Earning & Extending Trust: Lessons from First-Time Grantmakers
By Sonya Childress, Co-Director, Color Congress
Color Congress is a grantmaking organization and collective of majority people of color (POC) and POC-led organizations aimed at centering and strengthening nonfiction storytelling by, for and about people of color across the United States and territories.
In the summer of 2021, Sahar Driver, a veteran documentary impact producer and researcher, reached out to me with a proposition: would I help her launch a new initiative to fund, support and connect people of color-led and serving organizations in the documentary sector?
For over 15 years, Sahar and I worked in proximity to one another as impact producers; strategists who lead campaigns to maximize the reach and impact of social issue documentary films. We both got our start in this work at Active Voice, one of the pioneering impact organizations in the United States founded by Ellen Schneider. We shared a similar community and movement-centered orientation which we brought into our work with filmmakers and film organizations. As impact producers, our role was to connect documentary films with people and organizations that could leverage the films to shift perceptions, behaviors, resources, legislation, narratives and power. Both Sahar and I shared a belief in the transformative power of film, and a deep respect for the artistry of filmmakers. We also felt deep accountability to the communities who would be most affected - positively or negatively - by nonfiction work. That orientation sometimes placed us at odds with an industry that centers the artistic vision of individual filmmakers and commercial viability of their work, rather than the communities whose stories are the focus of the films.
That sense of accountability to communities was at the forefront of my work when Sahar approached me in 2021. I was completing a two-year senior fellowship with the Perspective Fund, where I supported new initiatives that nudged the documentary field towards equity, impact, collective power and accountability. I spoke publicly about my concerns about the increasing dominance of commercial players in our field over the last decade, and the ways these forces were beginning to influence the kinds of films that were funded, produced, and distributed. Films that were so different, in substance and approach, from the work that Sahar and I had supported as impact producers.
I suspect Sahar also reached out because of my role as a trustee of the Whitman Institute, a philanthropic entity that advanced social, political, and economic equity by funding dialogue, relationship building, and inclusive leadership (and which supported a number of storytelling and impact initiatives like Active Voice). Launched by a living donor as a private operating foundation in 1985, the Whitman Institute evolved into a grantmaking organization after the death of the founder. The foundation embraced a trust-based model in its funding, leaning even more deeply into this approach after receiving candid feedback from grantees in 2013. It would eventually become one of the founding funders of the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project (headed by another Active Voice alum, Shaady Salehi). My experience on the Whitman Institute board was transformative. As someone raised by a single parent in a working class home, I was ambivalent about wealth and those who controlled it. As a trustee, I witnessed a very different kind of resource stewardship - one that was transparent, steeped in humility and respect for those doing the work. I felt a kinship with the co-directors, John Esterle and Pia Infante and fellow trustees who could acknowledge the fundamental inequity that allowed the Whitman family to amass their wealth, while taking on the responsibility of distributing that wealth to people and projects that would bring about more equity and justice in our world.
Sahar explained that the vision for this new initiative was based on the findings from the Beyond Inclusion research she conducted for the Ford Foundation, which mapped all of the organizations that serve documentary filmmakers of color in the United States and territories. Sahar’s research found that while a handful of historically white-led organizations offer programs for filmmakers of color, their work overshadows the vast network of organizations that are created by and for people of color. And that despite the deep commitment and contributions of these POC-led organizations, they were dramatically under-resourced and under-valued. The new organization would intervene in this dynamic by directing new funding to these organizations, stabilizing them with infrastructure support, and connecting them across regions and communities so that they can build power. In simple terms, the Color Congress aimed to extend support, respect, and trust to those who have had to fight for it for far too long.
Sahar expressed a desire to create a new philanthropic entity that, like Whitman, would center transparency and accountability in its stewardship of resources. In our early conversations, she expressed a similar discomfort with philanthropy, and a worry about creating a new gatekeeping organization in a fragile ecosystem. We talked at length about the values and practices that are central to the Trust-Based Philanthropic approach and agreed that as new funders we would model our organization on those core values.
Seeded with a pooled grant of $3.5 million dollars from the Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation and Perspective Fund, we launched the Color Congress, a new ecosystem-building intermediary organization designed to support, fund, connect and champion people of color led and serving documentary organizations. Our vision is to reimagine the documentary landscape toward one that strengthens the visibility, voice, and power of people of color, so the field can be a more powerful force for social change.
