Trust-Based Blog
Reimagining philanthropy begins with learning out loud.
By sharing ideas, with curiosity and humility, the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project blog features trust-based grantmakers who talk about their own lessons, questions, and aha-moments along their power-sharing journeys.
Should I Stay Or Should I Go?
What happens when a foundation’s work strives to be trust-based, but its internal culture is anything but? We get this question a lot from foundation staff whose workplaces have embedded legacies and structures that seem counter to the core values of a trust-based approach. Here are a few clarifying questions to consider about your role in supporting this work.
How Philanthropy Can Move from Crisis to Transformation
We are in a once-in-a-lifetime opening to transform philanthropy: let's use it, writes Dimple Abichandani, Executive Director of the General Service Foundation. In this moving reflection on the year of COVID, racial justice uprisings, elections, and more, Abichandani writes about the new philanthropy that is ours to create.
No Agenda, and Other Lessons from Global Fund for Children
Because the Global Fund for Children’s work is child- and youth-centered, it’s inherently about power. In recent years, the Fund has examined what true collaboration looks like not only in their grantmaking, but in the myriad of ways that funders can provide additional support. We sat down with Vice President of Programs Corey Oser to hear more.
A Tale of Two Funders
Amber Twitchell has worked in the nonprofit sector for almost 20 years. The current crisis has presented challenges she has never seen before. In this blog post, she reflects on the range of experiences she’s had with funders in response to covid-19. Amber highlights two foundations from the same community, yet still worlds apart.
The Urgency of Trust-Based Philanthropy
As sectors and organizations are reassessing the status quo, philanthropy has a unique, and urgent, opportunity. The Whitman Institute’s co-executive director John Esterle reflects on how foundations must meet the moment we are in with responsiveness, adaptability, and creativity. “To do so means rethinking basic assumptions about impact and attribution, power and control, learning and relationships, role and job, endowments and organization lifespans.”
In the Face of a Pandemic, Foundations Adopt Trust-Based Principles
Last week, in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, several of the nation’s top foundations pledged to ease or eliminate restrictions on grants, reduce asks of grantees, and support and uplift the voices of grantee partners. The Whitman Institute’s Pia Infante reflects on what happens after the pledge, how our words translate to embodied action, and how we can use this moment to assert values of power-sharing and equity.
Confessions of a Former Nonprofit ED
Trust-Based Philanthropy Project Director Shaady Salehi reflects on her experience as a first-time executive director, the challenges and power dynamics she faced, and what motivates her to be a part of the growing advocacy movement to make trust-based practices the norm.
How General Service Foundation's Radical Shifts Are Sparking Greater Efficiency and Learning
When Dimple Abichandani stepped in as Executive Director of the General Service Foundation, she noticed a gap between the social justice foundation’s grantmaking processes and the type of relationship they had with their grantees. Soon after, she and the GSF staff started making changes to their practices in order to fully embody trust-based processes.