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 involved in global grantmaking?
If you are a funder making grants beyond the borders of your country, you can still listen to shift power.
Get going with these tools and resources
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Six principles to help your foundation develop strategies that increase accountability, shift power, and center communities in service of advancing justice and equity.
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This approach can guide your foundation to partner with and fund community-led efforts that create systemic change by empowering communities as drivers of their own agendas.
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This case study shares Equality Fund’s efforts to fund an ecosystem by asking the community to make decisions about how to prioritize limited resources in a non-competitive way.
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FRIDA Fund documents their unique model of participatory grantmaking with lessons.
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Get inspired by what other funders are doing
With a strong commitment to raising youth voices and ensuring that young people inform its work, Global Fund for Children (GFC) works closely with an active Youth Leadership Council (YLC). Representing different countries and holding unique experiences of activism across sectors, the YLC’s 11 members play an important role in GFC’s strategic planning, program development, and grantmaking processes. The YLC’s chair also sits on GFC’s governing board. A position on the YLC is a volunteer role but members are paid an annual fee and are also compensated for other time commitments. Additionally, they gain access to networking, capacity development, and other career-enhancing opportunities.
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.
