Using the Mirror Tool to Minimize Unconscious Bias in Grantmaking and Fund Leaders Closest to the Issues

Chicago Beyond dramatically shifted its grantmaking and, today, all of its multi-year grants are in support of BIPOC-led organizations with direct experience in the social issues they are working on. Here, Liz Dozier shares more about how the organization went about making this change and introduces Chicago Beyond’s Mirror Tool, which other funders can use to identify and reduce bias in the ways they fund.

In the first three years of Chicago Beyond’s existence, only 14 percent of our multi-year grants were directed toward BIPOC-led organizations and only 4 percent were directed toward organizations led by people with direct experience in the social issue area they were working to improve. Today, all of our multi-year grants are distributed to BIPOC-led organizations with direct experience. The impact has been transformational.

Much of this success is due to our philosophy; we push ourselves to notice differently and shift practices, and we develop supports like the Mirror Tool to inform our thinking along the way. How did we use this and other tools to bring about this change? How can other organizations follow suit? And, just as importantly, why should they?

Despite recent retractions, I am encouraged by the philanthropic sector’s willingness to embrace equity and support more proximate leaders. However, recent data reminds me that we have a long way to go toward achieving equity in our country.

By the numbers

On average, Chicago Beyond’s multi-year grants are $1.4 MM across 3.9 years, significantly more than median grants from America’s large foundations ($50K for 1.5 years).

Since 2020, all of Chicago Beyond’s multi-year grants have been toward BIPOC-led organizations and they have all been made toward leaders with direct experience in the issues they are focused on solving.

The Case for Funding Leaders Closest to the Issues

Before I dive into the processes and tools Chicago Beyond has used to address bias in our grantmaking, I want to emphasize why I believe funders should be distributing significant capital to leaders closest to the issues and their organizations, to better serve systemically oppressed populations and improve life outcomes for all.

1. For all people to have the opportunity to live full lives, we must effectively serve society’s systemically oppressed populations. Inequities are creating immense harm and holding back human flourishing. Black mothers are dying at three times the rate of white mothers; Black Americans make up 13 percent of the general population but 37 percent of our incarcerated population; and the statistics go on and on.
2. Closing inequity gaps improves quality of life for others. Throughout history, there is significant evidence that solving problems for those on the margins in fact improves life for all. When Civil Rights legislation was passed in the 20th century, it not only dismantled discriminatory laws, but generated greater workforce participation, improved representative democracy, and spurred additional movements for women, disability rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, and more.
3. Leaders closest to the issues are well positioned to introduce, develop, and shepherd solutions. Across sectors, there are benefits to organizations with bottom-up decision-making, or those that empower individuals closest to problems to deliver solutions. For instance, research from McKinsey & Company posits that organizations who effectively delegate decisions to those closest to the issues are 6.8 times more likely to be successful. Similarly, nonprofit leaders closest to the social issues they are working to improve have deeper contextual expertise, more consistent asset-based approaches, and increased legitimacy with the communities they serve; as a result, they are able to advance innovative, effective, enduring solutions.

Obstacles to Funding Proximate Leaders and Organizations

Easier said than done. When Chicago Beyond intentionally pivoted toward funding leaders closest to the issues with catalytic investments, we encountered many challenges you also may have faced.

• We had to adjust our risk analysis and be willing to make large, flexible investments in organizations that had never received this level of funding and that were often led by teams without many of the conventional markers that traditional philanthropists rely on. We needed to realize the immense benefits to this style of grantmaking and elevate the counterfactual costs of “business as usual.”
• We needed to shift our processes, as grant applications were not connecting us to the community-embedded leaders we needed to reach. Instead of relying on grant applications, often written by better resourced organizations with development teams, we flipped this process on its head. We developed a grantmaking pipeline in which our team members were proactively in the community, in conversation with community members, and online identifying high-potential organizations for investment. Our team took the responsibility for developing the materials for us to internally deliberate the case for investment. Often, the first time we reached out to nonprofit leaders was to let them know they had been awarded funding, and their work was their application. For larger investments, we would often engage nonprofit leadership selectively, in order to respect their time, while also providing us with more deep understanding to refine our case for investment.
• Finally, we needed to interrogate the unconscious bias that unintentionally prevents us making more catalytic grants. To do this, we needed to recognize that the risks so often uplifted—such as the fear that large infusions of capital to underrecognized leaders might be mismanaged—are overstated and often rooted in bias and fear. For instance, a study of 21 nonprofits receiving large, unrestricted grants did not find evidence of a “lottery curse”. A further study of 277 nonprofits receiving large, unrestricted gifts found that 90 percent used funding to improve financial stability. In short, following a thoughtful diligence process, nonprofit leaders can be trusted to use funds to improve the world.

While each of these adjustments could represent their own blog post, I will focus on how we were able to address bias during decision-making about our funding using Chicago Beyond’s Mirror Tool.

Reducing Bias in Funding

Unconscious bias is woven into the fabric of decision-making throughout our daily lives. Additionally, America’s history and culture cultivate unconscious bias that diminishes trust in leaders that are often most proximate to the issues we as grantmakers hope to support. As grantmakers seeking to make high-quality decisions for enduring social change, it is incumbent upon all of us to do the work of unpacking unconscious bias with the support of practical, uncomplicated tools. As an organization open to learning and evolving, one of our priorities is to share tools and insights with our field so we can be better grantmakers. The Mirror Tool is one reflective tool we offer to others to use in the funding process. Here’s how it works:

1. Recognize five common types of bias. Beauty Bias, Affinity Bias, Halo/Horns Bias, Confirmation Bias, Contrast Bias; our Mirror Tool summarizes the five types of bias that most commonly get in the way of effective decisions. Learn about them, think about them, and identify them in your daily life.
2. Slow down and create intentional space to notice bias during grantmaking. During grantmaking, we encourage folks to use this tool to slow down, make time and space to consider if any of the biases apply, and then proceed with your evaluation and selection. This short, conscious exercise can make a load of difference.
3. Consider where else it might be valuable to pause and reflect on bias. Unconscious bias doesn’t only crop up in grant evaluations, but also in hiring, vendor decisions, and more. We’ve found countless ways the Mirror Tool has helped us to de-bias decisions, ultimately driving us toward funding more proximate leaders and embodying equitable practices in our work.

The Path to Equitable, Enduring Social Change

I’m proud of the intentional steps that Chicago Beyond and many other organizations are taking to address bias in our work, in a shared effort to flow catalytic funding to leaders closest to the issues and usher in equitable change for the world. Earlier this year, Lever for Change, a global nonprofit that influences over $1.5 billion in grants, adopted our Mirror Tool, which will now support addressing bias during the decision-making process on hundreds of millions of philanthropic dollars per year. Like Lever for Change, I am hopeful that you and your organizations will consider pausing to unpack unconscious bias in your work and your life. Together, we can shift the flow of philanthropic funding toward leaders closest to the issues and create a society where all humans, regardless of zip code, have equitable access to opportunities.

Liz Dozier is the Founder and CEO of Chicago Beyond.

The views and opinions expressed in individual blog posts are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the National Center for Family Philanthropy.