We hope you'll join us for our summer series on Regional Prosperity Through Racial Equity! Learn more about upcoming events below, and register for future events on our website!
Regional Prosperity Through Racial Equity Series
Producing Black & Brown Wealth
Friday, July 23, 2021
10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. | Register Here
Wealth provides options and opportunities for economic mobility. Black and Brown communities have historically been denied access to capital and networks that support entrepreneurship and business ownership. The pandemic has demonstrated how the lack of wealth has contributed to unequal outcomes for Black communities.
In this panel, we’ll discuss a range of options for wealth building and closing the racial wealth gap. Grantmakers have a unique opportunity to disrupt the systems that perpetuate the racial wealth gap by cultivating trust-based relationships with the Black investment and entrepreneurial community to create family and community wealth.
- MODERATOR | Danny Wright, 1863 Ventures
- PANELIST | Talisha Bekavac, US Black Chambers
- PANELIST | Ellis Carr, Capital Impact
- PANELIST | Gloria Nauden, City First Broadway
- PANELIST | Harold Pettigrew, Washington Area Community Investment Fund
Regional Prosperity Through Racial Equity Series
Leveling the Education Playing Field
Friday, August 6, 2021
10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. | Register Here
Education has one of the greatest social returns on investment, yet Black and Brown students in our region are battling educational disparities from degree attainment to discipline practices. In 2016, the U.S. Department of Education reported that in our region, Black and Brown students were more likely than their white peers to be one or more grade levels behind, and more likely to receive harsher discipline.
The region experienced modest educational outcome improvements pre-COVID, particularly in Prince Georges County; however, the impacts of COVID hit Black and Brown students harder and threatens the gains achieved. Philanthropy has an opportunity to help level the educational playing field as the region starts to recover. Ahead of a new school year, join us in a discussion on policies and investments needed to create an equity learning ecosystem stronger than before.
- MODERATOR | Kia Croom, Children's Defense Fund
- PANELIST | Samantha Davis, Black Swan Academy
- PANELIST | Christina Hanson, DC Public Schools
- PANELIST | Gwynn Hughes, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation
- PANELIST | Amity Pope, Prince George's County Public Schools
Looking For Shared Office Space?
WRAG is currently seeking subtenants for our space at the Navy Yard! Do you know of a nonprofit or foundation looking for office space? If interested, contact operations@washingtongrantmakers.org.
President & CEO Ruth LaToison Ifill to speak at The Giving Institute's Summer Symposium
on July 23, Ruth will join other Philanthropy-Serving Organization Leaders to discuss how grantmaking shifted as a result of the dual pandemics, what’s changed forever, and what remains to be done. The session will feature insights informed by both by data and lived experience, getting a solid sense of what was a unique time in our world. Learn more and register here.
Healthy Community Working Group Members Partner to Slow Spread of Regional COVID Variants
Members of WRAG's Healthy Communities Working Group have partnered to fund a central data-sharing resource of regional COVID variants. The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments is leading this effort with coordinating partners to include the de Beaumont Foundation, the Northern Virginia Health Foundation, and the Healthcare Initiative Foundation. These organizations will fund the development of a tracking system for sequencing information from positive COVID cases with the specific purpose of finding links between cases based on the number of mutations.
Epidemiologists currently have access to this information at a state level, but this project will enable public health officials to track variant information across state lines, vital in our inter-connected National Capital Area. This project is the first of its kind in the nation. After proof of concept, this model can be shared with other multi-state regions.
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Emergency Funder Briefing
The Dangers of Ignoring the Disinformation Campaign Against Critical Race Theory
Hosted by the Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity
and WRAG Member ABFE
Thursday, July 22 | 3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Virtual Event
Efforts to combat systemic racism are under attack through distortions of Critical Race Theory, anti-racist education, and even the intent of "DEI" programming.
Funders need to recognize this latest threat as part of a familiar racial backlash playbook and invest to tackle it more directly. It is imperative that we all have clarity of understanding about these attacks and the formidable conservative infrastructure behind them. This webinar will offer talking points to counter the attacks yourself, within your leadership, and with your board members.
The hosts look forward to providing critical tools to persuade your organization's key decision-makers to understand the moment we are currently confronting and to align organizational policies and priorities accordingly.
Speakers
- Lori Villarosa, Executive Director, Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity
- Susan Taylor Batten, President & CEO, ABFE: a Philanthropic Partnership for Black Communities
- Dennis Chin, Vice President of Narrative, Arts, and Culture, Race Forward
- Kimberlé Crenshaw, Critical Race Theory Scholar and Executive Director of the African American Policy Forum
- Eric Ward, Executive Director, Western States Center
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