Funders across the United States are shifting their approaches to philanthropy in order to more meaningfully involve and shift power to people from the communities they are funding. Two popular approaches that may provide a counterweight to the harmful power dynamics present in conventional philanthropy are participatory philanthropy and trust-based philanthropy.

  • Participatory philanthropy is a practice that explicitly includes the participation of community members (non-funders) with lived expertise in a relevant issue area. It shifts the usual power dynamics of foundation-led decision-making by inviting community members to make decisions in the grantmaking process and/or the foundation’s broader strategy and planning work. Participatory grantmaking, an approach within participatory philanthropy, is a structured process through which community members with lived expertise make decisions about grants.
  • Trust-based philanthropy challenges inherent power imbalances between funders and the nonprofit organizations they fund. Through clearly enunciated values and a set of best practices, like multi-year unrestricted funding and streamlined applications and reporting requirements, it provides a framework for more equitable and power-conscious funder-grantee relationships. Beyond grantmaking alone, trust-based philanthropy also leans on core values to guide other dimensions of philanthropic work, including culture, structures, and leadership.

Common Values, Distinct Frameworks

These two approaches have a lot of common ground, starting with a shared mission of overturning the assumption that funders know best and, relatedly, trusting the expertise of those who are closest to the issues philanthropy seeks to address. They both emphasize collaboration, redistributing power, and working for systemic equity. Both are values-based, process-oriented, and relationship-driven in their overall philosophy and ethos.

The list of tactics they promote overlap in many ways, too, including encouraging community-informed strategies and boards that reflect the communities served. Participatory philanthropy might at times call for trust-based structures to enhance funder-nonprofit relationships and trust-based philanthropy might at times call for participatory grantmaking to demonstrate trust in community experience and expertise.

Still, the two approaches have different origin stories and offer different frameworks for funders making design choices. This means that even with their aligned values, overlap in practices, and similar goals, mixing and matching the approaches can be tricky. Our experience with a recent grantmaking initiative demonstrates the benefits of taking both approaches into account and the challenges of trying to integrate them.

Read the full article about trust-based philanthropy by Winifred Olliff and Katy Love at The Center for Effective Philanthropy.