Browsing by Subject "racial equity"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    BIPOC exclusion from Milwaukee's professional theatre organizations: An inquiry into systemic change
    (2021-08) Esposito, Amy
    Arts organizations in the nonprofit sector often seek to create social change in their communities as a response to art rather than exclusively creating art for its entertainment value. As the United States continues to tackle and address racial inequities, the arts sector is not only responsible for evolving with society, but also crafting and depicting narratives many organizations hope will help positively impact society. In this sense, they should be leaders. This inquiry into racial representation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s nonprofit theatre sector hopes to identify the unique qualities of the Milwaukee arts community, inclusive actions currently taking place, and areas for improvement. Using a grounded theory approach, interviews were conducted with local arts leaders and stakeholders. Based on the literature reviewed and data collected, these findings were used to assess initiatives currently in place and to formulate recommendations for addressing racial representation and creating meaningful organizational change.
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    Equity in Banking and Lending - Project Findings and Next Steps
    (2021-08) Mbali, John; Williamson, Aaron S.; Arika, Jessica; Martinez Gavina, Blanca
    The community is poised to address issues related to disparities in access and quality of banking & lending options and solutions for African Americans in North Minneapolis in particular. This project seeks to understand the dynamics of barriers, assets, and potential solutions related to banking and lending specifically for African American-owned small businesses in North Minneapolis. In assessing this issue, the Capstone team and community partners hope this will be the starting point in a collaborative effort including the banking & business community to address some of the issues raised in this research project.
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    Equity in Minnesota State Grantmaking
    (2021-05) Gullickson, Nicolette; Jones, Wendy; Sand, Lilian; Yan, Jiapeng
    The state grantmaking process was not originally designed with equity as the organizing principle. As such, it is unsurprising to learn that nonprofit organizations in Minnesota led by and/or serving Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) receive less state funding than white-led organizations. Equity does not occur on its own, it must be cultivated. In recent years, there has been an increasing focus on community involvement when it comes to social service provision. Grassroots activism has elevated participatory funding as an equitable solution to the inequities present in grantmaking processes across the board, whether coming from the state or foundations. Communities know best what they need, and embedded community organizations are well- positioned to communicate these needs and execute the programs necessary to meet them. Unfortunately, the state of Minnesota takes a top-down approach, with agency personnel specifying what programs will be created, and thus funded, rather than asking communities what their needs are. In addition, this disconnected top-down approach leads to an application process that is overly burdensome and does not accurately capture the success of the organizations applying for state funding.
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    Equity in Minnesota State Grantmaking
    (2021-05-05) Gullickson, Nicolette; Jones, Wendy; Sand, Lilian; Yan, Jiapeng
    The state grantmaking process was not originally designed with equity as the organizing principle. As such, it is unsurprising to learn that nonprofit organizations in Minnesota led by and/or serving Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) receive less state funding than white-led organizations. Equity does not occur on its own, it must be cultivated. In recent years, there has been an increasing focus on community involvement when it comes to social service provision. Grassroots activism has elevated participatory funding as an equitable solution to the inequities present in grantmaking processes across the board, whether coming from the state or foundations. Communities know best what they need, and embedded community organizations are well-positioned to communicate these needs and execute the programs necessary to meet them. Unfortunately, the state of Minnesota takes a top-down approach, with agency personnel specifying what programs will be created, and thus funded, rather than asking communities what their needs are. In addition, this disconnected top-down approach leads to an application process that is overly burdensome and does not accurately capture the success of the organizations applying for state funding. Several foundations, both local and national, have taken up the call for centering racial equity in earnest and have implemented innovative giving models that directly engage community members. Three of these foundations are discussed in this report, to illustrate the potential frameworks the state of Minnesota could adopt to increase racial equity in the state grantmaking process.
