Decolonizing Philanthropy
- NOTOC**
Decolonizing Philanthropy: Shifting Power, Wealth, and Decision-Making
Decolonizing philanthropy is a broad effort to confront the colonial histories, racial hierarchies, economic inequalities, and institutional power structures that continue to shape charitable giving. It challenges the assumption that wealthy donors and foundations should determine what communities need, how social problems should be defined, and which organizations deserve support.
The movement calls for more than improving grant applications or diversifying foundation staff. Its central concern is the redistribution of power, wealth, land, knowledge, and decision-making authority. This may involve transferring control of funding to affected communities, supporting Indigenous- and Black-led organizations, financing reparative justice, providing unrestricted long-term grants, and questioning whether institutions built from accumulated or extracted wealth should continue operating indefinitely.
Some writers caution that philanthropy itself cannot literally be decolonized because decolonization historically refers to the restoration of land, sovereignty, political authority, and material resources. From this perspective, foundations should describe their work more accurately as anti-colonial, reparative, redistributive, or power shifting. Philanthropy cannot substitute for decolonization, but it can finance land return, restitution, community ownership, cultural restoration, movement organizing, and other forms of repair.
Decolonial and Anti-Colonial Practice
Conventional philanthropy often reflects the same unequal relationships found in colonial administration and international development. Donors control financial resources, establish priorities, define acceptable evidence, select recipients, impose reporting requirements, and evaluate whether communities have used funding correctly. Organizations seeking grants may be expected to translate local needs into language that satisfies distant institutions rather than the people they serve.
Decolonial practice asks funders to examine how their wealth was created and whether it is connected to colonization, slavery, land dispossession, racial segregation, resource extraction, exploitative labor, or unequal financial systems. It also requires institutions to reconsider assumptions about expertise. Professional credentials, quantitative evaluation, English-language applications, and donor-defined theories of change can marginalize lived experience, oral knowledge, Indigenous knowledge, community memory, and culturally specific approaches to social change.
Anti-colonial philanthropy seeks to move beyond symbolic language and institutional branding. It emphasizes material actions such as transferring resources, relinquishing control, supporting political organizing, changing investment practices, acknowledging historical harms, and becoming accountable to communities. This approach treats decolonization as an ongoing political commitment rather than a temporary philanthropic trend.
Participatory and Community-Led Grantmaking
Participatory grantmaking transfers some or all funding decisions from foundation staff and boards to people directly affected by the issues being funded. Community members may establish priorities, design grant programs, review proposals, select recipients, monitor results, and participate in organizational governance.
These models are based on the principle that people living with poverty, racism, disability, displacement, gender violence, environmental destruction, or political exclusion possess knowledge that cannot be replaced by outside experts. Community reviewers may also identify effective grassroots organizations that are overlooked by conventional grantmaking because they lack professional fundraising staff, formal institutional structures, or relationships with major donors.
Participation can range from consultation to full community control. Inviting community members to provide advice does not necessarily redistribute power if foundation officials retain final authority. Meaningful participation requires clear decision-making rights, compensation, accessible procedures, adequate time, training, translation, disability accommodation, and protection against retaliation.
Participatory systems can also create new burdens. Community members may be asked to perform unpaid labor, evaluate organizations with which they have relationships, or take responsibility for difficult decisions while funders maintain control of the money. Effective participatory grantmaking must therefore shift resources and authority rather than simply transferring administrative work.
Indigenous-Led Philanthropy and Self-Determination
Indigenous-led funds provide some of the strongest examples of community-controlled philanthropy. These funds place governance, grantmaking, and accountability within Indigenous communities rather than external foundations. Their priorities may include land rights, cultural survival, language revitalization, food sovereignty, climate justice, women’s leadership, youth organizing, traditional knowledge, and defense of Indigenous territories.
Indigenous philanthropy often emphasizes reciprocity, relationships, collective responsibility, and long-term stewardship. These principles differ from grantmaking systems that divide social issues into short funding cycles and narrowly defined projects. Indigenous-led funds may evaluate success through community wellbeing, cultural continuity, restored relationships, ecological health, and strengthened sovereignty rather than donor-imposed numerical targets.
Direct funding is especially important in climate and conservation work. Indigenous Peoples protect many of the world’s ecologically significant territories but receive only a small portion of environmental and climate finance. Funding frequently passes through governments, international organizations, or conservation groups before reaching local communities. Indigenous-led financing seeks to remove these intermediaries and place resources under the authority of the people responsible for the land.
Decolonizing philanthropy also requires recognizing that charitable funding is not a substitute for Indigenous sovereignty, treaty obligations, restitution, land return, or political rights. Philanthropic support can strengthen Indigenous movements, but it should not allow governments or institutions to avoid their legal and historical responsibilities.
Global South Leadership and Localisation
The movement to localize humanitarian aid and international development overlaps closely with decolonizing philanthropy. Localization seeks to transfer funding, leadership, staffing, and decision-making authority from international organizations to local civil-society groups, community foundations, grassroots movements, and national or regional institutions.
International aid has often portrayed communities in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and the Pacific as passive recipients of outside expertise. Fundraising campaigns may rely on images of helplessness, poverty, disaster, or dependent children while minimizing local knowledge, organizing, and political agency. Decolonial approaches replace these charity narratives with solidarity, partnership, mutual accountability, and recognition of local leadership.
Local organizations are frequently the first to respond to crises and remain after international agencies leave. Despite this, they often receive short-term, restricted grants while international intermediaries retain a substantial share of funding. Localization advocates call for direct, flexible, multi-year financing that allows local organizations to build staff, infrastructure, reserves, networks, and independent strategies.
However, localization does not automatically produce decolonization. Transferring administrative responsibilities without transferring money or authority can increase the burdens placed on local organizations. Decolonization requires deeper changes in institutional values, governance, risk assessment, knowledge production, communications, partnerships, and accountability.
Reparations, Racial Justice, and Wealth Redistribution
Reparative philanthropy begins with the recognition that many charitable fortunes and institutional endowments were created within systems of colonialism, slavery, segregation, land theft, discriminatory housing, exploitative labor, and racial capitalism. It asks what institutions owe to communities whose exclusion or exploitation helped create that wealth.
Reparative approaches may include direct financial restitution, support for reparations campaigns, land return, community ownership, endowment grants to racial-justice organizations, debt relief, investment in Black- and Indigenous-led institutions, and funding for historical research and truth-telling. They also involve examining how foundation investments may continue to profit from harmful industries, displacement, environmental destruction, or labor exploitation.
Racial-equity commitments expanded after the racial-justice protests of 2020, but many funding pledges were temporary, narrowly restricted, or never fully distributed. Black-led organizations frequently received short-term project funding without the long-term institutional support needed to build durable power. Reparative philanthropy calls for sustained commitments that survive political backlash and changing donor priorities.
The distinction between charity and reparations is significant. Charity is generally voluntary and controlled by the giver. Reparations are based on responsibility for harm and the rights of affected communities. Reparative philanthropy therefore requires institutions to surrender some control over how resources are distributed and how accountability is defined.
