Being in Transformational Relationship
Discussing GIA’s Racial Equity Workshop
with Marcus Walton & Eddie Torres
Photo courtesy of Grantmakers in the Arts and Grantmakers for Effective Organizations.
Recorded February 7, 2023
GIA premiered the Racial Equity in Arts Funding Workshop at the 2017 annual Grantmakers in the Arts conference. Since then, GIA has been developing and hosting the workshop for funders in partnership with Race Forward, TrueNorth EDI, and guest practitioners in the field. The workshops have been designed to help participants recognize that cultural funding is a system that has been historically racialized like so many societal systems, and to help guide our approaches to re-designing cultural funding as an anti-racist system.
On this podcast, we are glad to be joined by special guest Marcus Walton, President & CEO, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations who will be in conversation with our very own, Eddie Torres, President & CEO, Grantmakers in the Arts.
They discuss their experiences with the racial equity workshop given their unique roles within the workshop, and what it means to be in a transformational relationship. There is still space to register for the March 2023 workshop.
To listen to the full episode, click here.
Sherylynn Sealy: Welcome to a podcast by Grantmakers in the Arts, a national membership association of public and private arts and culture funders. I'm Sherylynn Sealy, GIA's senior program Manager. GIA premiered its Racial Equity and Arts Funding Workshops at the 2017 annual Grantmakers in the Arts Conference. Since then, GIA has been developing and hosting the workshop for Grantmakers in partnership with Race Forward, True North EDI, and guest practitioners in the field. The workshops have been designed to help participants recognize that cultural funding is a system that has been historically racialized, like so many societal systems, and to help guide our approaches to redesigning cultural funding as an anti-racist system.
On this podcast, we are glad to be joined by special guest Marcus Walton, president and CEO of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, who will be in conversation with our very own Eddie Torres, president and CEO of Grantmakers in the Arts. They will discuss their experiences with the racial equity workshop given their unique roles within the workshop. And Marcus will give us the inside scoop on what he's observed given his rich background and journey through grant making with a racial equity lens. And what it means to be in a transformational relationship. So I'll kick it over to you, Eddie, to get the conversation started.
Eddie Torres: Thank you so much, Sherylynn. And Marcus-
Marcus Walton: Yeah, yeah.
Eddie Torres: ... thank you so much for doing this with us and for being with us.
Marcus Walton: It's my pleasure. I mean, I'm so excited to be here, so honored. Thank you for the invitation.
Eddie Torres: Oh, thank you. I just wanted to start by saying, we have asked you to come and speak as part of so many of our past Racial Equity in Arts Funding Workshops because of the breadth and depth of experience that you bring. You're a national leader in effective grant making and in racial equity. And I'd just like to start with some context. Would you just tell us about the arc of your career?
Marcus Walton: Yeah, I mean, it's funny. I feel like I've been doing a lot of this lately, which scares me a little bit. I'm a little too young to be talking about the good old days, and how things have progressed a lot. But I view this as an opportunity to really celebrate something, and look ahead into a special opportunity for change that maybe we haven't been able to capitalize on in our lifetime. But I started off as an organizer.
I was in the South Bronx just recently out of school, and I learned the real value of door knocking. As a colleague of mine recently said, "There's no short-cutting. Door knocking or organizing." And that door to door, person to person group engagement really formed in a way that continues to shape how I view my work in philanthropy, the foundation for how decisions get made, how power flows, how to transform conditions that involve people, right?
Community. And so as an organizer, like I said, I'm knocking doors. I'm speaking to people in communities. I'm eating dinner at different people's homes. I'm learning the history and culture of the community in Highbridge in the South Bronx. After a while, the network of relationships that one can form, becomes so vast and so strong, that any interest in entering the community informs or is connected to my relationships. Or in other words, after doing the work within that community, supporting education reform specifically, but also tenant's rights work. Agencies from the City of New York wanted to come in, the child welfare system for example, and do work with the communities. And people would ask who should we talk to? How do we connect with the residents? And so they would increasingly get pointed to me, my name would come up, because of the different relationships that were established in these community driven processes.
And so I learned from there, and went on to work in philanthropy in different capacities as a grant maker, as an individual that's informing what effectiveness looks like in philanthropy through philanthropic support networks. And then as a grant maker, again, through Borealis Philanthropy, and now at Grantmakers for Effective Organizations. All of this is about a systematic approach to engaging individuals. Like I said, no shortcuts, but practice, testing, learning. And learning from those who are closest to the issues, who are on the ground, who are leading efforts, to understand patterns, to understand trends.
