One organization shares how they are thinking about “equity and right relations” and reshaping their practices to reflect justice, reciprocity, and a deeper understanding of the histories that shape wealth and giving today.
Despite a recent retreat on diversity, equity, and inclusion measures, the work continues, and many organizations and groups are looking to deepen their commitment through practical action. The Canadian Association of Gift Planners (CAGP) institutionalizes this commitment: “As leaders in gift planning, we have the opportunity as well as the responsibility to reshape our practices so they reflect justice, reciprocity, and a deeper understanding of the histories that shape wealth and giving today,” president and CEO Ruth MacKenzie says.
Much of the “philanthropic capital” we rely on has been built by extracting resources, land, and labour from Black and Indigenous Peoples. Picture endowments as a reservoir filled and held by the dam of historical and ongoing extraction of capital. While we cannot decolonize philanthropy, we can be anticolonial by being justice- and equity-oriented. Our work is to re-establish the natural flow of reciprocity, removing the dam so that wealth flows back into the soil and communities from which it was taken.
At CAGP’s Greater Vancouver Chapter, we’re cultivating a “food forest” of policy and systems rooted in values. In the ancient and ongoing Indigenous teaching and practice of food forests, from Turtle Island to Abya Yala (including here in Vancouver by the Vancouver Urban Food Forest Foundation), resilience and abundance are born of diversity and the strategic layering of life. We are weaving equity and right relations throughout every layer of our chapter’s ecosystem.
Why ‘equity and right relations’?
“Establishing a chair of equity and rights relations is the next step, ensuring this work is not episodic, but sustained, intentional, and embedded in how we operate,” says Kerry Dyer Shillito, co-chair of CAGP’s Greater Vancouver Chapter. “This role helps us create a chapter where more people feel a sense of belonging. In doing so, we contribute to a more inclusive and relevant philanthropic community.”
In my role as chair, in consultation with Zachary Biech of Sākāstēw Strategies and Stephanie Fenner of the First Nations Financial Management Board, we arrived at the name “equity and right relations.” We rejected the placeholder name, “equity and reconciliation,” because reconciliation cannot exist without a truth the Canadian state has yet to fully reckon with. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) 94 Calls to Action and the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls’s (MMIWG) Calls for Justice are literal directives whose meaning and importance must not be diluted.
“Equity,” because equity requires justice, inclusivity, diversity, accessibility. “Right relations” require truth, radical reciprocity, honesty, and balanced power dynamics. The concept of right relations draws from Indigenous teachings about responsibility, reciprocity, and accountability across generations and to all living relations.
The emergent layer
The responsibilities of “equity and right relations” and our values stretch like the emergent layer of a forest, keeping us looking toward the bright sky of a more just future. They also model behaviours to help us reach their lofty vision, representing teachings of former generations who have grown through it before.
The values this committee holds our practices up to are reciprocity, belonging, equity and solidarity, courage and leadership, abundance and generosity, and love. These values are based in certain teachings of African and Indigenous Peoples; in particular, the responsibility we have to past and future generations (Seven Generations teachings of the Haudenosaunee), learning from and honouring the past in order to move forward (Sankofa of the Akan), and the understanding that all flourishing is mutual, that I am because you are (Ubuntu of the Bantu).
The canopy and forest floor
Our chapter’s journey began more than three years ago, with a critical early step of expanding the executive’s understanding of the work (tending the soil) by taking the Home on Native Land course hosted by Raven at our monthly meeting. The executive functions as the tall, systemic trees that provide the protective microclimate. The learning and unlearning sessions are part of the root zone – the deep work of fertilizing a shifting consciousness that expands root networks, which in turn secure strong and long-lasting systems.
The understory
What followed was a small unfurling: incorporating justice, equity, diversity, accessibility, and inclusivity (JEDAI) and truth and reconciliation (R) work in our communications and events. Our communications committee began by sharing an introductory JEDAI-R article regarding different intersections of planned giving. The professional development committee partners with local affinity groups to host sessions with diverse speakers.
Throughout the early stages of our journey, we’ve asked what it means to centre love and community care in policy and governance. What could it look like to centre abundance and reciprocity in our day-to-day work? Every committee becomes a fruit-bearing (action) shrub, incorporating unique JEDAI-RR (right relations) goals. For the co-chairs, that could be implementing anti-colonial, non-hierarchical governance models; for membership, increasing diversity by addressing barriers to belonging for intersectional identities living under oppressive systems.
Our seasonal strategy is aligned to a circular, circadian rhythm. This includes time for rest and reflection, promoting longevity in work that continues for “as long as the sun shines, the grass grows, and the river flows.” Some initiatives include:
Winter (root and rest):
- Reflect, review, and be transparent about what worked and what didn’t.
- Allocate dedicated equity funding that demonstrates priorities.
