[public_defender]

Forgive me if this is addressed later in the article, but I stopped at the paywall.

There is a problem here with perverse incentives. I don't know about this specific project's funding trajectory, but it could arise from (1) The city wanting bus shelters and drawing in unrelated priorities like gender equity, or (2) a city project manager trying to kill two birds with one stone and grant funding to a gender equity project that also advances another city priority. Maybe neither one is happening here, but imagine that the nonprofit ecosystem is saturated with bad decisionmaking and mixed priorities on both axes. This gives rise to a cadre of nonprofits who can pitch any angle to get their project/office funded.

I have personally represented a nonprofit in meetings where a potential donor has added some sort of priority (e.g. "but how will this advance economic mobility?"), and you cannot fail to answer the question if you want to get funded.

In the funding process, you might assume that the donor is checking off a criteria pro forma (and that might even be the original intention). For example there are government donors that require all nonprofits or contractors do some level of gender equity analysis. The problem is that you can't control how you are held to this promise later. Sometimes the government donor is satisfied with the original gender equity analysis, sometimes the political exigencies have changed or the donor's project team has turned over and suddenly you are holding a women's rights press conference at a lamp post.

Here is a cartoon on point: https://nonprofitaf.com/2017/06/imagine-if-apple-had-to-run-...