Funder Listening Action Menu

Drawing on lessons from Public Profit’s “Dabbling in the Data” guide to participatory data analysis, a Ruth Mott Foundation learning officer developed working sessions with staff and members of the foundation’s Community Engagement Committee (CEC). Over a series of three “Data Simmers,” participants considered feedback collected during a series of community forums held as part of the foundation’s strategic planning process. The CEC, composed of local residents who had also advised on the forums, suggested different ways to share the data results back to the community. The simmer sessions, writes senior program officer Elizabeth Jordan, “were casual, conversational sessions intended to be approachable and culturally responsive.”

A year before the Ruth Mott Foundation hosted a series of community forums to gather input for a new strategic plan, it started gathering input to plan the forums themselves. The foundation formed a Community Engagement Committee (CEC) composed of 10 local residents from a variety of backgrounds to advise the feedback and collaboration processes. Committee members met once a month over dinner and were paid a stipend of $1,500 each.

A team of foundation staff rotated to guide meetings, which started with building relationships between CEC members and staff, using activities such as “I Am” fill-in-the blank poems and creating a collective playlist. Participants built context around the foundation’s mission, vision, values, and held one of their meetings at Applewood, the historical Mott family estate, to familiarize CEC members with the space. The group explored what they liked or didn’t like about engagement sessions they had participated in before, which helped shape the vision for the foundation’s forums. They also helped select venues, suggested outreach strategies, and tried out the activities staff designed based on their input. Above all, writes senior program officer Elizabeth Jordan, “they admonished us not to be boring.”

Founded in 1997 as the Consumer Health Foundation, iF, A Foundation for Radical Possibility renamed itself in 2021 to reflect its decades-long evolution from a traditional funder to a community-centered philanthropic partner dedicated to racial justice. The foundation describes its philanthropy as grounded in the belief that those who live at the sharpest intersections of systems of oppression, particularly race, class, and gender identity, should have decision-making power over the distribution of resources in their communities.

The foundation has community members on its governing board and in other leadership positions, implements participatory grantmaking, and works to be in close relationship with grassroots and frontline activists, supporting their organizing, coalition building, and advocacy.

Among those efforts, iF supports a coalition of leaders and organizations advocating for reparations for Black people in Washington, D.C. Upon the invitation of the D.C. Council, iF provided testimony in support of the case for reparations. The city’s reparations legislation passed in 2025, and the coalition is now fighting for its funding and implementation. The foundation continues to work with the coalition on reparations and the broader fight for economic justice.

iF also continues to pilot a worker-led guaranteed income project for D.C.-area hospitality workers who lost their jobs due to COVID-19. Let’s GO (Guarantee Opportunity) DMV! centers workers and includes a strong narrative component to help make the case for permanent, government-supported guaranteed income. The foundation works in partnership with the DC Guaranteed Income Coalition and other pilots and coalitions throughout the region and across the country.

To center community voice in its latest strategic plan, the Horizon Foundation, which focuses on health equity in Howard County, Maryland, interviewed more than 100 grantees and leaders of other local institutions to hear their perspectives about the needs of the community and how to address them. But the foundation wanted to also hear directly from residents, especially those facing the biggest health inequities: “We needed to go to the source,” foundation leaders said.

To do this, Horizon partnered with a Black-owned survey firm to conduct a random, representative poll of 400 residents of color earning below $85,000 annually to find out what stood in their way of achieving an abundant and healthy life. The foundation also hired a Black-owned canvassing firm with a diverse staff to knock on 17,000 doors primarily located in lower-income communities of color — of which 1,700 opened and residents there talked about their challenges. All who participated were given e-gift cards for their participation. Additionally, Horizon held a community summit where more than 400 residents participated in live polling, and held listening sessions with more than 100 Spanish-speaking residents. Collectively, this work informed decisions made on the new strategic plan by Horizon’s Planning and Evaluation Committee, which consisted of equal numbers of board members and community members.