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    Opportune Timing Racial Equity Policy Tools and Opportunities for the Minnesota Legislative Report Card on Racial Equity at Voices for Racial Justice
    (2017) Bakerian-Devane, Luna
    This policy project outlines racial equity policy tools and explores opportunities for furthering the impact of the Legislative Report Card on Racial Equity produced by Voices for Racial Justice in Minnesota. Voices for Racial Justice is a Minneapolis nonprofit organization that began in 1993 as the Organizing Apprenticeship Project, working to train community organizers and catalyzing work for social and economic justice. In 2014, the organization shifted focus exclusively to the work of racial justice. The Legislative Report Card on Racial Equity began in 2005 as an opportunity to evaluate the work of the Minnesota State Legislature in terms of racial equity. It provides accountability, education, and a community resource. This report makes the case for assessing governance and policy through a racial equity lens, lays the framework for racial equity reporting, details the longstanding report card model at Voices for Racial Justice, and explores new opportunities for the report card. Outside of the scope of this project are explanations of and opportunities for federal and local level racial equity assessments, although they are addressed. It is my hope that this analysis will be useful in informing racial equity reporting in Minnesota, and can be an informational and inspirational guide for those working for racial justice nationwide.
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    Racial and Economic Disparities in Electric Reliability and Service Quality in Xcel Energy’s Minnesota Service Area
    (2024-02) Pradhan, Bhavin; Chan, Gabriel
    This paper asks whether disparities exist in access to shared infrastructure systems, focusing on the electric system, an essential service delivered by heavily regulated public utilities. We examine disparities in access to electricity service in the service area of Xcel Energy across three dimensions: utility disconnection, service reliability, and grid availability to host distributed energy resources. We quantify disparities across Census block groups by leveraging unique, high-resolution datasets of service quality and grid conditions that have only recently been made publicly available. We find significant and pervasive evidence of the disparities among different demographic groups across utility disconnection and service reliability. Across a battery of regression models, we find that living in poorer neighborhoods with a greater concentration of people of color is associated with a statistically and practically significant difference in the likelihood of disconnection from service due to non-payment and the experience of extended power outages. We also find evidence that hosting capacity for distributed generation is higher in disadvantaged communities and communities with high populations of people of color. These findings underscore the opportunity for policy initiatives to rectify deep-seated inequalities through affirmative investments and safety net programs that ensure all communities, regardless of their racial or economic composition, have equitable access to universal basic utility service and reliable, clean energy.
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    Racial Disparities in Nonprofit Funding: Bringing BIPOC Nonprofits into Focus
    (2024-04) Deng, Shuyi
    The dissertation examines racial disparities in nonprofit funding, by focusing on Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) nonprofits. The first chapter sets the stage by reviewing the theoretical background and empirical challenges to quantitatively study racial disparities in nonprofit funding. Chapters 2-4 are three independent yet interconnected papers. Chapter 2 reviews the commonly used referents to identify BIPOC nonprofits and demonstrates that how BIPOC nonprofits are defined and identified matters for the presence and magnitude of racial disparities in nonprofit funding, based on a sample of Minnesota nonprofits. Chapter 3 estimates and decomposes revenue disparities between nonprofits with race-conscious missions and those with race-neutral missions, using data from Minnesota nonprofits that filed their tax forms electronically between the years of 2010 and 2017. Chapter 4 investigates the intra-group nonprofit funding disparities within the BIPOC community and the inter-group disparities between the BIPOC community and advantaged group, as well as the relationship between these two types of group disparities, utilizing a national dataset of human services, general support grants awarded between the years of 2018 and 2022. Lastly, Chapter 5 concludes the dissertation by discussing the theoretical, empirical, and practical and policy implications of the findings.
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    Trust, Power, and Organizational Routines: Exploring Government’s Intentional Tactics to Renew Relationships with Nonprofits Serving Historically Marginalized Communities
    (Public Administration Review, 2023) Cheng, Yuan
    Existing public management practices and organizational routines in the contracting regime have systematically created power asymmetry and distrust between government agencies and nonprofits serving historically marginalized communities. However, little is known about how the government could reform public bureaucracies to renew relationships with these important organizations and build trust. Through a process-oriented inductive study of Minnesota’s 2-Generation Policy Network, we find that government’s cascading trust-building tactics both inside the bureaucracy and with nonprofits serving Black, Latino, Indigenous, and Immigrant/Refugee communities allowed them to create a new collaborative infrastructure that both changed organizational routines and built power to address racial inequities in the existing human service system. Power is not a zero-sum game. By sharing resources and building trust with their nonprofit partners, government agencies and nonprofits collectively access more power for genuine public management reform to address systematic inequities.