Standing Alongside Our Partners as a United Front
A letter from Aditi Vaidya, President
As we close out the year, many of us are holding big questions about how it is that we got to this stage in our democracy and how our work and lives will change under the new administration. We are now entering a period that requires those of us working to address longstanding societal inequities to be crystal clear about our roles and values and how we can have the most impact. I hope we are all finding ways to process our experiences, so that we can translate those feelings into creating a common future that is resolutely committed to racial, gender, and economic justice.
Building a united front
Years ago, when I was a community organizer, I had a mentor whose wisdom I often return to, Tim Thomas. Tim was a writer, organizer, and educator with a lifelong commitment to Black liberation. In times of increased attacks on communities, when movements and organizations must decide how to respond with both immediate- and long-term strategies, he would remind me about our need to build and maintain a united front. What that meant was not necessarily being in lock step of every aspect of every decision. Rather, it was understanding our shared values and moving together, each from our own position, to bring our vision of safe, healthy, joyful, self-determined communities into existence.
As like-minded nonprofits, movements, foundations, and communities working to build an inclusive, multiracial democracy rooted in care and responsibility, we all face big decisions on how to move forward into this unprecedented time. Not all of our choices will be identical, in part because we each play a unique and interconnected role.
A united front looks like philanthropy committing our support to our partners–including base building organizations and groups building community power and aligned nonprofits and movements facing frontline attacks. A united front looks like moving thoughtfully and swiftly to make important decisions that will impact our communities. It looks like being responsive to both immediate needs, as well as understanding, planning, and planting seeds for the long arc of equity work that drives us.
As we move ahead, my hope is that each of us gets clear about the particular role we play in these times and that we commit to excelling at our role. This is the time to be rooted in, and stay true to, our values of equity and justice. This is especially true for those of us in philanthropic institutions, which hold the capital and other resources that will be necessary to support change in the years ahead. At Mertz Gilmore, we are committed to continuing to reflect on how we model these approaches with and for our partners.
Preparing our institutions for this moment
To do our most impactful work, this next chapter will also require that we show up with our house in order, grounded in values-aligned practices. By fortifying our internal systems and processes, we can help philanthropic institutions like ours to not shy away from risks, and to be prepared for the pivots that the next two and four years, and beyond, will require.
Over the past two years the Mertz Gilmore Foundation has updated and tightened up our internal systems. These changes have included a mix of proactive updates, such as making necessary upgrades to our financial, IT, and HR systems, as well as responding to external factors, such as the loss of 40% of our typical grantmaking resources. This work is ongoing, but as a result of updating our processes and procedures, today we are better positioned to maximize our impact, move with confidence and increased nimbleness about important decisions to come, and prepare for necessary risks when the time is right. Alongside these updates, we have started the work of setting our strategic direction forward, with care and our grantee partners’ needs front and center.
As we consider the impact we can make and what it looks like to use all of our assets, I’m very excited to share that Mertz Gilmore has entered into partnership with Bivium Westfuller as our new investment advisors. Their incredible team will be working closely with us to transition Mertz Gilmore to a fully mission aligned endowment. I am thrilled for the positive, collaborative energy that the Bivium Westfuller team has already brought and am confident they will help us build more impact into our work. Our collaboration with them is one part of our effort toward leveraging all of our assets for impact, including staff expertise, grant making, investment strategy, convening space at our meeting house, and our relationships with partners.
Knowing we will continue to stand with our partners in the years ahead, foundations must get clear about the role we play, including developing strong internal systems and processes to best support our shared work.
Looking ahead: moving in new ways
We held our recent board meeting at the Gibney Center, a grantee partner of ours here in New York. When you come through the doors of the Gibney, you’re met with movement. Walls of windows show dancers and creatives rehearsing in studios, taking breaks in the hallways. The space is alive with creativity and possibility, which infused our conversations with a different tone, a more expansive experience. Staff, board members, and speakers shared their own experiences with dance, both present-day and from childhood (including one board member who took classes at the Gibney). Another grantee partner, Passion Fruit Dance Company, performed an excerpt from Trapped, bringing together different types of music and mediums, from street and club dance.
The experience was a reminder that the expression of how we understand this moment can and will look different. Passion Fruit manifested their grace and societal agony into something that moved all of us. It helped remind me of Mertz Gilmore’s connection not only to movements, but to movement and the unique role the foundation has long played in cultivating and supporting dance for all New Yorkers.
The road ahead requires that we all move in ways that may feel new or that we haven't pivoted in before. Foundations will need to be responsive to crises and the immediate needs of our partners and communities, while also funding in ways that build toward the long-term arc of the future we’re creating.
One reality for Mertz Gilmore and our partners is that, while we will continue to make grants, we will be making them at a time when our grantmaking budget is reduced. While this change happened in response to a loss of income in 2023, we understand the gravity of where we are with threats to workers, communities of color and particularly immigrant and queer and trans communities, as well as those working to protect free speech and the environment, and much more. Therefore, we are exploring what kind of support can be responsive to both the immediate and long-term priorities of our partners. We have heard some grantee partners consider their work as part of a long term agenda, anchored in building power; while others are advancing a vision for an economy that builds generational wealth by creating new reparative, care-based systems rooted in community-controlled assets. In the short term we have also heard the need for resources to protect the safety and security of our grantee partners, and the communities they organize and serve.
These agendas align with who Mertz Gilmore is as a foundation–recognizing the need to dismantle systems that desperately need restructuring, and understanding philanthropy’s extractive roots and the negative impacts it has caused to communities, while also funding the infrastructure and capacities for communities to organize and build power. We look forward to playing our role, alongside others, as we continue to move in an aligned, united front to advance equity and justice.