Feminist, Black Feminist, LGBTQ+, and Disability Funding
Feminist philanthropy connects grantmaking with movement building, collective care, bodily autonomy, economic justice, and resistance to patriarchy. Feminist funds have helped develop participatory models in which activists and community organizations determine funding priorities. These funds frequently provide flexible, multi-year support to groups that conventional donors consider informal, politically controversial, or difficult to measure.
Black feminist philanthropy emphasizes the leadership of Black women, gender-expansive people, and organizations working across racial, gender, economic, reproductive, disability, and LGBTQ+ justice. Black feminist movements remain severely underfunded despite their influence on social movements worldwide. Black feminist funds seek to build independent movement infrastructure and challenge philanthropic assumptions about risk, professionalism, and leadership.
LGBTQ+ participatory grantmaking allows lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer, and gender-diverse communities to decide how resources should be distributed. Decolonial funding for trans movements also recognizes that gender diversity, cultural identity, community care, and political resistance cannot be separated from colonial histories and local contexts.
Disability-justice philanthropy is guided by the principle of “nothing about us without us.” It calls for disabled people to hold leadership and decision-making authority throughout foundations, grant committees, program design, and evaluation. Accessible applications, communications, meetings, and reporting systems are essential, but genuine inclusion also requires funding disability-led organizing rather than treating disabled people only as recipients of services.
Trust-Based and Solidarity Philanthropy
Trust-based philanthropy seeks to reduce the administrative and power imbalances between funders and nonprofit organizations. Common practices include providing unrestricted multi-year grants, simplifying applications, reducing reporting burdens, offering support beyond the grant, increasing transparency, and building relationships based on dialogue rather than surveillance.
Unrestricted funding allows organizations to pay staff fairly, maintain facilities, respond to emergencies, improve technology, develop leadership, and pursue strategies that cannot be predicted in advance. It recognizes that community organizations generally understand their own operational and political needs better than outside donors.
Solidarity philanthropy goes further by positioning funders as long-term allies of social movements. Rather than treating organizations as service providers, solidarity funders may support organizing, protest, political education, mutual aid, legal defense, communications, security, and movement infrastructure. They accept that meaningful social change may involve conflict with powerful institutions and cannot always be represented through conventional measures of charitable impact.
Trust alone, however, does not eliminate structural inequality. A foundation may simplify its grant process while retaining control over strategy, investments, governance, and the continued accumulation of wealth. Trust-based practice is most transformative when combined with participatory decision-making, racial justice, reparative action, and community accountability.
Institutional Power and Accountability
Decolonizing philanthropy requires foundations to examine their entire institutional structure, not only their grant programs. Relevant questions include who serves on boards, who controls investments, how staff are recruited, whose knowledge is respected, how risks are defined, whether communities can challenge decisions, and whether institutional preservation is valued more highly than social transformation.
The principle of perpetuity is increasingly questioned. Many foundations are designed to preserve their endowments indefinitely while distributing only a small percentage each year. Critics argue that maintaining concentrated wealth for future charitable activity may conflict with urgent demands for redistribution and justice. Some institutions have adopted spend-down strategies, increased annual payouts, transferred assets to community-controlled funds, or reconsidered whether permanent existence should remain their primary objective.
Accountability must flow toward communities as well as governments, trustees, and donors. Traditional foundation accountability focuses on legal compliance and financial stewardship. Community accountability asks whether funding relationships strengthen local power, respect community priorities, repair harm, and allow affected people to influence or remove decision-makers.
Institutional transformation may also require foundations to use more than grants. Investments, shareholder power, public communications, convening authority, research, legal resources, and political influence can either reinforce existing systems or support structural change. A foundation cannot credibly promote justice through grants while investing its endowment in practices that contribute to exploitation or inequality.
Challenges and Criticisms
The language of decolonization can be diluted when institutions use it to describe minor administrative reforms. Diverse hiring, inclusive communications, listening sessions, and simplified grant forms may be valuable, but they do not necessarily change ownership, sovereignty, wealth distribution, or institutional control.
There is also a risk that participation becomes tokenistic. Community representatives may be invited into decision-making spaces without sufficient authority, compensation, information, or institutional support. Foundations may celebrate community involvement while maintaining the power to establish budgets, revise recommendations, or discontinue programs.
Power shifting can also produce conflict. Communities are not politically uniform, and disagreements may emerge over representation, priorities, eligibility, and resource distribution. Participatory philanthropy should not romanticize communities or assume that local decision-making automatically eliminates exclusion. Strong processes require transparency, conflict-resolution procedures, attention to internal inequalities, and accountability to the people most affected.
Another challenge is resistance within philanthropic institutions. Staff and trustees may fear loss of control, reputational damage, political controversy, financial risk, or criticism from donors. Decolonial transformation therefore requires funders to confront defensiveness and accept that accountability may be uncomfortable.
Conclusion
Decolonizing philanthropy is ultimately about who controls wealth, who defines knowledge, who makes decisions, and who is entitled to shape the future. It challenges charitable institutions to move beyond generosity toward justice, repair, redistribution, and community self-determination.
Participatory grantmaking, Indigenous-led funds, Global South localization, reparative philanthropy, feminist funding, disability leadership, trust-based practice, and solidarity funding offer practical ways to redistribute authority. None of these approaches is sufficient when adopted in isolation, and none should be reduced to a branding exercise.
The deepest transformation occurs when communities gain durable control over resources and institutions become accountable for the histories and systems that produced their wealth. Philanthropy cannot replace political rights, reparations, land return, economic restructuring, or decolonization itself. It can, however, choose whether to preserve concentrated power or help communities build the material, cultural, and political capacity to determine their own futures.
- TOC**
Decolonising Philanthropy and Anti-Colonial Practice
No, You Can't Decolonize Philanthropy, Part 2: But We Can Fund Acts of Decolonizing and Repair
| Community-Centric Fundraising | Community-Centric Fundraising | 6 April 2026
Argues that philanthropy cannot itself substitute for decolonization, but can resource repair, redistribution, land return, and community-led anti-colonial work.
Toward a Decolonial Philanthropy for Trans Movements
| International Trans Fund | Alliance Magazine | 6 April 2026
Calls for funding practices that center trans movements' knowledge, culture, care, and political leadership rather than donor-defined priorities.
Decolonizing Philanthropy: Centering Trans Movements Through Context, Culture, and Care
| International Trans Fund | International Trans Fund | 31 March 2026
Explains how decolonial grantmaking can redistribute decision-making power and recognize movement knowledge as expertise.
No, You Can't Decolonize Philanthropy, Part 1: A Closer Look at Colonialism and Decolonization
| Community-Centric Fundraising | Community-Centric Fundraising | 30 March 2026
Examines the historical meaning of decolonization and questions whether institutions rooted in extracted wealth can truly be decolonized.
Decolonising Peace Direct: A Learning Paper
| Peace Direct | Peace Direct | 2 January 2026
Reflects critically on five years of internal organizational change, including trust, power, accountability, and relationships with local partners.
Decolonial Thought in Brazilian Philanthropy: Not a New Label, but a New Stance
| Staff | Alliance Magazine | 27 October 2025
Frames decolonial philanthropy in Brazil as a sustained political and institutional stance rather than a fashionable label.
