Lauren Maria Padilla-Valverde

Five Elements to a Thriving Anti-Racist Health Foundation

The California Endowment plays an influential role within the field of philanthropy, taking bold stances to advance health and racial justice through grassroots power building of those most impacted. In the spring of 2018, foundation staff brought to executive leadership’s attention the need to activate its leadership by becoming explicit about the direct connection between U.S. structural racism, racial capitalism, and persistent poor health and life outcomes, particularly for Black, Native, and other people of color. Doing so would address the historical harms and power imbalances inherent in philanthropy and negatively impacting grantee partners and their communities. This call was especially true for grantees who were on the frontlines of movement work organizing those most impacted to advance meaningful change.

In 2018, the Endowment began its journey to build organizational anti-racist culture. The first phase of Advancing Racial Equity (A.R.E.) ushered in organization-wide commitment and learnings and increasing staff understanding of anti-Blackness and systemic racism as the driver of poor health and life outcomes. In 2020 the foundation recruited the inaugural director who led the development of "The Five Elements to a Thriving Anti-Racist Health Foundation," a set of mutually reinforcing, interdependent capacities for transforming culture and operationalizing ant-racist practice.

Presenters will share the foundation’s journey and how it has embodied democratic participation by directly engaging staff at all levels of the organization. Core to this plan is the development of a Somatic Abolitionism practice to build embodied fortitude to metabolize the historical and deeply oppressive system of white body supremacy. The work to become an anti-racist health foundation is hard but necessary. We must become the transformation we need to see in the sector and share power and truly walk in trust with our partners in the broader movement building ecosystem. This interrogation is active, constant, and necessary to fully live into values and have clarity about the foundation’s proper role as a philanthropic leader.