US Foundation wealth exceeding $1T while folks are going hungry and losing their apartments and homes tells you so much about the state of foundation philanthropy. https://twitter.com/r_j_schlegel/status/1354534962339471363

I wrote this in May, still applies: https://link.medium.com/eDS9QLjbpdb 

An alternate title woulda been “What if you just believed us and moved the way we were asking you to?”

From the piece:

“We weren’t just unready, we were made unready. The loss of life we are seeing right now could have been prevented but few wanted to believe this was coming.”

“Many of us were told that our funding for the public good was contingent on not talking about it directly. PoC were, as always, the canaries in the coal mine. It didn’t occur to anyone that we were an indicator of the conditions of the coal mine to come for everyone else.”

“On the philanthropic side, I saw the event that launched a thousand strategic evaluations. And while many folks tried to plan for the future, we faced yet another round of people saying ‘We’re changing direction but would love to hear more as we flesh out our strategy’”

In reference to Covid “As a society, we are proving to be terrible at believing that the situation we are in IS as terrible as it seems. We don’t want to admit that in a battle of good and evil, sometimes good losses. We don’t want to admit that we lost the current battle.”

“On one end you have folks paralyzed looking at the past as if that will change the future. On the other end, you have folks so undercapitalized that the present is all they can build for. We are given “hold the line” money for the encroachment of plutocracy and literal fascism.”

“What happens in this moment of catastrophe if instead of having spent the last 3 years denying how bad this could get, we vaccinated our public good space against the pandemic of inequality for the battles we were screaming were sure to come?”

“Ask any non-profit executive in an off the record conversation and they will tell you how much more this mental toll has taken in the last four years. This is making folks turn on even the concept of a public good, believing that they will never be allowed to exist.”

“Turning to the option of destruction as the only hope for real change.”

“Holding the line is not enough. We need to fund and support not only the folks we need to stem the losses of the current fight but the folks that need to plan and build actual infrastructure for the battles to come.”