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.
Try on different listening practices
Funders can listen to people and communities in many different authentic, equitable, and non-extractive ways. The practices highlighted here are meant to demonstrate how listening can show up throughout your organization, not only in grantmaking, but also in other areas, including staffing and governance. In some cases, listening to shift power can be achieved not only through specific practices but also through more structural or systemic changes, such as those that reformulate who the decision makers are.
- Pro Tip
Many of the different listening practices we explore would benefit from you working in partnership with your grantees and other nonprofits working in the communities you seek to serve. And all of them are expected to enhance your continuing efforts to listen to and be in direct feedback loops with your grantees, such as through trust-based approaches and the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s Grantee Perception Report.
It’s important to keep in mind that funders shouldn’t think they must always create the space for listening, such as by conducting listening tours or focus groups or hosting their own participatory processes. People, neighborhoods, and communities are already talking, connecting, communicating, and convening in their own forums, such as town halls, and in myriad more informal ways all of the time. As funders build relationships with communities, they should be finding ways to meet people where they are, working with them in the common spaces of partnerships and listening opportunities that already exist.
