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Wealth inequality is higher in the United States than in almost any other developed country and has risen for much of the past 60 years. Racial wealth inequities have persisted for generations, reflecting the long-standing effects of racist policies, not individual intentions or deficits. In a nation that professes that those who work hard and play by the rules should be rewarded with social and economic upward mobility, these persistent disparities are a stark reminder that, as a society, we have not achieved this goal. - Urban Institute

Newly added content:

RESOURCES
Listen:
• Valarie Kaur on Sage Warrior
Websites:
• Sonoma County Agenda for Action
• Trust-based Philanthropy

UNITED WAY OF THE WINE COUNTRY VIDEOS
Conversations on Economic, Race & Social Equity Part 2

UNITED WAY OF THE WINE COUNTRY VIDEOS
Conversations on Economic, Race & Social Equity Part 1

CONVERSATIONS ON ECONOMIC, RACE & SOCIAL EQUITY PART 1

United Way of the Wine Country’s President & CEO, Lisa G. Carreño is interviewed by Laurie Lynn Hogan, MBA, Principal Steward, The Connection Company about the new direction of the organization, why United Way of the Wine Country has shifted focus, and how programs like 2-1-1 and Earn It, Keep It, $ave It support that shift.

BITE-SIZED SAMPLES OF CONVERSATION 1

We need to get to the root causes of what makes it easy for some to have everything and for many to have...

We need this change now because we have no other choice, but it is potentially the hardest because...

Learn with us

Unlike the official poverty measure which primarily accounts for the cost of food, the Real Cost Measure...

Community-Centric Fundraising is a body of thought - focused on principles of economic, race...

Is all this true or is this fake news? Open your eyes and look around. Walk in the neighborhood that...

2-1-1 provides a safe space for those in need to access the vital, culturally appropriate resources...

It is about creating belonging, recognizing and appreciating the assets of everybody in the...

The people with the fewest resources are most affected by the challenges we’ve faced in our community over...

It costs so much to be poor in America. People living on the margins know how to make every penny...

Just throwing a lot of money at a whole host of social problems hasn't changed them...

 In truth what’s happening is that there’s all kinds of power and opportunity available when...

Thanks to supporters like the County of Sonoma, EKS provides life changing refunds to help...

United Way of the Wine Country strives to create a sense of belonging to a cause that is greater than...

We have a much more solid understanding now about how economic and race equity play...

 When we say we’re not just your grandparents’ United Way, what we mean is that we’re a United Way...

My advice is follow your heart. Join the conversation. Don't be afraid of what you don't know...

It has been well researched and over decades that this free tax service, which is provided by…

Put simply, community centrism is putting the community that we want to serve in the center of everything...

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CONVERSATIONS ON ECONOMIC, RACE & SOCIAL EQUITY PART 2

United Way of the Wine Country’s President & CEO, Lisa G. Carreño continues the conversation with Laurie Lynn Hogan, MBA, Principal Steward, The Connection Company about the new direction of the organization and how Community-Centric Fundraising provides the framework for achieving the organization’s mission.

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RESOURCES

United Way adopted Community Centric Fundraising (CCF) principles to transform local philanthropy and nonprofit management. CCF promotes fundraising grounded in equity and social justice, emphasizing collaboration over competition and advocating for the holistic well-being of communities. We aim to shift from competitive and extractive practices to racially, economically, and socially equitable norms by engaging in deep conversations with nonprofits, funders, businesses, and political leaders to raise understanding and support for CCF. Ultimately, our goal is nothing short of transforming how we do fundraising and community investment in Sonoma County. 

Our approach includes building relationships with community-based organizations, especially those led by people of color, raising and providing flexible funding, and investing in the capacity-building needs of our organization and our partners’. We are also advocating for policies and practices that promote equity and inclusion in philanthropy and nonprofit management.

These resources have been pulled together to support the continued collaboration focused on developing Sonoma County’s Community of Practice and to more deeply implement CCF principles that shift fundraising and community investment practices from transactional to deeply relational.

LISTEN

  • https://sceneonradio.org/seeing-white/

    Just what is going on with white people? Police shootings of unarmed African Americans. Acts of domestic terrorism by white supremacists. The renewed embrace of raw, undisguised white-identity politics. Unending racial inequity in schools, housing, criminal justice, and hiring. Some of this feels new, but in truth it’s an old story.

    Why? Where did the notion of “whiteness” come from? What does it mean? What is whiteness for?

