Reflecting on our Equity Journey

Now half way through 2023, this year has proven to be one of turning points. In May, the COVID Disaster Declaration officially ended, marking a transition back to life of enjoying time together in person. However, we remain forever changed by the events of 2020 – both in the lasting impacts of the pandemic, and in the attention that was given to racial inequities and mental health.

As we consider a new, “post”-COVID world, we must maintain our focus on righting historical wrongs and pushing toward equitable outcomes for all. We strive to do this in our work, and know that accountability is critical in this process.

We share the following to hold ourselves accountable across all areas of our work to shift the paradigm and practice for behavioral health, and recognize the unique spark and basic dignity in every human.

Vision Philadelphia

Philadelphia will welcome a new mayor and city council next year. Incoming leadership will have the opportunity to move Philadelphia forward and allow our city to fulfill its promise as a thriving city for the 1.5 million people who live, learn, and do business here. Together with our philanthropic peers, we developed Vision Philadelphia, an on-going series that explores promising solutions to improve city services and the quality of life of all Philadelphians.  Authored by local and national thought leaders, experts, and practitioners from diverse backgrounds, Vision Philadelphia can serve as a guide for key issues areas that will be critical for new leadership to address. The series outlines key issues that impact all Philadelphians, and those that disproportionately impact Black and Brown communities and makes recommendations to improve access to capital for BIPOC small business owners, improve our behavioral health system, and reduce gun violence.

Think Bigger Do Good

The Foundation and its partners realize that children are our future and recognize the need to advocate for policies that advance equity and promote health for the next generation. The Think Bigger Do Good series featured two papers this year on policy and implementation recommendations for children’s mental health. 

Promoting the Mental Health of Parents and Children by Strengthening Medicaid Support for Home Visiting

Home visiting programs, which have been long supported by funders in Philadelphia, offer a wholistic approach for new parents and children at home through health education, parenting support, and other services. Evidence of its benefits has accumulated across a growing number of home visiting models, some of which have demonstrated direct mental health outcomes, such as improved access to mental health services and reductions in family stress and maternal depression. Medicaid offers a natural vehicle to scale home visiting programs to promote early childhood development and address the mental health of both mothers and young children. To scale home visiting and reach far more families across the country who could benefit, federal policy makers should establish home visiting as a required Medicaid benefit and make additional investments to help states build capacity as the approach is scaled.

What About the Kids? Child and Adolescent Crises, the Pandemic, and 988

988 is an opportunity for state and local leaders to scaffold youth-based crisis services that are interconnected, ones that provide person-to-person care and allow children and adolescents to remain in their day-to-day lives, so they have continued access to their education, peers, family, and other supports.

This year, the Foundation worked with organizations focused on reducing gun violence to build their internal capacity to measure and communicate impact. Through providing technical assistance to the City of Philadelphia Community Expansion Grantees (CEG), as well as the grantees of CHOP’s Growing Resilience in Teens initiative, the Foundation has worked with many Black- and Brown-led organizations striving to make their communities safer. 

This spring, The Philadelphia Inquirer published an article that was critical of the CEG program and its grantees. We agree with critiques of the piece, and believe that it is our collective responsibility to support these organizations, and others like them, to build their capacity to deliver on their mission. Grassroots organizations like the CEG grantees have deeply rooted relationships and are best positioned to do the kind of community-building work that is critical to improving public safety. It is our goal to support these organizations beyond the grant dollar so they are able to best position their programs to make positive change in their communities. 

General Grantmaking

What gets measured, gets managed. So, since 2020, we have tracked how many grants and grant dollars we are deploying from our general grantmaking portfolio toward organizations that are led by and serving BIPOC communities. This is by no means a perfect process, but we know that by tracking demographics of organizational staff, leadership, and participants, we will be active in our pursuit of supporting organizations working to advance racial equity.

Highlights:

• All of our grantees in FY23 had a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion plan or clear public commitment to advancing equity.
• 60% of all FY23 grant dollars went to organizations with executive leadership that identifies as Black, Indigenous, or person/people of color (up from 50% of grant dollars the previous year) and when looking only at new grantees, 72% of grant dollars went to organizations with executive leadership that identifies as Black, Indigenous, or person/people of color.
• 67% of our grants and 64% of FY23 grant dollars went to multi-year commitments, which we know helps to sustain non-profit financial health over a longer period of time. 

Areas for Improvement: 

• Just 47% of our total FY23 grantees had executive leadership composed of individuals who identify as Black, Indigenous, or people of color, which is down from 51% of FY22 grantees. Our goal is to have 70% of our grantees meet this criteria. When looking at our new grantees in FY23, 64% met this criteria, indicating that our new grantees have BIPOC leadership, but that legacy grantees are largely white-led. 
• In FY23, 73% of the grant programs we supported provide services to BIPOC communities, which is down from the previous fiscal year and below our goal of 80%.
• Many of our grants to BIPOC-led organizations were one-year grants, with only 27% of our grants and 37% of grant dollars going toward multi-year grants to organizations led by Black, Indigenous, and people of color. 

Participatory Funds

Expanding our participatory grantmaking work has put decision-making power in the hands of community members most impacted by how grant dollars are spent. Our ongoing commitment to the Community Fund for Immigrant Wellness has now put a total of over $1 million into the hands of over 30 community-based, immigrant-serving organizations. We have worked with the City of Philadelphia to enhance our partnership around the Kensington Community Resilience Fund, another participatory grantmaking initiative with Kensington residents at the helm. Further, we partnered with the City to launch the first round of the Overdose Prevention and Community Healing Fund, which allows for individuals impacted by the opioid epidemic to distribute dollars from Philadelphia’s allotment from the national opioid settlement. In its first year, the Overdose Prevention and Community Healing Fund granted $1.9million to 27 organizations doing work in the substance prevention, education, and harm reduction space. 

As a private foundation, we must also consider how we invest our endowment to reflect our values. The Foundation’s investments continue to be rooted in Quaker values by screening out 100% of harmful investments such as tobacco, alcohol, gambling, weapons, for-profit prisons, and more. In addition to screening out harmful investments, the Foundation has focused on investing in diverse managers, including but not limited to a new partnership with Zenith Wealth Partners. By the end of the calendar year, the portfolio will be rebalanced to include several new diverse managers, and more than 40% of Scattergood’s assets will be managed by firms that are owned and led by diverse managers.

Our Board of Directors has continued to build a more diverse and inclusive team. With new members who represent diverse backgrounds and expertise around driving racial equity, they have enhanced governance structures to ensure that all voices are heard. 

We will continue to share our work toward realizing anti-racist principles and look forward to working with our philanthropic, non-profit, government, business, and civic partners to improve transparency in our collective work toward advancing racial equity and justice.