Greg Wilson on Racialization in the Nonprofit Sector

Taylor [00:00:04] Hello, and thanks for joining us for the Poverty Research and Policy podcast from the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I’m Nateya Taylor. For this episode, we are going to be talking with Dr. Greg Wilson about his recent paper titled “An Invisible Impediment to Progress Perceptions of Racialization in the Nonprofit Sector.” Wilson is an Assistant Professor at The Ohio State University and a previous IRP Graduate Research Fellow and Dissertation Fellow. He is interested in understanding how, why, and in what ways the nonprofit sector is racialized and how this system impacts the work of nonprofits led by people of color, particularly those led by African Americans. Greg, thanks for being here today.

Wilson [00:00:54] Yeah, it’s good to be with you. Thanks for inviting me.

Taylor [00:00:57] I would like to start our conversation by asking, how do you define Black led organizations, also known as BLOs?

Wilson [00:01:05] Yeah. Thanks so much for this question. And this is really one of the most important parts of my work because when I first started studying. The nonprofit sector, I noticed that there was not a clear sort of definition of what constituted a Black led organization. And, you know, one of the reasons why is because organizations are not asked to define themselves, on the basis of race when they become incorporated as a nonprofit organization. I mean, there are some signals and some hints about the kind of work that they do, but it’s not kind of definitive. And incidentally, the inability to kind of discuss organizations on the basis of race has probably been a significant impediment from understanding the experiences of organizations led by people of color. And so, for me, this operationalization point about how to define an organization as Black led was really, really an important part of this work. And so for me, and for the purposes of this work, I define Black led organizations as an organization that is led by an executive director and the majority of full time employees who identify as African-American.

Taylor [00:02:26] Moving on what frameworks does your understanding of racialization stem from to examine blows, and how does this framework help us understand the experiences of Black leaders working in non-profits?

Wilson [00:02:40] So, this is an important question too I mean, I am a trained sociologist at Wisconsin, PhD in sociology. And so much of what I study, draws upon classic sociological theories, particularly in the area of race. And so for this particular project, I drew upon a lot of those theories, you know, most prominently in this paper, I use Victor Ray’s theory of racialized organizations, which is, a relatively recent theoretical framework that helps us kind of understand how organizations are racialized in ways that disadvantage people of color. And so for the purposes of this project, I extended race theory of racialized organizations to the nonprofit sector experiences of Black led organizations and use it as a lens to kind of begin thinking about what the experiences of these organizations look like across a number of different areas. And so, the reason why this framework is so useful is because it basically serves as kind of a lens that shines kind of a light on the experiences of Black led organizations that might typically be seen as, race neutral or, or uninteresting in some ways. And so by using this framework, it provides a signal. In some ways, I mean, that’s what theoretical frameworks do. They help you sort of think about issues, that might otherwise seem uninteresting or insignificant, but they shine that light to say, okay, these are, some of the experiences that in this case, Black led organizations are having. And here’s how we can interrogate them through a racial lens in a way that kind of sheds light on the challenges that they experience.

Taylor [00:04:56] In your study, you chose to examine BLOs in Madison, Wisconsin. Why did you choose Madison as your place of study?

Wilson [00:05:05] Thanks for this question. And, I love that BLOs just kind of like rolls off the tongue because, again, as I said, you know, in the first question, I don’t know that there is a, standard, you know, definition or understanding of what constitutes a Black led organization. So it’s nice that to hear BLOs is kind of, you know, gaining some steam as an acronym even if only in this conversation. But the reason why I chose Madison is, is pretty straightforward. I mean, on the surface, it obviously makes sense because I was in Madison. So in sociology we would call that a convenient sample. But this was more than just a convenience sample. The decision to study Madison resulted from talking to people on the ground and, you know, basically hearing about the experiences of Black led organizations that seem to be quite unique, that seem to be very different from white led organizations. And so Madison kind of emerged as kind of an interesting case. You know, the other thing, given that Black people, are facing a number of structural barriers in Madison, as evidenced by some people might see as controversial, but, a really sort of eye opening report called Race to Equity, that kind of illuminated a lot of these racial disparities that existed in Madison. That was a significant factor in selecting Madison. Also, Black led organizations, are few and far between in Madison. And so, just from a sociological standpoint, it would stand to reason that they they might be experiencing some level of marginalization in the city. So the racial dynamics of the city, the convenience, of of being physically in Madison were two significant catalysts for studying Black led organizations in Madison.

