens was able to “flip” the nature of evidence the group gathers to instead measure the benefits each additional Black high-school graduate or new business owner brings to a community.

Stephens says that without the expertise that My Brother’s Keeper brought to the collaboration, Black Family Development would not be in a position to measure the positive results of its work and present that evidence to donors interested in using a “return on investment” approach. My Brother’s Keeper Alliance is not included in the current round of Kresge grants. Stephens says she’s eager to work with other national groups as Black Family Development looks to expand its mentorship programs to younger students.

Building on Previous Pledges

The Hewlett grants are part of a $170 million commitment to support racial equity that the foundation announced in July. Including the current $15 million in grants, the foundation has made $20 million in racial equity grants this year. The foundation’s president, Larry Kramer, hopes the rest of the money will begin to go out next year.

(The Hewlett Foundation is a financial supporter of the Chronicle.)

The idea behind the extra $15 million in support was to say, “We’re here,” and offer a down payment on the larger effort, Kramer says.

Kramer says he and other staff members consulted with racial-justice organizations to find potential grantees, and anyone on Hewlett’s staff could offer a suggestion for where the money should go. After the staff nominations and potential grantees identified in Kramer’s search were combined, a list of nearly 100 organizations was circulated to the staff, who then whittled it down to about 40 groups.

Those nonprofits were then vetted by an advisory group of staff members who identify as Black or of African descent. They sent recommendations back to the entire staff, and after a voting process, 15 grantees were named.

Kramer says Hewlett is still deciding whether to focus on one aspect of anti-racism nonprofit work. Some options include reducing economic disparities, rethinking community safety, or building political power. Kramer says racism in America is pervasive, and trying to tackle everything might not prove effective.

“We have to narrow it down some,” Kramer says.