Funder Listening Action Menu

Tools & Resources to Shift Power to Communities

Browse Menu
Listen through your role or function

Looking at your role/function within your foundation.

Listen through various approaches

What are listening practices that can shift power?

Reflect on listening and power

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

Try on different listening practices?

Host interns and fellows

Listening requires much more than plugging in the proverbial microphone and making an open call for people to speak up. Funders must help cultivate a pipeline of community members who can be true partners, both familiar with the intricacies of philanthropy and empowered to influence its direction. Internships and fellowships provide individuals the skills, knowledge, and networks needed to meaningfully contribute, and also might offer a platform for growth into staff and leadership roles within foundations themselves.

Get inspired by what other funders are doing

The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation has piloted an internship program for young people who have experience in the foster care system, and it is developing a fellowship program to provide leadership and professional development opportunities for people with lived expertise in other issues areas where the foundation works.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation has run a fellowship program for young people who are paid to design programs and advise on grants for the foundation’s youth-engagement work. Casey has also included young adults in internal RFP processes.

Explore this menu to spark the changes you want to see.

Mix and match to find the examples, resources, and reflections best suited to help you and your organization shift power to the people and communities at the heart of your work.

How to use the menu
How we choose the items
Listen through your role or function
Are you involved in grantmaking or strategy development?
Are you involved with measurement, learning, and evaluation?
Are you a trustee or do you work with trustees?
Are you a donor or do you advise donors?
Are you involved in global grantmaking?
Listen through various approaches
Build nonprofits' capacity for systematic feedback loops
Survey, convene, or meet with your community
Engage with community through participatory philanthropy
Change the composition and roles of your staff and board
Host interns and fellows
Convene community advisory boards
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?
What power does your foundation hold and how does it wield it? What spoken or unspoken ideas about power are at play at your foundation?

Have questions about the menu or ideas for resources or examples?

Please reach out to our communications manager, Debra Blum.