Our Sector Has an Imperative to Repair Harm

Gabriela Alcalde, Executive Director, Elmina B. Sewall Foundation

I came into philanthropy ten years ago out of criticism of it. Prior to working in philanthropy, I worked in nonprofits, academia and local government, and eventually ran a statewide grassroots organization focused on an intersectional approach to reproductive justice. Throughout all the innovation in that organization, I still had to spend 40 to 60% of my time dealing with the funders, trying to protect the community organizers that I had hired, and preventing or mitigating harms that we knew would come to our communities and partners if the funder was able to push their “expertise” over our community organizers’ experience, knowledge and relationships. That signaled to me that there had to be another way for the sector to operate.

Out of this desire to do things differently and a belief that there was a huge impact opportunity in philanthropy, I started my path into philanthropy, which led me to  my current role at the Sewall Foundation. I knew that philanthropy could make ideas bigger and propel social change, but that hasn’t always been our track record in the field. Philanthropy only exists because profound inequities have and continue to exist. So in fact, the ideal world, an equitable world, is one in which philanthropy wouldn’t even have to exist because wealth, power and opportunity distribution would look different. That means the status quo is not an option; philanthropy’s imperative for transformation requires us to repair the harm that we have caused directly as a sector. Working in a trust-based way is about philanthropy redefining the role we play in a country where the government does not provide all that's necessary for people to survive and thrive. That’s the direction we need to move as a field. 

How do we get there? Slowly over time, and through relationships. I know I’m on track when a grantee texts or calls me to say, “I’m dealing with a problem. Help me think through it?” And it's not a request for money; it’s a recognition of partnership and shared values. While funding is important, there is much more that foundations can do to support grantees and the communities they serve. At the beginning of the pandemic, a grantee told us that they needed hand sanitizer. They weren't asking us for more funding, or technical assistance—hand sanitizer. We learned one of the state distilleries was starting to make hand sanitizer, and through a relationship with one of our staff, paid them directly for a bunch of it. Another staff member drove to the distillery, picked it up, and drove it to this grantee. 

Sometimes treating people like people is the most important thing we can do. Some people hear about trust-based philanthropy and think it’s about being friends with everyone. As an introvert, I can confidently say that’s not the case. This isn’t about friendship. It’s about meaningful, sincere and authentic relationships. It’s about rigorous honesty and transparency around what you can and cannot do. 

Trust-based philanthropy requires paying attention to and working on our organizational culture. Internally, we reworked all our roles recently to leverage the skills of each staff person in deeper ways. That’s been an emergent process that’s a part of our phase of questioning everything, including our structure. We shifted our structure from a very traditional sort of nonprofit hierarchy to what we call a pod structure with distributed leadership. All that work required real trust amongst the staff and lays the foundation for even more meaningful trust with grantee partners.