    Scene on Radio host and producer John Biewen took a deep dive into these questions, along with an array of leading scholars and regular guest Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika, in this fourteen-part documentary series, released between February and August 2017. The series editor is Loretta Williams.

  • https://www.ibramxkendi.com/be-antiracist-podcast

    Be Antiracist imagines what an antiracist society might look like and how we all can play an active role in building one. Dr. Ibram X. Kendi is the author of How to Be an Antiracist, the book that spurred a nationwide conversation redefining what it means to be antiracist, and in this podcast, he guides listeners how they can identify and reject the racist systems hiding behind racial inequity and injustice. Alongside notable guests, Dr. Kendi continues his journey towards building a just and equitable world and proposes how we can all help create it with him.

  • http://www.theethicalrainmaker.com/

    In the United States alone, philanthropy is a $427 billion dollar industry, of which 68% comes from individual donors. Yet the practices, theories, and foundation of modern philanthropy and fundraising often ignore the ways in which the industry perpetuates harm. 

    From grounding practices in donor experiences instead of a community's needs, to a lack of political, race, class, and power analyses, traditional fundraising practices often perpetuate the very injustices the nonprofit sector wishes to end. The Ethical Rainmaker is a podcast that hosts authentic conversations grappling with the questions that we don’t often ask in the nonprofit world.

    Join our host, Michelle Shireen Muri, as we explore some of the practices that undermine our missions and navigate the way forward with today’s resisters, reimaginers, and the re-creators of the Third Sector. It’s time to think differently.

  • Unlocking Us with Brené Brown

    Civil rights leader Valarie Kaur is building a movement to reclaim love as a force for justice, healing, and transformation in America. In this episode, we talk about what led Valarie to courageously explore Sikh ancestral wisdom, how her ancestors’ truths parallel what I’ve learned from the research, and how we need both the eyes of a sage and the heart of a warrior to live a fully meaningful life.

BOOKS

  • by Robin DiAngelo

    The New York Times best-selling book exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged and how these reactions maintain racial inequality.

    In this “vital, necessary, and beautiful book” (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and “allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to 'bad people'" (Claudia Rankine). Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue.

    In this in-depth exploration, DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.

  • by Regina Jackson and Saira Rao

    An instant New York Times Bestseller!

    A no-holds-barred guidebook aimed at white women who want to stop being nice and start dismantling white supremacy from the team behind Race2Dinner and the documentary film, Deconstructing Karen.

    It's no secret that white women are conditioned to be "nice," but did you know that the desire to be perfect and to avoid conflict at all costs are characteristics of white supremacy culture?

    As the founders of Race2Dinner, an organization which facilitates conversations between white women about racism and white supremacy, Regina Jackson and Saira Rao have noticed white women's tendency to maintain a veneer of niceness, and strive for perfection, even at the expense of anti-racism work.

    In this book, Jackson and Rao pose these urgent questions: how has being "nice" helped Black women, Indigenous women and other women of color? How has being "nice" helped you in your quest to end sexism? Has being "nice" earned you economic parity with white men? Beginning with freeing white women from this oppressive need to be nice, they deconstruct and analyze nine aspects of traditional white woman behavior—from tone-policing to weaponizing tears—that uphold white supremacy society, and hurt all of us who are trying to live a freer, more equitable life.

    White Women is a call to action to those of you who are looking to take the next steps in dismantling white supremacy. Your white supremacy. If you are in fact doing real anti-racism work, you will find few reasons to be nice, as other white people want to limit your membership in the club. If you are not ticking white people off on a regular basis, you are not doing it right.

  • by Ibram X. Kendi

    #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning comes a “groundbreaking” (Time) approach to understanding and uprooting racism and inequality in our society and in ourselves—now updated, with a new preface.

    “The most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind.”—The New York Times

    ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—The New York Times Book Review, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Shelf Awareness, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews

    Antiracism is a transformative concept that reorients and reenergizes the conversation about racism—and, even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. At its core, racism is a powerful system that creates false hierarchies of human value; its warped logic extends beyond race, from the way we regard people of different ethnicities or skin colors to the way we treat people of different sexes, gender identities, and body types. Racism intersects with class and culture and geography and even changes the way we see and value ourselves. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes listeners through a widening circle of antiracist ideas—from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilities—that will help listeners see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves.

    Kendi weaves an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science with his own personal story of awakening to antiracism. This is an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond the awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a just and equitable society.

