[00:00:03] Lindsey Spindle: We engage in our work really through the lens of trying to build trust with our community, and be good listeners, be good partners, be good advocates, help connect people. Oftentimes, it's really not our funding that people need. They need someone to help open a door, they need an introduction, they need a problem solve.

[00:00:27] Erin Samueli: One person will never be able to create equity in a way that a society can, and there will always be racial lines that are drawn there. There will always be gender lines and sexuality lines that are drawn there, and there will always be class lines that are drawn there. For me, as a person who builds relationships with grantees and nonprofit leaders, I look to the ones that aren't getting funding in Orange County. That's the easiest place to find where the need is largest.

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[00:00:59] Host: Orange County Grantmakers and Past Forward present Adjust Accordingly: Placing Equity into Practice. A series of discussions about how inequity is experienced in life and work, and how industries, organizations, and people are working to move equity forward. This series was produced with support from the Orange County Community Foundation.

In this episode, we connect with Lindsey Spindle, President of the Samueli Family Philanthropies, and Erin Samueli, Director of Social Justice Philanthropy. In our conversation, we discuss the Samueli Foundation's philanthropic effort to promote and secure equity, diversity, and social justice throughout Orange County. We discuss the importance of tackling these issues on a local level, the connection to community, and the example that can be set for other communities to work toward. Here are Lindsey Spindle and Erin Samueli.

[00:01:53] Host: In this big, broad discussion of equity, there's always this idea or concept of an uneven playing field. What is the role that philanthropic organizations like Samueli Foundation play or should play in attempting to balance that playing field?

[00:02:14] Lindsey: Look, there is the blessing and curse of philanthropy. The way I see it is, you have to have honest conversations about power. Power and equity have a complicated and important interrelationship that philanthropy also has to get into the middle of and it's messy. When you are on the granting side or the funder side, you have resources and therefore you have power. There are organizations that for long, have been the recipient of those resources and are perceived to be ones who have less power.

I think Erin and I have a real mind meld when we do our work that the real power in change is with proximity to the change; that people who understand their condition, they understand their community, they have a desire to solve for it, and they're coming up with solutions inside their communities. They, to us, have the power. We view our role in philanthropy of taking our resources and putting it behind those who have the power, who have the ideas, who have the proximity to their community and have the will to create change. We're accelerant for them. We aren't top-down. We aren't telling people what to do. We really do everything we can to be a good faith partner and bring where we have strength to where they have strength because strength plus strength is where you really start to get solutions on tricky things like equity.

From my perspective here at Samueli (I'm also on the board of the Skoll Foundation, which is doing a lot of work on racial equity, social justice issues), where philanthropy, I think, plays a very important role is that we can afford to be patient capital. We can invest over the long haul and for the long term. There are very few types of organizations that can engage like that. When you're trying to deal with entrenched problems like economic inequity, you have to be willing to be invested in the long haul.

My last comment is really about Erin as a partner and also about Susan and Henry, who I work for. They speak a different language about equity because there's a generational, I think, divide in the language of equity, but they are so aligned in terms of wanting a more just and fair world that creates opportunity for all. It's been really fun to work with the family in this community and across generation to find where we all have passion and energy and try to focus our work in that direction.

[00:05:17] Erin: I couldn't agree more with every single point that you just made, Lindsey. A couple things that are raising to the top for me in this conversation of equity– I used to be a teacher, I used to be a science teacher. In the schools of education across the world, there is this picture that is always taught. If I may paint you a mental picture of what it looks like, it is three children trying to watch a baseball game over a fence. They're all different heights. There's a tall kid and there's a medium-sized kid and there's a small kid. There's really three versions of this cartoon. The top one is equality, where everyone's standing on the same height box. The tall kid doesn't need the box, but he's on it anyway, he can see. The middle kid, they are on one box, so they can now see, but the small kid on a box still can't see.

Equity is when everyone's standing on a box that is the appropriate size for them, so the tall student no box can see fine, middle student one box sees great, small student two boxes sees great. The third panel of this cartoon that I am so excited about is the one that is called justice. The wall is taken down and replaced by a chain-link fence. Everyone can see it and they don't need a box. I think that philanthropy can take us from the equity conversation, which we're also moving towards, into the justice conversation.

When you're in the game of redistribution, which is quite literally my job every day of the week, and you think about funding leaders that are proximate to their issues. I'm talking BIPOC leaders. I'm talking LGBTQ+ leaders. I'm talking people who are historically looked over for funding, that is justice because those are individuals who are historically shut out of economic prosperity.

