Being Called In: Philanthropy in the Times of Crisis
Part of the 2024 GIA Conference Blog
Erin Toale
Photo of keynote speakers on stage, (L-R) Amber Hamilton, Susan Taylor Batten, and Kashif Shaikh.
This high-energy and inspirational closing keynote featured Amber Hamilton (President and CEO, Memphis Music Initiative & GIA Board Member), Kashif Shaikh (Co-Founder and President, Pillars Fund), and Susan Taylor Batten (President & CEO, ABFE). In the October 2024 socio-political climate, critical issues include: the upcoming U.S. election, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the Supreme Court’s decision on Affirmative Action, and attacks on DEI initiatives. The three panelists shared thoughts about how to address this current climate, and urged the nonprofit sector to adapt and respond promptly to these multiple, overlapping crises.
To begin at the end—Hamilton, in closing, issued the following urgent call to action:
“Reflect on your roles, individually, your roles within organizations, and what your organization could be doing better. Because if we can’t act now, y’all, I don’t know what we’re waiting on. I really can’t figure it out. So, I just really encourage you all to take that stance, to go back and have these conversations at your board meetings, at your staff meetings, and ask really tough questions about what are we doing to respond to this moment? Because we are really called in to respond. The people are counting on us to respond in this moment.”
Graphic Recording capturing the keynote conversation from “Being Called In: Philanthropy in the Times of Crisis,” featuring Amber Hamilton, Kashif Shaikh, and Susan Taylor Batten. Drawn by Urban Wild Studio for GIA.
Shaikh spoke in front of a slide featuring a photograph of a separation wall in Palestine featuring a mural of George Floyd, reminding the audience that all struggles toward liberation are intertwined. The photo was from a trip organized by the Chicago-based Inner-City Muslim Action Network called Black Jerusalem. The journey attempted to de-center European cultural hegemony while engaging sacred Muslim, Christian, and Jewish traditions in communities from the African diaspora. This multi-faith experience inspired Shaikh to “center race at the heart of what ails us” and to choose bravery in the face of hopelessness; he invited grantmakers present to do the same. Shaikh also called for multi-layered support from foundations—for example, offering professional development opportunities in addition to direct, unrestricted financial gifts. He elaborates “Our job in these institutions is not just to fund these incredible organizations. It's to give them the opportunity to lead. It's to give them the resources to be able to live into their values.”
Taylor Batten shared a traumatic experience as a young, Black Program Officer some twenty years ago, when the sector focused and blamed societal ills on poverty. When she pointed out that these outcomes were tied to racism, not poverty (which is in itself a manifestation of systemic racism), she was ridiculed by a senior executive. Slowly, painfully, she organized with other BIPOC grantmakers to shift the discourse toward the actual underlying issue of racism, which required a great deal of courage and authenticity. She says of the experience, “I was trying to be my authentic self. And when I think about what we're afraid of [at] this moment in the sector, I question whether or not we are afraid of being our authentic selves and speaking truth to power… We cannot go back.
Never has a house been more brought down than by Hamilton’s closing remarks in the waning hours of the GIA conference. First, she addressed an elephant that had been in the room for several days: it is difficult to critique funders and then ask those same people for money. However, this critique, and call in overall, was delivered with love and for the greater good. Hamilton reminded us that power concedes nothing—that it always fights back. The current backlash against liberation is so strong because the moral arc is bending towards justice, and those fighting for collective liberation are winning.
All three of the panelists touched on fear. Fear of challenging the status quo (which Hamilton calls our “apex predator”); fear of standing up for what is right (Taylor Batten reminds us that the fear is often larger than the actual threat); fear of legal ramifications for advocacy work and race-based programming (as GIA President Eddie Torres specified on day one of the conference: “to be clear, there has been no ruling that stops race explicit grant making.” Taylor Batten echoed this, asserting: “it is not illegal to invest in Black people.”) Hamilton encouraged everyone in the audience to face this fear by tapping into the earnestness and energy that drew them to philanthropy in the first place. “You got into this because you wanted to do good in your world, not because you want to shuffle paperwork, not because you want to help people hoard wealth, not because you wanted to be a gatekeeper between the money and the people. Go back to that person.”
Now we end at the beginning: if you feel called to philanthropy, remember the principles and values that brought you to that work in the first place. Hamilton implored the audience to commit to the “slow, deep, irreversible” work towards equity and inclusion—”for our ancestors and for ourselves.”
ABOUT THE KEYNOTE
Amber Hamilton, Susan Taylor Batten, and Kashif Shaikh tackle the pressing challenges facing philanthropy today. With the upcoming U.S. election, genocide in Gaza, the Supreme Court’s decision on Affirmative Action, and attacks on DEI initiatives, they explore how the sector must act and adapt to respond effectively in these critical times.
