Reflecting on our first 10 years, Part 3: Innovation and experimentation
Ten years ago, a group of Bay Area foundation program officers with deep ties to social justice movements came together to form a network of grantmaking professionals committed to making philanthropy more responsive and accountable to grassroots, people of color-led movements advancing systemic change.
As philanthropic support organizations (PSOs) are typically created to serve philanthropy, meaning serve those with wealth and institutional power, there were limited models for how to create a new kind of PSO that was accountable to frontline organizations. Foundations themselves often operated in ways that upheld power structures that reinforced the very social, racial and economic injustices that movements sought to dismantle.
So what did we do? As an organization that was sparked by a desire to bridge the gulf between grassroots movements and the philanthropic institutions meant to support them, we began by listening deeply to frontline leaders. We listened to stories they shared about the tensions they experienced with funders, and worked together to design interventions that could be tested locally and eventually applied at a larger scale. Our goal was to be students of our movements, to figure out how to make movement-informed shifts in philanthropic practice, and ultimately reimagine the role of philanthropy in supporting our movements to thrive.
Since then, the Bay Area Justice Funders Network has evolved into Justice Funders, a national organization working to usher a Just Transition in philanthropy. But what has continued to guide our work is a deep commitment to following the lead of movements, and to organize the philanthropic sector to do the same. We are continuing to listen to and learn from our movement partners to develop interventions for philanthropy that help to advance social justice movements working toward systemic change.
“There is a genuine interest [by Justice Funders] in learning and hearing from folks that are on the ground and impacted by the oppressions that we are trying to organize against…from the very beginning [they have] been conscientious and mindful about connecting to movements in order to be of service and not just have an initiative that doesn’t address the needs of organizations on the ground.” ~ Movement partner
One of the first things we heard from our movement partners was how difficult it was to get funding for movement building work. Foundations typically do their grantmaking in siloes — by issue, geography and identity — which is counter to the reality of how our communities experience intersecting systems of oppression and how grassroots movements build power. Meanwhile, we also heard from our BAJFN members that they were grappling with how best to “make the case” within their philanthropic institutions for funding movement building work.
In fall of 2012, we conducted a member survey to better understand what kind of movement building work Bay Area foundations funding, as well as the most effective strategies they were utilizing to move philanthropic resources toward movement building work. The resulting report, Funding Movement Building: Bay Area Approaches shared case studies which offered paths forward for foundations to intentionally and strategically increase their investment in social justice movement building.
Following the release of Funding Movement Building, our members provided feedback on how helpful it was for the report to document a range of case studies. They also wished we had included a key ingredient that was missing in most philanthropic white papers: the questions that were asked which opened the door for these conversations to be had. This insightfulness paved the way for the development of The Choir Book: A Framework for Social Justice Philanthropy in 2015. The Choir Book was co-created with a group of both movement and philanthropic partners, through a process in which movement partners shared invaluable insights and reflections about their experiences with philanthropy that informed the creation of a resource meant to guide philanthropic organization in aligning grantmaking practices with social justice values. The Choir Book is oriented around appreciative inquiry, where we begin with questions, understanding that there is not just one way to get to a transitional or a transformative practice. To date, the Choir Book has been utilized by thousands of grantmakers nationally and internationally to gain greater clarity on how to strengthen the quality and quantity of grantmaking for social justice.
While both Funding Movement Building and The Choir Book supported our members and the larger philanthropic community to better understand how to effectively support movements for justice and apply social justice values to their grantmaking, it soon became clear that more work was needed for funders to make shifts in their practice. Therefore, using The Choir Book as a foundation, Justice Funders launched a cohort-based leadership development program called the Harmony Initiative. Now in its sixth year, Harmony has trained over a hundred grantmaking professionals with the community, skills, and practices to make philanthropy a true force for justice and liberation, with a curriculum deeply informed by the first-hand experiences of frontline leaders with a vision for philanthropy to trust, follow and abundantly resource grassroots movements for justice.
