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Two images we used for the 6-9 & 10-12 yr olds history classes in the Omega Dr. Carter G. Woodson Academy yesterday. IMAGE 1—Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth in front of his home after it was bombed Christmas Day 1956, 5 days after he said he’d be working to desegregate buses in Bombingham. We used this photo to discuss his leadership of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights and their work to establish citizen rights for African Americans in Bombingham, AL;

IMAGE 2-Robert Chambliss “Dynamite Bob” being taken into custody in 1963 for the 16th Street Church bombing. He was eventually convicted of the murder of Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson & Denise McNair and, according to an FBI informant, was the bomber of Shuttlesworth’s home on 12.25.56. We used this photo to discuss ongoing and terroristic response of White Bombingham to when African Americans tried to establish their civil rights. Shuttlesworth dies of old age in 2011 and Chambliss dies in 1985, while still serving multiple life sentences. Source: Carry Me Home by Diane McWhorter

philanthropicwindows-blog

This post is from a blog that documents my fraternity 's, (Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc.), project The Omega Dr. Carter G. Woodson Academy. I write the posts and am the Project Director for this program that runs 10 Saturdays out of the year. Philanthropically, this project is funded by contributions from African American business owners who are members of the fraternity. Birmingham is actually connected to Pittsburgh and the industrial age that produced a good bit of Pittsburgh philanthropy. Birmingham was called "Pittsburgh of the South" because of its steel production and US Steel was, according to McWhorter, a bank roller of a front organization called "The League to Maintain White Supremacy" that fomented violence against African Americans who worked for Civil Rights in that city.

#BlackPhilanthropy #philanthropy

sprezzeeland

when is the last time you read a #newspaper?

Racial equity in the arts? Racialize "White" arts organizations too.

In the course of the Unsung Majority project we noted at The Heinz Endowments, Pittsburgh Foundation and Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council that we did not know a Pittsburgh arts organization that was now or had ever been principally led by people of direct African descent (P-DAD) with a budget of $500,000 to $1,500,000. By led, I mean majority of staff and board. At The Heinz Endowments we refer to organizations of that budget size as "mid sized". But this week I've been wondering whether I should be changing my language to say "mid-sized white arts orgs are between $500,000-$1,500,000 (its probably more like $350K to $1.2M)" and then looking for a new norm for orgs led principally by P-DADs. I am thinking the answer is "Uh, yeah?!". What's crazy is that in Pittsburgh the norm for mid-sized orgs led by P-DADs might be something like $60K to $90K...

Racializing the term "mid-sized" would be taking a page from the theorists, writers, artists who say we shouldn't make white people's lives and experiences the norm against which all other racial groups are judged and then applying it to the nonprofit arts and culture world. In other words, white people's experience is not "normal" for anyone but white people and if we are going to racialize organizations to promote equity as we do in the Advancing Black Arts Program, it would follow that it would promote equity to racialize all arts organizations in order to help us see arts orgs as diverse from one another as opposed to ALAANA (African, Latino, Asian, Arab and Native American) orgs being diverse or different from the white norm. Maybe I'll bounce this off colleagues, see what they think and report back. Maybe. I still have undone homework assignments from prior posts.

The good news from my vantage point is that making race more visible for all aligns with some major moves happening in the arts this year, like this one from the NYC's Dept of Cultural Affairs.

Definitions of Race Matter

The Peoples Institute for Survival and Beyond (PISAB) has the best definition of 'race". Period. Dot. Came across it again today while doing my homework assignment (See prior post.). See it below from a document titled "Structural Racism" written by Keith Lawrence and Terry Kehler for the 2004 Race and Policy Conference.

RACE: A specious classification of human beings created by Europeans (whites) which assigns human worth and social status using ‘white’ as the model of humanity and the height of human achievement for the purpose of establishing and maintaining privilege and power. (Ronald Chisom and Michael Washington, Undoing Racism: A Philosophy of International Social Change. People’s Institute Press. People’s Institutefor Survival and Beyond. 1444 North Johnson Street. New Orleans, Louisiana, 70116.1997. Second Edition. p. 30—31.)

