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Join the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) for a discussion on health and racial equity in New Jersey and how to achieve it. The roundtable discussion will focus on exploring strategies to advance health equity goals across a number of key areas, some of which are those identified in A Policy Agenda for a Healthier, More Equitable New Jersey, which RWJF released earlier this year.

Speakers include:
Maisha Simmons, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Atiya Weiss, The Burke Foundation
Sharnita Johnson, Victoria Foundation
Marianna Schaffer, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation
Alana Vega, The Fund for New Jersey

There will be time for Q & A following the roundtable.

Cost: Free for CNJG Members

Resources:
A Policy Agenda for a Healthier, More Equitable New Jersey
New Jersey Reparations Council
New Jersey Birth Equity Funders Alliance
Neighbors Helping Neighborhoods
New Jersey's Public Health Institute: Advancing Health Equity in New Jersey
Organizing Examples: Make the Road and Wind of the Spirit

Adopted by the CNJG Board of Trustees October 20, 2023

Each principle begins with a common understanding followed by developmental steps for members beginning to look at these principles as well as the aspiration for each principle. These principles are intended to promote continuous learning, vulnerability, and reflection for how philanthropy can evolve from its historical roots to a more trusting, accountable, and equitable model.

The principles include:
1. Ethical Leadership
2. Stewardship
3. Values
4. Equity & Justice
5. Community Engagement
6. Public Voice
7. Continuous Learning
8. Transparency & Accountability

1. Ethical Leadership

Understand:
We believe that ethical leadership is required to build and maintain community trust in philanthropy. This is achieved through adherence to laws, good governance and community- informed decision-making.

Begin:
We serve our partners and communities in a way that engenders trust. We adhere to all applicable laws and take seriously our fiduciary duties. In order to maintain trust, we seek to continuously improve our governance, decision-making processes and organizational culture.

Aspire:
We actively engage the community in our governance and decision-making, balancing donor intent and community need. We strengthen community trust by including new and diverse voices on our governing bodies and decision-making teams.

2. Stewardship

Understand:
As philanthropic entities established for charitable purposes, we operate with a privileged tax status. We recognize that, in addition to money, foundation assets include investments, relationships, human resources, connections and networks, knowledge and expertise, and stature.

Begin:
We recognize our roles as funders, employers, economic entities and community members. Through each of these roles, we use the wide range of assets held by philanthropy to create positive benefits and impact with our communities.

Aspire:
We use all of our assets to build equity and strengthen communities, as defined by the communities, themselves. We use all available tools such as values-based investing, impact investing and giving beyond any minimum requirements, to generate community benefits.

3. Values

Understand:
Having clear and transparent goals, missions and values allows us to be purposeful in philanthropy and facilitates accountability with communities and stakeholders.

Begin:
Our missions and goals are clearly stated and are transparent to the community. We hold ourselves accountable to them. We periodically examine our missions and goals for relevance, impact and alignment to our values.

Aspire:
We seek to understand and incorporate the values of our stakeholders and the communities we serve into our missions, values and goals. The community participates in examining our mission, values and goals for relevance, and holds us accountable to them.

4. Equity & Justice

Understand:
We recognize two truths. Philanthropy is created to promote the welfare of others. Our commitment to equity requires us to dismantle disparities in access to power, money and resources. At the same time, philanthropy is a system that is built on historical structural inequities and systemic racism. These inequities create a resource gap and power differential between philanthropy and the community.

Begin:
We are in a unique position to promote equity and justice. We seek to understand how intersectional inequities and racism manifest in our philanthropy and our communities. We work to become anti-racist individuals and organizations. In order to advance equity and justice, we listen to the community, honor their story and rely on their lived experience to inform our grantmaking.

Aspire:
We acknowledge our privilege in resources and resulting power. We commit to increase power sharing with our community, especially with communities that have been historically marginalized. We believe in trust and shared power in decision-making, which increases community access to philanthropic resources. This increases equity and makes progress toward dismantling racism and eliminating systemic inequities.

5. Community Engagement

Understand:
Philanthropy works best when it builds long-term community relationships rather than focusing on short-term transactions. Positive impacts increase when we hold mutually respectful, direct relationships with the community. As a result of community engagement, philanthropic efforts become more relevant and donors/grantors more accountable to our community.

Begin:
We listen to the desires of the community and we interact with the community in culturally appropriate, meaningful and respectful ways. We engage in continual and reciprocal listening and learning, cultural curiosity and humility. In our relationships, we respect the community’s time and resources and strive to give more than we receive.

