Disabled in Development Project Storyteller #10: Catherine Hyde Townsend

November 18, 2019November 18, 2019 / Ingrid Tischer / Leave a comment

“Linking ableism to other forms of oppression is also critical.”

Photo courtesy of Catherine Hyde Townsend

“Developing relationships between community leaders and philanthropic staff is essential. These social networks not only inform grant-making decisions, but also help reinforce learning and understanding of the disability community. It’s also one of the hardest things to do.”

Name or Anonymous:

Catherine Hyde Townsend

Please share how you prefer to introduce yourself:

I’ve worked in philanthropy on human rights issues since 2002 and became disabled 16 years ago.

Like lots of people, I was pretty clueless about disability before I experienced it myself. But I quickly realized what internalized ableism looked like as well as the social model of disability. I had/have access to incredible support from my family, work and friends, as well as significant privilege within the healthcare system. I haven’t always self-identified for a variety of reasons, but do so now for both political and personal reasons, finding significant community with others in the disability community.

For most of my time within philanthropy, I’ve been trying to educate and advocate to colleagues about how they can better include people with disabilities. One of the things I’m most proud of is helping to launch the Disability Rights Fund, a global donor that uses a participatory decision-making structure.

Most of my past work was at Wellspring Advisors, which works anonymously and takes a very low profile. For obvious reasons that was challenging, but I was able to launch and expand a grant-making portfolio focused on the [UN] Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities with a very intersectional lens. That grant-making was/is really important, but it was also important for donors of women’s rights, HIV, AIDS, immigration, etc., to understand the ways different forms of oppression link and reinforce one another, but also how our advocacy can do the same.

My current work seeks to advance the inclusion of people with disabilities within philanthropy – mostly focusing on the grant-making, but a lot on learning and culture change, as you cannot have one without the other.

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An Open Letter to Advocacy Funders: #FundDisAdvocacy Because Disability + Ableism = Structural Discrimination

October 3, 2018July 6, 2019 / Ingrid Tischer / 6 Comments

Want in on the conversation about ableism? Check out what disabled advocates, civil and human rights activists, and philanthropic leaders had to say at the Twitter chat on 10/12/18 about philanthropy and inclusion. Then make your voice heard at #FundDisAdvocacy.

Foundation funding for disability advocacy dropped 23% between 2011-2015. Disabled people were the only group to see a decrease. Most funders are “aware” of disability but do they see ableism and structural discrimination? How do we make funders see disability civil and human rights as areas of actionable, urgent advocacy? A first step is recognizing disability as a constant but hidden set of variables in nearly all formulas for civil and human rights.

I’m writing to you in my capacity as a community organizer – which is another name for a social justice fundraiser.

I believe you and I share common ground on the importance of advocacy:

We know that the great civil and human rights gains of the last century, envisioned and organized by the grassroots, were built to last through the courts and legislation, and they will continue to be the battlefields for preserving them.

I’m writing because disability civil and human rights advocacy is missing from your funding portfolios.

The first step in changing that is frank communication.

When you do not explicitly say “disability” in funding advocacy, you send a message to us: Deny, disown, and downplay your disability identity. That denies all marginalized communities access to our hard-won legal tools and, worse yet, our expertise in using them.

You may understand this letter, at first, as pertaining to a discrete group: disabled people. But it is a fundamental mistake to think that civil and human rights for any community can be fully achieved if we neglect, forget, or disregard such a basic human condition as disability and allow it to be the “natural” cause of poverty and abuse. If we are not safe or free to be vulnerable, then we cannot call ourselves safe or free. Our society is not safe or free.

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