Decolonising Philanthropy: A New Resource to Transform the Sector
| Peace Direct | Peace Direct | 3 July 2025
Introduces a practical resource for confronting colonial power, changing funding relationships, and turning institutional commitments into action.
5 Ways Technology Can Help Decolonize Philanthropy
| Laura Steele | Submittable | 21 May 2025
Explores how grantmaking technology can reduce bias, widen access, simplify applications, and support community participation.
Philanthropy, We Can't Keep Straddling Two Worlds
| Staff | Alliance Magazine | 29 July 2024
Challenges institutions to move beyond decolonial rhetoric and confront the colonial architecture embedded in wealth, governance, and practice.
Why 'Decolonizing' Is the Wrong Word for Changes We Make Inside Oppressive Systems
| Community-Centric Fundraising | Community-Centric Fundraising | 11 March 2024
Distinguishes decolonization from institutional reform and proposes anti-colonial practices such as redistribution and funding BIPOC-led groups.
It's Time to Decolonise Philanthropy—Are You Ready to Join the Conversation?
| Staff | Alliance Magazine | 16 November 2023
Invites funders and practitioners to examine the contradictions, possibilities, and practical demands of decolonizing philanthropy.
Decolonizing Knowledge in Philanthropy: What Does It Mean?
| Staff | Alliance Magazine | 28 June 2023
Urges funders to decenter themselves, value lived and ancestral knowledge, and let communities define problems and solutions.
Opinion: African Diaspora Can Decolonize Philanthropy from Within
| Marième Daff | Devex | 2 January 2023
Reflects on how African diaspora professionals can challenge paternalism and redirect resources toward African-led organizations and priorities.
Decolonizing Giving with Kris Archie
| Canadian Women's Foundation | Canadian Women's Foundation | 16 November 2022
Discusses centering Indigenous wisdom, shared learning, relationships, and accountability in charitable giving.
What Is the Role of Communications in Decolonising Philanthropy?
| Shape History | Shape History | 24 October 2022
Examines how philanthropic communications can reproduce or resist colonial narratives, imagery, and assumptions about communities.
Funders Must Reckon with the True Motivations of Philanthropy if They Want to Decolonise
| Staff | Alliance Magazine | 11 October 2022
Calls on donors to examine power, knowledge, reciprocity, and the motivations behind giving before claiming decolonial practice.
Decolonising Philanthropy: From Conceptual Apprehension to Functional Progress
| Staff | Alliance Magazine | 6 September 2022
Defines decolonising philanthropy through intersectionality, power analysis, local agency, and concrete changes in funding practice.
Decolonising Ourselves to Decolonise Philanthropy
| Cristal Campillay Alarcón and Paula Riedemann Fuentes | Alliance Magazine | 9 August 2022
Argues that institutional change requires funders to confront internalized colonial habits, privilege, and assumptions about expertise.
Freeing Ourselves from Colonial, White-Savior Models of Philanthropy
| Firelight Foundation | Nonprofit Quarterly | 16 June 2022
Critiques Global North philanthropy's imperial legacies and calls for long-term, flexible support directed by African communities.
Edgar Villanueva: Decolonizing Philanthropy
| Rhodi Davies | Philanthropisms | 13 January 2022
A conversation about shifting decisions to communities, addressing defensiveness, and applying Indigenous ideas of healing to philanthropy.
Decolonizing Philanthropy Through Arts and Culture
| Seattle Foundation | Seattle Foundation | 5 April 2021
Describes a Black- and Indigenous-led arts grant process in which community reviewers—not funders—made funding recommendations.
3 Ways to Decolonize Philanthropy Right Now
| Geoffrey Thige and Jailan Adly | RefuSHE | 30 December 2020
Recommends investing in local leadership, supporting collaboration, and providing unrestricted funding to challenge donor dominance.
Indigenizing Philanthropy: Indigenous-Led Funds
| Cultural Survival | Cultural Survival | 14 December 2020
Explores Indigenous-led funds as vehicles for self-determination, community decision-making, and restoring balance in philanthropy.
Indigenous Funds Lead the Way to Decolonize Philanthropy
| Rucha Chitnis | Cultural Survival Quarterly | 3 December 2018
Profiles Indigenous funds that resist top-down giving by placing resources and authority in Indigenous hands.
Donor Foundations and Colonial Inheritance
| Lisa M. Castellanos | MAI Review | 1 January 2008
Examines missionary and colonial inheritances that continue to shape donor foundations and international human-rights philanthropy.
Participatory and Community-Led Grantmaking
Who Holds the Power in Grantmaking—and Should That Change?
| Plinth | Plinth | 3 April 2026
Examines the structural power imbalance between grantmakers and communities and asks what meaningful redistribution of decision-making would require.
Reimagining Philanthropy Through Shared Power
| PEAK Grantmaking | PEAK Grantmaking | 5 March 2026
Profiles a community-driven grantmaking model designed to dismantle conventional power structures and expand community authority.
Who's Doing the Work? How to Shift Power and Not Just Workloads
| Staff | Nonprofit Quarterly | 24 February 2026
Warns that participatory philanthropy can burden community members unless institutions also transfer real authority, resources, and support.
Who Decides? A Guide to Community Philanthropy
| Impact Funding | Impact Funding | 2026
Surveys participatory grantmaking, community foundations, giving circles, and other models that put funding decisions closer to communities.
Redressing the Power Imbalance: Participatory Grantmaking
| Charity Service | Charity Service | 5 November 2025
Introduces participatory grantmaking as a method for moving funding decisions to people with lived experience.
Building a Feminist Case for Participatory Grantmaking
| Fenomenal Funds | Fenomenal Funds | 22 May 2025
Connects participatory grantmaking to feminist politics, movement autonomy, collective care, and the redistribution of philanthropic power.
Participatory Grantmaking at Trust for London
| Trust for London | Trust for London | 16 April 2025
Shares lessons and practical guidance from grantmaking processes that transfer decision-making to affected communities.
Participatory Grantmaking in Philanthropy
| The Philanthropist Journal | The Philanthropist Journal | 10 March 2025
Reviews evidence and case studies from disability, feminist, environmental, antiracist, and Black-led participatory funds.
Weathering the Storm: How Fenomenal Funds' Participatory Model Strengthens Feminist Movements
| Fenomenal Funds | Alliance Magazine | 3 February 2025
Describes a multi-year experiment in feminist power sharing, collaborative governance, and flexible movement funding.
New Book Makes a Clear-Eyed Case for Participatory Grantmaking
| Mike Scutari | Inside Philanthropy | 13 January 2025
Reviews a major collection of research and case studies on democratizing grant decisions and shifting power to communities.
A Deep Dive into Robert Wood Johnson's Participatory Pilot
| Staff | Inside Philanthropy | 26 November 2024
Examines a grantmaking pilot that treated people most affected by racism as decision-making equals throughout the process.
Leaning into Participatory Grantmaking to Increase Equity
| Candid | Candid | 2 July 2024
Explains how community reviewers can identify effective grassroots organizations and make funding more equitable.
Not Sure Where to Start with Participatory Philanthropy? There's a Tool to Help
| Staff | Inside Philanthropy | 6 February 2024
Introduces a practical toolkit for funders exploring different levels and models of community participation.
