When our colleague Rajib shared lessons from the field about advancing racial equity inside foundations, we were inspired to continue the series and highlight our additional efforts to learn about what other foundations have done to further their equity commitments and goals. 

Irvine has a long history of supporting organizations led by and/or serving people of color, but we hadn’t, until recently, acknowledged or intentionally addressed the impact of structural racism on economic opportunity. That changed in 2020 when Irvine committed $20 million in additional funding to embed racial equity in our grantmaking initiatives and facilitated learning and coaching for board, staff, and leadership; and in 2022 when we published a racial equity case statement with commitments about how we operate and give.  

We each had a unique perspective on these efforts because Amy joined Irvine in 2017 and Ethan joined in 2022. Our tenures bookend the organization’s racial equity evolution and offered a chance to combine historical knowledge with new perspectives. Given our roles on Irvine’s Program Development team, which Amy led until her departure in June 2024, we wanted to look externally and understand best practices for integrating racial equity into grantmaking strategy development to help inform the foundation’s own choices.  

From December 2022 to September 2023, we interviewed 11 public and private foundations and consultants, and reviewed literature on this topic. Foundations were selected based on a demonstrated commitment to racial equity, expertise in bringing racial equity to grantmaking, and an annual grantmaking budget of at least $50 million.  

This process taught us that organizations can more effectively incorporate racial equity into grantmaking when their leaders do three things: 

• Create a collective equity orientation for the organization. This can be done by clearly articulating, ideally from the CEO and the board, a racial equity commitment that, among other things, authorizes the organization to examine and shift how equity fits within their individual roles.  

• Set concrete grantmaking goals for equity, then monitor and adjust to stay accountable to those. A clear and measurable goal organizes individual, equity-oriented grants into a coherent strategy.  

• Develop a shared analysis of equity and apply that to grantmaking systems and practices. We repeatedly heard the importance of shared learning and analysis of equity across teams to translate good intentions into good execution. Inconsistent approaches reduce overall effectiveness.  

We invite you to read the full findings here to read direct quotes and case studies from foundation leaders we interviewed and the changes that those actions inspired at Irvine.  

Some of those changes at Irvine include adjusting how we allocate dollars to stay focused on equity in grantmaking and improving how we incorporate community feedback. And in another blog post planned for this series, you’ll learn how our grantees and the field contributed to developing updated grantmaking principles, goals, and framework. 

We know this isn’t a static process and that our learning and goal setting must evolve. We are currently in a multi-year process to build our internal understanding of key equity concepts and looking at how our structures need to change to meet community needs.  

We are grateful to the people we interviewed and appreciate the chance to apply their knowledge to our own racial equity efforts, and we will continue to share the lessons we learn along the way.  

This piece is part of our blog series on Irvine’s work to advance racial equity in our grantmaking and how we operate. You can read previous posts in our Racial Equity series here and here.