Equity
Although PEG has always favored clients and leaders with a deep commitment to vulnerable populations -- e.g., low-income people, people of color, immigrants, LGBT people -- over the past few years PEG has redoubled its equity focus, seeking out more partners who (like PEG) explicitly place equity at the “heart” of their work.
Illustrative equity-focused work:
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: Equity Learning Lab
PEG partnered with Learning For Action to develop and implement the Equity Learning Lab initiative funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The Equity Learning Lab aims to achieve outcomes at multiple levels: individual participants, participating Transforming Health and Health Care Systems’–funded partner organizations, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Transforming Health and Health Care Systems team and focus area, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as an organization, and the broader fields of health care systems, philanthropy, and health equity-advancing nonprofit organizations.
PolicyLink
PEG has supported equity movement leader PolicyLink to gather feedback from leading equity organizations, policy makers, business leaders, funders, and others nationally, in service of helping PolicyLink determine its most value-added roles within the equity movement going forward. PEG also has supported PolicyLink national partners MIT CoLab and the Emerald Cities Collaborative to develop comprehensive organization sustainability plans.
The San Francisco Foundation
PEG consultants supported the San Francisco Foundation in the development and implementation of a comprehensive new foundation-wide strategy focused on racial and economic, culminating in reorganized program areas, grant-making priorities, advocacy priorities, and more, in service of reducing racial inequities within and across the region.
The San Francisco Foundation published two case studies and an article detailing their strategy development experience, including their work with PEG:
Greater Milwaukee Foundation
PEG worked with the Greater Milwaukee Foundation to develop a racial equity framework, resulting in shifts in the foundation’s program areas, grant-making, convening, advocacy, communications, and operations. PEG helped GMF develop a framework for racial equity and inclusion, featuring targeted strategies within the interconnected and mutually reinforcing ideas of Connected People and Thriving Communities. Fundamental to this commitment is employing culturally responsive practice by inviting people to be at the center of decisions that affect them and ensuring their ability to participate in designing, building and implementing specific strategies to address the conditions or systems they seek to change.
CFLeads
PEG joined forces with CFLeads (a capacity building organization for community foundations nationally) and PolicyLink to support design of CFLeads Equity Network. The Equity Network is comprised of community foundation teams who are working to advance equity in their communities while also helping to shape the practice and thinking of the broader community foundation field.
Equity Continuum
Public Equity Group worked with PolicyLink and CFLeads to develop the initial version of the Equity Continuum for a national network of community foundations focused on racial equity. The Equity Continuum has been used by several cohorts of community foundations as part of CFLeads’ multi-year leadership development initiative.
In collaboration with partners, and with support from the James Irvine Foundation, Public Equity Group is reimagining the Equity Continuum as a toolkit for social sector organizations in California (PEG’s “home” until 2019) and nationally.
The toolkit (free, public-facing website forthcoming in 2022) helps organizations advance equity in one or more organizational dimensions, through case studies (written in collaboration with partners, or drawn from publicly available materials) and with the aid of tools (actionable and concise distillations of best practices and leading equitable approaches).
Case study examples:
Find a synopsis of the Equity Continuum in this article from The Bridgespan Group, and an overview of the Equity Continuum concept here.
Our Work in Puerto Rico
PEG is committed to supporting social sector organizations in Puerto Rico. PEG has worked with leading grassroots and grass-tops organizations on the island, including: the Center for a New Economy, Espacios Abiertos, Ayuda Legal Puerto Rico, Kilómetro Cero.
PEG has also worked with Open Society Foundations’ Open Places Initiative in Puerto Rico and with the Open Society Foundations’ Puerto Rico Project.
Learn more about our work in Puerto Rico.