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 grantmaking or strategy development?
Power-shifting change happens when funders partner with community members from the outset of their work, listening well in an ongoing and systematic way as strategy and grantmaking evolve.
This critical from-the-start approach can be paired with the grantee feedback many of you already collect. Together, the input from, and partnerships with, grantees and the people and communities you seek to serve will lead to better informed and more equitable grantmaking and strategy-setting decisions.
Note: If you’re involved with grants administration, check out some of the resources at Peak Grantmaking.
Get going with these tools and resources
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A case for philanthropy to significantly increase its investment in Black-led social change organizations and efforts is made here, with suggestions to create sustained long-term infrastructure investment, increased exposure to the lived experience of Black people, and racial equity grantmaking plans.
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This actionable guide can help align your foundation’s practices with racial justice principles by addressing systemic inequities, centering communities of color in decision-making, and sharing power.
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Report highlighting recommendations from focus groups of Native nonprofit and philanthropic leaders surfaced five themes — including relationships, self-determination, and capacity building — critical to understanding what it takes to support people and communities in achieving their dreams and thriving on their own terms.
Get inspired by what other funders are doing
As a new health conversion foundation, Natrona Collective Health Trust wanted to create a philanthropic institution centered on the belief that the community owns and informs their work. They partnered with global social impact firm FSG on a strategic planning process that engaged over 50 community members and leaders, particularly members of historically marginalized communities. Hearing from community members brought local and national data on health disparities to life. For example, many were surprised to learn that it could take someone hours to pick up a prescription from the pharmacy using public transportation.
Based on the data and what they heard from the community, the foundation decided to focus its work on improving behavioral health in early childhood and adolescence. They also have created a program advisory committee composed of paid community members and work with youth on participatory grantmaking efforts.
The Colorado Health Foundation’s annual survey of nearly 3,000 Coloradans helps shape strategy. In recent years, residents have identified the rising cost of living, the cost of housing, and homelessness as the most serious problems facing the state. In response to those results and other input from community, the foundation added a new priority area, Economic Opportunity. And it is relying on additional listening efforts, such as interviews and focus groups and its staff’s continued community engagement, to inform its work in that area.
Says Tracey Stewart, a senior program officer: The survey data, “point us in a certain direction and then we start knocking on the doors of the people we need to meet to understand, plan, and act.”
As with other GreenLight Funds across the country, GreenLight Boston relies on local GreenLight Selection Advisory Councils made up of for-profit and nonprofit leaders, philanthropists, social entrepreneurs, and academics, who act as expert partners and sounding boards to help decide which community-based organizations receive funding. In Boston, GreenLight’s model also includes a separate council of family partners who engage in a parallel process to the Advisory Council, sharing their opinions on what kinds of services they would use and how nonprofit programs impact their communities. Ultimately, the family partners join the Advisory Council to vote on what organization to support.
Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo undergoes a strategic refresh every five years, conducting a listening tour in order to re-examine its community goals. In one such effort, the foundation worked with community-based partners to engage community leaders, nonprofits, and residents through interviews, focus groups, and surveys. One result: instead of continuing with plans to invest in transportation and childcare, the foundation pivoted to focusing on systems change within education and workforce training programs to address the root causes of the challenges residents from low-income households said they were facing.
Before launching a new grantmaking program, the Freedom Fund collaborates with frontline organizations and local advisors on a scoping study and strategy process that includes the voices of people with lived experience. To learn about how to address the risks to young women in textile mills in India, for example, the fund supported partners’ field staff to collect 300 life stories, then brought together nearly three dozen people, half nonprofit staff and half community members, to together analyze the stories and identify themes to focus their efforts on. The findings were also used to create a film and an accompanying curriculum that the local organizations used for community-led discussions.
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.
