Knowing What to Do Will Never Be Enough

In the past, when given the chance to write about philanthropy, I’ve generally focused on the question of what we can do differently. You know the drill: start with a sober critique of the status quo, pivot to a charismatic vision of what the alternatives might look like, and then close with a set of concrete practices that will credibly bring us closer to that vision. Sounds compelling, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately, holding forth in this manner will only get us so far. To start, the sober critiques aren’t exactly new. Most of philanthropy is totally disinterested in the question of building or shifting power. And even among “aligned” funders, it’s still possible — common, even! — to fund the right work in the wrong way.

The charismatic vision can be forceful, but it can also feel more than a little removed from the current state of affairs. And the list of concrete practices...well, that list ought to be very familiar by now: long-term, unrestricted commitments; various approaches to co-design or democratized decision-making; relational or trust-based philanthropy; and so on.

I could even flex a bit and frame the practice of “spending down” as a way of taking an abolitionist stance with respect to private philanthropy itself, just to stir things up. But the reality is that, while knowing what we can do differently is absolutely necessary, that knowledge in and of itself remains woefully insufficient. Instead, we need to focus on how we actually bring these practices into being.

We Cannot Educate Our Way Out of This

Left to our own devices, the philanthropic sector tends to operate from what I can only describe as an “information deficit” theory of change. If funders only knew, then they would act accordingly. And so we have the countless reports, briefings, and thought pieces created by those of us who wish to educate funders into adopting different approaches. While all that data, storytelling, and well-reasoned argument is useful, the merits of the overall approach have been grossly overestimated. Take, for example, the well-worn story of the friendly program officer who consistently reads the reports, attends the briefings, and shares the thought pieces...and yet the behavior of the foundation where they work hasn’t moved an inch. What’s missing here? What’s happening — or not happening — behind closed doors?

Unsurprisingly, we usually find that the real obstacles are both cultural and structural: the cultures that inform how funders approach our work and the structures that make it hard for us to change that approach — even when we genuinely want to. Rather than simply educating our colleagues, we must meet these cultural and structural obstacles head on. If we believe that organizing is a fundamental practice for facilitating social change, and if we believe that it’s capable of transforming entire sectors, then surely these beliefs must apply to the philanthropic sector as well. Many of us regularly use the phrase “funder organizing,” but what does it really mean?

This may seem obvious, but it’s important to name that funder organizing can and should mean much more than simply fundraising. “Moving the money” may be our primary objective, but it’s not, in and of itself, an act of organizing; it’s an act of mobilization. It’s absolutely critical, but it doesn’t take place in a vacuum.

If we sketch a working definition of “organizing” as the process of building collective power and developing leadership to effect structural change, then “funder organizing” must focus on building power, developing leadership, and effecting structural change within the philanthropic sector itself. This work must be informed by and accountable to pre-existing organizing efforts taking place in marginalized and oppressed communities, but it must also be its own, distinct practice with its own knowledge, skills, relationships, and cultural competencies.

Developing Leaders in the Fullest Sense

Leadership development is the backbone of organizing; good organizers develop the leadership of community members and, ultimately, of other organizers. Organizing isn’t just about meeting a set of campaign objectives; it’s about developing and democratizing leadership itself. That’s how we really build and shift power. Good funder organizers, then, must do more than develop better grant makers; they must develop more powerful leaders who are effective funder organizers in their own right.

Transformative leaders model different ways of being; that’s part of shifting culture. They also seek to change the rules to more broadly support — or even require! — different ways of being; that’s when we make it structural. The project of transforming philanthropy will require powerful leaders who are capable of both modeling better grant making and changing the rules to require better grant making.

As a radical leader in philanthropy, and as someone who’s deeply committed to organizing my peers, I’ve found it both illuminating and sobering to look back on all the ways that my own leadership has been developed over the past 15 years — by the progressive and radical funders who took me under their wings, by the philanthropic support organizations that recruited me into their leadership development pipelines (both formal and informal), and, most importantly, by the grassroots organizations that saw in me more potential than a simple fundraising target. This in and of itself represents a cultural shift in how we engage with funders, and the importance of that shift has not been lost on me.

Organizing in the Philanthropic Workplace

As funders, we talk a lot about “moving the field.” But we’re rarely as talkative about what it takes to move our own organizations — and our own organizations can be deeply contested spaces. Knowing what you can do differently will only get you so far, especially if your boss or members of your board don’t share your perspective. There can be real risks in pushing for transformative change within a contested organization; people can — and have! — lost their jobs in these fights.

We must take the question of power seriously, not only as the lens for what we fund or for how we fund it but for how decisions get made within our own sector, including in our own organizations. In that sense, funder organizers have a lot to learn from more established forms of workplace organizing. We must build on strategies to win better wages or working conditions and direct those strategies toward questions of organizational decision-making and the impacts that those decisions can have on the outside world. What would it look like to power map philanthropic organizations, determine the nature and the location of consolidated power, and develop effective strategies to challenge that power? Which of these strategies are structural, and which are fundamentally cultural? Our ability to mobilize resources at the scale at which they’re needed depends on our ability to answer these questions.

For example, let’s consider the concept of organizing one’s own board. With an information deficit theory of change, board “organizing” is a fairly low bar. We send them some readings, there’s a compelling presentation, and we have a robust conversation. That’s all fine and good, but what about power mapping your board, developing the leadership of specific board members to challenge consolidated power, and investing not only in their education, but in their skills and their relationships? Aligned board members are good. Aligned board members who can speak powerfully when they’re needed are great. And aligned board members who can speak powerfully and organize their peers to do the same are fantastic.

I simply cannot overemphasize the importance of culture in all of this. If political power is the ability to influence decision-making — in a city, a state, a country, and also in an organization — then cultural power is the ability to influence what people perceive and what they believe about themselves and the world around them. It’s a disservice to all of us when we misrepresent culture as simply a product of something else; culture sets the parameters for what we believe is possible or desirable in the first place. And the dominant culture of philanthropy — which is to say, the dominant perceptions, beliefs, values, and norms — undergirds literally everything that happens in the sector. Transforming structures will require that we shift cultures as well.

Finally, it would be irresponsible of me not to name the ways in which race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and ability show up in this work. Given philanthropy’s torrid love affair with “diversity, equity, and inclusion” as a reformist and tokenistic frame, we cannot simply recruit leaders from marginalized or oppressed communities into philanthropic spaces that are often implicitly — or even explicitly! — white supremacist, classist, cisheteropatriarchal, or ableist. When we talk about the power dynamics inherent to philanthropy, we clearly need to talk about all of the power dynamics between funders and grantees. And we also need to talk about the power dynamics among funders — even funders who are at the same organization or part of the same program team. Good organizers know how to navigate complex power dynamics, and even how to use them to their advantage. If we aim to develop the leadership of good funder organizers, then we’re going to need to be comfortable naming these dynamics early and often.