And so today, I bring inside of that organizing framework, and unusually lucky, I say, a set of experience that somewhere along the way also included 12 years of executive in leadership coaching. As well as now 13 years of, which is hard to believe, of racial equity training experience. And so the combination of all of that organizing, and Racial Equity Training and executive leadership. Has just shaped my perspective in a way that I've learned is pretty unique, and one that I've increasingly seen as my responsibility to share with the world, to inform our collective point of view around what it takes to cultivate conditions for thriving in our sector.
Eddie Torres: That's amazing. Because as you're the leader of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, it's so easy, I think, for folks to assume that what you are going to bring is something that's kind of technocratic, that is very, very one size fits all, this is the means toward effectiveness. But what you bring as an organizer, as a coach, and through the lens of your values, sounds like it's very oriented around relationships, around individuals, and around trust.
Marcus Walton: Yeah, it's interesting. I have to give so many props to the generation of GEO community, participants. That's members, that's colleagues, partner organizations, my predecessor who actually runs the council on foundations now. So many different staff who have gone on to lead organizations and other entities. And at the end of the day, I'm a part of a lineage, a part of multiple generations of folks who continue to move the needle forward. And I love to say this, that GEO is not Marcus, they found me. The table was already set for me to bring what was developing through the experience that I just laid out. And so I joined a team of folks who are already oriented in this way. And my experience, which is literally grounded in having examples of what to do and what not to do, and some familiarity with what to anticipate. It just helps situate the organization differently, and move through some of the really tricky dynamics associated with organizational transformation.
Eddie Torres: That's amazing. Because it sounds to me, what you're talking about is the difference between that which is complex versus that which is complicated.
Marcus Walton: Oh, yes, sir. I love it. Yes.
Eddie Torres: And when you talk about that trickiness, I mean, so often, it's tricky. There's certainly complicated parts of it that could be solved technically, but it's tricky. Because, even then, anybody who is working on it as a human being with an emotional life, with a background, with values, and they're all in relation to each other.
Marcus Walton: And how about this? Not only that, but we belong to groups of people who have had experiences with systems and structures over the course of time, that are not all the same. And so there's complexity. I like to think of complexity as layers, and I like that you mentioned complicated as our response or reaction to the challenges associated with change. So i.e., the resistance that we experienced through the process, but both are required. And so yeah, you named it. A primary observations around the sector, the philanthropic sector, and what has continued to represent a barrier to our progress. Is this oversight of looking at the complexities, and supporting individuals in a way that defines us as human beings, to respond, when we inevitably experience resistance to change.
All of this is about change. And so when you talk about trust, trusting relationships of a transformative nature, meaning beyond just a transaction, beyond a project, beyond a funding relationship, but one that's supportive. Being able to lean on colleagues like yourself, helps me move through my resistance, helps me to be aware of it in the first place, and then receive the kind of encouragement that we know is required in order to show up differently, to produce a different kind of result. The challenges of philanthropy are just the challenges. But if we don't see ourselves as needing to change in order to produce different results, then I think we missed the point.
Eddie Torres: Yeah, yeah. No, that's so well put. And talking about the resistance. I mean, so often, certainly I do it. We don't anticipate the resistance, because we don't anticipate how much all people process change as loss.
Marcus Walton: Oh my goodness. Eddie Torres. We did not plan this, but this is, oh my God. 2022, for me, was a transformative year in so many ways. But primarily because one of the insights that remains with me, is this connection of thriving to grief. And so the way I describe it is, prior to this insight, I defined thriving as an absence of grief, an absence of loss, an absence of anger, frustration, discomfort, et cetera. As a result of 2023, and this is moving through organizational transformation, experiencing year three of a pandemic,. Looking back on a brief tenure at GEO, which is just now going into my fourth year and wishing, wow, wondering what would it have been like if after six months we didn't have to go completely into a shelter in place moment? How far along might we have been in ways that we are now? And being able to just settle into things this year, looking ahead, and say to myself, "Wow, I am experiencing loss."
I was going to mention earlier, vulnerability. We miss in philanthropy, an explicit acknowledgement of how vulnerability is required for us to respond to change. The shifts that we are being asked to make in order to be better managers, more effective grant makers, better partners and colleagues across identities, across positions of power within hierarchy. Vulnerability is required for that. Openness and willingness to be open to the unexpected, the unknown. And so acknowledging loss somehow. Somehow this summer, this is kind of connected to some racial healing work that I've been able to do with the Kellogg Foundation, and the Clinton School for Public Policy at the University of Arkansas. A bunch of colleagues from our field as a cohort experience.
