ABOUT EQUITY & SOCIAL CHANGE
The Minneapolis Foundation invests its community resources to increase social, economic, and racial equity in our community. Our goal is to ensure everyone has the power to build a positive future for themselves, their families, and their communities.
To do so, we invest in efforts to transform education, promote economic vitality, and build social capital.We consider the strategies we fund to create lasting social change,
which we define according to a framework created by the Women's Funding
Network (and adapted with their permission). This framework is titled
The Five Shifts of Social Change.
Definitions of equity that help guide our Community Grantmaking decisions.
Equity
“Equity is society's commitment to meet people where they are and provide for the resources needed to enable them to achieve at their highest levels. Equity is about respecting each person's inherent worth and acknowledging that the primary infrastructures of our society have failed to do so.”
Quote by David Dodson, MDC, Inc. Conference on Community Philanthropy and Racial Equity in the American South.
Racial Equity
Racial equity is the state in which race and ethnicity no longer adversely shape an individual’s or group’s experience with power, access to opportunity, treatment and outcomes. Systems including education, employment, justice, etc., do not perform equally well for different racial and ethnic groups, because racial identity still predicts, in a statistical sense, how groups fare. To achieve racial equity, active measures must be taken to close the gaps in these systems.
Social Equity
Social equity means Minneapolis residents have fair and equal access to livelihood, education, healthcare, resources, and other social securities; full participation in the political and cultural life of the community; self-determination in meeting fundamental needs; and equal status and rights under the law. To achieve social equity, measures must be taken to eliminate enforced social class and unjustified discrimination in systems, based on unchangeable parts of a person’s identity, such as race, gender, age, place, sexual orientation, origin, class, or income.
Economic Equity
Economic equity is the state in which goods and incomes are fairly distributed among all Minneapolis residents. Currently, large differences exist in relative incomes for people of different races, ethnicities, and gender. To achieve economic equity, actions must be taken to eliminate poverty and differences in income currently sanctioned by systems, policies, and institutions, and then replaced with systems that produce equal opportunity for all to achieve the American dream of prosperity in return for hard work and a universal system of support that includes an adequate safety net for those in need.
Five Shifts of Social Change
The Minneapolis Foundation has adapted the following Five Shifts of Social Change, modified from the Women’s Funding Network Making the Case evaluation tool, to describe the strategic process used to advance racial, social and economic equity.
They provide a framework for planning, categorizing and measuring the impact of advancing social, racial or economic equity.
Applicants will be asked to choose one of the Five Shifts of Social Change as your primary strategy to advance social, racial and economic equity in Minneapolis.
Shift in Behavior – People are behaving differently in the community or larger society because of some changes in attitude.
Shift in Definition – The issue is defined differently in the community or larger society.
Shift in Engagement – More people in the community or larger society are engaged. Critical mass has been reached.
Shift in Policy – An institutional, organizational, or legislative policy or practice has changed.
Maintaining Past Progress– Past progress has been maintained, generally in the face of opposition.