Participatory Grantmaking in Philanthropy: How Democratizing Decision-Making Shifts Power to Communities
| Cynthia Gibson and Chris Cardona, editors | JSTOR | 2024
Collects scholarship and practitioner accounts on participatory grantmaking, giving circles, community philanthropy, and democratized funding.
Participatory Grant Making Is Key to Shifting the Power
| Staff | Alliance Magazine | 28 November 2023
Argues that localization and decolonization require funders to relinquish control rather than merely consult communities.
There's an Extensive New Guide to Sharing Power in Philanthropy
| Staff | Inside Philanthropy | 21 November 2023
Reviews a detailed framework for moving from information-sharing and consultation toward genuine co-decision and community control.
Participatory Grantmaking: Building the Evidence
| Catherine Ang and colleagues | Centre for Evidence and Implementation | 1 June 2023
Synthesizes international evidence on participatory grantmaking's benefits, tensions, implementation needs, and power-shifting potential.
Giving with Pride: Considering Participatory Grantmaking in LGBTQ+ Philanthropy
| Emily J. Dale | The Foundation Review | 1 January 2022
Examines how LGBTQ+ funders can reduce power disparities and center communities most affected by funding decisions.
Co-Creating Equity with Nonprofits and Communities
| PEAK Grantmaking | PEAK Grantmaking | 11 July 2021
Connects community participation in grantmaking with trust, relationship-building, and equitable power redistribution.
Letting Go: A New Book Explores the Promise of Participatory Grantmaking
| Staff | Inside Philanthropy | 3 May 2021
Explores the practical and psychological challenges funders face when transferring grant decisions to outside participants.
Shifting Power to Communities in Grant Funding
| Rodney Foxworth and Marcus Haymon | Stanford Social Innovation Review | 20 January 2021
Argues that racial justice requires communities—not only foundation boards and staff—to control where capital flows.
Moving the Rooms of Power: Participatory Philanthropy Is Gaining Traction
| Staff | Inside Philanthropy | 24 June 2020
Traces the growth of participatory grantmaking and its challenge to elite, closed-door philanthropic decision-making.
The Historical Case for Participatory Grantmaking
| HistPhil | HistPhil | 15 August 2019
Shows how social-justice foundations and movement-linked funds developed participatory practices decades before the current surge of interest.
How Community Philanthropy Shifts Power: What Donors Can Do
| Global Fund for Community Foundations | GFCF | 2 May 2018
Offers practical guidance for using grants to strengthen local assets, agency, trust, and community-controlled philanthropy.
Participatory Grantmaking: Power to the People
| Disability Rights Fund | Disability Rights Fund | 18 December 2017
Shows how people with disabilities can shape strategy, governance, and grant decisions in rights-based philanthropy.
Indigenous-Led and Native Philanthropy
Indigenous Fund Leads the Way to Decolonize Philanthropy
| International Funders for Indigenous Peoples | IFIP | 2026
Highlights Indigenous-led funds as models for listening, unlearning, reciprocity, and moving resources under Indigenous authority.
Here's What Young Native Americans Funded with $720,000
| Thalia Beaty | Associated Press | 13 October 2025
Profiles a youth-led Indigenous grantmaking process supporting culturally grounded food-sovereignty projects in tribal communities.
Indigenous-Led Funds: A Movement with Momentum
| Native Americans in Philanthropy | Native Americans in Philanthropy | 1 October 2025
Reviews the growth of Indigenous-led funds and their role in moving resources, authority, and accountability toward Native communities.
What Philanthropy Can Learn from Indigenous Funders
| Sweet Grass Consulting | Sweet Grass Consulting | 23 May 2025
Centers trust, reciprocity, relational accountability, and community priorities as lessons for the broader funding sector.
The Subtle Power of Indigenous Philanthropy
| Staff | Alliance Magazine | 17 March 2025
Reflects on Indigenous philanthropy as a practice of learning from communities rather than deciding what funders should do for them.
Standing Our Ground: Indigenous Philanthropy and the Path to Climate Justice
| One Earth | One Earth | 12 February 2025
Calls for Indigenous-led climate funding that respects land-based knowledge, cultural practices, self-determination, and long-term stewardship.
How Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Are Shaping the Future of Climate Funding
| Ford Foundation | Ford Foundation | 5 February 2025
Profiles funds and grantmaking structures created by Indigenous Peoples and local communities to channel climate finance directly.
Three Indigenous-Led Funds and How They're Changing Philanthropy
| Synchronicity Earth | LinkedIn | 2025
Introduces three Indigenous-led environmental funds and explains how their governance reflects distinct cultures, priorities, and relationships.
Funding Trend Analysis on Indigenous Peoples Philanthropy
| International Funders for Indigenous Peoples | IFIP | 1 July 2024
Analyzes funding patterns and defines Indigenous-led funds as vehicles for self-determination, recognition, reciprocity, and power shifting.
Indigenous-Led Funds: Challenges and Opportunities for Shifting Power
| Mesoamerican Fund | Mesoamerican Fund | 31 May 2024
Summarizes a discussion on Indigenous-led conservation funds, historical injustice, direct finance, and community governance.
BIPOC-Led Climate Groups Get a Bigger Funding Boost
| Andrew Freedman | Axios | 8 May 2024
Reports on a pledge encouraging climate funders to direct substantially more support to Black, Indigenous, and other people-of-color-led groups.
The Rise of Indigenous-Led Funds
| Staff | Alliance Magazine | 16 April 2024
Explores the growth of Indigenous-led funding structures within the wider movement to shift power in development and philanthropy.
Towards Better Climate Funding for Indigenous Communities
| Synchronicity Earth | Synchronicity Earth | 16 October 2023
Argues that effective climate philanthropy must transfer funds, capacity, recognition, and rights to Indigenous and local communities.
Better Climate Funding Means Centering Local and Indigenous Communities
| Staff | Stanford Social Innovation Review | 11 May 2023
Links more direct climate finance to repairing unequal relationships and recognizing local and Indigenous expertise.
Honoring and Resourcing Native Communities to Lead the Climate Movement
| Native Americans in Philanthropy | IssueLab | n.d.
Documents funding barriers facing Native-led climate organizations and recommends long-term investment in Indigenous leadership.
Rethinking Philanthropy: Indigenous-Led Grantmaking
| Candid Learning | Candid | n.d.
Features Native and Indigenous leaders discussing traditional giving practices and community-controlled grantmaking.
What's Next for the Decolonizing Wealth Project?
| Magic Cabinet | Magic Cabinet | n.d.
Discusses efforts to transform philanthropic practice through wealth redistribution and stronger Black- and Indigenous-led funding infrastructure.
The Indigenous Women's Flow Fund
| Indigenous Women's Flow Fund | IssueLab | n.d.
Highlights an Indigenous-led participatory fund supporting community-sourced initiatives, relationships, and women’s leadership.
Native-Led Change: Building Power and Equity in Philanthropy
| Native Americans in Philanthropy | Native Americans in Philanthropy | n.d.
Provides research, advocacy, and programs aimed at increasing philanthropic investment in Native communities and Indigenous self-determination.
Decolonizing Wealth Project Grantmaking
| Decolonizing Wealth Project | Decolonizing Wealth Project | n.d.
