After not attending any large gatherings for two years, I was excited to join Confluence's 12th Annual Practitioners Gathering. It felt special to be back among colleagues in a conference room—abuzz with ideas and human connection. At the very start of the meeting, I was immediately struck by a deeper significance of what “being in the room” means.
john a. powell, director of the Othering & Belonging Institute, opened the conference with an idea that resonates strongly with me: “Inclusion”—as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts have promoted—is not enough. “Inclusion” suggests an invitation into someone else’s room, with their rules, norms, and agenda. powell explained that belonging should be our goal. We must disrupt the traditional notion that business relationships are forged via exclusive “backroom deals,” and instead realize a world where such invitations are not required, where belonging is the default manner in which all people bring their unique views and experiences into the room. We all belong.
This shift is fundamental to how we, as philanthropic professionals, need to approach our work.
At the Surdna Foundation, we are in pursuit of a just society with inclusive economies, sustainable environments, and thriving cultures. We know it is not possible to achieve our mission without directly addressing structural racism and creating “belonging” for those who have been historically marginalized from fully participating in our economy and other dimensions of our society.
So, how can funders move from inclusion to belonging? Here are three things we’re doing:
1. Looking inward. You cannot underestimate the importance of making time for your staff and board to interrogate who holds decision-making power and learn about the historical impacts of systemic racism. Only then can you begin to create the policies, processes, and practices that foster belonging for everyone.
2. Investing in entrepreneurs of color. Given the U.S.’s staggering racial wealth gap, we believe this is one of the most effective ways to drive job and wealth creation and address long-standing racial inequities. To that end, our Inclusive Economies and Impact Investment programs were among the first backers of the Impact America Fund, which makes early-stage investments in tech-driven businesses that create ownership and opportunity within marginalized communities. The fund’s founder, Kesha Cash, is one of the few Black women in venture capital. Kesha understands that traditional venture capital funds often overlook prioritizing and supporting entrepreneurs of color. This means that traditional venture capital funds also miss out on great investment opportunities. Her fund helps founders get traction with institutional investors, who often don’t have the expertise or lived experience to appreciate the huge opportunities at hand, such as MayVenn.
3. Building bridges: There is a large financial and cultural gap for small businesses in low-to-moderate income areas that are less connected to the traditional funding networks of Silicon Valley and New York City. To bridge this gap, we seeded $1.5 million of equity capital in Founders First Capital Partners to support its novel efforts to provide revenue-based finance (RBF) to underserved, and mostly small businesses owned by women, LGBTQ+, Black, Indigenous, and people of color. Founders First’s Kim Folsom selected RBF to better match the needs of underserved entrepreneurs because she understood first-hand what it takes to succeed. Alongside its direct funding, Founders First also serves as an accelerator that provides educational curriculum and expert coaching to enable small businesses to grow and scale.
Like many funders, afforded by our endowment and position as grantmakers, we often have the power to set the rules, norms, and agenda for our various rooms and sometimes even the rooms of our grantees and investees. Let’s use that power to bring more people of color into previously exclusive spaces and back the creativity, needs, and experiences of communities on the ground because they hold the truly impactful and scalable solutions. In doing so, we can take one step closer to creating belonging for all.
- Don Chen, President, Surdna Foundation
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