This definition could be more specific in terms of what economic class of whites created the concept, but it is still the best out there for at least two reasons: (1) It's clear in racial terms about who created the term. Dr. Joe Feagin, a sociologist of Texas A & M University, author of The White Racial Frame, points out that when history is written on the racism experienced by African Americans it tells us the object of the sentence (African Americans) but not the subject (white people). For example, we might read something like "In the Jim Crow South, African Americans were often denied the right to vote". Feagin might rewrite the sentence to say "In the Jim Crow South, African Americans were denied the right to vote by a variety of white institutions."

Secondly, it tells us the purpose of the term of "race". We are not learning about "race" as a naturally occurring, politically neutral concept, but rather its being exposed as an ongoing shaper of our reality that penalizes and benefits. This definition then plays an active part in the undoing of racism, which of course is the goal of the People's Institute. The Institute has done training for Grantmakers in the Arts, of which I am a board member, and it's been the most impactful professional development of my time in this field.

#race #philanthropy

My #Philanthropy Black History Month Assignment

With the movie Selma out and research I’ve been doing for a few other projects, I’ve had a chance to learn, think and talk about the Civil Rights Movement and the business of philanthropy. In David Garrow’s “Bearing the Cross” there is a brief mention of a foundation, The Field Foundation, withholding payment to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for failure to meet grant conditions at the end of ’62/beginning of ‘63, right before the Birmingham, AL Project Confrontation campaign is to commence. This withheld payment required Dr. King to meet with the foundation personally and to acknowledge that the voter registration that they were to be doing in a number of localities in the South wasn’t really happening. Wait. What?? Dr. King was called to account by a Program Officer??

Coming across some parts of the backstory of that meeting in two other sources piqued my interest even further. According to Charity, Philanthropy and Civility in American History and the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy’s report “Freedom Funders: Philanthropy and the Civil Rights Movement”, in 1961 President John F. Kennedy convened a few foundations Taconic, Field, Stern Family and New World and asked them to put money into a project called the Voter Education Project. (VEP) His idea was that Civil Rights organizations like the SCLC, SNCC, CORE and the NAACP would turn their attention to voter registration rather than the direct action strategies like sit-ins and freedom rides. His argument to the organizations was that voter registration was big change rather than the smaller local efforts of sit ins. The authors of both pieces cited above say Kennedy was more so motivated to take pressure off the Federal Government to provide protection for the activists and in doing so alienate Southern “white” voters.

There are a number of interesting angles here (1) The VEP as an example of philanthropic practice; (2) The VEP as “public/private partnership; (3) The VEP as structural racism; (4) The VEP as funding grass roots political activity; (5) The VEP as a way of unlearning the story of “South-racist, violent, bad” and “North, on the side of African Americans, supportive, good”. The assignment I will give myself as African American history month closes is to write on at least of two of these angles. Angle #4, “The VEP as an example of funding grass roots political activity has been taken in the NCRP report”, so that should leave only two undone. If anyone wants to help get extra credit for this assignment and take on one on their own or find a new angle and write that one up, that would be “sweet” (circa 1986).

To get going, I’ll start with “The VEP as an example of philanthropic practice”. This story brings philanthropy and Black liberation movements into focus in a way that gives me pause and reflects ideas that I find most problematic in our work. In this little anecdote, we see behavior pretty consistently criticized as a going against best practices and I point them out not to say I haven’t made these choices, or that The Heinz Endowments has made a commitment to invest in civil disobedience direct actions. I have made these same choices and we haven’t made those investments in direct actions in my time at the Endowments. Still, this history deserves real attention and should be something I check myself against everyday. This story shows philanthropy…

Providing project support when leadership needs the flexibility of general operating support, an issue that particularly affects ALAANA (African, Latino, Asian, Arab and Native American) orgs.

Inserting funders ideas of what the mission should be in place of the ideas of the workers on the ground;

Offering funding in ways that changes an organization's practice to meet the needs and funding priorities of the funders.