Describes movement-led grantmaking that places decision authority with Black, Indigenous, and other historically under-resourced communities.
Reparative Philanthropy Framework
| Decolonizing Wealth Project | Decolonizing Wealth Project | n.d.
Defines reparative philanthropy as redistributing resources while acknowledging wealth accumulated through colonization, slavery, and extraction.
Framework for Decolonizing Child and Youth Philanthropy
| Elevate Children Funders Group | Elevate Children Funders Group | n.d.
Offers a framework for redesigning child- and youth-focused philanthropy through equity, partnership, and power sharing.
Decolonising Philanthropy: Cultural Audit and Toolkit
| Woor-Dungin | Woor-Dungin | n.d.
A First Nations-centered training and audit process for challenging conventional donor assumptions and supporting self-determination.
10 Practices to Decolonize Philanthropy
| Hispanics in Philanthropy | Hispanics in Philanthropy | n.d.
Lists practical commitments including unlearning, alliance building, humility, multiple knowledge systems, and non-dominating relationships.
Critical Consciousness as a Tool to Decolonise Philanthropy
| Liberation Alliance Africa | Liberation Alliance Africa | n.d.
Encourages donors to recognize their power, analyze the structures sustaining it, and change relationships with funded communities.
Global South, Localisation, and Shifting Power
The Dinosaurs of International Aid Must Adapt or Die
| Halima Begum | The Guardian | 22 May 2026
Argues that large international charities must transfer funding and authority to local civil-society and grassroots organizations.
Localisation: Power and Resources for Local Actors
| Salud por Derecho | Salud por Derecho | 3 May 2026
Reviews the gap between localization commitments and the actual flow of direct humanitarian funding to local organizations.
From Aid to Solidarity: Local Voices on the Future of International Cooperation
| Enrica Lorusso and Raaval Bains | Peace Direct | 1 May 2026
Presents Global South perspectives on replacing one-directional aid with equitable, decolonial, feminist, and collectively governed international cooperation.
Influencing Funders to Shift Power: Lessons from the Giving for Change Initiative
| Global Fund for Community Foundations | GFCF | 25 March 2026
Analyzes how funders change mindsets, systems, and practices when pressured and supported by Global South networks.
What It Takes for International Funders to Shift Power to Communities
| Global Fund for Community Foundations | GFCF | 25 March 2026
Identifies barriers, enablers, and organizational changes that help international funders move from rhetoric to meaningful power transfer.
ActionAid to Rethink Child Sponsorship as Part of Plan to Decolonise Its Work
| Kaamil Ahmed | The Guardian | 22 January 2026
Reports on plans to replace paternalistic sponsorship narratives with solidarity, community direction, and locally shaped funding.
Shifting Power, Resources, and Capacity to Local Actors
| IKEA Foundation | IKEA Foundation | 22 December 2025
Synthesizes evidence and interviews on localization, direct funding, transformative partnerships, and the role of Global Majority-rooted organizations.
The Birth of UAF Asia and the Pacific: A Guide for Decolonisation Through Regionalisation
| Urgent Action Fund Asia and Pacific | Alliance Magazine | 22 December 2025
Documents how regionalization transferred governance and grantmaking authority closer to feminist movements in Asia and the Pacific.
Shifting Power Through Blended Finance
| Jesse Simmons | Alliance Magazine | 16 October 2025
Considers whether blended finance can be designed around local leadership, accountability, and equitable control of capital.
Localisation's Power Problem—and How Philanthropy Can Fix It
| Staff | Alliance Magazine | 6 October 2025
Calls for large, direct, long-term commitments to locally rooted organizations and networks instead of intermediary-heavy funding.
Addressing Localization Challenges to Shift Power to Global South Nonprofits
| Nicola Banks | Giving Compass | 3 October 2025
Explains how localization can inadvertently strengthen Northern NGOs unless funding and decision-making move directly to Southern organizations.
Shifting the Power: Empowering Local Organisations for a Sustainable Future
| NEAR Network | NEAR Network | 15 September 2025
Highlights organizational transitions that give local entities autonomy, direct access to funding, and leadership over programs.
From Crisis to Action: How Philanthropy Must Adapt in 2025
| Staff | Alliance Magazine | 24 April 2025
Urges donors to accelerate localization, rethink resource allocation, and support organizations operating closest to crises.
A Shifting Global Landscape: Rethinking Philanthropy from the Global South
| Alianza de Fondos del Sur | Alianza de Fondos del Sur | 1 April 2025
Presents commitments from Global South funds to strengthen local philanthropy, movement infrastructure, and regional power.
A Radical New Business Model That Could Save International Aid
| Tiara Ataii | The Washington Post | 24 February 2025
Proposes cash-first aid and a supporting role for international agencies so grassroots groups can control delivery and resources.
It's About Solidarity, Not Charity
| Lizzy Davies | The Guardian | 13 January 2025
Profiles Oxfam GB's effort to move power and funding toward the Global South and replace charity narratives with solidarity.
Localising Philanthropy—What Does It Entail?
| Staff | Alliance Magazine | 26 February 2024
Defines localization as equalizing relationships, investing in local ecosystems, and shifting strategic authority as well as money.
Unpacking Aid in Africa: The Decolonization Turn
| Staff | International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science | 13 February 2024
Examines colonial and hegemonic structures that continue to organize development aid across Africa.
Peace Direct Releases Guide to Decolonising Partnerships
| Peace Direct | Peace Direct | 27 September 2023
Introduces a practical guide based on consultations across 70 countries for building equitable, trust-based international partnerships.
Decolonising International Partnerships in the UK
| Raaval Bains | Peace Direct | 31 July 2023
Reflects on how colonial power appears in UK international partnerships and why local organizations must control more resources.
Decolonising Aid: Perspectives from Civil Society in Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa
| West Africa Civil Society Institute | WACSI | 18 July 2023
Centers Francophone African civil-society perspectives on Western norms, donor control, knowledge, and practical decolonization.
From Innovation for Localization to Local Philanthropy, Localization, and Power
| Global Fund for Community Foundations | GFCF | October 2022
Examines experiments in Ghana and Somalia that combined locally rooted funding mechanisms with community philanthropy.
Localisation and Decolonisation: The Difference That Makes the Difference
| Peace Direct | Peace Direct | 2022
Argues that funding targets alone cannot transform aid without changing underlying values, mindsets, relationships, and institutional behavior.
Time to Decolonise Aid
| Peace Direct | Peace Direct | 10 May 2021
Documents structural racism in humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding systems and calls for locally led transformation.
Systems to Shift the Power
| Barry Knight | Global Fund for Community Foundations | 1 November 2019
Uses systems thinking to propose ways of transferring control of resources and development decisions from external agencies to local people.
Racial Justice, Reparations, and Wealth Redistribution
Philanthropy's Role in Reparations and Building a Culture of Racial Repair
| Staff | Nonprofit Quarterly | 3 July 2026
Explores how philanthropy can support reparations, truth-telling, institutional accountability, and a durable culture of racial repair.
A $100 Million Fund for Black-Led Groups Fell Flat. That Didn't Stop the Momentum
| Staff | The Chronicle of Philanthropy | 16 June 2026
Examines the promises and limitations of pooled racial-equity funds and the continuing need for sustained support of Black-led organizations.