  • by Greg Sarris (Sonoma County Resident)

    A gently powerful memoir about deepening your relationship with your homeland.

    For the first time in more than twenty-five years, Greg Sarris—whose novels are esteemed alongside those of Louise Erdrich and Stephen Graham Jones—presents a book about his own life. In Becoming Story he asks: What does it mean to be truly connected to the place you call home—to walk where innumerable generations of your ancestors have walked? And what does it mean when you dedicate your life to making that connection even deeper? Moving between his childhood and the present day, Sarris creates a kaleidoscopic narrative about the forces that shaped his early years and his eventual work as a tribal leader. He considers the deep past, historical traumas, and possible futures of his homeland. His acclaimed storytelling skills are in top form here, and he charts his journey in prose that is humorous, searching, and profound.

  • by Valarie Kaur

    #1 LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER • FINALIST FOR THE DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE • An urgent manifesto and a dramatic memoir of awakening, this is the story of revolutionary love.

    “In a world stricken with fear and turmoil, Valarie Kaur shows us how to summon our deepest wisdom.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love

     
    How do we love in a time of rage? How do we fix a broken world while not breaking ourselves? Valarie Kaur—renowned Sikh activist, filmmaker, and civil rights lawyer—describes revolutionary love as the call of our time, a radical, joyful practice that extends in three directions: to others, to our opponents, and to ourselves. It enjoins us to see no stranger but instead look at others and say: You are part of me I do not yet know. Starting from that place of wonder, the world begins to change: It is a practice that can transform a relationship, a community, a culture, even a nation.

WEBSITES

  • https://unitedwaysca.org/realcost/

    United Ways of California, in partnership with California’s 29 local United Ways, is proud to release How Much it Costs to Struggle: The Real Cost Measure in California 2023, our new study on what it takes to make ends meet in California.

    Unlike the official poverty measure which primarily accounts for the cost of food, the Real Cost Measure factors the costs of housing, food, health care, child care, transportation and other basic needs to reveal what it really costs to live in California.

  • https://communitycentricfundraising.org/

    Community-Centric Fundraising is a fundraising model that is grounded in equity and social justice. We prioritize the entire community over individual organizations, foster a sense of belonging and interdependence, present our work not as individual transactions but holistically, and encourage mutual support between nonprofits.

  • https://belonging.berkeley.edu/

    Othering is the problem of our time. Belonging is the solution.

    The Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley advances groundbreaking approaches to transforming structural marginalization and inequality. We are scholars, organizers, communicators, researchers, artists, and policymakers committed to building a world where all people belong.

  • https://www.policylink.org/about-us/equity-manifesto

    The Equity Manifesto has been inspired by the work, commitments, insights, and resolve of the many partners with whom PolicyLink has shared this journey. Please use it, share it, and reflect on it in your lives, your work, your struggle. Just please don’t change it.

  • https://nonprofitaf.com/

    Vu Le (“voo lay”) is a writer, speaker, vegan, Pisces, and the former Executive Director of RVC, a nonprofit in Seattle that promotes social justice by developing leaders of color, strengthening organizations led by communities of color, and fostering collaboration among diverse communities.

  • https://www.hatogether.org/agenda-for-action

    The Agenda for Action (AFA) is a call to action for leadership throughout Sonoma County to come together to invest sustainably in protecting and supporting the wellbeing of the community, and specifically the community members who have been most impacted by an interlocking ecosystem of systemic inequities. 

  • https://www.trustbasedphilanthropy.org/

    The trust-based philanthropy movement is fundamentally reimagining the role funders can have in building a more just and equitable society.

OTHER

  • https://communitycentricfundraising.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/CCF_Aligned_Actions_List.pdf

    The work to integrate race, equity, and social justice into fundraising is ongoing and will require lots of discussions and experimentations. However, below are examples of things you can start implementing at your organization. Use this list to plan when and how you’ll start applying these strategies. Decide whether you have the freedom and resources to enact each strategy now, or if you need to set medium to long-term timelines. Either way, make a plan and try stuff out. Also, capture any lessons you learn that may be helpful to the field.

  • https://oag.ca.gov/ab3121/report

    On June 29, 2023, the Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans issued its final report to the California Legislature. The final report surveys the ongoing and compounding harms experienced by African Americans as a result of slavery and its lingering effects on American society today, and proposes a comprehensive reparations plan in satisfaction of the direction set forth by the Legislature in AB 3121 (2020). For ease of reference, the complete report, executive summary, and each individual chapter are available for download via the links on this page.