The Boston Foundation Arts & Culture team, the Barr Foundation and the Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture center racial equity, transparency and accountability join forces in a new approach to grantmaking.
Eva Rosenberg, Interim Director of Arts & Culture at the Boston Foundation writes:
As the Foundation works to develop a shared definition of using a racial equity lens in grantmaking, we as an Arts & Culture team will hold ourselves accountable, and invite you to hold us accountable, for who and what we fund, how we select nonprofit partners, and the kind and size of grants they receive. We are committed to deploying philanthropic capital to organizations and people most often seen as “risky investments,” namely those from BIPOC communities, particularly when our early investment may help attract other support from the networks of wealth that drive arts philanthropy in Greater Boston. In addition to centrally involving community members as decision-makers and inviting and acting on feedback from our partners, we need to be transparent about our progress towards racial equity in funding and where we are falling short. That involves setting and communicating clear, measurable goals on these issues – work we are doing in 2021 but have not yet done.