As we take a moment nationally to reflect on African American history and the Civil Rights Movement in particular, its interesting for me to contrast how the Civil Rights Movement has been lauded all throughout this month for the courage it showed in direct actions to dismantle Jim Crow. In this the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Voting Rights Act, there will be celebrations throughout the year. I would guess that some of this attention has been and will be supported by philanthropy. Simultaneously, the #BlackLivesMatter movement continues its fight against police brutality and killings. What will be said about philanthropy’s role in that movement in 50 years?

#civil rights movement #dr. martin luther king jr.#blacklivesmatter #philanthropy

It was all good just a week ago... Last Sunday, I got back from the Facing Race conference where my Heinz colleagues, Melanie Brown and Carmen Lee and our partners on this effort, Karris Jackson and Mark Lewis of The POISE Foundation, went with 7 additional colleagues to Dallas to the Facing Race Conference. Shouts to Melanie and Karris who did great thought and logistics work to make the effort a success. Facing Race is focused on promoting racial justice, which the sponsoring organization, Race Forward defines as the following: "The systematic fair treatment of people of all races, resulting in equitable opportunities and outcomes for all." I loved having the experience of attending the conference with so many folks working in Pittsburgh on what might be called racial justice. They were as follows and pictured from left to right in top photo.

Tiffany Wilhelm, Deputy Director, The Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council

Karris Jackson, Vice President, The POISE Foundation

Rinku Sen, Executive Director, Race Forward (obviously not a Pittsburgher, but it's great to have her in the picture)

Etta Cetera, Core Committee member, WHAT'S UP Pittsburgh

Mary Parker, Director of Training and Learning Development, Coro Pittsburgh;

Me, Justin Laing, Senior Program Officer, Arts & Culture, The Heinz Endowments

Celeste Smith-C.E.O. One Hood Media Academy

Melanie Brown, Program Officer, Education Program, The Heinz Endowments

Not Pictured in top photo

Karen Abrams, Manager, Community Relations, The Urban Redevelopment Authority (Karen is in the 3rd row of photos on left side)

Dr. Gretchen Generett, Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research, School of Education, Duquesne University (Gretchen is 2nd from right in left hand photo in 2nd row of pics)

Majestic Lane, Director of Community Engagement & Strategy, A+ Schools

Carmen Lee, Communications Officer, The Heinz Endowments

Kimberly Merrell-Director of the Metro Urban Institute, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary

Mark Lewis, CEO, The POISE Foundation

From the Heinz perspective, our purpose in attending the conference was to see the way racial justice was positioned and how we might apply it to our work at the foundation. Seeing as how Facing Race was well supported by philanthropy, this seemed like a good place to see how this particular racial justice frame might apply to our work at the foundation. We wanted to go with folks who have been working on issues of racial justice, so that we could not be in a vacuum but be with folks who are working in this space on a daily basis and see whether they found the ideas useful. We also wanted to share the privilege that we have as Endowments staff to travel to conferences with a section of the community so that the conference would be more likely to benefit Pittsburgh than it would if just Heinz staff went, particularly since this is not a current focus of the Endowments.

We picked folks by looking within our grantee pool and in the general community, so the bias was clearly to our networks (Tiffany pointed this out at our wrap up dinner in Dallas). There were some great sessions and conversations in Dallas. Highlights for me:

Keynote Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, Toshi Reagon and Tashawn Reagon. Three generations of African American women working on justice in the US, singing, talking to the audience, conversing amongst themselves. Powerful. Quote I remember "Risk your privilege."

Youth led racial justice work-Pointed out by Melanie, the youngest person on the panel was 26 years old. Good reminder to keep this in mind in my own work;

Moving Foundations Towards Racial Justice Grantmaking-A comment from Woods Fund Chicago Program Officer, Caroina Grimble that we need to look at outcomes and not just process to name something as RJ grant making;

Frustration with Philanthropy-There were were more than a few murmurs of frustration with philanthropy that I heard in the sessions/plenaries re: how our sector needs improvement if its going to be a force for justice.

The overall good time and good conversations with all of the Pgh folks. Learned a lot from going as a group.

