Is the change we’re all seeking for Chicago within reach?
By Gillian Darlow, Polk Bros. Foundation CEO
I find myself grappling with this question every day.
I am always moved by the work our grantee partners are doing. There is immense hope in the way they so often directly and tangibly improve people’s lives. And over these past four very difficult years, I have been especially grateful as the Foundation’s grantee partners have come together across communities and issues not only to respond to immediate needs, but also to challenge policies and practices that are rooted in racial injustices and to imagine and help make progress toward a more just and equitable future for our city.
This Foundation has been committed to addressing poverty and inequity in Chicago for 35 years. That commitment continues, fully. But severe and entrenched racial inequities remain for nearly every critical aspect of everyday life. Even with the relentless commitment of our grantees and the many lives they’ve changed, these long-standing inequities have so far proven intractable.
So I wonder if we — my Polk Bros. Foundation colleagues and I — are doing nearly enough to help dismantle the deeply racist and unjust conditions that surround the good work of our grantee partners, affect the lives of Chicagoans in profound and multifaceted ways, and keep Chicago’s agonizingly persistent racial disparities in place.
Our Foundation’s racial equity journey so far
Something I wrote back in June of 2020 has stayed with me: “As protestors take to the streets across our city, around our country and all over the globe to demand justice, we must remember how we arrived in this moment and do all we can to push toward real change for our city. The path forward is not at all clear, but it’s a path we must take.”
When I wrote those words, Polk Bros. Foundation’s Board and staff had been working since the mid-2010s to deepen our understanding about how Chicago’s racial disparities are a direct result of historic racially-discriminatory practices such as racial covenants, redlining, and inequitable access to federal assistance that helped create the U.S. middle class, as well as present-day discriminatory practices leading to unequal distribution of resources. In 2013 our Board’s Investment Committee had identified some ways to bring a deeper mission focus to the Foundation’s investments. Beginning in 2016, we had adopted new ways of working, including new operations, expenditure and hiring policies and practices, and we began piloting a more explicit racial equity focus in particular areas of our grantmaking. And in 2019, we published a set of guiding principles that named equity as a core value.
Then came the COVID-19 pandemic and the disparities facing Chicago communities became even more stark. In response, in 2020 our Board recognized this as a catalyst moment and agreed to respond with $17 million in additional grantmaking over two years to help Chicago recover from the COVID-19 pandemic in a way that addressed persistent and significant racial inequities. This new Equitable Recovery Initiative gave us a chance to invest increased resources to help Chicago’s communities heal from the many effects of the pandemic, mobilize additional funding and collaboration, work across silos, take some new risks, make some bigger investments and try new approaches to smaller investments. Engaging in meaningful conversations with grantee partners and community leaders taught us more about the complexities and nuances of the challenges facing our city, and guided us as we moved these new resources into communities.
We have so much more to learn, but it became clear that we couldn’t just go back to what we were doing before. Moving closer to the change we’re all seeking for Chicago will require more than addressing the current conditions of poverty and the immediate harms of systemic racism.
Listening, learning and deepening our focus
Polk Bros. Foundation’s commitment to Chicago and its residents demands that we do more to help confront systemic racism head on. It has become apparent that we cannot help achieve the kind of change we’re all seeking for Chicago without a deeper focus on fundamentally changing the conditions that uphold racial injustice and cause racial disparities.
As we speak with and listen to our grantees and others working to dismantle oppressive systems — partners whose guidance is helping us navigate the path ahead — we are hearing the challenges they face and what kinds of support can help them and their communities build a more just, sustainable and equitable Chicago. So Polk Bros. Foundation’s journey to adopt racial equity more explicitly and comprehensively in our work continues to deepen.
We’ve been learning a great deal on our journey so far, and are pushing ourselves to wrestle with big questions. Alongside two racial equity consultants with expertise in intercultural competency and systemic change, Zemsky & Associates and Synergistic, we’ve been working to recognize and reflect on our own personal assumptions and how white supremacy culture norms show up across our organization.
And we are doing our best to act on what we learn.
We are wrestling with the many ways issues connect and affect each other, what that means for nonprofit leaders and how the Foundation should use its limited resources most wisely to address the root causes of the issues facing Chicago communities.
We are considering our grantmaking – what we support, who our policies and practices center, and who they marginalize.
We will soon welcome two new staff members in positions created, in part, to support our capacity to more fully and intentionally infuse racial equity and justice into the Foundation’s overall grantmaking.
As we navigate this complex journey, we are guided by our unwavering values of purpose and partnership. While we don’t yet fully know where this journey will lead us, we deeply value the critical role our grantee partners play in creating a better future for Chicago.
We understand you may have concerns about potential shifts in funding priorities. Any decisions we make will be rooted in our commitment to achieving greater impact and justice for the communities we serve. We know when funders shift priorities, those shifts can affect organizations and the communities they serve. We are committed to communicating transparently and with ample notice about any decisions being made, and to giving organizations opportunities to ask questions and communicate with us as we learn, adapt and evolve to better serve our city.
We are humbled by the work so many across Chicago are doing not only to address the harms of our present systems, but to undo those systems and envision new possibilities for new futures together.
Like so many of you, we want to move closer to a time when Chicagoans most affected by historic disinvestment and racial injustice can also enjoy long, prosperous lives in opportunity-rich communities that embody the change they seek. I believe this is the change Chicagoans deserve and it is the Chicago we will keep working toward.