Taylor [00:07:13] What methods did you use to examine how BLOs and Madison perceive racialization?

Wilson [00:07:21] Yeah. So for me, this is also an important question because I operate from the perspective that questions drive methods. And so when I began this work, I didn’t have a particular method in mind, of course. Inclined towards mixed methods with, with a, with a particular interest in qualitative methods because of what they could tell us about the, the deep sort of intimate experiences of people navigating the social world. For this project, I used qualitative interviews. That were part of a two year qualitative study, of Black led organizations in Madison. And and I use these interviews because rather than, use secondary data or even survey data to kind of document some of the experiences of organizations hearing directly from the leaders of these organizations was was key to kind of really getting a deep understanding of what their experiences were like within the nonprofit sector.

Taylor [00:08:28] From the qualitative interviews, there were five main findings. The first one was that BLOs were seen as community leaders to diminish agency. Can you go more in depth about what that means and how that came out in the interviews?

Wilson [00:08:44] Yeah, I mean, qualitative interviews are always it generates substantially more data than can be used in a research article, which is why most people who do qualitative work of this nature and writing books, which is something that I’m also thinking about, a little bit as well. But, you know, this idea that Black led organizations are seen as community leaders to diminish agency was an interesting finding because, you know, historically, community leader is not seen as kind of this negative thing. It’s seen as somebody who’s really actively engaged in their community to affect some level of social change. But in this particular study, community leader was seen as an illegitimate kind of nonprofit executive. And so there was kind of this distinction that was made. And so the idea that Black led organizations were seen as community leaders in the context of the Madison nonprofit sector meant that there were a set of expectations about what they could accomplish and what they kind of represented that was aimed at delegitimizing them as nonprofit executives who could effectively lead organizations and address a lot of the issues that were facing the people being served by their organizations. And so, in a very sort of interesting way, community leader was reappropriated within the sector in a way that limited the capacity of Black led organizations to navigate the nonprofit sector as legitimate nonprofit executives who were capable of leading organized nonprofits, consistent with the standard that was set in the sector.

Taylor [00:10:46] Your second finding states that funding is used to control and unequally distribute resources. You use the terms racialized control, racialized strings, and racialized finessse to explain this. Can you define each term and explain how BLOs experience each one.

