Rising Tides Don’t Create Racialized Change: Analyzing Institutional Change Projects in Postsecondary Philanthropy’s College Completion Agenda

The author analyzes the evolution of nine postsecondary foundations’ theories of change and their impact on minoritized communities.

Introduction

In 2020, the philanthropy sector saw a surge of public commitments to antiracism, in support of the Movement for Black Lives. In the years after, a political backlash urged institutional leaders to reconsider those commitments. The author of this article explores how nine postsecondary foundations have evolved their theories of change on educational equity over time and how this affects minoritized communities. Racialized Change Work (RCW) is a purposeful action that specifically focuses on changing norms and processes that reproduce racial inequalities. The author highlights one foundation, Lumina, as an example of how foundations can drive RCW by 1) setting public, measurable, and absolute goals and 2) focusing on addressing power structures, not minoritized communities themselves.

Heather N. McCambly is an Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations, Organizations, and Policy at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. McCambly’s current research focuses on the role of philanthropy in US postsecondary education.

Methods and Findings

McCambly analyzes the grantmaking descriptions, grantmaking activity, annual reports, mission statements, and press releases of nine foundations using an archival dataset from 2000 to 2019. Through this archival analysis that connects foundations’ theories of change, funding practices, and ultimately their effect on educational equity, McCambly explores the pitfalls many foundations faced when first defining the drivers of educational inequities. Additionally, the author provides an example of how one foundation is actively pursuing RCW. 

The author highlights how foundations’ initial theories of change in the 1990s to mid-2010s were ‘race-evasive’ or did not explicitly refer to racism as a driver of inequality in higher education. This led to interventions that only focused on educational access rather than success. Later, when foundations first started to address educational inequities due to race and class, they often employed deficit thinking that placed blame on low-income students and populations rather than educational institutions. These foundations tended to depict minoritized students as roadblocks to meeting national and statewide educational outcome goals rather than centering on the failure of institutions. These frames led to the funding of deficit-focused interventions that failed to address racial inequities.

The first foundation to break away from these pitfalls was Lumina. McCambly presents two primary ways that Lumina changed its approach to educational equity, which led to an increase in the foundation’s proportion of race-conscious funding and RCW.

• Setting public, absolute, and measurable targets: Lumina announced their Goal 2025, which committed to increasing “the percentage of Americans with high-quality, two- or four-year college degrees and credentials from 39% to 60% by 2025, an increase of 23 million graduates.” McCambly argues that this public goal was an essential step in Lumina taking accountability and responsibility for creating quantifiable change.
• Naming racism and focusing on institutional change: Lumina’s goal directly acknowledges that “historical and current patterns of discrimination, segregation and racism continue to foster disparities […] and make it increasingly difficult to achieve the American dream. Native American, African American, and Latino students are disproportionately poor, have less access to quality education, and are underrepresented in positions of power.” Lumina’s explicit naming of racism and focus on the lack of representation in positions of power shifts the narrative to a need to address racial inequities and power structures rather than minoritized communities themselves.

Conclusions

Through analyzing the evolution of these theories across nine foundations and their ties to grantmaking activity, McCambly argues that theories of change have a crucial impact on the ability of postsecondary foundations to drive educational equity. The author concludes that foundations can avoid racialized deficit thinking and practices that can impede the educational outcomes of minoritized communities by 1) establishing public and measurable goals that hold the foundational accountable for the outcomes of minoritized students and 2) explicitly naming racism and a focus on institutional change rather than student-level change.