Letter to John D. McIlquham, Publisher of the Nonprofit Times and the 2008 Power & Influence Top 50

September 17, 2008 by rosetta · 5 Comments

Heather Carpenter’s list of next generation leaders inspired me last week. But when I saw the official Nonprofit Times Power & Influence Top 50, I got so riled up that I wrote a letter to the publisher. There were barely any people of color on that list, and I feel that it is really time for us to start pointing that out when we see it, instead of just saying “well, that’s the way it is.” Below is the letter I emailed to John McIlquham, the publisher of the Nonprofit Times. Hopefully he will write me back.

In the meantime, please help me add to my list in the comments, so we can all learn from each other about the depth of multicultural leadership in our sector. How do we pay this forward so that we can begin to build a culture of honoring contributions from people of color in the nonprofit field?

Dear John,

Like my colleagues in the nonprofit field, I am an avid reader of The NonProfit Times, as the “premier business publication written for nonprofit executives.” As your website notes, the NonProfit Times reaches 38,000 executive decision makers, and we all appreciate the timely information that is presented in each issue. That is why it shocked me to see that this year’s Nonprofit Times Power & Influence Top 50 included so few leaders of color in a list of 50 influential people in our sector. I was very disappointed that your publication did not reflect the racial diversity of nonprofit leadership. From looking at your list, one might be inclined to think there aren’t really any minorities leading in the nonprofit sector. But you would be wrong.

Recent studies show that: people of color represent 18% of nonprofit CEOs and 14% of board leadership.

As a nonprofit community, I think it fits within our values to recognize the deep talent and contributions that people of color are making in our field. I have only worked in nonprofits for six years, and I am aware of way more than 50 leaders of color that are leading the way for social change and making an impact on our sector overall.

I hope to be helpful in my remarks to you in the hopes that we will see a more inclusive set of leaders in your publication next year. For now, I offer this brief list to the NonprofitTimes Top 50 Power and Influence selection committee as a small sample of other folks to consider for 2009.

Sincerely,

Rosetta Thurman

Blogger & Leadership Consultant

Perspectives From the Pipeline

http://rosettathurman.com

rosettathurman@gmail.com

703-965-6631

Julian Bond, NAACP Board Chair
Emmett Carson, President, Silicon Valley Community Foundation
Patrick Corvington, Senior Associate, Annie E. Casey Foundation
Erica Hunt, President, 21^st Century Foundation
Diane Bell-McCoy, Associated Black Charities
Michael Lomax, United Negro College Fund
Marc Morial, President, National Urban League
Ron McKinley, Fieldstone Alliance, Kellogg Action Lab
Bao Vang, Leadership Program Coordinator, Minnesota Council of Nonprofits
Terri Lee Freeman, President, Community Foundation for the National Capital Region
Mai Moua, Leadership Paradigms
Janet Murguía, President, National Council of La Raza
Rodney M. Jackson, President, National Center for Black Philanthropy
Diana Campoamor, President, Hispanics in Philanthropy
Albert Ruesga, Chair, Hispanics in Philanthropy, Vice President Eugene & Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, blogger at White Courtesy Telephone
Lisa Morton, Nonprofit HR Solutions
Trista Harris, Executive Director, Headwaters Foundation for Justice
Trabian Shorters, Knight Foundation
Maxine Baker, African American Nonprofit Network
Greg Taylor, W.K. Kellogg Foundation
Van Jones, formerly Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
Geoffrey Canada, Harlem Children’s Zone
Cristina Lopez, National Hispana Leadership Institute, formerly Center for Community Change
Deepak Bhargava, Executive Director, Center for Community Change
Beatriz Otero, CEO, CentroNia
Linda Nguyen, Director of Civic Engagement, Alliance for Families and Children
Priscilla Hung, Co-Director of Grassroots Institute for Fundraising Training
Mia Herndon, Executive Director, Third Wave Foundation
Alison Lugo Saenz, Associate Director, The Grantmaking School of Grand Valley State
Sonya Garcia Ulibarri, Executive Director –Youth Build, Denver, Colorado
Eddy Morales, – Center for Community Change, Generation Change Program
Taij Moteellal – Executive Director, Resource Generation
Phuong Quoch, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy
Dwayne Patterson, Southern Organizer for Center for Community Change, Black America’s Organizing Project
Tracey Greene Dorsett – Director of Evaluation, National Rural Funders Collaborative
Glen O’Gilvie, Center for Nonprofit Advancement
Joanna Opot, Executive Director, StartingBloc
Jeremy Foreman, Executive Director, Hands On Ogeechee
Elsie L. Scott, President, Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Inc.
Cassandra Butts, formerly Fund for American Studies, Obama Campaign
Mando Rayo, Hands on Central Texas
Michael Watson, Girl Scouts USA
Benjamin Jealous, President, NAACP
Luz Vega-Marquis, President, Marguerite Casey Foundation
Wenda Weekes Moore, Secretary, Board of Directors , The W.K. Kellogg Foundation
Lillian Cruz, formerly with The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven
Antonio Romero, Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union
Gary Flowers, Black Leadership Forum
H. Alexander Robinson, National Black Justice Coalition
Dorothy Height, National Council of Negro Women

Rosetta Thurman

Thank you to all that have emailed me names of other leaders of color to add to this list. Let's keep it going!