When we're intentional in the world of philanthropy about redistributing along those lines, and we pay attention to who the beneficiaries are, we don't need to use the word empowerment. That's a dirty word for me. It is returning power. It is unveiling the power of the community that's always been there and just allowing them the freedom to exercise their knowledge to help themselves better than outsiders ever can.

[00:07:46] Lindsey: By the way, she loves that story because she's 5'11'' and I'm 5'2''. I would need nine boxes-

[00:07:52] Erin: You need a lot of boxes. [chuckles]

[00:07:53] Lindsey: -to be able to see what she can see.

[00:07:55] Host: Well, I love that you talk about justice. It moves into my next point. I've been privileged through all of these podcasts to be able to interview a lot of social justice leaders for different programs. There's one question that I ask all of them. The question is, where is the biggest fight? Is it at the local level? Is it at the federal level or is this a global fight? Across the board, every one of them says it needs to start in the community. I'd love for you both to talk about the Samueli Foundation's connection to its community and the importance of community-level philanthropy?

[00:08:42] Lindsey: I'll draw a contrast again between two experiences that I've had and continue to have. The Skoll Foundation is focused on global systems change. It is giving away around $140 million a year in almost every continent and takes a global view of trying to address some of the inequities in the world to lead to a more sustainable and peaceful, and prosperous world for all.

The Samueli Foundation is hyper-focused and local, and there are benefits to both. You need people in the world worrying about and thinking about and constantly agitating for justice at all levels. Because, you could do extraordinary work in the community, but it won't scale. It won't start to affect lives beyond if there isn't also someone advocating for it at the state level, at the national level, at the international level. I don't think there's a one size fits all and a right approach.

What I would say is that there is enormous opportunity. At the level that I think is unprecedented in this moment where you have a federal government that is not particularly super functional. There's a lot of divisive orientation language, not a huge emphasis on compromise and policymaking and working toward. There's a lot about pointing fingers instead of progress. At the local level because it is a smaller geography, and a more intimate understanding of all the players, and a sensitivity toward progress, you can get a lot done with focus.

I had a mentor early in my career, and I've shared this with Erin and others that we work with, he used to always remind us, "Pick battles that are big enough to matter, small enough to win." When I think about Orange County, nothing could fit the bill more than that, big enough to matter. This is the sixth largest county in our country by population, and a very diverse one, a way more diverse one than people appreciate, but I think it's small enough to win.

I think, with our resources with smart partnerships, with the committed organizations that Erin and I have the privilege of working with and meeting every day, we can accomplish a tremendous amount of the next decade, and become a model for other counties to look at and say, "Well, if they can do it in Orange County, we could do that," and so that's what we're really focused on; what kind of transformation can we affect here in Orange County that is wonderful and good for us, and could become a model for others to pick up on in terms of inspiring them toward more civic transformation that is equitable, and just and creates opportunity for all.

[00:11:50] Erin: Again, you're going to hear me say this a lot. I couldn't agree more. Absolutely.

[00:11:54] Lindsey: We love each other.

[00:11:55] Erin: We see eye to eye, we have a good, great working relationship. The only thing that I would add to that because I am the person who's really focused on grassroots community organizations, that is my bread and butter, that is my portfolio, those are the leaders that are-- they get me out of bed in the morning. I think the only thing that edges that out in my brain is when you think about large scalability, I think the easy route in a lot of places is a copy and paste. I think there's a lot of potential pitfalls in a copy and paste, and especially when you're thinking nationally, globally.

A community in Orange County is not even the same as a community in San Bernardino County, regardless of a community in Ethiopia. If you look at a solution, and you try and scale it in a way that is copy and paste, I think you leave a lot of room for failure.  Failure, I think, is something that people think too negatively on, I think failure is actually more than anything an opportunity to learn.

At the community level, what you can do is really leverage the knowledge holders in your community, and understand how to best deliver services and care and support so that it is exactly fitting the puzzle piece of where you are working. When you have that, you can be that model.

We can be the model of an Orange County for someone in Detroit to say, "I love what they're doing in Orange County, let's do our version and not the exact same." I think that that's really powerful. You also have people who are super galvanized about it in a community-based work because that's where they live, it's where they do their entire life, and so I think that passion is also irreplaceable.