Aspire:
We take time to understand our relationships with the community, align our aspirations and actions, and adjust our work, as needed. We solicit community critique and feedback. We strengthen our grantmaking through power sharing, joint decision-making and funding of solutions defined and led by the community.

6. Public Voice

Understand:
Philanthropic organizations and individual donors enjoy power and influence that we must use responsibly, both individually and collectively, for the greater good. Our public voice augments our grantmaking to demonstrate partnership in communities and to advance our goals.

Begin:
We form our public voice by listening humbly to those with lived experience on issues we seek to influence. We use our collective voice to share knowledge, educate ourselves and others, and impact change on issues that advance equity and strengthen our community.

Aspire:
We amplify the voice of communities that have been historically marginalized. We use our collective voice to impact change in public policy and public opinion on issues important to our communities. We use our resources to amplify community voices and support grassroots organizing and advocacy.

7. Continuous Learning

Understand:
We have unprecedented access to information from local and global sources including science, research and community networks. Our communities offer rich information about the human impact of policies and resource distribution. We are obligated to use various information sources to actively learn and strengthen our practice and allow for vulnerability and openness to the evolution of our work.

Begin:
We are curious about our work and engage in activities that help us to consider new viewpoints and address individual biases. Through a range of learning activities including research, self-assessment, evaluation, professional development and community engagement processes we seek and use information that improves our grantmaking and expands our understanding of the community.

Aspire:
With the community, we engage in ongoing learning and jointly define funding priorities. We respect many cultural ways of learning and knowing and work to achieve individual and organizational cultural competency. We promote continuous learning with our teams and alongside our grantee partners. We improve our work by offering and using peer feedback and being open and vulnerable in the process.

8. Transparency & Accountability

Understand:
Transparency builds trust and strengthens our accountability to the community. By being transparent, we are accountable to our mission, values and goals.

Begin:
We exhibit transparency by being clear, consistent and timely in our communications, decisions and commitments. We share information publicly in order to meet regulatory requirements and uphold community expectations, in the context of our missions. We demonstrate accountability by learning from community feedback and critique.

Aspire:
We consider state and federal regulatory requirements to be the minimum standard of transparency. We excel at transparency and accountability by engaging the community in decision-making and external evaluation of our work

As artificial intelligence (AI) and technological advances take on an increasingly prominent role in our society, BIPOC and immigrant communities face the threat of biases and outright hostilities being encoded and automated into surveillance, enforcement, and judicial tools. At the same time, creative leaders in the nonprofit sector are leveraging and building new technologies to better deliver culturally responsive services at scale to their communities. In this two-part series on the intersection of AI, technology and immigrant justice, GCIR invites funders to deepen their knowledge in the space as well as gain insights on how philanthropy can deploy investments that build the movement’s capacity to respond to emergent threats and opportunities.

Part 1: The Threat of AI and Technology to Immigrant Justice
As technological innovation accelerates, so too do its potential harms, particularly for immigrant communities. AI and tech tools are increasingly being weaponized in surveillance, enforcement, detention, and court system contexts. Troubling examples of this include DHS’s use of tools to automate decision making on credibility determinations, benefit eligibility, and whether or not individuals should be released from detention. AI and technology tools are also being used to spread mis- and disinformation, not only endangering immigrant communities, but also weakening our ability to function as a society with a shared set of information about the world. In this discussion, funders will learn from immigrant and civil liberties groups at the forefront of the movement to mitigate technologically-driven harms to historically targeted communities.

Speakers:
Tsion Gurmu, Legal Director, Black Alliance for Just Immigration
Rachel Levinson-Waldman, Managing Director, Liberty & National Security, Brennan Center for Justice
Paromita Shah, Co-Founder & Executive Director, Just Futures Law
Cinthya Rodriguez, National Organizer, Mijente

Registration is also open for for the second part of the series, "Tech for Good: Building Innovative Tools to Serve Immigrant Communities," taking place on Thursday, February 13th. Click here to register.

Join your fellow CNJG members and CNJG staff, every first Friday of the month, for a 60-minute Zoom session. Much like the New Jersey Center for Nonprofits’ Member Mondays or “open office hours,” these sessions are a dedicated time for members to gather online to network, ask questions of each other or the CNJG staff on topics that could address:

• The latest issues facing New Jersey philanthropic organizations, resources and calls to action.
• How to use Trust-Based Philanthropy practices at your philanthropy.
• How can funders “Do Good Better?”
• Sincere discussions, sharing your questions, challenges, and success stories with your philanthropic colleagues.
• Opportunities for collaboration, programs you are offering for grantees, RFP announcements, and more.