There is much more to share and maybe I'll do later posts. One source that looked helpful was from one of the closing speakers, Ian Haney Lopez. The book is titled Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class. We'll have a chance to share this work with colleagues and continue the conversation at Heinz, so I look forward to that.

Super shout out to Celeste Smith AKA Haute Muslim of 1Hood Media for the lovely photographs. Thanks, Celeste!

#Facing Race #philanthropy #racial justice

Beautiful photos of the Unsung Majority Event taken by Jen Saffron, Director of Communications for the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council in her day work and a wonderful photographer in her own right... I am pretty happy with how all of this turned out. The most exciting pieces for me were (a) by using Open Space Technology (OST) and (b) the response of individuals to the data. With the use of OST, individuals were able to define the topics of conversations and then offer that opportunity to others to have that conversation with them. This allows folks to have the discussion they would like to have at that moment with others who feel the same. Conversations like

How to deal with scale and scaling up

Race in the arts

Non-artists and non-founders running arts organizations;

And several others. Please go to the Unsung website to see them

It was really nice to see how folks still had plenty to talk to each other about after 45 minutes and I think you can see some of the energy in the photos above. The notes are posted at the Unsung Majority. I have not looked at them closely yet, but definitely will. A special thanks to Tiffany Wilhelm whose idea the breakout sessions were and who organized that part of the day.

In terms of artists responding to the research, it was encouraging listening to Jeffrey Carpenter of Bricolage Theater ask tough questions of the final panel re: the way financial resources are spread across the arts community, particularly the factoid from the research that 75% of the dollars in the performing arts go to 8 organizations. While this is a tough conversation for those of us in philanthropy, since our work has been a significant contributor to that arrangement, I think it spurs us to think of a response and ways to make sure we are honoring and recognizing in even more tangible ways the “Unsung Majority”. Kudos to Jeff and others who were willing to say a few things that might have made us uncomfortable.

Jeff’s comment and an earlier question Beth Corning of Corningworks posed wondering what the philanthropic community thought should be done about the support provided small and midsize arts organizations points me to a weakness in the day: we could have done a much better job bringing the philanthropic sector out to this event. Unfortunately for me, I have to shoulder a big part of this shortcoming as one of the chief organizers. However, in every challenge an opportunity and so this is something we hope to remedy in future by creating opportunities for others in the funding community and arts sector to consider what we might do in terms of next steps. It may take us to early 2015 to get to this stage, but I think we’ll get there—Justin Laing

There Has To Be More Than The Vault & The Revolving Door... Right?

Tomorrow, along with the Pittsburgh Foundation and the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, The Heinz Endowments is hosting a fairly large and open gathering on questions pertaining to arts organizations with annual budgets under $1.5 million. The event focuses on a report called the Unsung Majority by TDC Consulting and has a range of interesting findings that have sparked my thinking about how I could be more helpful to this set of "small" and "medium" budget organizations (one of the things I want to do is change the terms we are using)

One of the findings of the research is the common sense one that new audience growth is far more likely to come from organizations under ten years old than it is to come from those 21 years or older. Of course it's easier to grow from 0 than it is from 2000 and the % of growth will be substantially higher when you add a 100 audience members to your previous 100 than it will be to add the same growth to 2000 audience members. However, this finding made me realize that we need to pay more attention to whether our grant making program focused on the smallest of orgs i.e. those with budgets under $250,000, called The Small Arts Initiative is structured appropriately to both support organizations who have been working in the field for more than 20 years, and are now Pittsburgh institutions, and new organizations under ten years old.

I say this because Unsung Majority found that 48% of the organizations in the sample who reported declining audiences were 21 years or older, which is about the same % of older organizations in the 57 org sample. This large % of the sample that consists of organizations 21 years or older lines up with what I think I have seen in the Small Arts program over the last couple of years: a growing % of older orgs in the "funded" category after each round. I place responsibility for this outcome on a choice we made to place more emphasis on fully funding project requests so that we would see more projects with the resources to present their project excellently, rather than spreading the grants more broadly across the applicant pool and providing a higher number of grants with smaller awards. We thought that was important to do because too frequently follow up reports were stating that the project had not been fully implemented because the full budget had not been raised.

