2007 Latino Community Donor Awards

Guest Speaker Henry A.J. Ramos Speech Transcript

Good evening everyone and thank you so much for coming out on a Friday night no less for a very wonderful and important cause:  the cause of celebrating and advancing Latino community philanthropy.

I am particularly indebted to my friends David Pesqueira and Evette Cardona, as well as Juan Calixto, Karina Ayala Bermejo, Amalia Castro, and all of their colleagues who have taken the lead to establish Chicago Latinos in Philanthropy and Latinos in Development, and this Stellar Awards Program which tonight and in the past has recognized such a marvelous array of community leaders and institutions.

I am also particularly excited about meeting with you this evening at the National Museum of Mexican Art, which I consider to be the premier Latino-focused arts institution in the United States today. In recent years, I have had the privilege to partner with Carlos Tortolero and his able team here, including Juana Guzman who I know is here with us tonight.

In that connection, I have had the opportunity to analyze and write about the Museum’s extraordinary board leadership and donor development models, which have built over the years on the vision and the wisdom of Latino and Latina business leaders and professionals who are among the most committed I have ever known: Maria Bechilly, Art Velasquez, Dr. Teresa Ramos, Marty Castro, and others.

I am honored to share this occasion—the 10th anniversary Awards Program of Chicago Latinos in Philanthropy, in the company of such leaders. When I was asked to speak at this gathering, I was encouraged to discuss a few key themes related to the evening’s essential intent to “Celebrate Latino Donors”.

The event organizers were especially interested in hearing my thoughts on why it is important for Latinos to give to charitable organizations and institutions.

They also wanted to hear my thoughts on the significance of Latino leaders developing new formal giving mechanisms, like the Chicago Community Trust’s Nuestro Futuro Fund which was informed by the good work of my friend Margo DeLey and is ably managed by my friend Sylvia Sykes of the Trust staff and committed fund donors—many of whom are here tonight with Trust CEO Terry Mazany, to acknowledge the Fund’s critically important work.

In a nutshell, the event organizers for our gathering this evening have encouraged me help establish the case for Latinos in Chicago and other parts of the nation to increase their leadership and institutional profile in organized philanthropy.

I am pleased and honored to have this opportunity, because I am convinced more than ever that much of the future of this nation will be informed by the extent to which we are successful in engaging more broadly Latino social and financial capital in the cause of community problem solving and community building.

I believe this work is essential to quality of life in our communities and nation.
I believe this work is squarely in the interests of the Independent Sector; and I believe it is vital to the future healthy functioning of American democracy.

Let me explain what I mean by making these assertion. First, a few statistics are worth considering...

Do you realize that virtually all credible U.S. demographers acknowledge by the year 2050, fully one in every four Americans will be of Latino origin? That’s right… one quarter of the American population.

Did you also know that while our current share of the national population stands at around 15 percent, in cities like Chicago and New York (where I live) and Los Angeles (where I come from originally), Latinos now already constitute upwards of one quarter of the metropolitan populations?

And did you know that public elementary schools in these and other large U.S. urban centers are increasingly being dominated by Latino student populations?

At no other time in the nation’s history, including even during the great migrations to America from Europe and Asia during the 1880s to the 1920s, has America faced such a profound change in population composition and culture. And much, if not most, of what is driving that change has to do with Latino population growth.

In past epochs when America has faced such change, government and strategic private initiatives helped to smooth the way. American leaders and institutions facilitated needed integrative interventions through support for strong schools, effective public health and transportation systems among other key investments.

Government programs helped to employ millions of immigrants and working class Americans to build our cities, our roads and rails, and our homes. And private philanthropists helped wisely to build ancillary institutions that assisted the poor to survive and thrive. They financed Settlement Houses, like Chicago’s own Hull House, led by Jane Addams. They erected a world class system of public libraries. And they helped to support church-led and other charities for the poor in need of stabilization, like the Salvation Army.

These large-scale institutional investments enabled America to become a strong and unified nation. They helped to give us a sense of common cause and they prepared our people to overcome the three great tests of the 20th Century—the Depression, WWII, and the Cold War.

