Giving up grant-making power
Lessons learned from 10 years of Shared Gifting Circles
“I thought it could be a disaster or a beautiful experience, and it was a beautiful experience.”
That comment from a participant in RSF Social Finance’s first Shared Gifting Circle mirrored what we all secretly felt about this radical experiment in giving up grant-making power. The enthusiastic response to that session — despite its rocky parts — inspired us to continue developing a process that requires a group of nonprofit leaders to collaborate on the best ways to distribute a pool of grant money, with no guideposts from the funder.
Now, more than 10 years later, interest in participatory grant-making processes is rising, largely in response to critiques from inside and outside philanthropy focused on the power dynamics of wealthy people and their institutions deciding what everyone needs. This emergent trend prompted me to analyze feedback on 14 Shared Gifting Circles over the past decade, along with adaptations we’ve made in response to that feedback.
The results reveal a range of benefits — from transformative personal experiences to the opportunity to address larger issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion — as well as insights for foundations looking to let their communities lead.
Shared gifting gives new meaning to ‘participatory’
The typical spectrum of participatory grant-making practices runs from unilateral (we’ll just tell you about our grant decisions) to consultative (soliciting advice and concerns from the community) to involving (two-way communication that leads to joint decision making). Shared gifting practice is beyond that.
When I first observed it, as practiced by the Mid-States Shared Gifting Program, I was overwhelmed by how different it felt from traditional philanthropy. We were looking for ways to democratize our own practice, and this seemed like an avenue to restoring trust, building community, and sharing power.
In our adaptation of the shared gifting approach, we invite 6 to 10 local nonprofits (selected through a community nomination process) to spend a day together and decide how to divvy up a pot of money among themselves. They review each other’s proposals and ask questions about each other’s work. Typically, each participant receives $10,000; they keep $2,000 and must distribute the remaining $8,000 according to their own criteria. We encourage participants to be open and honest with the group about how they made their funding decisions. The group also decides how participants will report back on their use of the gift.
Participants praise peer-to-peer learning and connections
The power shift was extremely important to us. Participants obviously recognize the shift, but it’s the experience that results in the most compelling benefits. In the tally of our feedback, 70 percent of respondents said connecting with leaders in the field, learning about each other’s work, and reading each other’s proposals was the most valuable part of the process. Other benefits cited include several variations on this theme:
- Opportunities for resource sharing and partnership (26 percent)
- Discussing common goals in the field and understanding what funding makes possible throughout the field (23 percent)
- The opportunity for peer learning, giving and receiving feedback, and talking openly about challenges (21 percent)
That’s not to say power issues are unimportant. “Shifting power dynamics and turning competition into collaboration” (27 percent) and “being given the experience of giving and receiving” (18 percent) were also significant benefits.
“It really hit home that this was the only time that I had ever been able to truly influence the funding of other artists and organizations that are run by and serve people of color,” said one participant in a circle of community organizing and arts organizations.
Many (20 percent) also appreciated understanding others’ decisions, and noted that transparency in the decision process — something they find sorely absent in typical grant making — creates mutual accountability.
Despite the relatively small amounts given away, 84 percent said the grant amount and experience warranted a full day of their time. “I spend at least that much time, most often significantly more time, preparing grant applications for much less,” said one. “Not to mention, it was worth the time to get to know my colleagues and their work better.”
The process creates the value, and other lessons
In our decade of sponsoring or facilitating Shared Gifting Circles, we’ve learned lessons on how to run them well and larger lessons about the range of responses to a shift in who holds money and power.
On the more practical side, we quickly realized that the process creates the value, so it can’t be rushed. Participants gain huge benefits from reading each other’s proposals and talking about them: They get to see how other people make a case. When they field questions from their peers, they see what’s not clear about their own case. Potential collaborations and connections come pouring out.
To get those results, the number of participants needs to be scaled to both the total amount of grant money (so that grant sizes will be meaningful) and effective group dynamics. We’ve found 6 to 10 is the sweet spot, though others have made shared gifting work with slightly larger groups. The most successful circles also include a community co-facilitator. We bring expertise to the process, but we’re not always familiar with all the issues affecting the people around the table; working with someone who’s embedded in that community allows us to address shared issues and gain meaningful context.
On a deeper level, we’ve seen that while many people feel a surge of empowerment from the shared gifting process, others are uncomfortable with making decisions about who should receive money and how much.
A few participants in every circle will decide to give everyone an equal amount. Some people experience this as affirming and building community among the participants, something that would never happen in traditional philanthropy. Others see it as the group not being ready to give each other direct feedback or make difficult decisions, which is understandable given that they spend only one day together. In addition, making decisions about money as a community isn’t a familiar experience for most of us. It is a new skill set, and one that’s worth developing because it’s crucial to community self-determination.
We’re still learning as well, and evolving our practice. One thing we’re working on is further reducing our power in the process. We request nominations for participants, but we’re still narrowing the list and ultimately deciding who participates. Potential solutions include inviting previous circle participants to pick new participants, or selecting half the participants ourselves and asking them to invite the other half. We also want to incorporate the Post Growth Institute’s Offers and Needs Market, a facilitated process in which community members share what they have to offer and what their needs are.
Ultimately, our goal is to transform philanthropy
Something has shifted in the philanthropy world: there is a real openness to the concept of participatory grant making. I get regular inquiries about shared gifting, to the point that we’ve created a starter tool kit and other resources for foundations that want to explore the practice. We encourage people to go through the process and make it their own.
The potential benefits are significant. If many more grant-making organizations incorporated shared gifting into their practice, there would be a lot more diversity in grant making, in terms of both the people and the organizations funded. Those who are exploring shared gifting often see it as a decolonizing wealth strategy.
They have caught onto a crucial point: The goal of shared gifting is to transform philanthropy, not individuals, because the typical grant-making process is not working. That truth shines through in the frustration shared gifting participants often express at having to return to traditional fundraising. It’s jarring, they note, to be forced back into “just tell me what you want me to do to get the money” mode. Instead, nonprofit leaders should be making decisions on what their community needs—and community members are the experts on that topic. By shifting grant-making authority from the holders of capital to a circle of peers, we can free up the creative power of communities to find and carry out transformative solutions.
An earlier version of this article appeared in the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