As we've implemented this policy, the % of funded orgs per round dropped from the 70%-80% rate it was when I arrived in 2006 to less than 50% in our last round (I should note that that round had 43 requests which was the highest in memory, before we were around 60%). As funded requests drop, my sense is that older organizations with a solid track record and audience, a history of funding, and knowledge of grant writing have begun to win a higher % of the awards and fewer new orgs or consortia of artists have gotten into the pool. This is important to the ecosystem because if new audiences come from new orgs, older orgs are more likely to report declining audiences and our grant making policy of fully funding projects is making it less likely that new orgs are getting funded, what is our strategy to bring new or returning audiences into the ecosystem?

I am not sure of what we can do yet and budgets are tight such that just saying "add more $ to the pot" is not so easily done. Still, there has to be other approaches to grantmaking other than the revolving door approach i.e. "out with one and in with the next" and the vault approach i.e. "who's in is in and who's out is out". Tomorrow is set to have 150 folks or so and so there will be many good ideas in that conversation. More to come. --Justin Laing

#UnsungMajority #The Heinz Endowments #philanthropy

Just saw Leslie Ezra Smith's "The Book of Ezra" a the Pittsburgh Playwrights Theater Co. a project supported in part by The Advancing Black Arts program, a funding program of The Heinz Endowments and The Pittsburgh Foundation. I was personally inspired as a father, as a man shaped by 80s and 90's hip hop and, as I said in my fb status, I left feeling charged up! But I also left noticing something that kind of bugged me: this story that reflected on a life of young, artistically gifted African American boy & teenager growing up in Homewood and Larimer did not include a reference to an arts organization that assisted him on his path.

On Thursday night i was able to go and see another grantee of The Heinz Endowments, Alumni Theater Co. as they rehearsed the show that they put up this weekend "I am artist"in the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust's Education Center and was so happy to see a place where creative, wanting to dance and sing, young Black men can go to express themselves AND get training and instruction. Training that can help students win auditions at CAPA High School, CMU, Point Park and beyond, so that careers as an artist are even more possible.

Which brings me back to the story Leslie Ezra Smith told tonight that mentioned organizations like Operation Better Block, Community Empowerment Association and Nation of Islam but did not include a reference to an arts organization helping to shape the life of a young Black man growing up in a very violent Homewood of the late 80s and early 90s. This is not to say Ezra does not have a story he could tell, I didn't ask him, just that i know as a resident predominantly African American neighborhood in Pittsburgh that transformative arts experiences for youth are in short supply.

At Heinz we have been working over the last couple of years on this process called the Transformative Arts Process (TAP) that has asked the question "How can the arts be transformative in the lives of youth living in African American and distressed neighborhoods?" The idea is to increase the access that youth living in African American/distressed neighborhoods have to transformative arts experiences, particularly experiences facilitated by teaching artists who have deep background in working, living and making art in neighborhoods like Homewood. I'll work to explain TAP in future posts, but as i reflect on tonight's experience I note this: Ezra's piece tonight was presented in a a safe but formerly dilapidated community now called the Pittsburgh Cultural District. The Cultural District would not have been possible without contributions totaling hundreds of millions of dollars by Pittsburgh's Foundation community. The question that I think about today is can there be something different in the future, with the kind of impact of the Cultural District that will change the kinds of stories future artists from African American neighborhoods tell about their upbringing. Thank goodness that artists like Ezra Smith can make a pathway for themselves regardless.--Justin Laing

What Do Marching Bands Tell Us About Schools?

I went to the African American Heritage Day Parade this past weekend with my family and a contingent of my brothers of Omega Psi Phi to represent our part of the African American cultural scene and heritage, and I had a blast, despite the Pittsburgh cold, gray rain. It was cool to see the range of African American organizations like masonic organizations, motor cycle clubs, African American sororities (shouts to my DST sisters) and even a marching band from... Baltimore? So, the young people were dope and I imagine there is a good reason for it, but upon reflection it did raise a question. Where are our marching bands? Now, to be clear, Obama's marching band was there and I just happened to miss them because I was late, but they look great in the picture I saw (thanks to Vernard Alexander for letting me know Obama was there and for sending me the picture). Still, the question that came up for me when I saw the band from B-more was supported when later that same day I saw an instagram photo taken by DJ SMI (the photo above) noting that the marching band at his high school back in the day was bigger than the one in the photo, which was all of the marching bands in city right now with the exception of Westinghouse.

