Open Philanthropy is about funding in an inclusive and transparent way. Openness applies to how you design your fund, how you make your decisions, and how you evaluate your impact.

Open Philanthropy is inclusive, as it brings in people with direct personal and professional experience of the issue to be addressed. They set the strategy, design the fund, and allocate grants. It’s an approach which centres accessibility, is designed with diversity in mind, and aims to foster trusting relationships between grantees and funders.

The key differences between Open Philanthropy and other approaches such as participatory grantmaking and trust-based philanthropy is that it combines transparency with inclusivity; takes into account traditional data and expertise; and values a range of experiences equally. In doing so, it brings together lived experience, professional knowledge, funders, and researchers to take all the key decisions collectively. Open Philanthropy draws upon co-design, participatory and trust-based methods and aims to take them a little further.

In 2022, we set out to test our theory that working in this way can bring multiple benefits. Over 18 months, we researched the field, designed a process, and quickly gave out over £570,000 of grants to charities helping people in financial hardship across the UK.

Here’s what we learnt about how to run our Open Philanthropy process. Not everyone will choose to take exactly the approach we did, but if you do, here’s what we think matters.

  1. Recruit your grantmaking panels
  2. Set the Strategy
  3. Allocate funding
  4. Publish results

Read the full article about open philanthropy by Tris Lumley at Alliance Magazine.