Skip to content
Grantmakers In Health
  • Our Work
    • Focus Areas
    • Health Equity and Social Justice
    • Access and Quality
    • Community Engagement and Empowerment
    • Philanthropic Growth and Impact
    • Population Health
    • Policy and Advocacy
    • Strategic Plan
  • Articles and Publications
    • GIH Blog and News
    • GIH Bulletin
      • GIH Bulletin Signup
    • Podcasts
    • Reports and Surveys
  • Meetings and Events
    • 2023 Annual Conference
    • Meetings and Conferences
    • Webinars and Videos
    • Event Calendar
  • Tools and Resources
    • Strategic Guidance
      • Technical Assistance
      • Peer Review
      • E-Forums
    • Trustee Resources
    • Grantmaker Profiles
    • Awards
    • Terrance Keenan Institute for Emerging Leaders
    • Philanthropy Careers
      • Submit a Position
    • Health Philanthropy Search
    • Directory of Philanthropy Consultants
  • About
    • Staff
    • Board of Directors
    • Mission and Values
    • Funding Partner List
    • Join GIH
      • Join the Network
      • GIH Careers
    • Annual Reports
  • Join GIH
    • Join the Network
    • GIH Careers
  • Support GIH
  • Funding Partner Portal
  • Philanthropy Careers
  • Contact GIH
    • Funding Partner Portal
    • Partner Directory
  • Funding Partner Portal
  • Partner Directory
Sign In
Grantmakers In Health
  • Philanthropy Careers
  • Contact GIH
  • Our Work
    • Focus Areas
    • Health Equity and Social Justice
    • Access and Quality
    • Community Engagement and Empowerment
    • Philanthropic Growth and Impact
    • Population Health
    • Policy and Advocacy
    • Strategic Plan
  • Articles and Publications
    • GIH Blog and News
    • GIH Bulletin
      • GIH Bulletin Signup
    • Podcasts
    • Reports and Surveys
  • Meetings and Events
    • 2023 Annual Conference
    • Meetings and Conferences
    • Webinars and Videos
    • Event Calendar
  • Tools and Resources
    • Strategic Guidance
      • Technical Assistance
      • Peer Review
      • E-Forums
    • Trustee Resources
    • Grantmaker Profiles
    • Awards
    • Terrance Keenan Institute for Emerging Leaders
    • Philanthropy Careers
      • Submit a Position
    • Health Philanthropy Search
    • Directory of Philanthropy Consultants
  • About
    • Staff
    • Board of Directors
    • Mission and Values
    • Funding Partner List
    • Join GIH
      • Join the Network
      • GIH Careers
    • Annual Reports
  • Join GIH
    • Join the Network
    • GIH Careers
  • Support GIH
  • Funding Partner Portal
  • Philanthropy Careers
  • Contact GIH
    • Funding Partner Portal
    • Partner Directory

It’s Time to Converge on Narrative Change for Racial Justice and Health Equity

Views from the Field
Posted June 16, 2022
vff_jun22_navarro-silver
Morgan-Hynd

Amanda Navarro, Executive Director, Convergence Partnership
Michele Silver, Director of Programs, Convergence Partnership

Philanthropy is increasingly embracing narrative change as a tool for building public and political will to advance equitable policies and structural change. Yet philanthropic narrative investments to advance racial justice and health equity are still relatively new and disparate. The work is often siloed, lessons and insights are not often shared across efforts, and there is also a wide range of definitions of narratives, perspectives, and approaches on how to shift them.

According to a definition put forth by the Narrative Initiative, narratives are “the themes and ideas that permeate collections or systems of related stories.” Because narratives manifest across collections of stories, it is important to understand how the stories we choose to tell add up to narratives that either reinforce—or undermine—actions and solutions that will move the needle on racial justice and health equity. Like many in philanthropy, the Convergence Partnership (the Partnership)—a national funder collaborative working to transform policies, practices, and systems to advance racial justice and health equity—began with a grounding in strategic communications, not narrative change.

In the face of blatant racism from town halls to the halls of Congress, communities continue to fight for their right to exercise power and voice. The wisdom, voice, and agency of people—particularly people of color—must be prioritized and elevated to change racist and harmful narratives, policies, and systems. Now is not the time to backpedal from racial equity commitments. For health equity to be truly realized, philanthropy must strengthen its investments in those most impacted by structural racism to shape narratives that promote health and wellbeing. And perhaps even more importantly, philanthropy must break its usual tendencies to invest in disparate efforts that will not add up to the kind of groundswell of political and public support we need toward an inclusive, healthy democracy and society.

For these reasons, the Partnership adopted narrative transformation as a core strategic priority in late 2017. The shift to a narrative strategy also emerged from the Partnership’s commitment to working with grassroots leaders and impacted communities to amplify inclusive narratives and counter harmful racist narratives. In 2018, the Partnership brought on narrative strategy consultants Narrative Arts (formerly Working Narratives) and Moore + Associates to build and grow narrative power for the Partnership and its partners. Since 2018, the Partnership has supported the community-determined power building and narrative priorities of nearly 30 frontline, BIPOC-led and serving movement building organizations in six regions across the country—Buffalo, New York; California; Chicago, Illinois; Kansas; Kansas City, Missouri; and Louisiana—to shape policies and systems toward racial justice and health equity.