Sherece Y. West, Ph.D., President and CEO, Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation

Barbara R. Arnwine, Executive Director, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law

Sandra R. Hernández , MD, Chief Executive Officer, The San Francisco Foundation

Antonia Hernandez, President & CEO, California Community Foundation

Robert K. Ross, MD, President and CEO, The California Endowment

Linetta J. Gilbert, Senior Program Officer, Community and Resource Development, Ford Foundation

Peggy Saika, President/CEO, Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy

Linda J. Kelly, JD, President, Hartford Foundation for Public Giving

Alberto Ibargüen, President/CEO, John S. & James L. Knight Foundation

Marian Wright Edelman, Founder & President, Children’s Defense Fund

Sheila Johnson, Philanthropist
meaningbuilding

FYI–I just posted this to my blog.

Rosetta Thurman’s recent post about the discrepancies between the actual rate of leaders of color in the nonprofit sector and their representation on the NPT’s Top 50 list, along with her observation that 77% of all nonprofits have budgets under $1M got me to go look at the actual list. One thing stood out to me from the list: Two cities/regions are hugely overrepresented on this list: Metro-DC area and New York City. Here’s the actual breakdown by state (Most of the NY entries were from NYC, although there was one from another NY city):

State Males Females Total
CA 3 1 4
DC 5 19 24
GA 1
1
IN 1 1 2
MA 1 1 2
MD 1
1
MI
2 2
MN
1 1
NH
1 1
NY 6 2 8
OH 1
1
PA 1
1
TX
1 1
WA 1
1
Grand Total 21 29 50

What’s interesting to me about this list is this is an industry-wide paper, but the top three states make up almost 75% of the people on this list. I won’t count DC as “the South” meaning that only three leaders from Southern states are represented. The Mid-West (I’m going to include Ohio and Indiana): six. West Coast: five.

One measure of how skewed this list is could be the amount of foundation assets in a given state. While this isn’t a perfect measure, it is useful because most foundations have a propensity to give to causes within their communities. I realize there are exceptions to this, of course, but as a general rule it has some credence. In the US, foundations have assets that approach $850B. These are historical numbers, so the current economy aside, it can be assumed this number is actually larger. DC has foundations with assets totalling $11B. If you include all of Virginia, the asset total is just $28B. New York has assets of more than $116B; California $110B. Massachussets, $27B. Florida, with no representation on the list, has assets of $23B. Texas: $36B. The Gulf Coast Region (TX, LA, MS, AL) have assets of more than $44B–and some of the country’s most pressing social, educational, and natural disater related problems–yet there is only ONE top leader in the country from the entire region? There are no states represented from the Southwestern United States, despite the fact that many of these states are experiencing massive population growth, increasing environmental problems and cultural shifts that are belweathers for the rest of the country for the next several generations. WHY?

I recognize that DC faces many of the most intransigent social problems in the WORLD (a higher crime/murder rate than Columbia, rampant gangs, horrendous schools, political corruption to make the Mafia proud and intolerable poverty) but most of the organizations on the list have been around for a very long time and the problems in DC aren’t any different than anywhere else in this country. I want to echo Thurman’s call for more and better diversity, but I would wager that a broader geographical, budgetary and philosphical search would yeild a much more diverse group of leaders–not just of color, ethnicty and nationality but also of sexual and gender identification, political “stripe” and age.

One final note, I realized that this is a strangely nationalist list, despite the fact that an increasingly large segement of the people in the nonprofit sector are beginning to work with nonprofit leaders around the world to address problems both here and there. Environmental, health, social injustice, social migration, poverty allieviation and cultural transmission issues are becoming more international not less. Why is this list artificially restricted to US-based leaders rather than to leaders around the world who have an impact on the people and institutions in the US? I’d be interested in seeing who would make it onto that list.
Brigette Rouson

Thanks, Rosetta! What a wise response! The list is already formidable. I would add: Omowale Satterwhite, Founder of National Community Development Institute;
Darryl K. Lester, founder of Community Investment Network; and David Maurrasse, founder of Marga Inc.
http://rosettathurman.com/blog/2009/07/independent-sector-launches-envisioning-our-future-initiative-but-is-it-inclusive-enough/ Rosetta Thurman » Independent Sector Launches “Envisioning Our Future” Initiative, But is it Inclusive Enough?

[...] left out of the equation. The participant roster, however, is fortunately not a carbon copy of the Nonprofit Times’ Power & Influence Top 50 list of majority white, Baby Boomer leaders. Generation Y leaders involved include Ben Rattray of [...]
http://rosettathurman.com/blog/2009/08/whites-only-nonprofit-leadership/ Rosetta Thurman » “Whites Only” Nonprofit Leadership?

[...] These folks have undoubtedly made a major impact on the nonprofit sector and the communities we serve. But when I looked at the racial makeup of the folks on this list, I couldn’t help but notice that it was pretty colorless. Just like it was last year. [...]