How to Mobilize Philanthropy to Advance Racial Equity? A Call to Action

Only 3% of the 1,904 submissions to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s historic competition for a single grant of US$100 million, 100&Change, proposed work to address racial equity in the United States. Through a close examination of these submissions, this 2018 Samuel V. Westerfield lecture presents a taxonomy of the work of nonprofits working to address racial equity and an analysis of the weaknesses in their submitted applications. The lecture concludes these applications would have been stronger if there were greater engagement between social sector organizations and academic economists. The lecture issues a call to action for economists to communicate beyond an academic audience, to form partnerships with nonprofit organizations, and to move beyond applied economics to translational economics