Today, the situation facing our people and our nation is quite different. Now, we live in an age that is more aptly defined by a sense of limits and selfishness. We live in a time of anti-government sentiment, of public and private retrenchment from significant social responsibilities. We live in an age of growing disparities between the wealthy and the poor, and between an aging White America and an Emerging America of Color.

All of these contemporary factors pose major challenges, as well as imperatives where Latino Philanthropy is concerned. They press us to look more and more to ourselves, rather than government or benefactors outside of our community to bear the principal burden of improving the deplorable conditions that many of our people still experience in America today …

-   The more than 50 percent drop out rates that our children face in schools;

-   The fact that still 2/3 of Latinos in this country today do not have basic health insurance;

-   The continuing reality that Latino and Latina workers are among the most abused and underpaid in our national economy.

In these times and circumstances, our very future and that of our children calls out for self-help as never before.

Of course we know that Latinos have never lacked generosity. We are among American society’s most generous communities as a matter of fact.

In virtually every recent study on comparative giving I know of, it turns out that our folks give relatively more per capita than white American mainstream donors. That is to say, we give less in actual dollars than our white American counterparts; but, as a percentage of household income, on average we give more.

Many people are confused by these data because the common wisdom of the street is that “Latinos Don’t Give”. The problem and the basis for the misnomer that “Latinos Don’t Give” is that still now our giving as a community is highly informal. So when Tio Beto down the street becomes ill and can’t work or collect disability support because he is a non-citizen, we help with cash support to see Beto and his family through.

When there is a massive earthquake in Mexico, we send money to help with the recovery, usually in the form of a direct gift to family members or unincorporated support networks.

Typically, when our close family members are poor and needy where they reside in our nations of origin, we wire monthly cash transfers to them to help them out. (Incidentally, we are now wiring close to $50 Billion annually to home country causes and relations—so who says we don’t give!)

All of these practices show our commitment to giving. What they don’t do, however, is qualify us for tax deductibility under IRS law.

What they don’t do is qualify as a measured charitable gift by research and tracking institutions like the Foundation Center.

What they don’t do, because our giving practices are largely invisible, is demonstrate to the larger society that indeed we are much more accurately characterized as givers than takers.

And ladies and gentlemen, in the current, harsh anti-immigrant /anti-Latino moment in which we live, if we can’t or otherwise don’t change the general perception of our community in this connection, both we and others in our nation will be in for some tough days ahead.

I cannot think of a more dangerous combination of fates taking hold than an unmitigated national trajectory combining high rates of Latino school dropout and poverty along with reduced public social investment and growing dependency on incarceration as a central means of managing social dislocation.

The good news is that there is absolutely nothing that stands in the way of a much brighter future for our people—except the question of initiative and will: our initiative and will.

By building strong independent sector networks and in institutions, by supporting those efforts principally with our own talent and treasure, and by aligning our vision with those of key non-Latino allies and institutions we can help to drive America toward a next generation of greatness.

We can show the path towards new and better ways to imagine organized philanthropy; and we can dispel dangerous and unproductive myths about our intentions in American society. But the key to all of this is ramping up our giving and our engagement in the formal structures of organized philanthropy. Only in this way can we gain the required learning and the standing to effectively challenge others outside of our community to meet us half-way.

One of the great distinctions when I think of Chicago Latinos in Philanthropy’s Awards Program over the past decade is the inherent emphasis on self-help leadership that it brings forward. The program reminds us of the tremendous but generally unrecognized leadership, wisdom, creativity, and generosity that exists within our Latino community. It lifts up examples of social investment innovation and conscientious civic organizing that establishes for us a central place in the process of building community and democracy in America. And it reminds us as well that, often, for us, the contributions we make through this work reflect new and different, but no less invaluable, ways to do philanthropy.

At the heart of our giving lie our core values. And while many in America today would challenge our very right of establishment as a community; and while many would consider our basic worldview to be un-American, I submit to you that our core values are indeed the bedrock of so called “traditional American values,” so much so that I would argue we are more American than many non-Latino Americans who critique our ways.