- Invest in repair (bursaries, gifts to Indigenous-led and -serving organizations).
- Honour rest and sustainability.
Spring (budding actions):
- Deepen the executive’s anti-colonial and justice-focused learning.
- Integrate equity and right relations goals in all committees.
- Create brave, trauma-informed spaces.
Summer (blooming):
- Apply values to all decisions, partnerships, and communications.
- Advance relevant TRC Calls to Action and MMIWG Calls for Justice.
- Deliver accessible education through low-barrier webinars.
- Grow reciprocal partnerships with allied affinity groups.
Autumn (storytelling and harvest):
- Share knowledge openly (tools, resources, communal learning).
- Gather feedback and report back in conversation with community.
- Foster diverse, representative belonging in membership and volunteers.
One example: this June, Zachary Biech will share the different ways the Indian Act affects inheritance for Indigenous Peoples. We will be acting on our values by providing honorariums that reflect the emotional labour of discussing one’s lived expertise. The low-cost talk will be held online, reducing barriers to access. This webinar also advances the Calls for Justice from the National Inquiry into MMIWG, and the TRC’s 92nd Call to Action.
Identifying characteristics of white supremacy, we affirm that we will make mistakes – and will continue to courageously grow through this work. With radical transparency in sharing, we hope to turn errors into learnings. We are grateful to the kin who have helped shape and will continue to shape our ever-adapting work, including The Empathy Agency, The Circle on Philanthropy, Recast Philanthropy, and Sākāstēw Strategies. Cross-pollination of diverse thought and teachings are crucial to the resilient blooming of this work, and we’re honoured to learn in relationship with them.
Hopeful future of reciprocal kinship
We honour the teachings of the original stewards of this land by weaving the work of equity and justice into every layer of our policies and actions, from the ground-level work of learning and unlearning to the emergent layer of our highest values and behaviours.
As we continue this work, we’ve learned that embedding equity and right relations is most naturally rooted in learning and relationship-building with shared intentions. It becomes more complex as it moves closer to governance, radical transparency, and the allocation of resources – where values transform into tangible shifts in power and practice. One of the most significant challenges will be enduring in an increasingly turbulent society. We sustain this work by embedding goals into every committee’s strategy, ensuring that the work isn’t siloed or dependent on a champion who may burn out. This work must be held by many hands – distributed across committees and leadership, so it becomes a perennial feature of the ecosystem.
For chapters and organizations looking to begin or deepen this work, a few lessons have emerged: start with shared learning (ongoing courses for leadership) and true belonging for whole identities, but move quickly toward structural commitments; ensure that values are reflected in budgets and actions, not only language; expect to feel uncomfortable and make mistakes as part of the process; and resource the work in a way that reflects its importance. Pair quick wins like diversifying speakers and meaningful land acknowledgements with long-term systemic changes like restructuring board governance and codifying equity-based funding into the annual budget.
Our members . . . play a direct role in how wealth is structured, how giving is advised, and ultimately how capital moves.
Tracey Lundell, CAGP Greater Vancouver
The non-profit industrial complex was engineered by the same colonial body our chapter seeks to transform, but we are not helpless within its structures. Our actions from within can be anti-colonial by dismantling the legal and colonial dams that have historically diverted these waters of wealth. Through the circadian rhythms of our seasonal strategy, we cultivate a legacy forest whose abundance will nourish and care for the next seven generations of all living relations. It is a shift from the heavy, stagnant management of a reservoir toward the regenerative, self-sustaining intelligence of an ecosystem.
“There is also a ripple effect,” says Tracey Lundell, co-chair of CAGP’s Greater Vancouver Chapter. “Our members – across charities, financial, legal, and philanthropy – play a direct role in how wealth is structured, how giving is advised, and ultimately how capital moves.” Planned giving already shapes the future of wealth. The only question is whether it will continue to replicate extraction – or interrupt it.
This journey reminds us that philanthropy, at its core, is about relationships – and that building right relations must be central to how we steward resources and serve our communities.
Ruth MacKenzie, CAGP
We invite you to co-create this beautiful future with us – a future where estate planning is no longer a tool for the retention of stolen wealth but a mechanism for its return. One that holds equitable, right relations with all living relations at the centre of decisions for generations. We already know how. At the wellspring of gift planning, in direct opposition to the logic of extraction, are reciprocal relationships. At the source of Canada, we find the same blueprints for reciprocal relationships in treaties. It’s a return to the root of philanthropy (“for the love of humanity”), to centre love for ourselves, each other, and the communities that we inhabit. We can enshrine love in our sector’s policies and governance. We can and will use love as an act of structural resistance.
“This journey reminds us that philanthropy, at its core, is about relationships – and that building right relations must be central to how we steward resources and serve our communities,” Ruth MacKenzie says.