In our first eight months we have built a membership of over 80 documentary organizations and entities led by people of color across the United States and US islands, leveraged $525k thousand dollars towards infrastructure support for all of our member organizations through our Field Building Fund, and delivered $1.35 million dollars in unrestricted grants to 17 organizations through our Organizational Grant Program.
A Trust-Based Audit
Before we launched in January 2022, we looked at the six grantmaking practices of Trust-Based Philanthropy and did an audit of the design of our programmatic and grantmaking plans. At every turn we asked ourselves: Will our processes communicate trust and honor the organizational leaders we aim to support?
Give multi-year, unrestricted funding
We immediately saw the value of unrestricted grants, especially for organizations considered too risky, too small or too discrete to fund, and thus are the most vulnerable to shutting down in this period of economic precarity. We agreed that the $1.35 million dollars we had available would be delivered as unrestricted funds, spread over two years, regardless of how old or new, large or small the organization.
Do the Homework
We relied heavily on the deep research Sahar conducted to help us understand the needs of the organizations we are serving so that our funding and programmatic work matched their needs, rather than forcing organizations to contort themselves to match our needs. The research gave us a clear window into the scope and programmatic contributions of organizations that serve filmmakers of color, so that we could determine the most strategic use of our limited resources.
Simplify and streamline paperwork
We worked with our fiscal sponsor to create a grant delivery system that would be easy to navigate and quick to process. We asked grantees to answer a simple eligibility checklist with five Yes/No prompts and three very brief follow up questions that were not redundant with what we could find out for ourselves, and that would require the lightest lift for applicants. And we used that information, coupled with the data from Beyond Inclusion research, to vet the applicants to ensure eligibility was in place. We communicated to grantees that we will accept language or budget documentation that were developed for other grantmakers, and use verbal check-ins in lieu of reports.
Be transparent and responsive
Because Sahar and I are part of the ecosystem we aim to serve, it is not difficult to hold ourselves accountable to that ecosystem. We see ourselves as leaders among leaders, and strive to create as flat and transparent power dynamic as possible as we engage in this work. To demonstrate our eagerness to enter into the ecosystem in a new way, we held public conversations and webinars about our grantmaking process, shared information about our grantmaking at our monthly meetings, and detailed our grantmaking process and learnings in our monthly blog.
Solicit and act on feedback
We created two peer-led committees to design and advise on key aspects of the organization - from the collective decision-making processes to the final decisions on grants. Both committees reviewed our plans and we integrated their feedback at every stage of the process. We encouraged feedback on our process from applicants as well and were available to respond when issues arose. We held comprehensive conversations with all 17 grantee organizations to better understand their needs and to consider ways we might shift our support to match their needs.
Offer support beyond the check
Sahar’s research revealed that the bulk of our membership - an estimated 88% - operate with budgets under $500k, despite the length of years in operation. This signals a profound, chronic lack of investment, and presents a problem that a single unrestricted grant cannot fix. Additionally, with only $1.35 million in grants, we knew we could not fund all 80+ member organizations in our Congress.
For that reason, we developed a Field Building Fund to extend tangible infrastructure support to all member organizations. Congress members, which include film festivals, artist service organizations, filmmaker collectives, micro cinemas and curatorial organizations, have spent the summer months reflecting on the specific kind of support their organizations need to become stable or to deepen their work. The direct result of those conversations is a menu of resources that can strengthen their organizations’ infrastructure and sustainability. The support they have asked for, and can now access for free, includes: fundraising training and infrastructure development; financial planning support; consulting hours with a legal professional; PR and communications support; leadership training; accessibility training, organizing and campaign strategy; restorative justice and conflict resolution training. To pay for this support we will leverage $525k to retain contractors that can deliver support in small cohorts. We are hopeful that this member-driven support will offer the stability they need to lean into their potential and begin to collaborate together.
What We Are Learning
We have already learned a great deal from our first round of the Organizational Grant Program that offers 2-year unrestricted funds. We invited proposals from close to 50 eligible organizations out of approximately 120 applicants, and with the support of a Review Committee and our Advisory Board, we awarded grants to 17 organizations.
We learned that for many applicants this was the first grant they ever applied to or secured, and it was their connection to Color Congress staff, and the streamlined process, that persuaded them to submit an application. Two grantee organizations exemplify the contributions and needs of organizations in our ecosystem: Third World Newsreel and the Black Documentary Collective.
