Funder Listening Action Menu

Inatai Foundation hires employees who, explains president & CEO Nichole June Maher, “reflect the people we are accountable to and have expertise in delivering change with communities.”  Inatai does not require prospective staff to have philanthropy experience, and they prioritize candidates who are connected to and live in certain counties in Washington that may be underrepresented on their team. They rarely recruit out of state. 

After learning from community leaders how much they valued local connections, Inatai, based in Seattle, opened a second office in another part of the state, and has team members working remotely in more than a third of the state’s counties. Says Maher: “This approach extends to how we recruit board members, where we host meetings and convenings, where and with whom we spend our dollars, and of course, where we make grants.”

The Community Foundation of the Central Blue Ridge (CFCBR) and Missouri Foundation for Health (MFH) each employ full-time community liaisons. Unlike program officers who deal with grants and grantees, these staff members have a mission to hear directly from and build relationships with the people their foundations seek to serve, reporting back in both formal and informal ways to inform and shape decision making at the organization.

The CFCBR’s director of community engagement, who has lunch every week at a local homeless shelter, says his strategy is to make himself a “part of the fabric of the community.” At MFH, the director of community relationships says for herself and the other field-based staff, the “whole job is just talking and listening to everyone” they can.

Omaha Community Foundation (OCF) supports five Community Interest Funds run by committees made up of residents who are directly connected to or identify with the populations the funds aim to support. The committees are responsible for setting and guiding direction, determining the process for grant selection, making funding decisions, and selecting additional committee members. Prospective committee members apply to serve through an open application process and are selected by the existing committee members.

The foundation provides administrative support to the funds and capacity-building and other support to the committees and to grant applicants. It also helps committee members embrace their role as more than advisors or managers of the funds, but, what staff describe as “true owners of it.”

The Katz Amsterdam Foundation collaborated with global social impact firm FSG and representatives from seven mountain resort communities to create a shared measurement framework with joint indicators for mental health and well-being. Previously, grantees had shared that key data on mental health and community well-being were unavailable for many mountain resort communities, making it difficult to measure their impact or develop programs that truly addressed community needs. Informed by community surveys conducted every other year, the data is now available through a public-facing dashboard in English and Spanish. Grantees have leveraged this data for strategic decision-making, targeting programs for specific sub-populations, securing additional funding, and collaborating effectively across regions.