But also just going deeper into healing-centered work as a critical component of racial healing, racial equity work. Being able to address and acknowledge the impact of a lifetime, perhaps several generations of inequity in different forms. And finally having a space to acknowledge that, and to work through the different emotions that come up. Not only does that require vulnerability, but it is a courageous act on the individual who is willing to recover, to forgive, to give forth of ourselves enough to release attachment to the traumatic or harmful impact over time, that we may have gone through, in order to show up differently. To me, that's what's possible through philanthropy practice in a different way. And oh, by the way, there's a thing called the cultural arts that is already made expression, a set of activities and modalities to help us get there, right?
Eddie Torres: That's amazing. It's amazing. I had a conversation just last week, with a man younger than myself, who is running a small cultural nonprofit in the South Bronx, and this was literally... I was telling him it was a walking distance from where I grew up. It was about six blocks from where I grew up. And talking to him about his relationship with Grantmakers in 2023.
And to hear him say no, it feels to me like lately, folks are approaching me and saying, "Oh, what can I do differently?" By folks, it means grant makers. It's like what can I do differently? How can I help you? How can I be of service to you? And he said, "And I've never experienced that before, and it feels like there's a big change." And to hear somebody saying that, another Latina person there in the neighborhood where I grew up, running a cultural organization, and to hear him say that in 2023, it's just I wanted to cry. Literally.
Marcus Walton: It's beautiful. No, I appreciate that. And listen, one of the reasons that I appreciate being with you and representing GEO as this multicultural... We are a very diverse group of folks, primarily folks representing mainstream populations, increasingly diversifying through different folks of different backgrounds, generations even. But this notion of healing that I'm picking up on, and loss as you mentioned, as a critical component of what we're talking about. It's just so important for me to share that as a lifelong learner... So first of all, I had to commit to lifelong learning. I think leadership today is being asked to be adaptive.
You can't just be adaptive based upon a desire. It's the right thing to do. It requires work, it requires support. It requires what I experienced as an acknowledgement of areas where I can improve, and then an active commitment to doing that. And so let me just bring this point home around loss. And I'm actually surprised that it's coming up now, and I'm grateful for this. Healing-centered work is so important, because as a wise person once said, "It's through heartbreak."
I'll just speak for myself. Through allowing my heart to be broken over and over again, I am available to empathize with other people. Without that, the heart is closed, I'm intellectualizing everything, just meeting people from the head space. And the type of connection that's possible, is restricted, right? It's limited. And so a full-bodied opportunity to be all-in in community, showing up as a whole person is a lot more. You talk about complicated, might be impossible.
And so this notion of loss, or even though we have a particular relationship with it in other spaces, I want to invite people to death. They walk away with nothing else than acknowledging heartbreak being open to our experience of the fullest range of emotions. There's a younger generation, another generation of leaders coming up in the field, who are emphasizing this. It's important to acknowledge that we care for each other. And I think, for me, this is what I've taken away. And it's like it serves us to be able to empathize.
And as a leadership competency, if we are not demonstrating vulnerability, if we're not showing up fully, open to consideration, being able to empathize with those folks who have a different set of experiences, then how are we going to apply that to the nonprofits, the grantees, the folks who are working on campaigns? The people who are not in a professional capacity working towards social change, but who are out there on the ground, on the hill when we make those calls, participating in these programs? The investments we make in philanthropy are served, and are justified, are deemed successful when these individuals experience the kind of connection and opportunities to contribute their best toward the fostering of conditions of thriving within these communities. So anything else that we are doing is, I think a distraction away from the core of what's required to transform our experiences together.
Eddie Torres: No, first of all, that's beautiful. And it reminds me of something that Storme Gray from Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy said. We were talking. A group of us were talking about equity and management, in just trying to take care of your people in your workplace. And in doing so, at one point, she stood up and she said, "But we also have to recognize that because we've all been trained through example or through literally teaching, we have to recognize that we're going to fall short over and over again."
Marcus Walton: Yes. Yes, yes.
Eddie Torres: "And while we're treating our team members with compassion, we have to treat ourselves with compassion too. Because we have to recognize that's the only way that we're going to learn is to fall short, recognize it, treat ourselves with compassion, and through that grow, and learn, and improve."
Marcus Walton: Shout out to Storme. Yes, I've participated in several of those conversations with her. And so check this out, to use our complicated and complex theme to bring it forward again. That applies, Eddie, even when the very people whose wellbeing depends on us, can't appreciate the validity of that practice. So even when people misunderstand, misinterpret our intentions and actions, it is still incumbent upon us to allow ourselves the space to fall short of our expectations and the expectations of other people, over and over again. And continue to do what's required to progress through that.
