Trust Is a Process, Not a Destination
Solomé Lemma, Executive Director, Thousand Currents
Since our inception in 1985, trust has been deeply embedded in the DNA of Thousand Currents. At that time, our founders saw that something wasn’t right with the top-down, externally driven and exported model of philanthropy that dominated the field. They wanted to know, what if we created an initiative to move resources directly to communities for projects that they want to do for themselves, because we believe communities know what’s best and we trust them? Since then, we’ve sharpened and expanded our understanding of trust and now talk about our work as solidarity-based and as systems-change philanthropy. In this work, trust is a process, rather than a destination.
Our grantmaking is grounded in a belief that people should self determine their realities and their futures. We are partners in that work, but we don't impose our own strategies on the sector. Walking with our partners towards their self-determined goals means moving with mutual accountability. As funders, we often think our resources are power, and that any nonprofit is lucky to have them; there is an assumption that nonprofits will immediately say yes to funding without expecting accountability from us. At Thousand Currents, we've been fortunate enough to be in relationship with groups that are so clear and principled that we’ve had to demonstrate our trustworthiness before they were willing to accept our funding support. Yes, they needed the resources to advance their work, but they needed a sense of right relationship with us first.
Deeply listening to our partners has led us to experiments that transformed our work in profound ways. One example is our Buen Vivir Fund, an impact investment initiative that came about because our partners asked us to think about how impact investing capital could reach grassroots communities more directly. After many conversations with them and with impact investors, we created the first experiment of its kind, bringing together investors and grassroots partners who aren't usually in relationship with each other in an effort to drive investments to traditionally underinvested or overlooked efforts. Because many grassroots groups have been harmed by microfinance & traditional investment mechanisms, it took significant relationship-building and reflection for us to get to a place where our partners could trust that they wouldn’t be penalized if they couldn’t pay back the capital they borrowed. The experiment brought up the multiple traumas of how banking and financial systems have exploited the communities with whom we are in direct relationship, so to co-create something like this took a lot of risk. Risk requires trust, which requires accountability and a deep commitment to each other.
In trust-based philanthropy, we have an imperative to look beyond operational practices. Without a systemic relational power analysis, “trust” is not going to have the impact that we want. Who funders think is worthy of trust and risk is limited by racism, sexism, xenophobia and other forms of oppression that pervade our sector. The funding data reflects the biases our sector holds; U.S. organizations that are led by communities of color are still severely underfunded compared to white-led organizations. Globally, the data looks even worse. There are reasons that people say they can’t do trust-based philanthropy: that it’s not strategic, that it takes too much time, that you can’t measure the impact. But if we look beyond those reasons, working without trust and relationship is really about being unwilling to surrender power and control. It’s about who gets to determine impact, who gets to articulate change.