So, what might a rich marching band culture that took advantage of the rich legacy of African Americans' contribution to this genre tell us about how we imagine quality education? Degrading and diminishing African/American culture has been such a part of the oppression of people of African descent, its restoration has often been posed as critical part of any educational process and so marching bands (as an example of the arts) could be a critical part of that conversation, but of course we'd have to be having that conversation about arts in schools more often than we are now. The Heinz Endowments' Arts & Culture Program has made some investments in the arts in the Pittsburgh Public Schools with an eye on African diasporic culture with support for the Culturally Responsive Arts Education Program and more district wide arts support with investments in the leadership of the city's arts instruction. However, this is happening inside of a local and national education reform effort that I don't usually hear posing arts & culture as central to reform in its communications & strategies, so that's going to be a long row to hoe. While I've spent a lot of time working in the space of arts in schools, I hadn't really given much thought to marching bands before I looked at DJ SMI's photo and reflected on this past weekend and then started writing this post. But of course when we think about places like Florida A & M University we often think about marching bands as an important part of that identity and what might make their brand of learning fun.

To be clear, I am not planning to advocate for a new initiative focused on marching bands, because that would miss the larger setting for arts in schools in America and Pittsburgh today. The bigger question is the role of arts and culture in how education reform is discussed by education leaders, parents and youth and how arts become a part of the "big table" conversations. That's a rhythm I think arts advocates could get funky to (and we can get plenty o' funky). --Justin Laing

#marching band #arts in education #philanthropy #african american culture

This picture of artist Chris Ofili, very successful British artist now living in Trinidad and maybe most famous for paintings of the VIrgin Mary that included elephant dung and what appear to be angel wings crafted from pictures of bootys taken from Black pornographic mags, seems emblematic of one of the challenges facing the next iteration of the August Wilson Center: How to present artists that are getting national and international attention and could draw arts funding from beyond Pgh and in ways that get attention and buzz deep in Pittsburgh's neighborhoods. How could this artist be presented in a way that shows he "is of us" and not a special being who simply "walks amongst us."?

The New Yorker picture in article "Into the Unknown" in the 10.6.14 issue shows the artist essentially alone, in chic clothing taking a drink in this very formal way that suggests it is from a servant. (In other words, the high quality artist as member of the elite). The author of this piece is basically interested in the personal journey of Ofili as an artist. I am not saying he doesn't have an interesting personal story, but it's not enough by itself, is it? The author seems to be taking his angle from the framing of the exhibit that is set to go up at the NY's New Museum from October 29th-February 1, 2015 which notes the following "Ofili’s practice has undergone constant changes, moving from boldly expressive to deeply introspective across an experimental and prodigious body of work."

So that's what a New York, predominantly white, not culturally explicit arts organization (by "not explicit", I mean its unlikely to promote any particular cultural orientation even though, of course, it has one as an organization founded by white Americans interested in contemporary art). But what might the positioning of Ofili's work look like for a culturally explicit, African American arts center? Whatever happens the work would need to be presented in such a way that it gives us insight on ourselves as folks living in Pgh, in this particular moment and in a city that continues to have signs of racism all over it, no less so in the disparities of its cultural life that the AWC was and is intended to address. That would be the art of it.

Welcome to Philanthropic Windows

So, I, Justin Laing, am going to post here to reflect on my practice as an arts & culture program officer at The Heinz Endowments with a couple of goals in mind: (1) tell stories about what I do so that it can help the field have a better sense of what folks who work at a foundation actually do. (2) reflect on questions that come up so that I can think them through and hopefully get smarter by reflecting on them and giving folks a chance to respond. This blog represents my views alone and do not represent the positions of The Heinz Endowments.

Thus, the title "Philanthropic Windows". Hope you enjoy.

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