We cannot do that alone. We dare not do that alone. And so there's something about emphasizing. And when you mention relational, I went there because these kinds of conversations used to be categorized as qualitative in nature. As soft skills versus hard. Listen, these are leadership skills. These are skills for effective management and effective grant making practice.
The practice of philanthropy is about a formal and structured approach to fostering conditions for thriving across a broad range of issues and topics impacting the quality of life for people, for people. And so yes, it involves technical expertise, but the practice of these other principles that have not been named, but have existed beneath the surface for so long. And contribute to building trusting, generative relationships. That's the only thing, that's what fuels change.
And fear, right? Fear of each other, contributes to change being delayed or thwarted. And so being relational, from this day forward, can we just eliminate that as the soft side of the shop, and talk about the real practice and the real significance as a competency, that being relational. Offering a relational approach as essential to conducting transactions of significance, of impact of that have meaning for every group of people involved.
Eddie Torres: Yeah. No, that's amazing. I think that so many of us have inherited this construct, that we're worth what we produce, we're worth what we make. And I know so many good, good people who are doing great work, who are just anxious if they project any emotion other than being harried. Because they worry that if they don't seem like they're working hard 24/7, or if they don't seem like they're tired, or they don't seem like that they are self-sacrificing. That they're not showing up, they're not leaving it all on the field, as though harming themselves will help each other.
Marcus Walton: Well, that was an unspoken pathway to progress one's career, to matriculation not so long ago. I certainly was one of those folks that, in terms of navigating systems, which is different than transforming them. You had to learned quickly, put that time in, and do it. Suffer silently, as they say. And we know the reality of that is that we burn out, we hold resentment. I was in a conversation recently, where a black woman running an organization, was sharing how there's expectation to always know. And so when you're talking about metrics, which is another one of those precise technical spaces that requires some upending...
I mean, we're really talking about learning, folks, I'm just saying. But metrics being used to really generate a kind of self-doubt. This wasn't intentional, but an adherence to metrics, and over reliance and emphasis on being able to prove through evidence that what we're doing is working. It created all kinds of anxiety in this person. To the point where she was saying, almost in tears, describing that the impact itself caused her to feel like she had to always prove her credibility.
You talk about anti-racist, that's an anti-human posture. Our credibility, once we get into the role, the work begins. We do the work to make ourselves credible candidates for leadership roles leading up to the time. Once we get in there, now the work begins. This is a whole other body of work. You could throw the other things out the door, because we have to learn. It's about learning. It's about organizing groups of people to engage in the unknown. And do decision making around iterative steps, next steps inside of these places that we've never been before, or seen in the same way.
And so, to approach evaluation in a posture in any other way than learning. In exploring creatively, even based upon past experience, how to measure progress. But progress not in service of reinforcing that I deserve to be here, but progress in terms of we are learning how to move closer to involving a broader range of folks, who have something meaningful to contribute into our processing. The design or conceptualization, the implementation, and the measuring of progress of all of the things that we have tried. I.e., the testing and the learning of ideas together.
Eddie Torres: Yeah. No, that's so great. And I oftentimes think to myself, how great it would be if we could measure our progress by how much we've learned. And if we could do that in a way that almost applauds one another for saying, how many times did I realize I was wrong in the past? How many times did I realized what I didn't know? Rather than having to cover up, and pretend that you've known all along, you've had the answers all along, et cetera.
Marcus Walton: Oh, that's right.
Eddie Torres: Maybe that's what progress is. Maybe that's what learning is. Recognizing you used to be wrong.
Marcus Walton: And what if inside of that same set of relationships, we measure progress by folks being able to say, wow, I've strengthened my relationships in these particular ways, or a certain set of degrees of expanding my network in ways that I find meaningful? That are actually contributing to a change in the quality of life, that align with the goals that we set at the beginning of this process. Or the extent to which we started to make progress on persistent issues that seemed hopeless in different ways, prior to whatever that thing is, that represented the breakthrough moment.
That can be how we measure progress too. And what a different feeling, right? I'm actually interested in exploring that, not so interested in that other way of doing things around the quantitative and qualitative. The science matters. All of this matters. And we have a chance now to humanize all of the things that we've been doing, in ways that I like to view as incomplete.
Eddie Torres: Yeah. Well, I mean there was a wave of managers and folks in the science of management, who came out of engineering a few decades back. And one of the things that it engendered was the idea that you could engineer people in situations, you know?