Wilson [00:11:06] Yeah. So one of the things that’s always been very interesting to me about resource distribution and the nonprofit sector is it’s typically understood, as, you know, whether or not the white led organization is getting more funding than the Black led organization. And so that disparity becomes the story. The reason why qualitative interviews matter is because it allows us to kind of get a acquire a deeper understanding of kind of the processes and mechanisms that lead to those kinds of disparities that I just talked about. And so in this paper. My understanding or my sort of conception of of racialized control is how funders within the nonprofit sector establish these kinds of relationships with Black led organizations for the purposes of controlling the work that they do as organizations on behalf of the people that they serve. So you have a lot of funders who are, especially in a place like Madison, that’s sort of traditionally seen as a liberal bastion, where you have all of these folks who are interested in supporting causes that are associated with racial equity, which these organizations, take up. But they also use the access to, to resources, which in this case, money, as a way to kind of control the work that Black led organizations are engaged in. And that’s kind of related to this, this idea of what I call racialized strings. And so for me, racialized strings is about using the funding to pull the strings of the organization effectively. And so it it means that, you know, you’re dangling the prospect of funding over the heads of Black led organizations. And so there were many examples in the paper that I pointed to that kind of talked about, you know, what that looks like? Looks like philanthropic organizations being frustrated with Black led organizations speaking out on particular issues and demanding meetings with them to tell them that they are not satisfied with how they are speaking out on issues, in the city and using the funding as a string to kind of like pull that string in. And I should be very precise that speaking out on issues. I don’t want to make that point vague. What what I mean is that speaking out on issues that are affecting Black people, which kind of gives it that racialized, string, dimension, then, you know, the racialized finesse is another concept, that was interesting because one of the things that emerged from this work is Black led organizations understood that white led organizations who, by the way, had difficulty connecting with Black clients on the ground, often used a racialized finesse. They took on kind of, a more sensationalized discussion aimed at kind of finessing, as some of the respondents described, a finesse that increase the likelihood that they would be able to get funds from philanthropic organizations, that is, white led organizations engaging in this kind of racialized finesse and Black led organizations summarily. You know, thought to themselves that, look, these experiences are already very difficult. And so there’s really no reason to offer these kinds of sensationalized portraits aimed at only securing additional philanthropic dollars. By the way, for white led organizations that were not going to solve these problems anyway for a number of different reasons. And so this idea of, racialized control, racialized strings and the racialized finesse were important mechanisms that sought to disadvantage and marginalize Black led organizations in the Madison nonprofit sector.

Taylor [00:15:42] Your third finding is that there is a neoliberal demand for data to limit BLOs agency. And you use the term data trauma to emphasize this. What does this mean?

Wilson [00:15:57] Yeah. I mean, so this is an important point because. Just to take a step back. Black led organizations, in Madison are working on behalf of clients who are dealing with the multidimensional effects of poverty. And so I mentioned earlier on the, you know, the Race to Equity report that documented. Remarkable. Racial disparities across, you know, every conceivable area. You know, I mean, health, the criminal justice system education, income, unemployment, I mean, just devastating racial disparities. And I think anybody, who knows anything about Madison would be shocked to see. I mean, you have Black led organizations who are working on behalf of predominantly Black clients who are dealing with all of these issues. And so, even before the Black led organization becomes, a source of support, or even as they become a source of support, clients are frequently having to utilize government based services and white nonprofit services. Wherein they have to present themselves and their traumas. Before they can receive services, and so Black led organizations frequently discussed how their clients have to call all of these phone numbers. And, you know, part of this sort of routine of the discussion when they call is to present their traumas. They have to be inundated with these questions about their socioeconomic status, their various, kinds of domestic hardships. And so they’re constantly being inundated in this way that leads to them just basically giving up on those kinds of services, you know, in the public administration or the public affairs literature. They call that dealing with an administrative burden for Black led organizations. They were very, at least in this study, very cautious about inducing what I call data trauma. So the constant inundation of requests for clients to present all of their traumas in a way that is, in some ways dehumanizing for them, but also creates a barrier between the client and the entity that they are seeking assistance from by being sensitive to data trauma Black led organizations maximize their impact. Now the challenge, of course, with being sensitive to data trauma is that they don’t fall into line with the sector’s expectation about how to demonstrate the effectiveness of your organization or the programs that you’re having. And so it creates kind of a tension between Black led organizations and the sector itself, because they’re saying we want to present data that captures kind of the whole person and not these kinds of abstract data points that are only aimed at capturing the trauma of the people that they serve.

Taylor [00:19:35] You also found that collaboration was used as exploitation to diminish BLOs agency. How do BLOs experience this, and how does what you call racialized access tie into this?