How could it be any other way if you consider the foundation of American values to be centered on family, religious faith, community and hard work?!?
What community do you know of that is more family-centric than ours? Or more devout in connection with our faith? Or more defined by a sense of common culture and community? Or more manifestly hard-working?
I think you know what I am talking about!

These core values, our values, are what inspire us to do everything we do in philanthropy, and what moves us to do philanthropy the way we do it. These core values are what drive us to form community organizations that support our people. They are the values that inspire us to give with and to our family and community members. They are the values that inspire our toil and sacrifice for things larger than just ourselves or our material self-interests.

Today, we have a growing Latino community in this nation with growing needs as well as growing assets. We have a robust nonprofit community infrastructure that we have built in recent years. We also have a strong and growing community leadership base and a burgeoning population of professionals and individuals who control wealth.

We need to further activate and support our capacities to meet our growing needs in ways that honor our traditions and realities as we know these things. This is simply difficult to do when we over-depend on others to do this work for us or when we adopt more established practices that finally do not find relevance with us.

By definition, given our socio-economic status, philanthropy for us is less a vertical than a horizontal proposition. We need to establish our place at the table of formal philanthropy by giving our time, treasure and talent collectively, in large numbers and at lower levels of giving. For us, it is not generally about highly individualized fortunes informing the development of huge private foundations—at least not at this current stage of our community’s experience in America.

This is why the efforts and examples we honor tonight are so powerful. They underscore the fact that we are in this nation to contribute; and that we can rely on our spouses and children and neighbors to join us in expressing new social investment visions through our giving. Indeed all of us want to participate in American civic culture, not merely stand by idly waiting for others to act.

Throughout American history, these are the inclinations that have helped every minority and disadvantaged population to gain a leg up. Pre-dating the granting of voting rights for women, Women’s Philanthropy was a driving force behind the work of the Suffragettes whose efforts finally changed American law. Modern impressive efforts by Jewish Americans in virtually every profession of consequence were all largely inspired by Jewish philanthropic values and practices.

And going back even to earlier days, the story has been consistent across the board—for German Americans, Irish Americans, Italian Americans, and others: Engagement in collective philanthropic associations and strategies has provided the fuel for subsequent public and civic participation. This is what has made America a viable democratic nation. This is what the great French observer of American Life Alexis D’ Tocqueville recorded in his Landmark Book Democracy in America.

Today, our story—The Latino Story that is redefining (for the good I would argue) what it means to be an American, is largely still in process. It is likely to have the happy ending that other American immigrant groups have experienced over the years. But such success is not pre-ordained. It is by no means a guarantee. We must work at it.

To achieve a happy ending, I believe that we need to redouble our efforts to bring forward the sort of leadership tonight’s honorees have exhibited. We need to be much more engaged and strategic in our social investment practices.
Every one of us who succeeds needs to honor a commitment to give back. Gratefully, through hard work and lots of heavy lifting over the years here in Chicago you have built community institutions and leadership that is impressive on any world stage.

The power behind institutions like the National Museum of Mexican Art and the Nuestro Futuro Fund of the Chicago Community Trust is real and still quite unique.

The quality of your Community Leadership in the form of all who I have named tonight, and others as well people (like Ricardo Millet, Julie Chavez, Carmen Prieto, Marta Tienda, Ernest Vasseur, and Maria Pesqueira)—that quality too is world class. (This is what tonight’s awards ceremony honors and makes clear to the larger culture!) You should feel terribly proud of your many accomplishments here in Chicago as a Latino community of givers.
In this work, you have paved a path of leadership that all of our Latino communities across the nation can emulate and learn from.

I am so pleased and honored to have been invited to be here with you this evening to share my congratulations and I thank you for your kind reception. I applaud your many accomplishments over the years and enthusiastically look forward to future opportunities to return to work and share with you in the cause of advancing Latino philanthropy here in the great city of Chicago and elsewhere.

¡Muchisimas gracias por su liderazgo y por invitarme!

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