Show Notes
Author and activist Heather McGhee joins hosts Phil and Grace for the fifth episode of season three. Heather provides keen insight into ‘drained pool’ politics, a core metaphor in her book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, that reveals how the racial zero sum mindset hurts everyone. She presents a compelling picture of how racial inequality cuts across any number of issues that donors may care about, and therefore needs to be deeply considered and addressed in order to be effective in giving. She also describes “the solidarity dividend,” the significant benefits that result when people come together across differences, and she shares her reasons for feeling optimistic about the future.
More from The Giving Done Right Podcast with Phil Buchanan
Daniel Stid, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of the newsletter The Art of Association and host of a podcast by the same name, shares his provocative argument that large-scale philanthropic investment in national policy advocacy has, over time, deepened American polarization rather than healed it. Stid, who spent nearly a decade leading the Hewlett Foundation's U.S. Democracy Program, explains why he believes funders on the left and right have increasingly bankrolled advocates clustered at ideological poles, making it harder for either political party to build governing majorities near the center where most Americans actually sit.
Phil sits down with Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, for a wide-ranging conversation on what this moment of backlash demands of individual and institutional donors. Stevenson places the current retreat from racial equity commitments within a much longer arc: the recurring pattern stretching from Reconstruction through Jim Crow to today, in which periods of racial justice progress in America are met by a deliberate counter-narrative, and progress stalls until a new narrative takes hold.
With the midterm elections just weeks away, Phil talks with Maya Wiley, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and its Education Fund, about what donors and foundations concerned about the state of American democracy can do right now, and why the philanthropic response has so far fallen short. Maya shares findings from the Leadership Conference's landscape mapping of its coalition, which found that nearly half of the organizations surveyed are doing voter protection and engagement work on a quarter or less of the budget they say they need.
Phil Buchanan is joined by Elisha Smith Arrillaga, CEP's Vice President of Research, as co-host for a conversation focused on some of philanthropy's oldest tensions: who should decide how charitable dollars get spent and how to balance short-term needs with the long view? Their guests, Glen Galaich, CEO of the Stupski Foundation, and Jamie Allison, Executive Director of the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, are usually the ones asking the questions, as frequent co-hosts on Glen’s podcast, Break Fake Rules.
As nonprofits face sharply increased demand, deep federal funding cuts, and a fundraising climate unlike anything in recent memory, Lysa Ratliff, CEO of KABOOM!, joins Phil Buchanan for an unusually candid conversation about what it takes to lead right now, and why she refuses to soften the truth to make anyone comfortable.