A Message from Kyle Caldwell, president and CEO of CMF

As our world continues to grapple with COVID-19, the situation remains rife with tension as various opinions on how to prevent the virus’ spread and eliminate it from our lives differ greatly. Acknowledging our discomfort with these tensions is a first step in moving past them so that we can define shared goals and common values, and work together toward solutions.

Avoiding the uncomfortable gives us only a false sense of harmony, and it means we’re not addressing the real problem. Similarly, those of us privileged to lead in philanthropy have to get comfortable with discomfort to courageously address our society’s most vexing issues.

Soon the CMF board will be sharing with our community of philanthropy a new strategic framework that places equity at the center of our work. This commitment to centering in equity is a commitment to addressing the deepest challenges our communities face – racism, socioeconomic oppression, systemic marginalization and more.

I am uncomfortable raising these topics – as a person of color, as a leader who recognizes the broad diversity of our membership, as someone who knows there are many differing views we hold – but I firmly believe it is time to embrace the discomfort of difficult conversations ahead.

Our year-long journey to explore what equity means to us has invited opportunities for philanthropy to identify the tensions of how our communities, nonprofit partners and other sectors in society need us to show up, now and in the future. I’d like to share just a few examples of where you have been leading in the face of these critical challenges, particularly racial inequity.

Our national reckoning for racial justice that has deepened over the last six months led the Community Foundation of St. Clair County to be introspective, asking if their grantmaking and community investment platform was truly representative of all voices in their community. Randy Maiers, president and CEO of the community foundation told CMF: “We have to be comfortable criticizing our own work and admitting that there’s room for improvement.”

Randy and other leaders are finding there are untapped opportunities in our own work that humble vulnerability and uncomfortable conversations can help us expose to exact the systemic solutions we seek.

Rotary Charities of Traverse City has been on its own equity building journey and has offered its staff and board in anti-racism training for those who identify as white. Becky Ewing, executive director of Rotary Charities participated in the training last year. “It was uncomfortable and amazing, providing a jumping off point for deeper understanding, conversations and action.”

This self-reflection involves finding the gaps within our own individual knowledge and our organizational structures as they stand today to meet the needs and our aspirations for the future.

The Community Foundation of Greater Flint and Flint Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) are supporting community conversations in Flint. The community dialogue events are called “courageous conversations” focusing on race and racism.

There are many other examples where CMF members are living into their deeper embrace of philanthropy’s core meaning—acts for the love of humankind. Equity is certainly at the core of our understanding on how we will hold ourselves accountable. So, what are the hard conversations we might hold to continue our equity journey?

• Do our grantmaking and investment policies promote equitable outcomes?

• Do our board or committees invite different lived experiences into their membership or deliberations that reflect the communities we serve?

• Have we built an inclusive table that engages partners working on the ground? One that welcomes Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities?

• Have we reviewed our internal practices and policies with the goal of identifying gaps where we may not be fully embracing our values and aspirations for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)?

Our role at CMF includes helping to foster and create a safe space for uncomfortable conversations for our community of philanthropy. You will see this up close at the upcoming Annual Conference where we have worked to equip you with tools to continue leading these conversations in your communities. Our main stage speakers, for example, will walk us through a series of increasingly deeper conversations on bias, racism and engaging in (or leading) the difficult civil discourse we all need at this critical time.  

As leaders in philanthropy we can lift up and address challenges through our investing and our grantmaking. But as leaders in community, we have the added privilege to engage, amplify and create a platform of belonging for unheard voices. Today our sector is holding the conscience for democracy and what it means to affect transformative community change. When we embrace trust, aim to deepen relationships with our partners and share power, we not only hold equity at the center of our work, we demonstrate the power of leading through discomfort.