In Buffalo, the Partnership provided core support grants to three organizations—PUSH Buffalo, CoNECT, and Heart of the City Neighborhoods—to build grassroots neighborhood infrastructure and develop social justice ecosystems and models at the neighborhood level to sustain community organizations, organizing, and engagement.

The Partnership also provided core support grants to two tribal nations—United Houma Nation and Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw—in Louisiana to fill critical resource gaps in their recovery from Hurricane Ida in August 2021. This resulted from their unjust lack of federal recognition, which exacerbates inequities and significantly diminishes their ability to qualify for federal aid after disasters.  This support allowed these tribes to return to critical work focused on land rights, cultural preservation, community resettlement, canal backfilling, and coastal and wetland restoration that benefit not just the tribes but all of Louisiana’s people.

To better understand opportunities to align racial justice and health equity-focused narrative change work across the philanthropic sector, the Partnership commissioned a field scan of the racial justice and health equity narrative change work going on in philanthropy, which was recently completed by the Partnership’s narrative consultants along with Narrative Initiative. This scan includes the dynamics of national grantmaking for narrative work, the role of narrative practitioners working with grantmakers and grantees, and philanthropic collaboration on narrative change. We are learning that the ways in which funders approach narrative power building vary significantly, and that there is a lack of alignment across those that fund narrative work, despite a clear desire to collaborate and share learnings. The scan also surfaced interesting tensions between investments in mass movement and community narrative power building and investments in mass media and culture narrative power. Achieving narrative change at the scale and depth required to shape a just society means making long term investments at various scales, in a diverse set of institutions, organizations, and individuals across the country.

We believe that creating a greater shared understanding of the narrative field—and establishing best practices for narrative change work—will result in greater alignment and impact on what many in philanthropy say they want to achieve: advancing inclusive, antiracist narratives and policies. Our hope is that the work of the Partnership, including the forthcoming report from this scan, will open up these much-needed conversations and explorations.

We welcome others to join us in aligning and coordinating philanthropic investments to unleash the true power of narrative to advance racial justice and health equity. If you would like to receive a copy of the report when it is released, and to stay in touch, please email us at info@convergencepartnership.org.

Focus Area(s):
Health Equity and Social Justice
Tagged:
Health Equity
Share this

Newsletter Sign Up

Want to sign up for the GIH Bulletin? Click here to get on the list.

Focus Areas

  • Health Equity and Social Justice
  • Community Engagement and Empowerment
  • Philanthropic Growth and Impact
  • Access and Quality
  • Population Health
  • Policy and Advocacy

Topics

Access (270) Advocacy Strategies (174) Behavioral Health (173) Children and Families (190) Civic Engagement (136) Climate and Environmental Health (24) COVID-19 (142) Governance and Operations (277) Health Equity (364) Healthy Eating and Active Living (146) Housing (17) Integrative Health (49) Justice Reform (7) Older Adults (115) Oral Health (49) Palliative Care (5) Quality (185) Rural health (8) Social Determinants of Health (6) Trust-based Philanthropy (13) Trustee Resources (12) Violence Prevention (6) Workforce (7)

Join the largest national network of health funders.

GIH Funding Partners are a diverse constituency of over 200 informed, connected philanthropic organizations.

Join GIH
Navigation
  • Our Work
    • Focus Areas
    • Health Equity and Social Justice
    • Access and Quality
    • Community Engagement and Empowerment
    • Philanthropic Growth and Impact
    • Population Health
    • Policy and Advocacy
    • Strategic Plan
  • Articles and Publications
    • GIH Blog and News
    • GIH Bulletin
      • GIH Bulletin Signup
    • Podcasts
    • Reports and Surveys
  • Meetings and Events
    • 2023 Annual Conference
    • Meetings and Conferences
    • Webinars and Videos
    • Event Calendar
  • Tools and Resources
    • Strategic Guidance
      • Technical Assistance
      • Peer Review
      • E-Forums
    • Trustee Resources
    • Grantmaker Profiles
    • Awards
    • Terrance Keenan Institute for Emerging Leaders
    • Philanthropy Careers
      • Submit a Position
    • Health Philanthropy Search
    • Directory of Philanthropy Consultants
  • About
    • Staff
    • Board of Directors
    • Mission and Values
    • Funding Partner List
    • Join GIH
      • Join the Network
      • GIH Careers
    • Annual Reports
  • Join GIH
    • Join the Network
    • GIH Careers
  • Support GIH
  • Funding Partner Portal
  • Philanthropy Careers
  • Contact GIH
    • Funding Partner Portal
    • Partner Directory
Contact

1100 Connecticut Avenue NW
Suite 1100
Washington, DC 20036

202.452.8331

Email GIH

Press Contact

Connect

LinkedIn

Facebook

Search

© 2023 Grantmakers In Health | Privacy Policy

Website hosted by Yoko Co

Scroll To Top