Creating Equity in Philanthropic Giving & Higher Education
Meghan Montelibano Gorman is a social justice advocate who works full time as an Alumni Engagement Coordinator for the University of Denver and has two side hustles running her own companies. One company, How Do You Say That is a blog committed to publishing stories of those who are othered in all spaces, with a primary focus on womxn of color in nonprofit & Higher Education. The other company is tayo, a creative consulting agency. On top of all of that Meghan was just accepted into a doctorate program in Higher Education.
I talked to Meghan about her work in nonprofit and Higher Education and how that intersect with the world of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion. Watch the full interview here.
Jocelyn: Meghan, you have your hands in so many things, with all those things what are you most excited about right now?
Meghan: Thank you for that introduction. I just wrote a piece on why I have to do so many things for survival. So thank you for basing that question out of joy and what I get out of it.
But like you said, I have a lot going on. But right now I'm just so excited for the How Do You Say That blog. It's just a few months old and I am so privileged to build and be part of that community. I started it for myself and that's hard for me to admit. I'm a daughter of immigrants, humility above everything, but I really needed that space. So being able to connect with so many women across the country is wonderful and also horrifying that everyone has the same experiences.
I am fully conscious it carries risk because I founded a blog about my workplace oppression and my colleagues are reading it. I'm aware of that. So I’m hoping this community empowers and emboldens me to continue to do that work and to uplift women of color.
Jocelyn: Awesome. Thank you. Now, starting with the basics, where do you see gaps for communities of color in Higher Education? And what are some ways we fix those gaps?
Meghan: What a big question. There's so many it's more like where are there not gaps?
When you break down Higher Ed, you can look at admissions, advancement, and alumni engagement. There's so much there. I read a piece by Dr. DL Stewart, who's a scholar here in Colorado, and they have this great piece Minding the Gap Between Diversity and Institutional Transformation: Eight Proposals for Enacting Institutional Change.
Dr. Stewart's talks about:
Opening the room, asking who's trying to get in into Higher Ed and who haven't we let in
Valuing minoritized voices
Rejecting traditional norms and policy
Prioritizing safety of minoritized folks
Valuing equity, over equality, that's a huge part of this in Higher Ed
And to your second question of how do we fix those gaps? It's in HR, it's in hiring people who look different, people who bring that lived experience to the space. And not just in your Administrative Assistant or Coordinator positions, in leadership and people who can really move the needle and impact that institutional change.
It's in working on yourself, analyzing systems of oppression within Higher Ed that you have benefited from, how you can change that, how you can make it more equitable. It's a complicated and nuanced issue and it's not going to get better until we start funding those types of programs as well.
Jocelyn: I think that's true in for-profit businesses too. We can talk about it all day, but until there's money put behind those initiatives, it's not a priority.
Meghan: Exactly.
Jocelyn: You also do a lot of work looking at philanthropic systems. So when you do look at systems of philanthropy, how do you find that the idea of White Saviorism plays into the way that we view philanthropic giving right now?
Meghan: When we look at the historical context of philanthropy in the United States, and I want to specify my work is very U.S. centric. Historically philanthropy was built by and for white men. So a lot of that infrastructure is still in place today and clearly our world compositionally alone just looks different. So it's not working.
When I hear how philanthropy is talked about, especially within communities of color, which is the intersection I live in, it's coming from a deficit model. White folks are coming down and helping the lowly and destitute. And that's not a nice way of talking about it.
It doesn't have a sense of dignity when working with communities of color and honoring those experiences. So just how I hear people talk about charity in general. The language needs to be adjusted.
And philanthropy is donor centric, but why are we honoring and prioritizing the donor when we're here to build relationships and uplift communities, it should be community centric.
So that shift in the paradigm is something that is going to take a long time for folks in this space to adjust to. Cause that's been the language and the currency, that's what brings dollars in. It takes time and I hope that time to change the perspective is now.
Jocelyn: How does the way we as Americans look at giving, reinforce the inequity in our philanthropic structures? Can you give some examples of this?