Black-Led Nonprofits Didn't See the Lasting Funding Boosts Promised After 2020
| Thalia Beaty | Associated Press | 7 April 2026
Reports that many Black-led nonprofits received only temporary or negligible gains despite major philanthropic pledges after 2020.
DataWoven: Making Nonprofits Led by Women of Color Visible
| Elizabeth Barajas-Román | Candid | 30 March 2026
Uses new data to expose structural capital gaps affecting organizations led by women of color.
Solidarity Philanthropy: Redefining Philanthropy's Relationship to Social Movements
| Trust-Based Philanthropy Project | Trust-Based Philanthropy Project | 20 October 2025
Offers a framework for long-term alignment, accompaniment, trust, and resource redistribution in relationships with grassroots movements.
Moving Towards Reparative Justice
| Ten Years' Time | Ten Years' Time | October 2025
Provides a practical framework for philanthropic institutions seeking to address past harms through present and future action.
Making Philanthropy a Tool for Repair
| Bold Ventures | Bold Ventures | 15 September 2025
Defines reparative philanthropy as intentional redistribution of wealth and power to address historical and continuing harm.
Clamoring for Equity: Now Is a Builder's Moment
| Staff | Nonprofit Quarterly | 8 September 2025
Defends racial-equity grantmaking and urges funders to invest boldly in movement infrastructure during political backlash.
Philanthropy's 'Double Dispossession' of Racial Justice Organizations
| Staff | Human Relations | 19 December 2024
Uses a racial-capitalism lens to examine how philanthropic accountability can constrain racial-justice organizations and reproduce extraction.
In 2025, Let's Build on Racial Equity Wins—Not Retreat
| Cora Daniels | The Chronicle of Philanthropy | 19 December 2024
Calls on funders to protect racial-justice organizations with money, influence, legal support, and sustained public commitment.
The Supremacy of Whiteness in International Philanthropy
| Staff | Springer | 22 November 2024
Argues that international philanthropy remains structured by whiteness in its wealth, institutions, practices, values, and authority.
Grant Makers, Here's How to Support Nonprofits Led by People of Color
| Staff | The Chronicle of Philanthropy | 13 August 2024
Recommends relationship-based, flexible, and equitable support for nonprofits led by and serving communities of color.
A Hopeful New Way to Pursue Racial Equity
| Drew Lindsay | The Chronicle of Philanthropy | 6 June 2024
Explores belonging as a framework for confronting structural exclusion while maintaining a clear commitment to racial equity.
Endowments Can Power Racial Justice Groups
| Cora Daniels | The Chronicle of Philanthropy | 26 March 2024
Argues that endowment grants can provide durable power and independence to racial-justice organizations led by people of color.
Racial Justice Programs Under Fire: Foundations Are Running Scared
| Staff | The Chronicle of Philanthropy | 6 February 2024
Urges foundations not to retreat from racial-justice commitments in response to political and legal intimidation.
Segregation Helped Build Fortunes. What Does Philanthropy Owe Now?
| Claire Dunning | Stanford Social Innovation Review | 30 January 2024
Connects foundation endowments to discriminatory wealth creation and considers what philanthropic reparations could entail.
Why Is Philanthropy Afraid to Talk About Reparations?
| Cora Daniels | The Chronicle of Philanthropy | 18 October 2023
Challenges racial-equity funders to engage directly with reparations rather than avoiding the redistribution question.
Reparations, Not Charity
| Staff | Nonprofit Quarterly | 4 May 2023
Argues that racial repair must disrupt white-supremacist narratives, close wealth gaps, and move beyond charitable relief.
Recentering Philanthropy Toward Social Justice
| Staff | Nonprofit Quarterly | 4 May 2023
Profiles funding strategies centered on BIPOC-led organizing, multiracial democracy, and long-term movement power.
A New Playbook for Racial Equity—Inside and Out
| Alandra Washington | Stanford Social Innovation Review | 14 February 2023
Argues that racial equity must shape foundation culture, staffing, governance, operations, and grantmaking—not only program portfolios.
Using a Data-Driven Strategy to Advance Racial Equity in Grantmaking
| Staff | Nonprofit Quarterly | 6 December 2022
Shows how data can reveal inequitable funding patterns and support participatory, accountable grantmaking reforms.
Philanthropy Can and Must Help Dismantle Racial Capitalism
| Staff | Forge Organizing | 17 June 2021
Offers movement-informed steps for shifting philanthropic practice toward dismantling racial capitalism and resourcing liberation.
Philanthropy and Reparations: Righting the Past
| Tory Martin and Michael Moody | Johnson Center for Philanthropy | 1 February 2021
Reviews how foundations can investigate exploitative origins and support investments that rebalance historical injustice.
Overcoming the Racial Bias in Philanthropic Funding
| Cheryl Dorsey, Jeff Bradach, and Peter Kim | Stanford Social Innovation Review | 4 May 2020
Documents personal and institutional bias that disadvantages nonprofits led by people of color and proposes corrective funding practices.
The Redistributive Imperative
| Guerrilla Foundation | Guerrilla Foundation | n.d.
Advances a philanthro-abolitionist critique of hoarded wealth and calls for radical redistribution measured by collective liberation.
Feminist, Black Feminist, LGBTQ+, and Disability Funding
Feminist Philanthropy in Practice: When Solidarity Becomes Systems Change
| The Philanthropist Journal | The Philanthropist Journal | 22 June 2026
Shows how participatory, unrestricted, multi-year funding and movement accompaniment turn feminist solidarity into institutional change.
Black Feminist Fund Awards $13 Million to LBTI+ and Black Feminist Movements
| Global Philanthropy Project | Global Philanthropy Project | 26 March 2026
Reports on long-term support for Black feminist organizing across reproductive, disability, youth, economic, and LGBTQI justice.
What Philanthropy Can Learn from Black Women-Led and Community-Centered Funding
| Kaci Patterson | Candid | 25 February 2026
Highlights co-governance, community expertise, and sustainable funding practices developed by Black women leaders.
Trust-Based Decolonial Feminist Philanthropy for Change
| Trust-Based Philanthropy Project | Trust-Based Philanthropy Project | 17 April 2025
Connects feminist, decolonial, and trust-based principles in a framework for equitable relationships and community accountability.
Driving Disability Inclusion in Philanthropy
| MacArthur Foundation | MacArthur Foundation | 6 March 2025
Calls on philanthropy to move from paternalistic service funding toward disability rights, power, leadership, and justice.
Building a Base of Black Feminist Power in Philanthropy
| Black Feminists in Philanthropy | Alliance Magazine | 8 March 2024
Describes a global network organizing inside philanthropic institutions to mobilize resources toward Black feminist movements.
Shifting Paradigms Through Feminist Funding
| Anita Chugh and colleagues | Global Public Health | 2024
Examines how women's and feminist funds support resilient movements, networks, and institutions through flexible, values-driven grantmaking.
Simple Ways for Philanthropy to Move Toward Greater Disability Inclusion
| PEAK Grantmaking | PEAK Grantmaking | 23 June 2023
Identifies ableism in applications, governance, staffing, and funding while offering practical steps toward disability justice.
