EQUITY BUDGETING FOR FUNDERS
Equity Budgeting is a full-ecology movement for economic justice in the non-profit & related spheres. Yes — it’s a grassroots movement, driven by a network of freelancers, community members, & artists working on “both sides” of community-based cultural, environmental, health, & other programs. While equity budgeting’s roots are certainly in practitioner & organization-side advocacy — fighting the good fight through revolutionary budgets that pay everyone involved in project work — we also very much envision equity budgeting as a movement in which grant-makers, funders, foundations, & philanthropists have a role to play.
Equity budgeting shouldn’t just be a model that grassroots communities teach to funders. If you are a grant-maker, a foundation officer, a funder, or a philanthropist, we want you to build equity budgeting for the programs & non-profits that you serve. Imagine what could happen — on a national and international scale — if funders, universally, stopped funding work that:
exploited community members?
didn’t fully or fairly compensate freelancers?
expected volunteer or intern labor?
didn’t pay oral history, cultural work, or folklife narrators/interviewees?
didn’t pay artists, because they love what they do & they’re working for exposure?
held in-kind wage calculations for volunteers at or below minimum wage?
held down wages for students, young people, retirees, or emerging professionals?
didn’t compensate the emotional & racialized & often traumatic labor associated with DEI, community outreach, & community liasoning roles?
What if, instead, your foundation or grantmaking program:
… only funded projects that paid everyone?
… required not just minimum wage, but fair, liveable wages for project work?
… required payment for any DEI or community liason labor?
… rewarded & funded, the most highly, projects that advanced speculative horizons for building abundant solidarity economies, beyond capitalism, in which all people involved in movement work could not just survive, but could thrive?
Funder-driven Equity Budgeting could change our world. As grant-makers & foundations & re-granting organizations, your decisions help right or refuse the going rates & going practices in non-profit & movement work. The policies you uphold, & decisions you make, like it or not, are defining your sectors & fields.
That’s a big role to play. And that’s why avocacy & education with funders is the Equity Budgeting Team’s #1 priority in 2022, because funders can make a critical difference in what sort of projects get funded, & in setting new baselines for ethical expectations in non-profit work.
Stay tuned for custom workshops, advocacy campaigns, & resources aimed at funders; &, in the meantime — if you are an organization working as a funder or re-granter to grassroots & community non-profits, contact us for how you can help align your funding & grantmaking practices with the tools of equity budgeting. We’re here to help!