Can we talk about...? A podcast on leading for racial equity in philanthropy · Philanthropy Northwest

Mauri Ingram and Esra Khalil on moving from scarcity to abundance

·55 min·3 clips

Mauri says the leadership team reorganized planning so equity could shape the budget before decisions were final.

Season three of Can We Talk About? is shaped by the guide Toward Transformation and by a cohort of 20 community philanthropy organizations that spent over a decade working together on racial equity. Mara Zasfaha opens the season with that frame and keeps the conversation close to the messiness of real work. Values come up again and again as the starting point. The basic idea is simple: where values sit is where resources should be easiest to find. That turns the conversation away from scarcity talk and toward a more grounded sense of abundance. The guests talk about community love as a reason to commit, not as a slogan. They also stay honest about the cost, because time is limited. What changes is what an organization decides to prioritize. The conversation makes it clear that prioritization cannot be handed off to a checklist. Leaders and institutions have to do that work themselves. Another thread runs through the episode: what gets set aside so racial equity work has room to breathe. The answer is not only tools or programs. It is also mindset. The episode treats the idea that not everything has to be zero-sum as a real shift, not a neat phrase. Curiosity and an open mind are shown as values with actual consequences. That means the internal work matters right alongside the external work. The episode also refuses to make abundance sound easy. Constraints are real, and the tension between urgency and capacity stays in view the whole time. Even so, the discussion keeps coming back to the same point: if philanthropy is meant to serve communities, then equity work cannot sit at the edge. It has to be part of how an organization spends time, builds relationships, and decides what matters. The result is a calm but pointed conversation about what transformation asks of people who already know the system from the inside.

As heard by us

A grounded look at equity, abundance, and the choices that shape meaningful change.

The conversation frames racial equity in philanthropy as a question of values before dollars, and it stays grounded in the choices leaders make about what to prioritize and what to release.

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Why you'd press play

If you want a values-first conversation about leading for racial equity in philanthropy, start here.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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