#InclusiveImpact Digital Dialogue Series Monthly Update!
October 5, 2020In August, New Profit launched the Inclusive Impact campaign, a digital dialogue series from New Profit and our network of social entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and other change-makers committed to driving equity in America. The series is aimed at creating dialogue around the concepts that are core to our Inclusive Impact strategy, which focuses on driving unprecedented capital and support to Black, Indigenous, Hispanic and Latino/a/x social entrepreneurs.
Each month we will be sharing the latest on the Inclusive Impact campaign. If you’re interested in more frequent updates be sure to follow New Profit on social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter) and check-in here on NPGO, our new media hub. Continue reading to get caught up on what has happened so far!
This Data Should Change Philanthropy Forever
“Only by considering the broadest accumulation of data may we make choices that are based upon our own hard-earned sense of reality. Speaking from my own special area of American culture I feel that to embrace uncritically values which are extended to us by others is to reject the validity, even the sacredness, of our own experience. It is also to forget that the small share of reality which each of our diverse groups is able to snatch from the whirling chaos of history belongs not to the group alone, but to all of us.” – Ralph Ellison in his 1964 essay “Hidden Name and Complex Fate: A Writer’s Experience in the United States
Tulaine Montgomery, New Profit Managing Partner and lead of New Profit’s Inclusive Impact strategy, recently published a piece in Worth featuring this quote from Ralph Ellison. The piece centers around data that highlights the need for breakthrough shifts in attitudes and approaches if we want to find sustainable solutions to the complex problems that undermine equity and opportunity in our society.
Following the publication of this piece, Tulaine sat down with Juliet Scott-Croxford, CEO of Worth Media, for a discussion about the equitable change that is needed right now to set America on a path to realizing its founding ideals. This conversation is part of our new dialogue series with Worth Media called “Rearchitecting the Future Through Philanthropy and Social Entrepreneurship.” Click here to watch their full conversation.
Effective Change Requires Proximate Leaders
Recently, Dr. Angela Jackson (a New Profit Partner and lead of our Future of Work Initiative), Tulaine Montgomery (a New Profit Managing Partner and lead of our Inclusive Impact strategy), and John Kania (a former New Profit Executive-in-Residence and Executive Director of Collective Change Lab), published a piece titled “Effective Change Requires Proximate Leaders” in The Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR).
In the piece, they wrote: “Leaders who arise from the communities and issues they serve have the experience, relationships, data, and knowledge that are essential for developing solutions with measurable and sustainable impact.” This fact is core to our Inclusive Impact strategy and the work that we do at New Profit. Drawing from the insights and experiences of New Profit grantee-partner Girl Trek and former New Profit grantee-partners Family Independence Initiative (FII) and Flikshop, the authors make the case for proximity as expertise and provide guidelines for how philanthropy can work to expand engagement with proximate leaders and drive greater impact.
While philanthropy has made it difficult for proximate leaders to succeed, it can also play an important role in bringing greater attention, money, and resources to proximate leaders.
Click here to learn more about the topic of proximate as expertise and the organizations featured in the article.
New Profit Invests $1M Each in Three BIPOC Led Organizations
Beyond 12: Led by Alexandra Bernadotte (formerly of New Profit’s Women’s Accelerator), Beyond 12 works to significantly increase the number of historically under-represented students who graduate from college and who translate their degrees into meaningful employment.
PushBlack: Led by Interim Co-CEOs Julian Walker and Eskedar Getahun, PushBlack (formerly of New Profit’s Civic Lab) is the largest nonpartisan and nonprofit media organization for Black Americans, playing a unique role in the fields of civic engagement, technology, and media. This investment is being made in partnership with the Skoll Foundation.
Urban Alliance: Led by Eshauna Smith, Urban Alliance provides high school students from underserved communities with access to opportunities needed to solidify lifelong economic self-sufficiency.
Join Us for a Special Screening and Panel Discussion
In this tumultuous season, its more important than ever to reflect on key lessons from our history. This is a time to study and learn from exemplary moral leadership. We invite you to examine the legacy of one of America’s most important warriors for equity: the late Congressman John Lewis. Please join us for a screening of JOHN LEWIS: GOOD TROUBLE, a documentary about the legacy of Lewis, an American hero and inspirational symbol of civil and voting rights. Following the screening we will be hosting a conversation with democracy entrepreneurs and movement leaders from our community:
- YORDANOS EYOEL: New Profit Partner and lead of our Civic Lab initiative [moderator]
- BEN ARNON: Co-Producer of John Lewis: Good Trouble; Co-Founder and CEO of Color Farm Media
- SARAH AUDELO: Executive Director of Alliance for Youth Action
- TULAINE MONTGOMERY: New Profit Managing Partner and lead of our Inclusive Impact strategy
- NICK TILSEN: President & CEO of NDN Collective
- JULIAN WALKER: Interim Co-CEO of PushBlack
What We’re Reading/Watching/Listening to
Reading:
- How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi, a National Book Award-winning author, is an essential read for people wanting to go beyond awareness to action
- The Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewen, which offers an eye-opening critique of how we are taught history in America
Watching
- 13th directed by Ava Duvernay, “explores the history of racial inequality in the United States, focusing on the fact that our nation’s prisons are disproportionately filled with African-Americans”
- John Lewis: Good Trouble is an “intimate account of legendary U.S. Representative John Lewis’ life, legacy, and more than 60 years of extraordinary activism.”
Listening
- Intersectionality Matters! is a podcast hosted by Kimberlé Crenshaw, an American civil rights advocate and leading scholar of critical race theory.
- James Baldwin’s Fire a recent episode of NPR’s Throughline focuses on the work of James Baldwin and contextualizing it in this moment