Giving Compass' Take:

Ed Whitefield, co-managing director for Fund of Democratic Communities, would rather focus on  building community agency and voice rather than depend on resources from philanthropic foundations. He shares his experiences building co-operative enterprises and engaging in community discussion.

Is there where philanthropy is headed in general? What are the benefits and what are some potential threats to making a transition like this one?

Read about ways to start democratizing philanthropy through community  foundations.


Folks who know us would not be surprised to hear that Marnie Thompson and I are critical of philanthropy and have built a small foundation that tries to be non-foundation-like in many respects.

We both have long histories in social justice work, typically done without subsidy, and we both have worked in non-elite private sector jobs while continuing to work at very active levels in the community.

Marnie and I began conceiving of Fund for Democratic Communities (F4DC) in 2007 when we had the opportunity to bring some financial resources to the challenge of nurturing authentic grassroots democracy.

Our first three years as a foundation were a bit bumpy, but by 2010, we’d honed our ideas about how to nurture authentic grassroots democracy and developed a framework that helps us focus our efforts. Our basic framework has two components. First is the importance of promoting self-reliance and self-determination. We feel that armed with sufficient resources and skills, communities can build the organizations and enterprises that meet their own needs.

We are convinced that there is a need to shift the activity of progressive philanthropy from its almost exclusive support for resistance and advocacy to finding creative ways to support the work of envisioning and actually building a new, more humane world.

The second important component of our framework is that the wealth of foundations is derived from the wealth that was created by laboring people, often from the very communities that currently need that wealth so that they can more fully develop and be productive.

We wanted to strengthen self-reliance rather than strengthen the dependence on philanthropy.

Read the full article about transitioning away from philanthropy by Ed Whitfield at Medium