“With Harmony…with their approach [to] cohort learning and peer learning and organizing, they have made a real contribution in shifting individual practices.” ~ Philanthropic partner
A few years after the launch of the Harmony Initiative, we began seeing our program alumni successfully make concrete changes to their grantmaking practices including more streamlined grantmaking processes, greater trust and open communication with grantee partners, and more resources going to social, racial and economic justice movements. Even then, our movement partners continued to wonder why more progress wasn’t being made: Why was it so hard to institutionalize these practices across an entire foundation? Why can’t foundations increase their payout? Why are the majority of foundation assets locked up in stock market investments that are harming our communities?
These questions led us to our next level of realization: our interventions were successfully engaging program staff at foundations, who were able to implement changes to the grantmaking practices that were within their purview. What we weren’t yet doing was reaching organizational decision makers who had control over the larger strategy and operations of these philanthropic institutions.
Around the same time, we were also engaging in conversations with movement partners who were beginning to popularize a framework for a Just Transition from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy, who were calling on Justice Funders to lead the charge to usher a Just Transition for philanthropy.
These conversations led to a co-creation process with some of the most visionary and forward-thinking movement and philanthropic partners we have ever worked with to develop Resonance: A Framework for Philanthropic Transformation. Resonance lays out our new North Star: a new vision for philanthropy that redistributes wealth, democratizes power and shifts economic control to communities.
The co-creation of Resonance and our ongoing conversations with movement partners has resulted in a major evolution and expansion of our work, including the launch of a new cohort-based learning program for philanthropic executives and trustees called Maestra. Maestra is intentionally designed to engage participants in pairs: 1 executive-level staff member and 1 trustee from the same institution who participate together to gain new strategies, skills and support to guide their organizations through a Just Transition. By supporting a peer learning journey for philanthropic decision makers, Maestra is guiding philanthropic leadership to unify their board, staff, investments and grantmaking in order to envision and practice a new approach to philanthropy that aligns with the vision and values of a Just Transition.
“It’s working well, because some of the first folks who have gone through the Maestra process…are putting in to practice the things they have learned together and from JF. I can testify that bold and more transformative leadership is emerging from programs and strategies that JF is advancing.“ ~ Movement Partner
As Justice Funders grounds more fully into a Just Transition, we call on philanthropy to not only redistribute its wealth to the Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) communities from whom their accumulated wealth has been extracted, but also to transfer the management and control of those resources to social justice movements advancing systemic change. This means philanthropy must support the building of infrastructure and intentional practices that allow our movements to collectively govern and manage those resources which are redistributed.
Toward this end, in 2019 Justice Funders launched Movement Commons, a national campaign to re-imagine and practice more transformative, regenerative and collaborative approaches to building power and resourcing social justice movement movements.The campaign engages development staff in local movement ecosystems across the country to shift away from scarcity and competition toward abundance and cooperation, builds practices for collective stewarding of movement resources, and promotes the right ways to use technology as a means to foster the political journeys of everyday people.
As our latest intervention, Movement Commons will support our learning about what it takes for social justice movements to collectively shift from transactional, extractive approaches to resource development and management to transformative, regenerative approaches to raising and stewarding resources that build enduring infrastructure for movement ecosystems. A Just Transition means that movements — rather than philanthropic institutions — must have the economic power and self-determination over how resources are allocated, so that they can leverage their political and cultural power toward advancing systemic change toward the creation of a regenerative economy. We are excited to be working in collaboration with our movement partners, listening to and learning from them about how best to build the practices that move us toward a Just Transition and allow our movements to govern resources for themselves.
One of the core tenets of the Just Transition framework is the simultaneous work to “stop the bad” and “build the new.” While we work to stop the further calcification of the extractive policies, practices and culture present in institutional U.S. philanthropy, we must simultaneously identify, build and begin to practice new regenerative ways of being. What Justice Funders has been learning over our last decade of work is not only how to identify the practices that resource frontline movements working for systems change, but also exploring the ways in which the democratization of control and power can transform how we engage with one another, where financial resources are a tool to build what we need instead of the currency that separates the haves from the have-nots. We know that the work before all of us is to determine how to increase the frequency and repetition of our regenerative practices so that they become the default in philanthropy. We look forward to continuing to partner with you to reimagine philanthropic practices that advance a thriving and just world.
We invite you to read the first two posts in our 10th Anniversary series:
