Philanthropy is many things, but at the core, it’s people making decisions about money.
For philanthropy to be effective, it matters who those people are, how they make those decisions, and who gets the money. In short, it’s about power and who has it.
It stands to reason, then, that thoughtful decision making will involve the people most affected by the problems that foundations are trying to solve. Yet this practice is far from the norm among foundations, especially larger ones.
But here’s the good news: A growing number of grant makers are inviting people from outside their institutions to help set priorities, develop strategies, and sit on their boards or advisory committees.
Global GreenGrants, for example, has a worldwide network of approximately 150 advisers who connect the fund to local activists who volunteer their time to identify strategic priorities, recommend grants, and serve as mentors to emerging leaders.
The NoVo Foundation’s decision to allocate $90 million to support the advancement of girls of color grew directly from a yearlong tour listening to girls of color, leaders of the movement, and organizers.
The Brooklyn Community Foundation, after getting feedback from people throughout the borough, gathers neighborhood residents to identify causes that need financial support and to recommend worthy projects.
Some of these foundations are taking participation one step further by putting decision-making authority in the hands of outsiders. These institutions are showing that it can be done — and in many ways, including setting grant criteria and conducting post-grant evaluations.
The Disability Rights Fund, for example, puts decision making about funding strategy and grants directly in the hands of disability-rights activists, who have expertise and perspective often lacking among traditional grant makers. This participatory approach, the fund’s leaders say, results in better decisions and outcomes, as well as more empowered participants. The Wikimedia Foundation, in keeping with the spirit of its founding organization, Wikipedia, seeks involvement from the public in every aspect of its grant application and award process through the same method it uses for Wikipedia articles. And it seeks out diverse groups of people from around the world to help it make grant decisions.
These are just a few examples of funds that are letting more people get involved in grant-making decisions. But is it time for big philanthropy to let outsiders into the process more often?
That’s the question the Ford Foundation wanted answered when it asked Cynthia — who had helped the Case Foundation hold one of the first national participatory grant-making competitions — to seek ideas, find out what’s happening today, and consider what could be done in the future.
Here, she and Chris, a program officer at Ford who oversees the grant maker’s work to strengthen philanthropy, discuss the key findings of the paper she wrote and the implications as they seek to move a conversation into the open usually held behind the scenes.
Cynthia Gibson: Why did Ford commission this work?
Chris Cardona: Much of the conversation about philanthropic effectiveness focuses on the “how": Are processes fair? Are foundations sufficiently diverse and inclusive? Are grantees treated with dignity and respect? These are all essential concerns, but we also must look at who is making the decisions about grants and whether we’re including the insights of people closest to the ground.
Gibson: But Ford doesn’t really “do” participatory grant making, right?
Cardona: Yeah, that’s fair. We recognize this is an area where we have a lot to learn.
We’ve tried out a couple of things. One is a network organized by the Social Justice Fund Northwest and the North Star Fund that is enlisting people from outside the foundations to participate in giving circles that distribute foundation money. Another thing we’re supporting is a collective of Detroit community organizations that are developing a fund to support grass-roots community organizing by putting decision making power into the hands of neighborhood residents.
Those are two things we’re trying out, but there’s more we can do. That’s why this paper was important: We’re hoping to show this is something that big foundations can take on, even if we learn as we go. You don’t have to have it all figured out to dive in.
Gibson: Why do you think it’s hard for big foundations to embrace participatory grant making?
Cardona: It’s certainly not for lack of examples. You cite dozens of these in the paper, from all different types of donors. But I think our professional identity as grant makers is often tied up in our decision-making acumen. We’re hired because we have been embedded in a field and know it well. We are entrusted to gather information and make recommendations for grant decisions based on our knowledge and connections and on data about the issues and actors.
So an approach that casts not us but community members as the experts — that can be threatening. But it doesn’t have to be. That’s what inspires me about participatory grant making: it taps expertise from community members rather than making the expertise of those within the foundation the default source of authority.
I gather that in your research, you’ve heard from participatory grant makers and nonprofits alike that in the same way that there’s growing inequality in society at large, there’s growing inequality in the grant maker-nonprofit relationship as the field becomes more top-down and donor-driven.
That certainly resonates with my own experience. That’s one reason participatory approaches are appealing as a balance or corrective. Getting outside our own frame of reference is healthier, and I honestly believe that it generally leads to better decisions.
Now let me ask you, Cynthia: You’re not just the author of this paper, you’re also one of the subjects because of your work at the Case Foundation and with other organizations. What did you take away from those experiences about the power and potential of participatory grant making?
