Though the principles and practice of participatory grantmaking have made headway recently, the notion that funders know best is still prevalent

While many assume the participation of communities affected by funding in philanthropy is a new practice, there is a rich legacy of grantmakers who have been participatory since well before the term became common parlance. These include the Funding Exchange members, Southern Partners Fund, Global Greengrants Fund, UHAI EASHRI, and Central American Women’s Fund. They and others laid the groundwork for what we now call participatory grantmaking, which is when funders cede decision-making power about grants to the communities they aim to serve. But how widespread is the practice?

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Many newer funds have been developed with participation at the core, for example the Diverse City Fund, Arctic Indigenous Fund, Child Rights Innovation Fund, and Black Feminist Fund, as well as family foundations like the Share Fund and Cypress Fund. Many have been influenced by the Movement for Black Lives and use a racial equity lens, such as if, A Foundation for Radical Possibility whose strategic plan focuses on racial justice. Others, like Mama Cash, have recently begun to apply participatory approaches to all of their funding or, like the Climate Justice Resilience Fund, are in the process of doing so.

There are those that are also breaking ground by developing new models such as the Step Up/Step Back model of Equality Fund’s ‘Activate’ funding stream that developed a non-competitive, ecosystem approach to allocating philanthropic resources. The Indigenous Aunties Council at Right Relations Collaborative invites funders to apply to be part of their collaborative. Meanwhile, pooled funds and funder collaboratives have offered grantmakers a space to dive into participatory grantmaking, including Arts Work Fund in Chicago, Fund for Shared Insight’s participatory climate initiative, and Health and Environment Funders Network.

Many funders – those with the most assets and power – are clearly either not convinced or not willing or able to change their structures, cultures, operations, and policies.

There’s also a growing number of tools, philanthropic infrastructure groups, and resources available to support funders interested in embracing these new practices. The self-organised and volunteer-run Participatory Grantmaking Community was launched in March 2020 with a small group of practitioners and has since grown into a community of over 1,500 people. As a community of practice, it offers regular programming, and an active mailing list. Many reports, webinars and guides have also been developed in recent years and are now widely available.

Hope… and scepticism

As long-time advocates for power-shifting in philanthropy, we approach this growing space with a sense of hope. At the same time, we have some scepticism about how widespread these practices are. Because in spite of the development of groundbreaking new participatory models and the increase in infrastructure, resources and support, the majority of funding in our sector is in institutional philanthropy, where little observable change has taken place. A study in 2021, Sharing Power? The Landscape of Participatory Practices & Grantmaking Among Large U.S. Foundations by the University of Washington found that only 10 per cent confer decision-making about grants on the communities they aim to serve. Why so few?

Many funders – those with the most assets and power – are clearly either not convinced or not willing or able to change their structures, cultures, operations, and policies. Some buy into the idea that proximity is not necessary. Others believe that people closer to the issues will have conflicts of interest or be too subjective to make ‘fair’ decisions. The CEO of the Rockefeller Foundation, Rajiv Shah, is a good example. His foundation prefers top-down approaches where people with significant higher education are considered the experts. As Marc Gunther wrote in a recent article in The Chronicle of Philanthropy: ‘Major efforts are developed in-house and [then] carried out by nonprofits and consultants… Faith in professionally trained and credentialed experts remains a Rockefeller hallmark.’

The ‘superior wisdom’ of the wealthy

This view that top-down approaches are better comes from capitalist philanthropy’s origins. Andrew Carnegie, the oft-referenced ‘father of philanthropy’, believed like many of those who have risen to riches, that his wealth gave him ‘superior wisdom, experience, and ability to administer [funds], doing for them [the poor] better than they would or could do for themselves’, as he wrote in The Gospel of Wealth.

We have challenged this conventional philanthropic worldview for nearly two decades. We’ve made the argument that involving community members in philanthropic decision-making is more just, because involving people in decisions that affect them is a central tenet of democracy and human rights. We also argue that, strategically, grants that value the expertise of people with lived experience are more likely to be effective because they understand their circumstances better than those who have never lived them. In Marc Gunther’s article, he cites a survey of Rockefeller grantees as follows: ‘Rockefeller’s staff is said to be less responsive, less respectful, less transparent, and less trusting than its peers, as well as not as knowledgeable and or compassionate as peers are about those it aims to serve.’

Truth be told, all actors in philanthropy have potential conflicts of interest. Pretending that there is more objectivity without proximity and that bias does not exist among those at the top of the ladder is a fool’s errand.

Rather than believing that distance creates neutrality and objectivity, participatory grantmakers see intimate knowledge of the issue, the context, and the actors as hugely relevant and essential. They do this while taking potential conflicts of interest and even perceived conflicts quite seriously. Many have developed clear policies and mitigation processes. Further, some offer anti-bias training and support, like Chicago Beyond’s Mirror Tool. These grantmakers often seek to surface differences of opinion, seeing that as a benefit of the approach. Truth be told, all actors in philanthropy have potential conflicts of interest. Pretending that there is more objectivity without proximity and that bias does not exist among those at the top of the ladder is a fool’s errand.

APPT: a way into participation

Proving that participatory philanthropy is more effective than top-down solutions is beyond the scope of this article. Participatory practices attack a worldview that divides people into haves and have-nots, experts and beneficiaries, subjects and objects. It is both a practice and an ethos, which changes the hierarchical culture in foundations. We recently developed a tool to help more funders understand the power differentials and embrace a shift in thinking and power.

Our Advancing Participation in Philanthropy Tool (APPT) addresses a gap by helping funders gauge where they are in terms of the participation of communities affected by their funding and supporting funders to identify further areas for growth. The APPT is a self-assessment organised along a spectrum of participation, from ‘no or limited participation’, through ‘some’ or ‘substantial participation’ to ‘full participation’. It is focused on the areas of work beyond grantmaking in a foundation, like finance, monitoring/evaluation/learning, communications and more. Each of the organisational functional areas in the tool includes key indicators, questions and statements which help users to identify where their foundation is on the participation spectrum. The tool is best used in a participatory process by teams working across departments and at different decision-making levels in order to instigate internal dialogue and increase joint understanding about how participation is functioning or can function within a funding institution.

We urge philanthropy to continue pushing towards more just, democratic and effective structures, where communities affected by funding are not only making grant decisions but also involved in roles of meaningful power from governance all the way through operations. We hope that the call for participation of people with experience of philanthropy will be a force that, over time, revolutionises how resources are shared. In the last decade, we have seen critical questioning about whether wealth equals wisdom and a change in how ‘expertise’ is understood. We have seen an increase in funds that embrace these practices from the beginning with equity in mind, especially following recent movements for racial, gender and disability justice. We hope our APPT will contribute to this swell of interest. Indeed, perhaps we are on the cusp of a sea change.

Katy Love is an experienced practitioner of participatory philanthropy
Email katylovework@gmail.com
@KatyOnTheWeb

Diana Samarasan is an expert in global disability rights and participatory philanthropy
dianasamarasan.work@gmail.com
@DSamarasan