A Sacramento Bee article on June 24, Pressed by legislator, nonprofit foundations agree to invest in minority-led organizations, stated that Assemblyman Joe Coto's (D-San Jose) proposed legislation AB 624 has led ten major California foundations to agree to commit to increased grantmaking and investment in minority communities. As a result to this agreement, Coto has dropped his legislation which would have required foundations with more than $250 million in assets to publicly disclose the number of grants and dollars awarded to minority organizations and the ethnic, racial, and gender composition of their boards and staffs. This issue came about from the Greenlining Institute's 2006 research that found "only 3.6 percent of grant dollars from the nation's top 24 private foundations went to minority-led organizations."
Does this government involvement help or hurt the nonprofit sector in California? Some readers of the article have commented that this is "another example of extortion," and that the "government is getting out of hand." However, others have expressed that this "public benefit tax-exempt status can build capacity for [their] community based organizations that mirror California."
In reaction to a post by Rick Cohen in The Cohen Report, Negotiating Diversity in Foundation-land and What it Means for the Rest of Us readers have commented that it is "pretty sad that it took a scare like that to actually force these foundations [to work on] diversity and inclusion."
Will this cause foundations to look within and change the ethnic composition of their staff and board? Will it cause added racial tensions or start tensions in an area where there weren't any to begin with?
Could this be the beginning of a "trend" in legislation in other states? If its any indication there was a comment by the Florida Minority Community Reinvestment Coalition to their listserv on the topic of AB 624 stating, "Question To Florida Legislature: What about Florida Minority Organizations?”
So, what do you think? So many questions. I'm sure that they will continue to be asked as the conversation continues.
Photo provided by Sarah Solie through Flickr
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