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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowAt the end of this week, Brian Payne will finish a 23-year run as CEO and president of the Central Indiana Community Foundation and president of the Indianapolis Foundation. You can think of CICF as an umbrella organization that includes the Indianapolis Foundation and many other foundations and charitable funds that make nearly $100 million in grants every year to help not-for-profit groups in central Indiana. Over 23 years of Payne’s leadership, the total assets of the CICF collective organization have grown from $338 million to more than $1 billion.
For that alone, Payne is widely considered one of the most influential not-for-profit leaders in the city. But he also is the founder and primary creative force behind the $63 million Indianapolis Cultural Trail that loops downtown, links its six cultural districts and has become a major driver of economic development along its path. Payne further cemented his reputation for taking on big challenges when, in 2018, CICF formally changed its mission to support racial equity and inclusion and to dismantle institutional racism in central Indiana.
In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Payne explains to host Mason King why he has decided to retire from full-time work, what he plans to do next, and how CICF will change once he leaves. We also discuss the impact of the Cultural Trail, why CICF decided to change its mission in 2018 and the challenge of measuring its progress on a goal as large as dismantling institutional racism in central Indiana.
Click here to find the IBJ Podcast each Monday. You can also subscribe at iTunes, Google Play, Tune In, Spotify and anyplace you find podcasts.
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Looking for another podcast to try? Check out IBJ’s The Freedom Forum with Angela B. Freeman, a monthly discussion about diversity and inclusion in central Indiana’s business community.
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I like a lot of what Payne has done over the years, but either he’s been ideologically captured by the woke mindvirus or he’s too afraid to state what most of us know (which is what wokeness depends upon). We should raise our eyebrows at any huckster trying to sell us on “dismantling institutional racism”. It’s a ludicrous goal that will always shift its benchmarks–it already has shifted to laughable lengths in the last 6-7 years–as a goal of shaking money trees, for nonprofits to buttress their old mission statements.
Anyone remotely attuned to human nature will realize that racism is just as intrinsic as greed or jealousy. Since most people know we can never get rid of those two, why bother trying to get rid of racism? Racism is whatever the accuser wants it to be, at that moment in time, based on his/her terms and conditions. That will never change. Far more effective is giving people the psychological armor to withstand what they perceive as racism so they can’t allow it to hold them back. Once the racists in their lives learn they can’t sting their intended victims, they’ll just find new targets.
+1
+1
True Lauren B.
When the media stops pushing victimization of skin pigment variations, and starts focusing on how to improves every pigment’s opportunities, we’ll stop the hucksters and baiters.
There is lots of work to do, but dividing us is not the start.
We can see firsthand the initial results of the CICF’s big new it’s-all-about-race initiative: They completely wrecked the Indianapolis Public Library’s national reputation by smearing and railroading our wonderful library director. Her crime? She was white. Wrong color, apparently.
Can’t wait to see who they trash next in their social justice crusade, which applies “to thee and not to me” — the new CICF chief executive is white. Of course.
Richard S.
Agreed!
It seems the left bases everything on race and are obsessed with race
24/7. They believe that anyone who does not buy into their race
obsession is racist.
All this racial nonsense is hurting our city.
Institutional racism is another phrase for, don’t try, blame others, and live off the government.
Use the give aways to get a free college education, by attending class, getting decent grades, staying out of trouble.
This is for any race, of lesser income.