A pivotal moment in the Elmina B. Sewall Foundation’s journey to center community voice and equity was its decision to use an open call to bring on six new board members representing more diverse community perspectives. The board also transitioned to a model of a governing board rather than a working board, moving away from day-to-day grant decisions and operations.
Here, board members reflect on struggles and successes in the process of transition, and the tools that supported them along the way. We spoke with three members of the 2021 cohort of new board members, each of whom had previously served on the staff or board of a Sewall grantee organization:
• Jono Anzalone, Board Chair
• Leslie Hill, Equity Committee Chair
• Amara Ifeji, Governance Committee Chair
The below insights, edited and condensed, are drawn from their remarks.
Culture was the hardest thing to change in the Sewall Foundation board, and the most important.
Anzalone: Initially I relied heavily on the bylaws, but bylaws are malleable. I quickly realized that culture was by far a much more secret-sauce ingredient to shape, and the hardest, especially for a new cohort of board members recruited under the auspices of all these amazing things, like advancing racial equity and decolonizing board practices. It took me a good six months to recognize that they were aspirational. We had so much work to do.
Ifeji: The six new board members had a clearer understanding of the foundation’s board as a governing board. The other five members were on the board at a time when it was more of a working board that had a say in granting and things of that sort. That switch was difficult; it’s harder to learn when you have to unlearn. But almost six years later, I feel really good about where we’ve gotten to.
Hill: From my perspective, what we encountered was a culture that was relatively hierarchical, among the board and between the board and staff. Some of us who came on were curious about that. If we were going to achieve some of those aspirations, then the hierarchy might not work so well.
The equity committee was new in the committee structure of the board. The committee began to think about what we would need to offer as things to think about as we go through our work, build our relationships with each other, and build our relationships with staff members.
A co-created visual theory of change laid the groundwork for culture change.
Ifeji: When you’re operating within different epistemologies as people, you’re bound to have friction. When we first came on the board, some of that friction was felt when it came to decision making, when folks were seeing things differently. Now we have something, our visual theory of change, that is very concrete — this is how we do our work, and there’s so much less friction that happens. We’re able to have better conversations around decision making, because we know where it is everybody’s coming from, because that’s been explicitly articulated. And it’s something that we also have a stake in as well, given how participatory and collaborative the process of crafting the theory of change was.
Anzalone: I remember when we were sitting in Lewiston having World Café–style conversations around the theory of change. Some members were asking, “Why are we doing this?” Fast-forward to today, and it’s one of the laminated sheets that we carry around during board meetings, and it has our decision-making matrix on the back.
The board had the basic ingredients of many boards, including proximity to wealth and proximity to privilege. No matter how well-intentioned somebody is, they carry that privileged perspective with them into a boardroom when they’re talking about decision-making. That change – to making decisions based on mission, vision, and alignment with our values – was fun to see happen over a relatively short amount of time.
If we're really interested in power sharing, then instead of thinking about all the ways it could go wrong, think about all the ways it could go right.
It was also important to establish shared norms and language around power.
Anzalone: Early on, difficult moments around board dynamics were popping up. Working through those challenges, we looked at things like acceptable norms and behaviors and where we wanted to head in having “power with” one another versus “power over” one another. It helped to accelerate some of the elements that are baked into the theory of change, but it took the board really grappling with some power dynamics internally.
That had implications on how we were working with communities. I’ll never forget a specific example. We had our values-aligned investment committee, where we look at the 10 percent set aside from our corpus that goes toward social enterprise activities in Maine and Wabanaki communities. Continuously, the discussion was about, well, that’s a below market-rate return. We were using neoliberal capitalistic language to suggest that we were a bank. Over the last three years, that language isn’t being used anymore. More often than not, when we talk about holistic evaluation of a partnership with communities, the question is: What happens if we don’t do this? What are the social costs?
Hill: Fairly early on, some of us attended an Equity in the Center workshop. It was about boards, and it gave a lot to think about, particularly about culture, the way governance might be nurtured to reflect our equity values, and relationship building.
Changing how power operates is an ongoing journey.
Anzalone: I want to envision a governance model that hardwires shared leadership in a way that is akin to employee stock owner plans: this idea that employee-owned companies have better outcomes, better cultures, measurably better ecosystems for their teams to thrive in. The nonprofit space has failed miserably at creating hardwired joint structures where those closest to the issues are built into the governance structures.
If we’re really interested in power sharing, then instead of thinking about all the ways it could go wrong, think about all the ways it could go right. It’s one of the last miles in nonprofit government structures in structurally adjusting the power dynamics between board and management.
Hill: Every year Sewall used to do an evaluation of the executive director, an evaluation of the board. We’ve been stepping back and revising that. It’s still a process. The same questions asked year after year, and often having been derived from an old hierarchical relationship between the board and the executive director, were not really giving us very much information. So the board is still in a process of thinking, how can we do that better, in a way that offers something that’s more generative both for the staff team, but also for the board? What do we need to be doing differently that would support the work that the staff does?
A shift from a focus on risk to a focus on trust was key.
Anzalone: We have staff who are closest to the issues. They’re closest to frontline communities. They should be making decisions. I think we spent 15 minutes max talking about approving a five-year budget, because we trust their expertise. This would have never happened in year one.
There’s also trust around how the board now engages with Gabriela [Alcalde, Sewall’s executive director]. Frankly, she doesn’t have to spend a ton of time managing a board. There’s an open invitation when we do have curiosities, but there is a distinct operating advantage — it is this “power with” dynamic.
Hill: Shifting perspective from a chief concern about risk to looking at decision making as a way of building trust has been huge. It has informed our financial decisions, not only investments, but whether to do multiyear grants budgets and to go from three-year to five-year multiyear grants budgets. And it informs our relationship with partners.
The board recently had two opportunities to offer funding in response to particular circumstances in Maine. One was funding proposals from a variety of non-Native organizations working in partnership with Wabanaki Tribal governments and nonprofits. We’ve been building our relationship with Wabanaki Tribal governments and nonprofits as well as with the non-Native organizations partnering with Wabanaki, and they came to us with several proposals from non-Native organizations working with Wabanaki on land return. Our response was, “Are you working together? Are you building a comprehensive view of what you want to happen and pulling forward the different pieces that will make that work? What is the guidance from Wabanaki partners on all of this?” That was Sewall saying, “We’re not going to tell you what to do and how to do it. We’re going to encourage you to work with each other to do this.” They came back with a beautiful, comprehensive proposal that responded to a variety of needs, centered Wabanaki perspectives, and moved from having competing proposals to a collaborative approach that holds collective work.
There’s another instance that had to do with responding to community needs in regard to the operations of ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] in Maine. Sewall has been funding a variety of nonprofits that are led by and serve immigrant communities in different parts of the state. A couple of those are hub organizations that have connections with many other organizations. A group of nonprofits came to us with a proposal to create an infrastructure that would serve both the organizations as well as individuals. Looking at what they designed, we were able to say, “Okay, here’s money. You figure out how to distribute it.” Our intent was to respond to this quickly and with significant resources. We also began to talk to other funders to create a more comprehensive potential for responding to this and other emergencies.
What gives me hope are the efforts that Sewall and other funders and some folks outside of philanthropy are making to really intentionally call people in. We are asking for people to think about ways they can actively build relationships and trust so that we can respond to the circumstances that people are faced with today. Collaboration is where my hope lies.
Jono Anzalone, Board Chair
Leslie Hill, Equity Committee Chair
