Baby Steps: A Community Foundation’s Transformation

Heather Peeler, CEO, ACT for Alexandria

I used to work at Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) where some of the early conversations around trust-based philanthropy were being introduced. When I left GEO for ACT for Alexandria in 2018, where I currently serve as the CEO, I had hypotheses about things that I wanted to test and put into practice as a grantmaker. Trust-based philanthropy was at the top of that list, which helped me to think early on about how to center grantee experiences in every step of our process while being mindful and humble about our role. 

ACT had about $18 million in assets at the time and we don’t have an endowment.  Almost all of our grantmaking happened through donor advised funds. We had about $100,000 in discretionary grant funding which we used for capacity-building grants.  Most of the capacity building grants were under $10,000; we required midpoint reporting and only provided half the grant fund at the beginning. Being new and curious, I asked:  why do we do that? These grants are not that large.  The phased payments and reporting are a burden for our grantees and our small team. 

Brandi Yee, ACT’s Chief Program Officer, and our grant committee were receptive to change. I knew from my time at GEO and work with hundreds of grantmakers, grant processes are what we make them.  We must be clear about our intentions and open to understanding the intended and unintended impacts.  At ACT, we wanted a grantmaking process that was supportive of our grantees and goals, and we have the power to create it. We started with baby steps: we replaced our reporting process with one-on-one meetings. We moved away from the midpoint reports all together. After some time, we got rid of the written proposal process and decided that we would ask for letters of interest to invite grantees to share what they were thinking about and what they wanted to learn, rather than a detailed project scope. We followed those letters with conversations with the finalists and gave grants to everyone we met with. One grantee even cried with relief and gratitude during the “application” meeting. Her reaction was a reflection of how emotional and disrespectful the alternative processes can be to grantees. When we move in a different way that honors their time, experience and capacities, our grantee partners see new possibilities in our work together. I think a lot of them also feel respected and valued as partners.

Historically, we've invited our donor-advised fund holders to be part of the capacity building grants process; they used to review the proposals, be part of the deliberation, and fund the work with us side-by-side. They had a hard time when we first introduced trust-based philanthropy. Without formal proposals and reporting, they had questions about accountability. These conversations challenged me to consider how people define accountability in different ways. If we want a grant process that includes multiple voices, we need to be open to different way of thinking while also being true to our values. We are still having the hard conversations that are forcing us to be clear about our approach and the rationale, and I think it makes our grantmaking stronger. We are trying to be humble and recognize we may not get it right every time. We have to be respectful of how our donors and partners are coming to the work. We use our influence where we can, but we can't be hard-nosed about it. We have to recognize when there is a mismatch. It has required integrity and clarity of values to maintain our philosophy, even when it might mean not everyone comes along with us.