Wilson [00:19:51] An axiom of the nonprofit sector is this idea that organizations are going to collaborate. And one of the reasons why that’s an expectation is that, you know, folks are like, well, there’s not a lot of money, so let’s collaborate, let’s maximize our impact. And some organizations have more capacity than others. And all of the other kind of common, refrains. But in in Madison, what became clear is that collaboration was used as a way to exploit access. And what I mean is that white led organizations dominate the landscape. The nonprofit landscape in Madison. But they have a very difficult time gaining access to clients because the predominantly Black clients have a mistrust of the white led organizations in Madison for a number of reasons, both historically but also from a contemporary perspective. And so in that way, the Black led organization in Madison becomes quite useful for for white led organizations. And so what ends up happening is that you have white led organizations that seek to collaborate with Black led organizations to gain access to that hard to reach population. But it’s not just that kind of what I call racialized access. It also ends up being an opportunity where why let organizations exploit the unique capacities of Black led organizations, their unique experiences, and their unique knowledge base about the experiences of the clients that they serve and the solutions that kind of result from that. And so you have a lot of instances in which Black led organizations find themselves on the short end of the collaboration stick by being forced to do all of this work, but then receive no credit for it in that way. And so it’s an interesting kind of dynamic because, you know, earlier on we talked about this idea that they’re seen as community leaders. And so the idea of them being seen as community leaders is an implicit negative commentary on their capacity. So this idea that they don’t have the capacity to be seen as legitimate nonprofit executives, but on the collaboration front, their capacity is completely recognized within the nonprofit sector because it is to the to the benefit of organizations that have difficulty gaining access to Black clients, who are the resources and in a lot of ways, within the nonprofit sector. I mean, the the very existence of a lot of these organizations, especially the kinds of antipoverty organizations that I’m talking about in this study, the very reason why they exist is because they are purportedly supporting. Clients who are dealing with the multidimensional effects of poverty. When it’s convenient for Black led organizations to be seen as having the capacity and all of these skills and relevant experiences, then they matter at that point.

Taylor [00:23:18] Your final finding is that whiteness is used as a credential for volunteering. How do BLOs experience this?

Wilson [00:23:27] So it’s Madison, Wisconsin. It’s a predominantly white city. And so that means that the volunteer base is going to be overwhelmingly white. And I argue that the volunteer base is structurally racialized because of that basic demographic fact. But also whites kind of have, you know, what some scholars have called biographical availability, where they just have the capacity to do more volunteering. And so, in the context of the Madison sector, whiteness becomes that credential for volunteering and that in that way. But it’s more complicated than just the existence of white people. So the challenge that Black led organizations face is that they’re dealing with a white volunteer base that lacks cultural competency. And the reason why cultural competency is important in the context of the work that Black led organizations do, is that they are dealing with clients who are dealing with all kinds of like issues. And so you want to make sure that you end up putting people in front of them who are going to have a unique appreciation for and understanding of the complicated experiences that they have. And so, you know, in this paper I talk about how white volunteers interact with Black led organizations in a manner that demonstrates that lack of cultural competency that could further harm the clients being served by Black led organizations. And so it also constrains the work of Black led organizations, because it more than just kind of doing their work, they end up having to then teach a white volunteer base that the clients being served by Black led organizations are not in these difficult positions because of some mistake that they made, but it is because of a larger structural, you know, roadblock that they face in society. And so that becomes a very difficult lift for Bled organizations.

Taylor [00:25:47] What research are you working on currently that will also give us more insights about BLOs?

Wilson [00:25:53] Well, thank you so much for that question. I am currently working on, a broader theoretical framework, theoretical explanation that I call the racialized non profit industrial complex. When people hear the idea of the industrial complex, you know, they probably are going to be hyperbolic in that kind of thing. But what I’m trying to suggest is that the nonprofit sector, as I understand it, as a racialized, nonprofit industrial complex RNIC is kind of a racialized social system. Consistent with the work of Eduardo Bonilla Silva that sorts the organizations into categories on the basis of race. And these are not just, you know, abstract categories. They are associated with a number of characteristics. And what I’m arguing in my work is that the differences between each category constitutes kind of the racial structure of the nonprofit sector in a way that helps us understand disparities across areas that is, leadership funding, data, collaboration and volunteering. And so what I argue is that within this racialized nonprofit industrial complex, there is a prescribed set of understanding associated with those key areas. And Black led organizations and white led organizations differ in their understanding of those areas in the way that I described, in this particular paper. And as I said, those differences constitute, the the racial structure. And it shows kind of the ways in which, Black led organizations in this case are disadvantaged. And so that’s a significant part of, the research that I’m undertaking right now. And there are other projects, as well, that I’m working on, but that’s kind of the big project, that I hope to see and press before the end of the year.