Gibson: The Case Foundation’s participatory grant-making program was originally intended to help promote examples of how ordinary people in communities were doing what we called “citizen-centered civic engagement.” That approach was designed to create civic spaces that allowed diverse groups of people to connect — including with those they might disagree with — to discuss priorities, develop solutions, and take action together to address problems.
As we dove into the process, we realized that we, too, had a responsibility to do what we were advocating. Specifically, we needed to throw open the grant-making process to real people and invite their participation in something that was usually left to experts.
The process we came up with involved the public in every step of the process, from developing guidelines and criteria for which decisions would be made to reviewing proposals to making grant decisions. This was significantly different from the kinds of online voting contests that were becoming popular at the time, most of which asked the public to vote on a list of organizations the funders drew up based on their goals.
But we didn’t leave out experts, either. We invited a small group of advisers with experience in community building to help cull the list of finalists selected by non-grant makers from 100 to 20, on which the public voted. According to an evaluation of the Case program, participants saw that blended process as key to finding the best projects for funding. Basically, the process supported our view that important decisions about what gets done shouldn’t be just the purview of experts but not a popularity contest either. Finding feasible solutions to tough problems has to involve experts on the issues as well as people closest to the problems, working in tandem.
Cardona: What do you think big foundations should do next to move this conversation forward?
Gibson: I’m heartened by recent efforts that are encouraging grant makers to listen more to people on the ground. But while listening is extremely important and necessary, I’m not convinced it’s sufficient, especially if the goal is to break down the power imbalances that are inherent in these relationships. Yes, people can give input, but if that feedback isn’t incorporated into whatever process for which it’s being elicited, it’s a bit hollow. Further, if the people giving feedback don’t have any decision-making power, there’s little incentive for those with power to use that feedback. That lands us right back to the top-down, expert-driven system that’s been a hallmark of institutional philanthropy for a long time.
The challenge is going to be whether and to what extent big foundations catch the wave of participatory grant making. That will be difficult because large institutions have more entrenched systems and bureaucracies that will be difficult to upend quickly. And it’s harder for such institutions to figure out who exactly their constituencies are. Not to mention that the organizations are still fiscally and legally responsible for their practices.
Those are legitimate concerns that may make foundations reluctant to dive right into participatory grant making, but they could dip their toes into those waters by picking one or two program areas and figuring out ways to involve people outside of philanthropy. Foundations could also think about whom they’re hiring in program-related positions; they could begin moving from a fixation on credentials or expertise toward valuing the real-world experience of candidates as equally, if not more, important in making decisions about effective strategies and resource allocations.
And I would ask you the same question: Specifically, how can you and the Ford Foundation move the conversation forward?
Cardona: Well, I can tell you what I will do as a program officer, and that is to continue integrating participatory practices into my own grant making. I’m doing that now in two projects we have in development.
One is on how foundation trustees can be champions for diversity, equity, and inclusion. We convened a group of nonprofit leaders, trustees, and experts over the summer to generate ideas, and their suggestions are having a big influence on the directions we’ll eventually pursue.
Another project is our partnership with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Borealis Philanthropy — and, I hope, additional grant makers before long — in which we’re working to incorporate as much grantee input and engagement as we can.
Cynthia, if you had a chance to talk to every foundation leader in America, what would you tell them about the importance of welcoming more people into the grant-making process?
Gibson: Take inspiration from those already doing this work. Talk to them and get their ideas. Experiment with some participatory activities. What have you got to lose? Foundations like to see themselves as being on the cutting edge, so what better way is there to show that you understand how the world in which we’re living requires new ways of thinking and operating that are transparent, inclusive, and collaborative?
At the core of that shift is the recognition that truly innovative approaches to resolving hard issues aren’t going to come solely from the top, from experts educated at elite institutions, but in partnership with people who can bring their own direct experience to bear in making important decisions about their lives, communities, and futures.
Other fields, like journalism and education, are getting this, and community organizers and deliberative governance practitioners have gotten it for a long time. So isn’t it time for philanthropy to get it as well?
After all, if foundations don’t involve the people who are most affected by their decisions, then they’re just reinforcing the problems they’re trying to solve. And given the extraordinary need for resources, that would be a tragedy.
Cynthia Gibson is the author of Participatory Grant Making: Has Its Time Come? a paper commissioned by the Ford Foundation. Chris Cardona oversees the Ford Foundation’s grants to strengthen philanthropy.