Current members (grantmaking and associate) are invited to participate. No registration is required.
There won’t be an agenda, and we will not record the session, but we will take attendance.

To Join:
Use this link

or use

Zoom Meeting ID: 879 8405 2351
Passcode: 663599

Meeting Norms:
To make the experience comfortable and worthwhile to all, we respectfully ask the following.

• Please try to be on camera as much as possible.
• Please keep the conversation respectful and nonpartisan.
• While everyone is welcome to share resources during the session and to include helpful information in the chat, we ask that there be no direct soliciting for new clients/customers.
• Please allow everyone the opportunity to participate.
• Feel free to continue discussions offline with anyone that shares their contact information with you. Contact information for our members can be found through our online member directory.

While the media tends to focus on high-interest stories of environmental advocacy and environmental justice in historically under-resourced urban communities, battles are being fought every day by citizens of rural and suburban municipalities to protect their community against environmentally inappropriate development, unsound resource management practices, and pollution of air and water.

Please join the Environmental Grantmakers Affinity Group at scenic Duke Gardens for a conversation with Eastern Environmental Law Center's Chris Miller and ANJEC's Jennifer Coffey on the ways that suburban and rural New Jersey municipalities and grassroots environmental groups are successfully addressing their community's environmental health.

Chris and Jennifer will present the legal and political tools that can be used by residents to advocate for environmental justice in their communities and share examples of recent successes across the state. There will be additional time after the presentation for questions and comments. A light breakfast will be served and attendees are encouraged to continue the conversation on their own over lunch in the Duke Gardens cafeteria and/or while exploring the scenic beauty of Duke Gardens in the Spring.

Cost: Free for CNJG Members and Nonprofits; $75 for Non Member Grantmakers

Chris Miller is the Executive Director of Eastern Environmental Law Center, a non-profit, public-interest environmental law firm which works on behalf of environmental advocacy, conservation and community groups to achieve environmental justice, implement clean-energy solutions and preserve the New Jersey’s open space, wildlife and natural resources for generations to come. Chris is a graduate of Vermont Law School where he earned a J.D. and a Master of Studies in Environmental Law. Prior to joining EELC, Chris was a partner at Maraziti Falcon, LLP, where he litigated environmental and land use cases on behalf of local governments throughout the State.

Jennifer Coffey is the Executive Director of ANJEC (Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions), a non-profit organization that helps New Jersey environmental commissions, individuals, and local and state agencies. They work with partners throughout New Jersey to preserve natural resources and promote healthy communities by engaging in equitable and inclusive practices through leadership, partnerships, education, advocacy for strong public policy and support of environmental commissions, public officials, and communities. In addition to her role at ANJEC, Jennifer serves as a member of the New Jersey State Water Supply Advisory Council and as an advisor to the New Jersey State Clean Water Council. She also serves as a member of the Hamilton Township (Mercer) Planning Board.

Join your fellow CNJG members and CNJG staff, every first Friday of the month, for a 60-minute Zoom session. Much like the New Jersey Center for Nonprofits’ Member Mondays or “open office hours,” these sessions are a dedicated time for members to gather online to network, ask questions of each other or the CNJG staff on topics that could address:

• The latest issues facing New Jersey philanthropic organizations, resources and calls to action.
• How to use Trust-Based Philanthropy practices at your philanthropy.
• How can funders “Do Good Better?”
• Sincere discussions, sharing your questions, challenges, and success stories with your philanthropic colleagues.
• Opportunities for collaboration, programs you are offering for grantees, RFP announcements, and more.

Current members (grantmaking and associate) are invited to participate. No registration is required.
There won’t be an agenda, and we will not record the session, but we will take attendance.

To Join:
Use this link

or use

Zoom Meeting ID: 879 8405 2351
Passcode: 663599

Meeting Norms:
To make the experience comfortable and worthwhile to all, we respectfully ask the following.

• Please try to be on camera as much as possible.
• Please keep the conversation respectful and nonpartisan.
• While everyone is welcome to share resources during the session and to include helpful information in the chat, we ask that there be no direct soliciting for new clients/customers.
• Please allow everyone the opportunity to participate.
• Feel free to continue discussions offline with anyone that shares their contact information with you. Contact information for our members can be found through our online member directory.

CNJG’s first-ever Policy Agenda that includes our approach to the policy work, and five policy priorities.

Foundation leaders have a unique opportunity to serve as powerful champions of their missions. Partnering with your grantees can amplify your impact. The following guide is designed to help you start having an honest conversation in the boardroom; a conversation about your foundation’s goals, approach, and, most importantly, vision for the future.

Sample board committee descriptions, including roles and responsibilities of committee members