Many leaders in our field, perhaps a majority, understand that for too long, philanthropy has operated in a top-down, hierarchical mode, isolated from the people and communities impacted by our decisions. We have privileged voices and perspectives of the wealthy and powerful while excluding or marginalizing communities from which wealth has been extracted or denied. Our institutions and ways of doing business are products of the same inequities that our grantmaking is often intended to address. And we need to change.

Those who believe that philanthropy needs to change can draw on an ever-widening variety of models, frameworks, and ideas. While it can be tempting to view these approaches as a continuum, with “entry level” and “advanced” practices, or as competing ideas, my colleagues and I at Fund for Shared Insight, the funder collaborative I lead, have come to see it’s more about fitting different pieces together within a specific context than choosing A or B.

Over time, our thinking about what constitutes high-quality listening and feedback, for example, has expanded to include a range of participatory practices. And our experience running a participatory grantmaking initiative has led us to recognize the complexity and nuance of power dynamics that warrant examination and shifting.

This thinking has been an evolution. We began our work in 2014 with the idea that both funders and nonprofits can do more good in the world by listening to the people and communities at the heart of their work and acting on what they hear. While we believed that funders listening to grantees was also important, we felt that idea already had considerable traction and was not the only way for philanthropy to hear community perspectives.

An early criticism of our work was that while listening is certainly important and foundational, listening alone is insufficient to disrupt the inherent power imbalance or to build trust between philanthropy and the people and communities most harmed by systemic and structural inequities and often least consulted by philanthropy.

We don’t disagree. While engaging in authentic listening is more multifaceted than feedback, and feedback is more involved than sending surveys, neither inherently shifts power or builds authentic relationships. Like all practices, listening and feedback can be done poorly or well. They can also be extractive and performative if not approached with humility and care.

Read the full article about shifting power by Melinda Tuan at The Center for Effective Philanthropy.