[00:13:44] Lindsey: I couldn't agree more. It's one of the things that I just love about this role is the focus and intentionality on the relationships that we have. We are in giving standards, a reasonably large foundation, but we have an intimate working knowledge with our partners, we never grow big enough that we can't each have close relationships with the people we work with.

I think that's the other word that Erin and I have a lot of shared passion for is about trust. We engage in our work really through the lens of trying to build trust with our community and be good listeners, be good partners, be good advocates, help connect people. Oftentimes, it's really not our funding that people need. They need someone to help open a door. They need an introduction. They need a problem solve. The benefit of focusing at a local level is it really affords you that opportunity for deeper more intimate relationships.

We can actually see people, we can visit them, there's so much that I'm learning in this experience. This is the first time I've actually done super focused play space giving, and the rewards are tremendous, not just in terms of our impact, but at a deeply human level. You feel different about your work when you are living in the community that you are waking up day in and day out trying to improve.

[00:15:24] Host: It's that boots on the ground, you're surrounded by, you see it on a daily as opposed to it being this somewhat vague notion of global challenge. They're keeping it in the community, and Lindsey, like you said, this is a very divisive time and in our politics have become extremely divisive, and very loud.Issues like equity and reproductive rights and LGBTQ rights and climate justice, they tend to fall on one side of that divide. How do you manage that hurdle in a historically conservative county, like Orange County? I would imagine that makes-- it creates more need for philanthropic organizations, especially at this time where we are as a country.

[00:16:21] Lindsey: I will confess that one of my hesitations of moving here, were some of the stereotypes of Orange County of the extremities of the politics, not that it was one all one way or one the other, but that there were extremities. I will tell you, that it has been one of the most pleasant surprises to be in a purple place.

I think when you live in a place where there are multiple perspectives, even ones you don't agree with, or you vehemently disagree with, you still learn more, you sharpen yourself as a problem solver. It is helping advance my thinking. I think environmental issues is always an interesting one, I'll pick on that one.

There is a language about environmental issues, that's very much economic in nature. It's about economic opportunity. It's about job creation. It's about wealth creation. It's about attracting the next generation of businesses. For an Orange County, that is very pro-business that has an interest in propelling itself forward from a real estate-based wealth generation economy to finding the jobs of the future, you can go and sit in rooms and talk about with real data, some of the opportunities that you would miss out on if you didn't engage in climate change and environmental issues in smart ways.

A lot of times, I never changed the focus of what I'm trying to accomplish, but I do think of my audience and what message might resonate most for them. I think there's real peril in making everyone get onto the bus on the same door. I've seen this on social justice issues. Erin and I may agree or disagree on this one, but if you require everyone to get on the bus through the moral door, you will not get everyone on the bus.

If you have six doors onto the bus, and one of them is a moral door, and one of them is an ethical door, and one of them is an economic opportunity door and one of them is-- and people start to find a way into a conversation, a way into an issue that they can see themselves in, I've found a lot more receptivity than I was originally concerned about. That does not extend to every issue. I mean, let's be honest, and I think Erin can speak more to some of the grantees that she works with, some of the issues she's most passionate about.

There are certain issues right now where there is such a stark divide. There are people who believe in women's reproductive rights. There are people who believe and advocate for the transgender community and then people who seek to vilify them and those are harder conversations. That there are really tough times for certain groups and I would never want to minimize the fact that it is really, really hard for certain people right now who live in Orange County.

One of my strategies is certainly not a be all, end all, and it's not cookie-cutter, it doesn't work on every issue. For the Samueli Foundation, I love who we are, what we do, what we stand for, the humility and the tone set by this family about fairness and kindness and compassion, and open-heartedness for every single person who lives in Orange County. Everyone has value. Everyone has something to give. We are relentless in our work, regardless of the politics, about being focused on progress.

That's a lot of what this takes too, is being relentlessly focused on impact and progress and trying to not get too disheartened in moments that can be really devastating on a personal or a political, or professional level. We definitely face setbacks in our work, and we are undeterred by those setbacks.

[00:20:52] Erin: Absolutely. Your bus metaphor reminded me of a quote from a TED talk, and I will paraphrase it. It was something to the effect of a bunch of people moving in the same direction with same ideas is a cult, a bunch of people moving in the same direction with different ideas is a movement, and we're trying to build movements.

I think that has stuck with me because a lot of the rhetoric around the social justice movement, especially amongst young people and my peers, is very monolithic. You need to buy into an ideology and if you don't buy into an ideology, you are actually evil and we cast you as such, and that is your way forward. Obviously, that is a very polarizing stance to take, and something that I've really appreciated, and Lindsey, is the ability-- she mentioned earlier, to reframe and rephrase ideologies that are exactly the same, just phrased in a way that someone can engage with.

I will say all day, every day, Lindsey is better at that than I am, and I'm very grateful to have her on my team helping me out with that, translating my words into words that make sense for everybody in the room. I think I totally agree in that there are ways to have these conversations that make sense for everybody.

For example, I really am fascinated about the world of Universal Basic Income. I was on a call about a year ago, held by UCI, they're trying to get some funding to do research in Orange County about universal basic income. A lot of what they were saying was very across the aisle and how there's a lot of support among conservative people for UBI because it can take the place of certain social safety net programs, and all of those things.

I was shocked by that. I was like, "Wow, this is such a progressive idea, one that MLK touted for years as one of the ways to heal the wounds of racial injustice, but it could get real support from people no matter what they feel." That, I felt, was a huge model for a way to engage in these conversations. As you were saying, Lindsey, that's not true for people of trans identity.

There are people who will simply condemn anyone who is of an identity that does not make sense to them, whether or not they take the time to engage in that conversation.

When it comes to those issues, to me, yes, we have people in Orange County that fall on both sides of that aisle, but the question is, who of those people have power and who of those people don't? The answer is very clear. The people, especially trans people of color across America and the globe have much less power in these conversations, which is a hard concept to grapple with but as a philanthropist who is happy and energized to engage in this space, for instance, one of my grantees that I talk about quite literally every day, Alianza Translatinx, the first trans led nonprofit in Orange County. I'm one of their only Orange County supporters.

That is true for a handful of my grantees, a significant number of my grantees. Sometimes I think about that and I get very upset because it's me and I'm alone and I'm fighting and I'm doing everything I can. Lindsey always reminds me, if you don't, who will?

I think that's really powerful because I am a person who was born into a place of immense privilege and power just by virtue of sheer randomness and luck. I can take up passion and courage and comradery with those populations who were not born into that by sheer luck and randomness and lend my power to those communities and say, "I'm here with you. I stand with you. I believe in you. I will support you in a myriad of ways, and the least of which is some funding."

I think there's ways to have conversations that invite everybody in and welcome everyone, whichever door of the bus they choose. There are some conversations where if you are condemning a certain person for simply being who they are, it's time for individuals to say, "I'm here and I stand with you in solidarity."

[00:25:18] Lindsey: I couldn't agree more. I'll give you an example. Erin deserves a lot of credit in this. When the Supreme Court issued its decision that essentially dismantled constitutional rights to abortion, the Samueli Foundation and family in general, we do our work quietly at the foundation. We don't do philanthropy for attention. Henry and Susan are very modest and humble. They don't give their money away to try to raise their status.

It's like a deeply held belief about doing good in the world and taking what they have and using it to benefit others. When that decision was issued, this family stood up very boldly and issued a statement about where we stand on people's rights in this world. It shocked a lot of people. It shocked some of our employees, Henry and Susan are also professional sports team owners.

That is not always the place where you find people so bold and so willing to stand up and articulate family values and beliefs. There was zero hesitation in any member of the family's part to stand up in that moment and articulate what we stand for. That matters. Are we changing every single person's mind? No. As a signal, as a signaling system to people in that moment who felt very desperate and very alone and very sad and very confused and very worried if not for themselves, then for their children or for their neighbor, just standing up and standing out and saying something is really important.

Particularly in a county, back to your original question about is it hard to do this work here, it matters. We stand by our orientation to do our work modestly unless we realize that being more out there and being more articulate and being more forceful in stating our values and focus may have an influence on others, then we are totally unafraid to be more public about our work.

[00:27:55] Host: When looking through this diversity, equity, and inclusion lens, how do you determine where the most need is and where do you see the most need at this moment in time?

[00:28:11] Erin: I think it's both a hard question and an easy question at the exact same time. I have always drawn on my experience of being a teacher in this conversation because I was a teacher at a public school in San Francisco, a very small school in a more affluent neighborhood but there were students from all parts of the city that came in.

In my seventh grade class, I had one Black student the whole year. He consistently had a fundamentally different experience than his peers every single day. It was a very racially diverse group. There was a large API population, a large Latinx population, but one Black student. There's a large population of Black people in San Francisco. That was not representative of the demographics of the county in the city.