Major Funders Call for Increased Support of Black Feminists
| Thalia Beaty | Associated Press | 26 January 2023
Reports on a global campaign to close severe funding gaps facing Black women and gender-expansive movement leaders.
A Radical Shift in Gender-Equity Funding Is Long Overdue
| Staff | Alliance Magazine | 19 August 2022
Calls for funders to move more flexible, long-term resources to grassroots feminist and gender-justice movements.
Participatory Disability Grantmaking
| Disability & Philanthropy Forum | Disability & Philanthropy Forum | 2022
Shows how sharing decision-making power with disabled people can strengthen equity, relevance, and accountability.
Time for Philanthropy to Confront Ableism
| Rebecca Cokley | Stanford Social Innovation Review | 12 November 2021
Argues that disability activists must hold grantmaking power and that participatory processes are central to anti-ableist philanthropy.
Applying a Feminist Lens to Grantmaking for Addressing Violence Against Women and Girls
| Coalition of Feminists for Social Change | COFEM | 19 October 2021
Provides practical guidance for funding transformative, survivor-centered, intersectional work against gender-based violence.
Meet the Black Feminist Fund Founders Out to Transform Philanthropy
| Ford Foundation | Ford Foundation | 15 September 2021
Profiles a fund designed to provide substantial, flexible, long-term support to Black feminist groups across regions.
What Funders Need to Know About Disability-Inclusive Grantmaking
| Disability Rights Fund | Disability & Philanthropy Forum | 2020
Explains the 'nothing about us without us' model, including disabled leadership across staff, boards, and grantmaking committees.
Women's Funds Guide the Way Toward Participatory Grantmaking
| Staff | Giving Compass | 2018
Explains how women's funds use listening, representation, and community engagement to make philanthropy more inclusive.
Feminist Philanthropy: A New Era for the Philanthropy Field
| Siobhan Daly, Miriam Carrasco, and Maja Scherer | ERNOP | 1 June 2017
Maps the growth of women's funds, especially in the Global South, and their role in movement-centered funding architecture.
Participatory Grant Making: A Success Story from Southern Africa
| The Other Foundation | Atlantic Philanthropies | 2 September 2014
Documents a peer-review process that increased transparency, accountability, and community influence in LGBTQ grantmaking.
Democratisation of Philanthropy
| Women Win | Women Win | n.d.
Describes participatory grantmaking in which activists, civil-society leaders, and community members lead funding decisions.
Shifting Power to Catalyze Movements
| Equality Fund | Equality Fund | n.d.
Presents a model that combines philanthropy, investment, and public funding to sustain feminist movements over the long term.
Black Feminists in Philanthropy
| Black Feminist Fund | Black Feminist Fund | n.d.
Builds a global network of Black feminists working inside philanthropy to organize power and mobilize resources.
Our Advocacy
| Black Feminist Fund | Black Feminist Fund | n.d.
Calls for dramatically increased investment in Black feminist movements and challenges the sector's persistent trust and funding gaps.
Our Calling
| Black Feminist Fund | Black Feminist Fund | n.d.
Sets out a vision for transforming how Black feminist movements are funded globally.
The Disability Rights Fund Participatory Model
| Disability Rights Fund | Disability Rights Fund | n.d.
Collects resources on disability-led participatory grantmaking, peer learning, and democratized decision-making.
Black Feminist Fund
| Black Feminist Fund | Black Feminist Fund | n.d.
Presents a global funding mechanism built to move long-term, flexible resources to Black feminist organizations, groups, and collectives.
Trust-Based, Solidarity, and Relationship-Centered Philanthropy
Solidarity Philanthropy
| Grassroots International | Grassroots International | September 2025
Calls for philanthropy to become an organized force for movement support, resource redistribution, and social and ecological justice.
Putting the Trust in Trust-Based Philanthropy
| Sonni Holland | Candid | 30 June 2025
Offers a foundation leader's perspective on people-first grantmaking, power sharing, and deep relationships with nonprofit partners.
When Love Calls, Philanthropy Must Answer
| Staff | Stanford Social Innovation Review | 2025
Advocates unrestricted, rapid, and long-term funding that trusts communities to define priorities and strategies.
Lessons from Fungi: Reciprocal Relationships and Philanthropic Philosophy
| Staff | Community-Centric Fundraising | 8 October 2024
Uses ecological reciprocity to rethink donor relationships, wealth redistribution, and community interdependence.
Trust-Based, Reparative, and Liberatory Approaches to Shifting Power
| Sadaf Shallwani | Sadaf Shallwani | 3 June 2024
Clarifies the differences and connections among trust-based, reparative, and liberatory philanthropy.
Racial Justice Requires Trust
| Nat Chioke Williams and Liz Bonner | Stanford Social Innovation Review | Spring 2024
Shows how racial-justice commitments require foundations to replace conventional control with trust, relationships, and power-conscious practice.
Why Are We Still Talking About Trust-Based Philanthropy?
| Trust-Based Philanthropy Project | Trust-Based Philanthropy Project | 16 November 2023
Reflects on why the sector still struggles to move from discussing trust to changing institutional behavior.
Investing in People: The Principles of Trust-Based Philanthropy
| Fluxx | Fluxx | 20 October 2023
Connects flexible funding, reduced burdens, relationships, and racial equity to a people-centered grantmaking model.
The Intersection of Trust-Based Philanthropy and Racial Equity
| Trust-Based Philanthropy Project | Trust-Based Philanthropy Project | 22 September 2023
Explains where trust-based practice and racial-equity work overlap and where each requires distinct commitments.
Webinar Series: Demystifying Trust-Based Philanthropy
| Trust-Based Philanthropy Project | Trust-Based Philanthropy Project | 16 March 2023
Explores the practical nuances of relationship-building, mutual learning, systemic equity, and flexible funding.
Trust-Based Philanthropy Webinar
| Philanthropy Together | Philanthropy Together | 2023
Connects the history of trust-based philanthropy with racial-equity learning in giving circles.
Participatory Grantmaking and Trust-Based Philanthropy
| Trust-Based Philanthropy Project | Trust-Based Philanthropy Project | 4 August 2022
Compares two power-conscious approaches and explores their shared values, tensions, and complementary strengths.
Trust-Based Philanthropy in 4D
| Trust-Based Philanthropy Project | Trust-Based Philanthropy Project | 2022
Extends trust-based practice beyond grant terms into culture, structures, leadership, and organizational behavior.
A Power Reckoning on Trust in Philanthropy
| Trust-Based Philanthropy Project | Trust-Based Philanthropy Project | 20 October 2021
Examines trust from both funder and nonprofit perspectives and asks what institutional changes are needed for it to endure.
Trust-Based Philanthropy Summer Learning Webinar Series
| Trust-Based Philanthropy Project | Trust-Based Philanthropy Project | 30 July 2021
Focuses on mutual accountability, equitable relationships, and the internal work funders must undertake to build trust.
Focusing on Fundraising Goals Is Harmful—Let's Measure Love Instead
| Staff | Community-Centric Fundraising | 16 April 2021
Challenges white-supremacist fundraising metrics and proposes relational, community-centered measures of care and accountability.