Meghan: American giving we're very ethnocentric. We think we're the center of the world and we know what's best and we know what needs to be done. I was in a social justice course in undergrad and there was this quote that's really stuck with me. “When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” With American philanthropy, I always call it the hammer syndrome. So you want to bang everything and that could be doing way more damage. You could be destroying a building when you think you're building a house.
One example is the trend to buy a goat for a family in some other country. Do they even want a goat? So it's the hammer syndrome. You just think that's what they need. It's an example of us placing value or deciding what people need.
That's the exact antithesis of my philosophy on philanthropy. Instead we should be coming to the table and saying, “Hey, you are a rich community with value. We're here to help support you. What do you need?”
I think that so rarely happens in American philanthropy. We decide for these communities what they need versus just asking them. And do you even want us to be here in the first place? And that theme of White Saviorism comes in, we think we know best.
Jocelyn: Your master's thesis is on promoting philanthropic giving from alumni of color, why is this important to you, and what are some ways you discovered to change the way we view this type of giving?
Meghan: First I want to honor the alums that I get to work with who have welcomed me into their lives, who have shared their stories.
Oftentimes when we're thinking about philanthropy, it's happy. But these communities, the specific stories I've heard have been of trauma and needing to heal and rebuild trust. The emotional and racial trauma that they've gone through, they don't have to justify it to me since I've been there, I experienced it so we can jump right into, okay, how do we make this better?
How do we make sure we don't pass on this generational trauma to the students who come after us?
So I wanted to explore that in an academic space of how we expect alumni of color to give to us when the institution took so much from them, or didn't give them the same equitable experience that other students may have had.
This type of work needs to be co-created. I say that because there are communities that I don't belong, to that I don't identify with, but I can still support and uplift and try to build equity with them which is the key. One example, the Pride Alumni group at DU, they're going to launch one of the first crowdfunding campaigns for One Day for DU, our big philanthropy day. It's the first LGBTQ+ focused initiative in the history of the school. So I'm just honored and proud to be an advocate.
Jocelyn: I’ve heard you talk about the 3 Ts of philanthropy, can you explain those and how they shape the way we view or solicit giving?
Meghan: I talk about the three T's: time, talent and treasure.
When we look at the definition of American Fundraising Professionals (AFP), that is a holistic view of what philanthropy is, but in practice, oftentimes the only thing we value is the treasure part, the dollars.
So in my work, especially in promoting equity in philanthropic spaces, it's honoring those time and talent pieces. That is informed by the volunteers that I've worked with, the volunteers of color who have been donating decades of time in mentorship programs, through informal communication. There's a very specific BIPOC experience within Higher Education, there're so many different parts of identity that are at play. That time piece is there, but it's not being counted, which is such a missed opportunity and there's equivalency you could do showing how an hour equates to dollars.
If you look at our CRM system it might say $0 contributed and it looks like they're not engaged with the institution, but if there was a way to honor time and talent, that would paint an entirely different picture. We're a data driven industry, so we need to be able to document that to make sure we're properly understanding what is being given.
Jocelyn: Yeah. That's so powerful. Thank you. You have such a passion for equity, why is this important to you and what are some small ways you embody this in your everyday life?
Meghan: Why is equity important to me? Simply it's my everyday existence living in inequity. It's based on my own lived experience of just knowing it has to be better. If I have to carve out that space for myself and that's what I'll do.
I’m inspired by my community around me, my parents, my family, and my friends, my other BIPOC folks that are in my circle. Cause I know my liberation is tied to their liberation. It's one in the same. We can all be doing this for ourselves, but we can also be doing it for everyone else around us.
And it's not just for BIPOC, it's for white people too. Once your brain has that orientation of diversity, equity and justice you see it every day, right? You can see gaps and opportunity and learning.
Jocelyn: Please tell us more about the projects you are working on?
Meghan:
We are trying to find sponsorships, people who just want to support this work. It's a big value of mine to pay women for their labor. I want to be able to pay all of our guest bloggers, email me If you're interested in supporting that.
I'm working on a curriculum to assess how fundraising in Higher Ed maps to how you're doing in terms of the equity space. That's exciting to be working on.
tayo: workwithtayo@gmail.com
My equity conscious company focused on graphic design, website design, and general DE&I consulting work.