I saw every single day that he got the short end of the stick in my school. I did everything I could in my classroom to level that playing field but one person will never be able to create equity in a way that a society can. There will always be racial lines that are drawn there. There will always be gender lines and sexuality lines that are drawn there. There will always be class lines that are drawn there. Those are things that you see from historical legacies like redlining and the predatory loaning system and all of these structural things that are baked into our economy.

For me, as a person who builds relationships with grantees and nonprofit leaders, I look to the ones that aren't getting funding in Orange County. That's the easiest place to find where the need is largest. Like I said, I am the only Orange County funder for a pretty good proportion of my grantees. If that is an answer to the question, "Who are your funders", I am immediately very saddened. Then right after that, I know that I'm in the right place, because if I'm in the game of redistribution, and I am, my goal is, "How do I level the playing field in the most one-to-one way? Who is not getting funding right now in Orange County and how do I show up for them?"

I think there's a lot of paralysis in the world of philanthropy around, "I need to make sure I'm doing this right." I understand that. You want to make sure you're having the greatest impact and you're making the best possible decisions and you're not making mistakes. Fundamentally, if you go by the metric of where are dollars not going, you jump in, you learn with that organization, they're most likely small so they'll be able to build a deep partnership with you, tell you the truth, be honest about what's working and what's not.

Even if they're having failures or shortcomings or things that aren't working as they intended them to, you're a partner in that conversation and you can make educated decisions about whether or not that's a failure or is this organization simply not a success because no one else is in this game. "What can I do as a person of privilege and power to get more people part of this conversation?" That's how I make that decision in my own portfolio and I think those broad strokes, racial, gender, and sexuality, and class conversations are ways to narrow in on that and then being unafraid to make a mistake and pivot as necessary.

[00:31:43] Lindsey: Erin's been doing just a great job with the foundation, with our grantees, but just also being a really important voice in our organization about the importance of DEI, and so I really want to call her out just for the contributions she makes beyond the actual work of grant-making. I'll just add a little bit of perspective. I'm a 50-year-old woman who has had an extraordinary career, but I have certainly faced my own set of challenges trying to work through a distinctly male world most of my life.

I've been mansplained, demeaned, sexually as verbally assaulted, sexually assaulted. It's a privilege to be running an organization now to be in a position having had the experiences that I've had in my professional life and seeing that conversation evolve far past gender now although we still have a long way to go on creating equity in the workplace on gender lines. I think… and a lot of credit is due to the younger generation coming and agitating for more, saying a conversation about gender or about color is not enough.

I view my role as an executive is to be continually listening and learning. We all have a long way to go. We all have to be modest and humble enough to realize that the world is changing, the conversation is changing. It's change that I'm all very excited about, and you have to be willing to sit in some uncomfortable moments and be okay with that, and teach your team that it's okay to sit in some uncomfortable moments.

We are continuing to evolve who we are as an organization, how we hire, how we think about our systems, our processes, and that's a big part of where I'm focused. Where I think Erin and some of our other colleagues are doing a great job at the grantee level of really pushing and being hyper-focused. I'm trying to spend more of my efforts at the organizational level. Our policies, our procedures, how we think about hiring, how we think about training and development, how we think about the resources that our team really need so that everyone in the end of the day walks into our office and feels like they belong.

That's my end state, is that anyone could walk into our offices anytime and feel like they belong. We have a ways to go and that's okay. We're committed to it. We are very, very committed. Again, I'm so fortunate to work for people who champion that and appreciate it. I would say the word of caution for people, Erin talked about not being afraid to make a mistake, I think that's excellent piece of advice. Mine is you have to continue to create a culture of grace. Not everyone gets the right word. Not everyone says it the right way.

People are learning and organizations that create binary choices, "If you say it that way, you're right and if you don't say it that way, you're wrong." Or, "If you don't like this--" we are working-- I feel very, very responsible for giving people room and space to learn and creating a culture of grace, assuming charitable intent while we're all developing and changing and growing as humans and as a group and as an organization, and as a funder.

With Erin's encouragement about not being afraid to make a mistake and, I think, with my encouragement about a culture of grace, I think that the Samueli Foundation is capable of real progress on this front. I'm really proud of what we're doing so far.

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[00:35:39] Host: If you would like to continue the conversation, visit samueli.org to learn more and visit Orange County Grantmakers at ocgrantmakers.org and the Orange County Community Foundation at oc-cf.org. To listen to more episodes and to find books written by and recommended from our guests, visit pastfoward.org or follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.