Funder Listening Action Menu

When The Ford Family Foundation learned that families in one of the Oregon towns where it works wanted stronger pathways to kindergarten for their children, it did not jump to a quick decision, such as to build a new preschool. Instead, the funder spent years supporting relationship-building in the community, creating dialogue to understand barriers around school readiness, and building trust and muscles for community organizing.

“If a new preschool was a solution we had prescribed for the community, would families really want to take their kids there? Would the town have rallied?” asked Kara Inae Carlisle, president and CEO of The Ford Family Foundation. “What Yoncalla did, through their own process, was begin to think about what they wanted for their community, what they wanted for their kids, how they wanted the school to operate.”

Pointing to Yoncalla Early Works, the community hub providing preschool and other services that was eventually built with the foundation’s support, Carlisle said she recognizes that the foundation could not have created it alone, or by simply providing funding. “We can’t grant-make our way out of any of these issues,” she said. Instead, for every effort the foundation takes on, she said, “we think about what power we want to hold and what we don’t want to hold,” and where the foundation can build capacity among others, especially by helping to activate the sometimes “invisible capital” within communities.

When The Ford Family Foundation began to shift its rural community building strategy from “leadership development” to “community development,” a new staff position — field coordinator — played a significant role in implementing the change. Neither program officers nor grant makers, field coordinators are remote employees charged with extending the reach of the foundation in the rural communities and regions where they live. These “ground truthers,” according to a report, “How Philanthropy Can ‘Go to Where the People Are,’” ensure that programmatic strategies never stray far from the realties in rural communities.

The Ford Family Foundation, which makes grants throughout Oregon and Siskiyou County, California, with a focus on rural areas, also maintains vehicles for other staff, who are also likely to live in rural communities, to travel around the state building in-person relationships and dialogue.

During a process to reimagine its strategy, Deaconess Foundation worked with a consultative project team to engage people in its region (Missouri and Illinois) and nationally, ultimately collecting feedback from 663 community members and policy analysts through neighborhood and community gatherings, grant partner focus groups, one-on-one interviews, and national peer funder conversations.

The purpose of the listening was to give the foundation a better sense of what mattered to individuals and their families and how its strategy could more closely align with their hopes and aspirations for the future. One of the listening exercises employed at public events was designed around posters that listed racial-equity benchmarking indicators. Attendees were invited to write their zip code on sticky notes, placing them on the indicators that best reflected an area in their life in which they wanted to see change. They were also invited to add written feedback about why they chose a certain indicator, how changes related to it would impact their lives, and what organizational values Deaconess would need to adopt to help achieve those changes. 

The James Irvine Foundation’s participatory learning journey has focused on listening and learning from its grantees. While some participatory approaches involve direct engagement with community residents, others can center on grantees — organizations that have deep roots in their communities and actively engage with residents and the issues they face. Irvine has prioritized working closely with grantees to inform its learning and decision-making, recognizing their role as trusted partners with direct community connections.