Marcus Walton: Yeah, that's right.
Eddie Torres: And that only works if people are units, if people are fully human, if people have full emotional lives, that just doesn't work that way.
Marcus Walton: You know what that reminds me of is, especially over the past three years. I've heard a lot of references to Jim Crow. And not only because of the incidents of violence and police brutality associated with George Floyd and others. But also because of the refrain around making America great again, pointing to a period in time in history. Well, that was a point in time where there was still sanctioned separation by all kinds of different identities. And you better not come into there with a different sexual orientation.
So what I've started to hear, or what is capturing my imagination today, is a conversation of, we've only really been 50 years out of Jim Crow, 60, 70 years out of Jim Crow. That is a fascinating and harrowing description of where we are in history right now. And yet it's sobering in a way that I appreciate and welcome, because it connects our work so deeply to an opportunity for real reckoning.
And so I believe, Eddie, one of the greatest opportunities for us to think about, in terms of partnerships with our organizations. In terms of the creative integration of arts to advance social change, is to really think about 50 years of colored water fountains, of some significantly shorter amounts of time since public restrooms were separated by gender. There's so many changes that have happened within our lifetimes, or shortly beyond them, certainly within the last 100 years, which is not a long time. And so if we can allow ourselves the patience to slow down and say, "You know what? We're still young in the fight, if you will. Despite the energy, despite the lionization of leaders in civil rights era, progression and post-war efforts." We're not talking about a long time.
And so unpacking the complex weave of policies of negotiations that serve certain groups and didn't serve others, that's warranted. And beginning to transition into, so now what do we do about this? How do we address those policies, reverse those policies, replace those policies that disproportionately benefits certain groups over others? How do we restructure or replace structures that are about perpetuating the status quo for the sake of efficiency, as opposed to the sake of effectiveness, which is grounded in relationship?
We're grounded in difference, and appreciating how difference is playing out in our behaviors, in our practices, in our orientations, how we make sense of our experiences. All of these things characterize our work today. These are the things that Grantmakers for Effective Organizations are exploring. It's why we care so much about racial equity, about community-driven principles, about the integration of healing modalities to support the individual through all of the different emotional reactions. All of the different mental blocks that we'll experience.
All of the different ways in which we'll associate judgments and critiques, and negative assessments around falling short of our own expectations, when we've already said that that's the definitional learning, is how it happens. And so we welcome partnerships with GIA and others, as a humbling acknowledgement of this can be sacred work. It has been scientific work. I'm going to be a part of the class of folks that bring together the science with the sacred.
Eddie Torres: That is amazing, Marcus. We are so honored every time that we get to work with you, and we are so grateful to get to be in community with you.
Sherylynn Sealy: Thank you both so much for the lively and informative conversation. I really appreciated the emphasis not only on the work, but also the person doing the work, the experience that the person is going through, the emotional piece of it, the mental piece of it, the sacredness of it, but clearly it is worth it. And so I'm really glad that you are here with us today, and you are able to share all of that. So thank you so much, both of you, for that, the time that you spent going into those details. And Marcus, for joining us today on this podcast.
Marcus Walton: Thank you.
Sherylynn Sealy: And... Yes.
Marcus Walton: If I may, I just have to acknowledge all of the people whose wisdom has really been synthesized into a point of view that I share. This point of view is not mine. It is a we, it is a us. And so many of the staff for Grantmakers for Effective Organizations who don't have the same platform and visibility as I do. Their voices I hope came through very strongly in what I shared. As well as ancestors, grandmothers, folks who are just, they care about their neighborhoods and communities. They work in schools, they work in the neighborhood stores. They watch children, they raise children. I mean, this is a truly communal effort, and this is an opportunity for us to advance something that we've never seen in our lifetimes before, in terms of real genuine connection for change.
Sherylynn Sealy: That's great. Thank you so much, Marcus. And as we mentioned at the very beginning, for those who are listening, Marcus was one of our superstar presenters on our Racial Equity Workshop. And we're so grateful to have this carved out time for you to share a little bit more. And if you would like to learn more about the Racial Equity Workshops, we have our next one coming up on March 3rd, 2023. If you're interested in getting involved, you can reach out to us. And if you have any questions about this podcast overall, or any upcoming programming, feel free to reach out to me, Sherylynn Sealy at sherylynn@giarts.org, or visit our website, giarts.org. And be sure to follow Grantmakers in the Arts on Twitter and Facebook @giarts. As well as Instagram, @grantmakersinthearts. Thank you so much everyone for listening. Have a great day.
