Trust-Based Philanthropy as a Movement Building Strategy

Farrah Parkes, Executive Director, Gender Justice Fund

When I became the Executive Director of the Gender Justice Fund in 2019, the organization had already decided that they wanted to use trust-based philanthropy as a framework. It made a lot of sense to me, having been on the nonprofit side for most of my career and having felt a lack of deep listening from funders. I quickly found that the model was a useful way to structure the work in a way that incorporated practices that felt instinctive to me. 

In addition to removing a lot of unnecessary burdens in the grantmaking process, trust-based philanthropy made sense to us because we see our grantee partners as collaborators working on a common goal to advance gender justice. We know achieving this goal is not possible without the organizations on the ground, so we believe supporting their capacity and growth is a key part of building the movement. 

For us, doing the homework means getting to know and building relationships with our grantees to understand their contributions to the issues we’re all working on. And trust goes both ways, right? Grantees trust us because they know we care about the things they care about. They know our relationship is not just about the money. Committing to gender justice broadly means supporting as many organizations doing that work as possible, even if we can’t fund all of them. So when we’re unable to support an organization financially [due to budget limitations or otherwise],  we try to show up for them in other ways. 

With issue-based funding, it can be challenging when funders and grantees don’t have the same understanding about what the root of an issue is. This can raise some significant challenges when foundation boards want to see “measurable impact.” At Gender Justice Fund we try to engage our board from multiple vantage points to help with this challenge. I have an incredibly supportive board chair and the larger board is committed to trust-based philanthropy. But since we all swim in the waters of white supremacy, we try to offer continued education on equitable funding and trust-based practices in the context of gender justice for our board members. Board members sit in on the interviews we do with everybody we're considering funding, which has been incredibly helpful in making the work real to them -- and helping them understand some of the related issues that movement leaders must deal with in order to advance a bigger vision for change.

Trust-based philanthropy gives us permission to work in a much more connected way. Frankly, I know more about my grantees than a lot of other funders know. Focusing on the relationship over the paperwork has provided a much richer level of analysis and knowledge of our partners. One of the things we've learned from these deep dive conversations with our grantees is that several of them are struggling with implementing organizing campaigns and providing training for the folks with whom they organize. This has led to us starting conversations with grantees about how we can provide centralized support for basic organizing training so they have more time to focus on their campaigns. That focus makes it easier to see their impact and it gives the grantees more space to do the work, which is more important than anything. Honestly, I think it's more fun this way. Who wants to read 50 grant reports when you can build an honest and open relationship with someone?