Taylor [00:28:12] And finally after conducting this research. What are some policy implications you would suggest to better the experiences of BLOs, not only in Madison but across other cities?

Wilson [00:28:24] Yeah. I mean, so one of the things. So to take to work backwards, you know what I believe and I have another case to kind of support this is that. Black led organizations are going to experience challenges, differentially, depending on where they are. So what we’re talking about today is just a small snapshot of the experiences of Black led organizations in Madison, Wisconsin. But this is part of a broader project, a four year study that compared the experiences of Black led organizations in Madison, Wisconsin and Montgomery, Alabama. So two really diametrically opposed, places that have very different experiences for Black led organizations. And so there’s definitely going to be some variation across cities. I mean, much like if you go to the, you know, to study this issue in the city of Chicago or even where I am in Columbus, Ohio, where I’m going to embark on a study, I say all that to suggest that there are some policy recommendations that I think could be useful. One, policy recommendation that is related to data is for us to begin thinking more carefully what constitutes effective data. So more than, requiring organizations to present abstract data points, we need to expand, our understanding of what constitutes effective data to allowing organizations to tell the story of their impact, in the lives of individuals. And that’s also connected to more equitable funding practices. So when we began expanding what constitutes effective data, that means that funders will make determinations about impact, not only not solely based on abstract data points, but considering the qualitative impact of the work done by organizations. I mean, Black led organizations are much more prone to telling stories about the work that they do. And if that’s not being captured in, you know, RFP request for proposals when they’re pursuing funding, it’s going to inherently place them at a disadvantage. And so I should also take a step back and say, you know, policy recommendations, especially as a as a professor in, a public affairs school, we’re thinking about these in terms of like what government can do. And I think that that’s different than what can happen at the sector level. There is some overlap. But, you know, in terms of like public policy recommendations where government controls funding, it could reform its application processes to more adequately kind of capture the work that Black led organizations are doing. The other things that I said previously apply more to the sector level. How can sector actors create the conditions that allow for Black led organizations to thrive across, these key areas? And so I use data, as an example, I also talked about. Funding. Another recommendation. Where collaboration is concerned is perhaps creating MoUs memorandums of understanding where collaboration is concerned to lay out very specifically what it is that a collaboration will look like. What does an effective partnership between, in this case, a Black led organization and a white led organization looks like so that at the end of a collaborative project, Black led organizations are not relegated to the sidelines, as as it were. You know, you know, the other thing within the sector, we have to do a better job of recognizing that leadership is quite dynamic. And so there is some advantage of the community organizer mantra to ensuring that Black led organizations have success, and it means that they are more deeply knowledgeable about the issues that are being faced by people within communities. They have a more activist orientation, towards them, that could actually get things done. And so, recognizing the dynamic nature of leadership within the nonprofit sector, I think is something that’s really important.

Taylor [00:32:56] Greg, thank you so much for taking the time to share more insights about your research on BLOs and also your policy recommendations. I enjoyed talking to you today.

Wilson [00:33:08] Thank you so much for the invitation, and I can’t wait to see where this work goes even further.

Taylor [00:33:16] Thanks so much to Dr. Greg Wilson. He joined us to discuss his recent paper titled “An Invisible Impediment to Progress Perceptions of Racialization in the Nonprofit Sector.” You can find a link to his paper in the program notes for this episode. The production of this podcast was supported in part by funding from the US Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. But views expressed by our speakers don’t necessarily represent the opinions or policies of that office or of any other sponsor, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Music for the episode is by 808xri. Thanks for listening.