Tools & Resources to Shift Power
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Looking at your role/function within your foundation.
What are listening practices that can shift power?
Assess how you are listening through a set of reflection questions.
Are you a donor or do you advise donors?
If you are a foundation donor — or work closely with donors — you have unique opportunities to shift your mindset from one of ownership over the organization’s wealth to one of stewardship. With this kind of reframing, defined by, and advanced through, listening to the people and communities your foundation seeks to serve, you’ll be creating a legacy of partnership that delivers resources where they are needed most.
- Pro Tip
- You’ll likely get a lot more out of this work if you first consider some of our reflection questions, such as, “What power do you hold as a trustee and how do you wield it?”
- If you’re a fundraiser, take a look at what community centric fundraising is all about.
Get going with these tools and resources
- Resource organization
Resource Generation offers resources and programming to young people with wealth, class privilege, or who are involved in family foundations to learn more about philanthropy around social, racial, economic, or environmental justice.
- Resource & resource organization
This guide invites you to reflect on four principles — accountability, equity, learning, and relationships — considering the meaning of each, how they manifest in your foundation’s philanthropic purpose, and how they show up in governance, grantmaking, and operations.
Pro tip: National Center for Family Philanthropy’s website offers a variety of other resources.
Get inspired by what other funders are doing
Through a community-based research process that tapped the wisdom of local movement leaders and grantee partners, the Tzedek Social Justice Fund recognized that it needed board members with direct experience doing the kind of work that Tzedek funds. Founder and donor Amy Mandel stepped down from the board, and Tzedek is now governed by a board of community leaders with diverse backgrounds and lived experience.
Dive into this menu to spark the changes you want to see.
Mix and match to find the examples, resources, and reflections best suited to help you and your organization shift power to the people and communities at the heart of your work.
About this collection
We know that you and other funders are moving toward listening and participatory practices at different rates and from different starting points and perspectives. We also know that shifting power is not easy work and requires a strong internal commitment and continuous learning. It’s best to be clear on your organization’s motivations, capabilities, and goals. And as you engage with this menu, consider your funding practices, operations, policies, and values — and then where change will best serve your foundation and the people and communities you seek to serve.
We offer a range of examples and resources because there are no one-size-fits-all solutions; and we share them in a menu format so you can pick and choose what’s interesting or relevant to you. We don’t rank the practices or the organizations employing them or intend to signal that any featured funder has listening figured out or listens well across the board. Each example represents only a moment in time — a practice one of your peers told us (or an intermediary) about, and that we hope might inspire you to enhance your own listening work.
Similarly, we do not rank the recommended resources, though we did select them based on a set of criteria, including:
- We and/or our partners have personally used the resource and find it is high-quality, promotes impact, and aligns with our power analysis
- The resource is widely and publicly available (not just to paid members) and, ideally, accessible to people with disabilities
- The resource is relevant to, and includes applicable lessons for, a variety of types of funders
- The resource is as evergreen as possible
New resources are always coming online. We hope that the ones we've included are helpful while also sparking your curiosity and helping you forge an ongoing relationship with the creators and other aligned efforts.
We encourage you to examine the menu’s resources and examples with a willingness to turn kernels of ideas into something right for you. We also hope you spend time on the reflection questions, which will help you and your organization better understand and prepare for what it means to listen to shift power. Checking out our Participatory Philanthropy Toolkit’s Funder Readiness Assessment will also help prepare you for changes in your priorities and practices.
We are always looking to add more funder listening examples and more resources. Please take a few minutes to share your stories and ideas on our Lift Up Listening online form.
Have questions about the menu or ideas for resources or examples?
Please reach out to our communications manager, Debra Blum.