Founded in 1967 by activist filmmakers, Third World Newsreel (TWN) is a training, distribution and production support organization based in New York City. For five decades, TWN has supported a veritable who’s who of documentarians - Renee Tajima-Pena, Charles Burnett, Camille Billops, Lourdes Portillo, Raoul Peck, Julie
Dash, Grace Lee, Yance Ford and Daresha Kyi. TWN has become a kind of alternative, egalitarian film school for people of color who are priced out of “elite” university programs, and who crave a politically progressive creative home. Despite their decades of service to filmmakers of color, TWN has struggled to secure significant grants from national funders, severely taxing the highly dedicated, but largely low paid or volunteer staff. With a $90k unrestricted grant and technical assistance, we hope to stabilize the organization, and put it on a path towards healthy sustainability.
The Black Documentary Collective (BDC) was founded 22 years ago by acclaimed filmmaker St. Clair Bourne to support the artistic and professional development of Black documentarians. Like so many organizations in the POC ecosystem, BDC began with a desire to formalize the mentorship and support that Saint offered his peers (without recognition or compensation), and grew into an indispensable networking space for legions of Black nonfiction filmmakers, including Thomas Allen Harris, June Cross, Yoruba Richen, Sabrina Schmidt Gordon, Byron Hurt, Michèle Stephenson, Stanley Nelson, Sam Pollard and the late Lewis Erskine. For two decades it was led by volunteers and sustained by membership dues. While the model offered flexibility for Saint and other leaders to maintain the collective and their work as filmmakers, the volunteer-run structure severely limited their capacity to serve their 80+ members. Color Congress provided BDC its very first grant in 22 years, which will enable the dedicated volunteer leaders to develop a staff structure and offer consistent programming.
Trust has not been extended equally
As applications rolled in, we were shocked by the number of legacy organizations in our field that had yet to receive significant philanthropic support. Just as the research showed, organizations with decades of experience nurturing, training and championing filmmakers of color still had to make the case for the impact and value of their work.
Just as filmmakers of color are sidelined by programs that deem them perpetual novices in need of years of mentorship no matter how many films they’ve made, leaders of color often face the same negative perceptions. The organizations they lead are often seen as “grassroots” or “scrappy” - a perception that translates to a lack of trust on the part of funders seeking “safe” investment. Other organizations that focus on supporting filmmakers from specific identity communities can be seen as “too discrete” or “too community-focused” and therefore less desirable than national organizations with a broad mandate that can offer donors a more visible investment.
As we learned with Third World Newsreel and the Black Documentary Collective, it was clear that the organizations trusted by filmmakers of color are not always the same organizations trusted by funders. The qualities and approaches that make an organization a vital source of support in the eyes of filmmakers of color are the qualities that can sometimes hurt that organization’s ability to raise national funding. It is not lost on us that notions of which investments are considered safe, of to whom trust is extended, are so often racialized and gendered. And while the Color Congress can make visible these dynamics and direct new resources to these organizations, solving this problem requires a full recalibration of philanthropy in our sector.
Historic disinvestment requires historic investment
People of color-led organizations need more than cash to become stable, but when cash is offered, multi-year, unrestricted funding can be a powerful expression of trust. Organizations built to serve filmmakers of color are often led by filmmakers themselves, people whose passion to seed new storytelling on their own terms drives them. These leaders often juggle multiple roles - organizational executive, programmatic director, HR, informal mentor to other people of color in the field, fundraiser, and filmmaker on their own projects. Managing these roles forces leaders inward, their eyes trained on their organizations, films, and communities. And while proposal writing and grant management are a necessary part of their work, we notice that leaders of color have little bandwidth (practically and emotionally) to cultivate relationships with program officers, investors or high-wealth donors from outside their social circles or regions that are necessary to evolve beyond grant-to-grant precarity. The emotional labor of case-making for the importance of serving their own community, of code-switching with donors, or navigating the hierarchies of traditional funders is taxing. All of this work pulls them away from the vital role they play in supporting filmmakers of color, and ensuring their work reaches a wide audience.
Conversely, we can see how an influx of no-strings attached cash can overwhelm leaders, especially those struggling through perennial fiscal precarity. We want to think carefully about how we support future grantees to be able to prepare for and manage unrestricted grants. This is where support “beyond the check”, and attention to building the infrastructure of these organizations becomes paramount.
What we have learned from our first year of operation, and our first round of funding, is that Trust-Based Philanthropy is more than a superficial check-list. Trust, respect and accountability are values that show up in every part of an organization’s DNA, and just as we work to extend trust, we work even harder to earn it.
Sonya Childress is the Co-Director at the Color Congress