How Hill-Snowdon Foundation Became More Creative, Responsive, and Trust-Based

The Hill-Snowdon Foundation is a DC-based foundation committed to supporting grassroots movements for social justice by funding community organizing and leveraging dollars in support of targeted initiatives. We sat down with Executive Director Nat Williams to hear more about their work to further equity and justice, and the processes they’ve put in place to make that possible.

Tell us a little bit about Hill-Snowdon’s overall grantmaking focus and approach.

For the last 20 years we have had an explicit and exclusive focus on supporting community organizing in low income and BIPOC communities. Geographically, 60% of our grantmaking is in the South. At the core of our grantmaking is a belief in community organizing as a central strategy for securing concrete improvements for low-income families and communities, and building power, voice and capacity to achieve social change. 

Partnership is central to our work. That’s a given for our grantees, but we’re also paying attention to how we work with other funders. For example, through the Defending the Dream fund, we experimented with an aligned giving fund for the first time. We learned a lot about how to work with other funders to disseminate our respective grants in a more collaborative way. That really underscored that trust-based grantmaking is not just about the relationship between funders and grassroots partners, but between and amongst funders. It allowed us to learn about and support new organizations focused on issues we haven’t funded in the past, such as demilitarization, healthcare, and reproductive rights. It’s given us a much broader way to engage. It also made us be more deliberate about reviewing and critiquing our practice and pushing ourselves to be more creative and responsive to the needs of the times.

What are some specific changes have you made to your grantmaking process?

We thought we already had a pretty streamlined approach, with a yearly narrative and proposal required for yearly grant renewals. But through conversations with The Whitman Institute (TWI) and other funders, we learned that not everyone does proposals or LOIs. We really grappled with that idea.

The initial application for Defending the Dream was a survey with three brief questions. When it came time for us to do follow-up interviews with finalists, we decided we would do something super short — 15-20 minute phone calls — since they are relatively small grants, about $10k each. 

Then I realized, if we can streamline a rapid response grant, why can’t we do it for a regular grant? We reached out to TWI to learn more about their process. Since then, we’ve learned a lot, and have made a number of changes to our overall RFP process. Now, groups who have been with us three years or longer do a streamlined proposal that asks for bullets on accomplishments, goals for the coming year, and other needs; they can submit a recent proposal from another funder. 

As far as reporting, the bullets grantees provide about accomplishments from the past year serve as their written report.  The site visit conversation is where we flesh things out. Maybe we’ll get to a place where we don’t ask for anything written. Our goal is to make sure this is working both for us and our grassroots partners as an exercise that is actually helpful to them.

We also do small grants for our current partners that are up to $5k for capacity building or strategic opportunities. We used to require reports for those, but starting in 2018 those just required a brief form asking if they used the resources.

A big shift for was in recognizing that proposals and reporting aren’t only about due diligence; they’re about learning from grassroots partners. Literally all we need to know is did they use the money for what they said they’d do. We just need some sort of financial certification that the money was used in that way.

How did the board feel about you streamlining your proposal and reporting process?

Our board mostly deals with policy issues. They tend to leave the grantmaking to the staff. They are engaged in the overall grantmaking process, and have to give final approval, but they also trust that we [staff] are in the field, and recognize that they are not. So if a change or approach makes sense to staff, it makes sense to them. Our value overall as a foundation is that we’re trying to foster political partnerships with organizations on the ground, working collectively to achieve the goals we all prioritize.

How does Hill-Snowdon benefit from a more streamlined approach to paperwork?

Some people talk about streamlined paperwork as taking the burden off the grantees.

But it’s not just that. If grantees have the money, the time, and the space for reflection—and they’re not spending an inordinate amount of time writing proposals—they actually have more breathing room to focus on achieving their mission.

How has all this prompted you to think about the role of trust in philanthropy?

For us, this work is all about partnership and trust. It’s about working together toward a common goal. I see it as three levels of trust: 1) among board and staff; 2) among staff and grassroots partners; and 3) among funder partners. 

Philanthropy is a very hierarchical system. Foundations are assumed to have more power because of the money they have, and the board plays a major role in establishing a culture that can trickle down from the top. If the board doesn’t trust that the staff are making decisions to advance the organization’s mission, that leads to a preoccupation with documentation. It’s almost like asking for DNA samples! Usually the request for documentation isn’t about making the work better, or ensuring it’s done well. It is about satisfying a basic level of distrust from those who have the power.

Within the philanthropic space it’s often in a charity perspective, which perpetuates distrust. There is a distrust from the elites against the folks who have less. Whether it’s giving money to an alms house back in the day, or a huge foundation doing work on poverty issues. There is a lack of trust that the people receiving the funds will do what is in their best interest.

What advice do you have for funders that want to practice trust-based philanthropy while being in solidarity with movements?

As an institution, we have been very clear – we try to create political partnerships with our grassroots partners. But we also realize that it is a limited partnership—because you’ll never fully erase the power dynamic between the funder who has the money and the leader who does the work.

Take my personal experience, for example. I see myself as a Black freedom fighter, and I started developing that identity well before my time in philanthropy. But that is my political identity, and as a funder I’m constantly reminded of that. Last year, as part of the Making Black Lives Matter initiative, a number of Black organizers asked if Hill-Snowdon could support a convening designed to build connections and momentum in the Black liberation movement. After creating the basic framework—cross-issue, cross-constituency, and cross-region—I went on to raise money for the convening, while the MBLM organizers and LeftRoots took the lead on the programming strategy and logistics.

As much as I wanted to be a part of all the planning around this convening, at a certain point, one of the event organizers asked me if I would be willing to let go of some control. This made me realize that the way I see myself is not actually the way I’m showing up. I realized I’m not an organizer anymore. Even though I’m talking to and funding people who are doing the work, the act of organizing is not my daily experience. I needed to do an ego check and step back and give the organizers their own space to plan, strategize, and vision together.

For me, and a lot of other funders in the social justice movement space, we see ourselves as more aligned with the movement than with philanthropy—but the movement doesn’t always see us that way. As funders, we must constantly ask ourselves how to leverage our role to be most supportive of the movement. And as a resourcer of the movement, you have to accept that you can’t be involved at all levels.

Philanthropy has to come from an understanding that even if we’re in different socio-economic circumstances, we’re all interdependent. Philanthropy requires extremely active, conscious, and humble action to constantly look at what you’re doing to see if you’re living up to those values of partnership.

This interview was originally published on The Whitman Institute blog as part of a series featuring foundations that practice trust-based philanthropy. It has been edited and shared here with permission.