What are the most effective philanthropic grantmaking models for social justice causes?

My personal and professional experience points to trust being at the heart of what needs to be transformed within philanthropic practices. I do appreciate TBP framework to get things going, as it intelligently proposes tools to change relationships on a very practical way. At the same time, and as a warning, I say that a practice can never be based only on tools to be executed and followed or it will not hold in meaning and purpose. We need to keep deepening the conversation.

Truly involving and listening to affected people and communities is in itself a paradox change. If we keep determining what is best to others, assuming we are and know better, we are in the service of supporting colonization. To really break free of it and allow change to happen, we need to make money available. The challenge with that is that we now have a well established giving market who needs to sell solutions. We need to complicate things to sell how to navigate complexity.

We seem to be reaching a turning point where it will become infamous to do anything other than giving without imposing. Instead of defending what is obvious, we will start turning against those who haven’t seen it yet.

Multi year C4/pac funding for progressive grassroots electoral organizing groups working for multiracial feminist democracy. You can use intermediaries like movement voter project or way to win or groundswell fund or tides action…or fund groups directly. An important part is to offer multi year baseline support so groups can weather the boom/bust cycle of electoral funding. And then you or your institution can always give more if able. This is key to building governing power, which is critical to winning structural changes needed.

All of these top 5 philanthropic grant making strategies are significant in creating social change. Relying on only one or few of these activities is to compromise potential impact - they are all of them interdependent on each other to drive real change. The participatory (1) builds trust (2) which leads to achieving the collaborative, the general and the multi year. Factoring early a staged approach, committing to evolving programs based on participatory engagement and collective opportunities sets a program up for success. Participatory arts engagement in healthcare settings is an outstanding example of change that is possible for some of the most vulnerable in our communities. Join me to learn more.