Funder Listening Action Menu

Tools & Resources to Shift Power

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Listen through your role or function

Looking at your role/function within your foundation.

Try on specific listening practices

What are listening practices that can shift power?

Reflect on listening and power

Assess how you are listening through a set of reflection questions.

Start Listening to Shift Power

What reflection questions can help you get ready to listen to shift power?

We recommend you and your foundation consider the following reflection questions to help assess your readiness to listen in authentic and non-extractive ways. In addition, the following pieces, which include discussions about power, might help deepen and contextualize your work:

  • Meditations on Power, ORS Impact
  • Decolonizing Wealth, Edgar Villanueva
  • Right Relations Collaborative 2024 Reciprocity Report
  • MPHI’s Limitless Possibilities: A Guide to Power Shifting Approaches in Philanthropy

Pro tip: For a deep dive, see Cyndi Suarez’s “The Power Manual: How to Master Complex Power Dynamics“

Reflect on listening and power
Who are the communities you seek to serve and what is your relationship with them?
How do you think about your own power? What power do you hold and how do you wield it?
How does your foundation think about power? What power does your foundation hold and how does it wield it?