A conversation with Evette Cardona as she bids farewell to Polk Bros. Foundation
Earlier this year, we announced that Polk Bros. Foundation’s Vice President of Programs Evette Cardona — who oversees the Foundation’s grantmaking — will retire this week after a nearly three-decade career dedicated to strengthening Chicago’s communities and improving the philanthropic sector. Evette first joined the Foundation as a program intern in 1997 and has since played a pivotal role in guiding the Foundation’s grantmaking and influencing broader efforts to build a more just and equitable city.
We sat down with Evette this week to reflect together on her career, what she’s learned along the way and what keeps her hopeful.
As you think about your work over the years, what key moments stand out to you the most? What are you especially proud of?
It has been such a privilege and an honor to do this work. It’s a field in which not a lot of people get to work, and thus there can be a lot of mystery around what it’s like to work in a foundation. And I always like to underscore the belief that when you know one foundation, you know one foundation! That said, I like to talk about how philanthropy allows for private money to be used for public benefit, and the tension that that creates is something that has always intrigued me about philanthropy. So I’ve been very fortunate that for 27 years I’ve been able to work at a foundation that understands its role in supporting committed and amazing nonprofit organizations to help Chicagoans and the communities they live in to not only reach their full potential, individually and collectively, but also to challenge the systemic inequities that have impeded that potential.
Several key moments stand out to me from the last 27 years. Personally, two moments were when I was hired as a program officer at the end of my graduate school internship and when I was anointed the vice president of programs right after the founding directors retired. Those two opportunities have been transformational to my life.
And then professionally, it’s been when the Foundation stepped up in times of crisis or during intense economic swings – there was the dot-com bust of 2000, the tragedy of 9/11, the economic crash in 2008 and subsequent housing foreclosure in 2010 – when the Board’s leadership leaned in and kept all our grantmaking level while many others were being forced to cut back grants. Level funding became the new increased grant, and I was always proud of that decision.
Another key moment that stands out for me is when we supported the development of the Police Accountability Task Force report. We debated whether to do so because of its contentious and controversial nature. And looking back, I’m very proud that the Foundation supported it because it helped inform Chicago’s consent decree for police reform. It came at a time when the city was really coming to terms with the inequities that Black and brown communities had been telling us were happening for decades. All those moments led the Foundation to start centering community and equity more comprehensively across our grantmaking.
So I’m really happy we did that initial work to go deeper because when the pandemic hit, it really brought to the fore how inequities were impacting our grantees and the families and communities they work with. And again, the Board agreed to increase the payout to allow us to look at funding equitable recovery in addition to rapid response grantmaking. That was a very critical time for the Foundation, and the work we did laid the groundwork for the new strategic framework we announced in October of last year.
Lastly, we are now in another key moment, a post-inauguration world, and the Foundation has chosen to deepen its commitment to our values of wanting a just and equitable world for everyone, especially in Chicago. Unfortunately, these values are being challenged by the policies and beliefs of the powers that be at the federal level. So it’s an interesting time to be retiring, and yet I’m very proud of that new groundwork we’ve laid and what we’ve built during these past 27 years that I’ve been with the Foundation.
I think we’ve built a solid foundation to come into this brave new world of ours with eyes and heart wide open.
What’s something you’ve learned over the course of your career that you’d like to pass along to others?
When I became a program officer, I came in as a former doer, somebody who worked in nonprofits and social services. I’m trained as a social worker, so I knew what the work on the ground was like. I was able to review proposals with an understanding about how poverty and other issues impacted families in Chicago. I saw a lot of former doers hired into philanthropy from my cohort.
I’d say in the last 10 years or so, the trend has been to hire former activists and organizers – folks who were doing a lot to address and challenge inequities in Chicago, and who were focused on justice work. That’s been a big and important change because philanthropy was, both before the pandemic and certainly after the pandemic and the social uprisings, called upon to look at itself and challenge whether and how it was being complicit in this work. What has philanthropy been doing to really move the needle or to address root causes of inequity? What would it mean to have a just and equitable world, and to value equity? Currently, one of the ways foundations operationalize that is to hire the right people – those with lived experience who have been on the ground, addressing not just poverty but the myriad of ways inequities play out in Chicago. And so I’ve seen a lot of former activists and organizers come into the field. It’s a new generation who doesn’t apologize for wanting to lean into that work and to speak truth to power – both external power and internal power. And that can be challenging for foundations to grapple with. But when it works, it works really well.
So for new folks coming in, and especially if they do have an activist orientation, my advice is to understand that philanthropy can be slow to change, and power sharing is a new concept for many in the sector. So you really have to know how to negotiate and navigate and understand what philanthropy can and can’t do, and to know how to challenge philanthropy in the right way, to bring them along. Being part of coalitions and teaching a class on philanthropy has given me a window into how complex it can be to navigate power and values inside foundations. Staff who want to center equity may not always feel safe doing so. I think a key skill is learning how to name what matters to you — and connect it back to your institution’s mission in a way that invites others in. Something our consultant said when we were doing the work to more fully center equity in our grantmaking has really stayed with me: “What is your goal? What is your role in relation to your goal? What do you do without losing your soul?” That has stuck with me. You just have to be able to adapt to meet people where they are, but without losing who you are and all you stand for. Because we get to be at tables where a lot of people in the city don’t get to be, and with that comes privilege. I think you have to respect that and know how to use it to your ability.
And my advice to new foundation and nonprofit CEOs and board members would be to continue to learn about and educate yourself to better understand what it means to center equity and community in your grantmaking. To really make space for the ideas of staff members coming in with activist and organizing backgrounds. And to get clear about what it means to share power or to let communities decide what it is they need.
This is especially important now that the federal administration is going after anything they think is related to DEI, and they are considering redefining what a charitable purpose is and threatening the revocation of certain organizations’ 501(c)(3) designation. Foundation leaders need to talk about what it means to really center equity in their work. What are the risks? What are they willing to do that allows them to continue to be true to their values? If they value equity and if they value an equitable and just world, make time and space to unpack what that means as a foundation in this moment, as stewards of funding that is an important source of resources for communities.
What brings you the most hope for Chicago’s future, and what are your hopes for your own future?
In my 27 years with the Foundation, during the key moments I talked about before – economic crises or the pandemic or social uprisings – nonprofit organizations have always stepped up and always showed up. They do it with money and they do it without money. They know how to respond, and how to stretch resources, big and small. I’ve seen moments when the economy was crashing and we thought that we were going to see all these nonprofits close. Yes, a few did, but a lot of them were just so resilient, they figured out how to continue the work. And so now we’re at another unprecedented moment where the sector is being threatened in ways most of us have never seen or experienced and there is the fear that folks will close their doors. But funders have had their backs in the past and I truly believe funders will have their backs again now. My hope is that we will figure out together how to continue to do the work. And to continue to be there after this current crisis is gone.
For my own future: I just want to sit still for a while, read anything other than email, take nice long walks, bird watch and stargaze, and be with my family, young and old. But I know that I will reengage in the near future because there will always be a need for which I can volunteer, a protest or rally I can join, or an issue for which I can fundraise or advocate.
It is work that has always been and will continue to be good for my soul.
