Hey, hurricane survivors! We're going to spend millions of dollars to begin a longitudinal study by non-hurricane survivors on what survival strategies work best for hurricane survivors five years out https://www.wallacefoundation.org/about-wallace/pages/studying-bipoc-arts-organizations-request-for-qualifications--rfq.aspx

(2/3) To be a bit less flippant, the Wallace Foundation is offering grants of $500,000-$3M to social scientists to do multi-year projects to come up with data to tell foundations what their strategy should look like if they want to invest their money in BIPOC arts institutions.

(3/3) Foundations are perfectly capable of doing their own, shorter-term research—which might include asking the organizations, which are run by specialists in running arts organizations, what they themselves need.

OK one more (4/4). This approach, at a time of great need, just honestly seems racist to me.

I tried to express my concerns directly to @WallaceFdn using the email provided on the RFP page, but it bounced because my Northwestern University email was "not authenticated" for that recipient.

I said "Why not ask the organizations themselves what they need, and formulate grants on the basis of what you hear, rather than giving those vast sums to researchers to produce data that won't be of use for many years and might not even be valuable to the institutions at all"

I then said "I say this as both a researcher and a board member of a Black art institution that could put $500,000 to immediate, crucial, important use."