Trust-Based Philanthropy and the Foundation Board
| Withersworldwide | Withersworldwide | 12 February 2021
Discusses how boards can address funding gaps, grantee exclusion, and institutional risk assumptions through trust-based practice.
Building a Trust-Based Philanthropy to Shift Power Back to Communities
| Philip Li and Pia Infante | Stanford Social Innovation Review | 20 November 2020
Links trust-based practice to racial, economic, and political inequity and emphasizes internal institutional transformation.
What UK Grantmakers Are Learning About Power and Trust
| Candid | Candid | 14 July 2020
Shares lessons on participation, equal partnership, and recognizing that funders are not always best placed to decide.
How Racial Equity Supports Better Grantmaking Practices
| Brendan McCormick and Afia Amobeaa-Sakyi | Candid | 8 July 2020
Argues that trust, relationship-building, and attention to systemic power improve grantmaking across issue areas.
Strategies for Narrowing the Power Gap in Philanthropy
| National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy | Trust-Based Philanthropy Project | 9 June 2020
Points funders toward practical tools for building, sharing, and wielding power in support of equity.
Trust-Based Philanthropy Explained
| Philanthropy Together | IssueLab | n.d.
Introduces trust-based grantmaking for giving circles pursuing racial equity and stronger community relationships.
What Is Trust-Based Philanthropy?
| Trust-Based Philanthropy Project | Trust-Based Philanthropy Project | n.d.
Provides a concise introduction to a movement reimagining funders' role in building a more just and equitable society.
Tools for Trust-Based Philanthropy
| Trust-Based Philanthropy Project | Trust-Based Philanthropy Project | n.d.
Collects guides, assessments, reports, and definitions for changing grantmaking practices, culture, structures, and leadership.
Support Beyond the Check
| Trust-Based Philanthropy Project | Trust-Based Philanthropy Project | n.d.
Compiles resources on providing responsive, non-monetary support without undermining nonprofit autonomy.
Institutional Power, Accountability, and Transforming Philanthropy
Can Philanthropy Be a Child of Our Time?
| Staff | Alliance Magazine | 19 May 2026
Asks whether philanthropy can evolve beyond inherited power dynamics and become accountable to contemporary movements and communities.
Purpose Versus Perpetuity: The Paradox of Philanthropy
| Staff | Alliance Magazine | 5 May 2026
Questions whether preserving institutional wealth indefinitely is compatible with urgent justice goals and community rights.
How One Foundation Built a Board That's Standing Up to Trump
| Staff | The Chronicle of Philanthropy | 28 January 2026
Examines governance changes that strengthened a foundation's commitment to community power, racial justice, and reparations.
A Guide to Global Philanthropy in 2026
| Staff | Alliance Magazine | 6 January 2026
Anticipates stronger demands for locally led, territorially grounded, and community-accountable philanthropy.
Reclaiming Capital: Community- and Movement-Centred Finance for Systemic Change
| Staff | Alliance Magazine | 23 December 2025
Explores capital allocation and governance models designed around social movements and community power.
Four Ways Philanthropy Can Support the Movement for a Third Reconstruction
| Staff | Nonprofit Quarterly | 1 December 2025
Calls on foundations to use grants, investments, influence, and public platforms to support community-led democratic transformation.
Power to the People: How Climate Finance Can Reach Frontline Communities
| Staff | Reuters | 4 November 2025
Argues for accessible, community-centered climate finance that recognizes Indigenous and frontline leadership.
Philea Forum 2025: Power and Equality
| Staff | Alliance Magazine | 3 July 2025
Reviews European philanthropy's debates over equality, power, participation, and institutional responsibility.
EDGE Conference 2025: Accountability in Philanthropy
| Staff | Alliance Magazine | 29 May 2025
Reports on funders and movement leaders pushing philanthropy beyond good intentions toward political accountability.
Building Back Power: Community Philanthropy as a Radical Force Beyond Aid
| Staff | Alliance Magazine | 13 May 2025
Examines how community philanthropy can build long-term power, resource grassroots movements, and move beyond aid dependency.
Power Moves: FAQs and Resources
| National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy | NCRP | 2023
Collects prompts, case studies, and guidance for funders learning to build, share, and wield power for equity.
Rethinking Philanthropy: Emerging Paradigms of Social Justice
| Staff | The Philanthropist Journal | 1 March 2022
Critiques the moral hierarchy of wealth and surveys solidarity, mutual aid, and justice-centered alternatives to conventional charity.
Can a Foundation Collaborative Advance Economic and Racial Justice?
| Staff | Nonprofit Quarterly | 25 January 2022
Examines a regional foundation collaboration seeking to dismantle systemic racism through aligned funding and institutional change.
Answering the Call: One Foundation's Approach to Shifting Power and Funding Racial Justice
| Hanna Mahon and Luke Newton | Inside Philanthropy | 20 January 2022
Describes a family foundation's effort to put justice at the center and hand meaningful decision authority to others.
Philanthropic Pledges for Racial Justice Found to Be Superficial
| Staff | Nonprofit Quarterly | 7 October 2021
Reviews evidence that many post-2020 racial-equity commitments remained limited, short-term, or disconnected from structural change.
Shifting Power in Philanthropy
| Tory Martin | Johnson Center for Philanthropy | 10 August 2021
Summarizes research showing that power sharing must be embedded across strategy, evaluation, governance, and grantmaking.
COVID-19: Using a Racial Justice Lens Now to Transform Our Future
| Lori Villarosa | Nonprofit Quarterly | 30 March 2020
Shows how racial-justice grantmaking can build community power and resilient infrastructure during and beyond crisis.
Voices from the Field: Six Leadership Imperatives for Racial Equity
| Staff | Nonprofit Quarterly | 30 January 2020
Outlines leadership practices for challenging whiteness in philanthropic boards, staffing, investments, grantmaking, and definitions of impact.
Just Transition for Philanthropy
| Justice Funders | Justice Funders | 1 January 2019
Maps a progression toward philanthropy that redistributes wealth, democratizes power, and shifts economic control to communities.
Wielding Power with Community
| Staff | Stanford Social Innovation Review | 30 October 2018
Calls on philanthropy to align with community concerns and support locally grounded alternatives to disinvestment and injustice.
Power, Privilege, and Effectiveness: Are Funders Connecting the Dots?
| Kathleen P. Enright | Stanford Social Innovation Review | 1 October 2018
Argues that effective equity work requires funders to share power and use privilege in partnership with nonprofits and communities.
Power Moves: Your Essential Philanthropy Assessment Guide for Equity and Justice
| National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy | NCRP | 1 April 2018
Provides a self-assessment framework for building, sharing, and wielding power with marginalized communities.
A Learning Journey: Investing in Racial Justice to Redress Philanthropy's Power Problem
| Clothworkers' Foundation | Clothworkers' Foundation | n.d.
Reflects on motivations, performative giving, extractive wealth, and the institutional changes required for meaningful racial justice.
Drive Equity
| PEAK Grantmaking | PEAK Grantmaking | n.d.
Calls on grantmakers to identify structural bias, reduce disparities, and redesign systems at the intersection of power and privilege.
Community Philanthropy and Shift the Power
| Global Fund for Community Foundations | GFCF | n.d.
Presents a people-led paradigm that values local assets, agency, knowledge, networks, and control over development resources.
