Marianne Glick, a director of philanthropy and volunteer service in central Indiana, remembers when charitable giving by foundations was about imposing donor ideas on people who needed a hand.
The chairwoman of the Glick Family Foundation board said she is grateful that a new approach is being implemented. Paying attention to what is needed in communities is a key component of trust-based giving, a concept in which funders and grantees work together as partners.
“Historically, philanthropists have come into communities, thought they had a good idea, and then imposed their ideas on the community,” Glick said. “This is what my grant is for. You may not have asked for this, but this is what I will give it for.’ It’s not really about talking to the people who live in that neighborhood.”
Founded 40 years ago by Gilck’s parents, Eugene and Marilyn Glick, the foundation has given more than $275 million to charitable causes.
This summer, Glick Philanthropies awarded $1.87 million in grants to 34 community organizations through its Glick Fund at the Community Foundation of Central Indiana.
Organizations were grouped into three categories:
◗ supportive arts and creative expression;
◗ advancement of education;
◗ helping those in need and promoting self-sufficiency.
Arte Mexicano en Indiana, a grassroots organization with a mission to elevate Mexican culture, became the first recipient of Glick’s funding. The nonprofit was awarded $21,500 for a visual artist mentoring project.
Conceptual artist and event promoter Eduardo Luna founded Arte Mexicano en Indiana in 2019.
“We created an organization called Arte Mexicano en Indiana to make sure that the child who is born in the United States to parents from Mexico will see that there is a connection,” Luna said. “There’s an organization that they can look up and find out a little bit about their heritage.”
Allissa Impink, director of family philanthropy at the Community Foundation of Central Indiana and senior philanthropic advisor to Glick Philanthropies, said funders can look to grantees as experts who can inform future rounds of giving.
“We are able to rely on them as partners and they can help us explore new ways to increase opportunities for other artists of color,” Impink said.
Of the $1.87 million in general grants, $363,500 was awarded to 11 Glick Philanthropies recognized for “creating vibrant communities through the arts and increasing equitable access to opportunities for creative expression.”
These 11 organizations included Arte Mexicano en Indiana as well as Discovering Broadway (to create a BIPOC artist fund), Indiana Black Expo (for its Performing Arts Academy), and The District Theater (for outreach regarding the upcoming production of “Gatinier of Gaddafi”, a play based on Mexican chef Carlos Ambrosi).
Center stage
In 2021, Arte Mexicano en Indiana founder Luna helped organize performances as part of the Swish arts and culture festival during the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
Luna said he is pleased that one of the groups he planned for Swish, Ballet Folklorico Mosaicos, will appear Aug. 25 as the opening performer for the Indy Arts Council’s Start with Art fundraiser at the Indiana Roof Ballroom.
“If you have a talent, let’s not be in a corner of Indianapolis,” Luna said of Mexican-American artists. “You have to be in the center of the stage, because you are part of the community.”
Luna said his organization will use the Glick grant to hire two people to implement the artist mentoring project.
The first, cultural promoter Marisa Zambrano, will discover the city’s Latino community for artists.
“We’ll ask people, ‘Hey, do you know anyone in your network who makes art?'” Luna said. “We will be looking for professionals, semi-professionals, amateurs and hobbyists.”
Arte Mexicano’s second hire, Daniel Del Real, who co-founded the multicultural arts organization Nopal Cultural with Luna in 2012, will lead a multi-day workshop for 20 artists selected from Zambrano’s creative pool. The workshop will provide guidance on how to present artwork, promote one’s career, and write grant proposals.
Common goals
The practice of faith-based giving emerged in 2018, when leaders from six foundations across the United States launched the Faith-Based Philanthropy Project.
Tyrone McKinley Freeman, an associate professor at Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, said nonprofits have called for streamlined paperwork in the grant application process and reporting of progress after grants are awarded.
Meanwhile, the Faith-Based Philanthropy Project encourages funders to value the expertise and experience of grantees.
“It’s a movement that comes out of this view that foundations must engage with their grantees as partners to achieve common goals,” Freeman said.
He added that receivers are looking for “more equality and more engagement, sitting together at the table as partners instead of one having to constantly shift and move to appease the other.”
Freeman and Glick cited 2020 as a pivotal year in the evolution of philanthropy, due to the pandemic and the racial justice protests following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
“I think the ways in which the pandemic made us all focus on issues of racial equity and vulnerable communities and power, [trust-based philanthropy] it was reinforced,” Freeman said.
“I think 2020 made us all much more aware of the racial disparities that maybe we thought we had done better than we had,” Glick said. “We realized that, no, actually, we didn’t.”
Glick credited the impact of the Community Foundation of Central Indiana, which announced in 2018 its mission to dismantle institutional racism, to help Glick Philanthropies bring awareness to organizations led by people of color.
In addition to CICF’s advisor, Impink, Glick Philanthropies works with Dionne Griffiths, community leadership officer at CICF’s sister organization, The Indianapolis Foundation.
“We’ve taken a much closer look at where our dollars are going and who our dollars are helping, with a very intentional focus,” Glick said.
Cultural identity
Griffiths credited Luna, who is a staff artist at Big Car Collaborative, for his work as an advocate for other artists.
Arte Mexicano in Indiana “is a great way to create a pipeline to elevate the Latino artists that are here,” said Griffiths, who manages the arts and creative expression portfolio for Glick Philanthropies. “This was a much-needed opportunity for Latinx artists to get their work out there and build a sense of community and strong cultural identity.”
Although Luna works with artists with ties to countries throughout Latin America in his Nopal Cultural work, he said it was important to launch Arte Mexicano en Indiana specifically for the Mexican community.
According to 2020 census data, Indianapolis is home to 116,844 Hispanic residents, or 13% of the total population.
In 2010, Indy’s Mexican community made up 76% of the state’s Hispanic population.
“We are placed in a bubble that mixes all the cultures of Latin America,” Luna said. “I feel like when you do that, you lose part of our heritage.”
Luna, who was born in Acapulco, Mexico and raised in central Illinois, hosted an Aug. 12 outdoor show by Spanish-language rock band Vertice at Super Tortas restaurant, 2641 W. Michigan St. On Sept. 10, Arte Mexicano en Indiana will present an eight-hour festival of rock, punk and ska bands at 10 East Arts Hub, 3137 E. 10th St.
Luna said he was frustrated to see cultural institutions planning Latino-themed events without having Latinos on staff. At the very least, he said, organizations should hire guest curators to provide expertise.
With Arte Mexicano en Indiana, Luna said she is working to increase the visibility of qualified cultural experts who can fill such roles.
“We’re in a system that tries to keep minorities in check,” Luna said. “It’s up to us to pick ourselves up. If we expect the institution and the big institutions to do it for us, it will never happen. We have to do it for ourselves.”•
