February 23, 2018
The D5 Coalition, as part of its wind down process, has finalized its formal evaluation and received feedback from a range of foundation CEOs, trustees and philanthropic leaders. This feedback was incorporated into a scan of ongoing work in the philanthropic infrastructure to assess where the field is now on issues of diversity, equity and inclusion, and clarify what is still needed to keep it moving forward.
D5’s leaders knew that the work to embed a commitment to these issues would not be complete in five years, but the scan indicates that the field has strengthened its capacity and the range of foundations engaging DEI has grown. To supplement this progress, we will keep the D5 website live so that people can continue to access the resources until they can be effectively deployed elsewhere. We hope that whatever resources deployed going forward supports growing coordination and collaboration and strategies that focus on areas that are essential but which are not currently being addressed.
Such an area is how diversity, equity and inclusion relates to leadership, management and governance. The trustees and CEOs who gathered at D5’s culminating convening at Pocantico reinforced this and research supports the importance of the CEO-trustee nexus in ensuring that this work is embedded in organizations. Not surprisingly, however, there is no clear consensus on the best way to do this.
Given this, we will explore the feasibility of engaging a broad spectrum of trustees in some depth around diversity, equity and inclusion. We hope that by the end of 2018, we will have better insight into what might be possible.
We know this work is essential and that many of you have important lessons from your own journeys to share. We also know that our field–not just our institutions–are strengthened by shared learnings and collective engagement, so we hope that you will stay involved, stay committed and stay inclusive.
