The Revolution Will Not Be Funded | Part 5: Six Practices That Actually Work (And Why Most Funders Won't Use Them) from Letters to the Housed by Paul Asplund of SecondGrace.LA
What if funders and communities walked together instead of one leading the other?
The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: The Trust-Based Philanthropy Framework
Part 5: Six Practices That Actually Work (And Why Most Funders Won't Use Them)
Last week, I showed you the evidence that MacKenzie Scott's $19.2 billion in unrestricted giving strengthened 93% of recipient organizations. Ford Foundation's BUILD initiative improved financial resilience for 83% of grantees. Academic research confirms that investing in overhead produces better outcomes.
The data is in. Unrestricted, multi-year funding works.
But evidence alone doesn't change behavior. If it did, every foundation would have already shifted to trust-based practices.
They haven't.
So this week, we'll look at some specific examples of what trust-based philanthropy look like in practice—what are the concrete steps funders need to take, and why the real barrier is not knowledge, but power.
The Trust-Based Philanthropy Project—led collaboratively by The Whitman Institute, Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, and Headwaters Foundation—provides a structured framework for funders seeking to change their approach.
Their core belief states: "Efforts to create social, political, and economic equity are more successful when funders proactively work to alleviate power imbalances."
They recommend six practices that every funder could use to reduce administrative burdens and increase program impact and I've seen most of these ideas at work already. The DRK Foundation is a leader in this approach, providing multi-year support with a capacity-building component built in. They were an early funder of Lava Mae and continue to support small, innovative non-profits. These practices need to be the rule, rather than the exception. They are as follows:
Practice #1: Multi-Year Unrestricted Funding
This provides flexibility to allocate resources where they're most needed, and addresses the long-term, unpredictable nature of nonprofit work. It also allows organizations to build sustainability rather than lurching from grant to grant.
Current reality:
Median grant length in traditional philanthropy: 1 year
Median grant length recommended: 3-5 years minimum
Why it matters:
When you give a one-year grant, organizations will most likely spend months 1-3 setting up programs, months 4-9 executing, and months 10-12 writing the next grant application. This cuts into the time for strategic thinking, and doesn't secure capacity for long-term planning. Hence, no ability to build something sustainable.
Multi-year unrestricted funding says: "We trust you to allocate resources where they're needed most, and we're giving you enough time to actually build something."
Practice #2: Do the Homework
I've seen this with several of the funders I've worked with and it's a lifesaver for smaller organizations. MacKenzie Scott's team researched every grantee they approached. This single act, a funder researching prospective grantees rather than requiring extensive applications, saved thousands of hours of administrative work across the many programs they funded. This allowed grantees to do what they do best, serve people.
The current system:
Organizations will spend an average of 30% of development staff time writing grant applications, that's time not spent on the mission. It's a tax on nonprofits that funders impose rather than doing their own research.
The alternative:
Funders can use public 990s, websites, annual reports, and conversations to learn what they need to know. The information exists, you've probably used some of the publicly available information to make your own decisions around giving. Funders just need to do their own research rather than demanding customized proposals.
As one foundation officer stated: "We realized we were essentially making organizations audition for us. Over and over. We had all the power, they had all the work. That's not partnership."
Practice #3: Simplify and Streamline Paperwork
This is another place I've seen progress over the years, reducing the time we spend on applications and reports allows nonprofits to focus on dialogue and learning rather than compliance.
Example:
One foundation reduced their application from 15 pages to 3 pages and their reporting from quarterly to annual. Grantee relationships improved dramatically.
Why funders resist this:
Extensive reporting makes funders feel like they're being rigorous. But reporting requirements don't equal rigor. They equal surveillance.
If you trust an organization enough to give them money, you should trust them enough to tell you what happened without 40-page quarterly reports.
Practice #4: Be Transparent and Responsive
Open, honest communication supports trust-based relationships. Funders need to model vulnerability and power-consciousness.
This means:
Tell organizations your budget and priorities upfront
Explain decision-making processes
Respond to emails and calls promptly
Admit when you don't know something
Revolutionary concept: treat nonprofit leaders as peers rather than supplicants.
What this looks like in practice:
Instead of: "We'll get back to you within 3-6 months about your proposal."
Try: "Our budget for this cycle is $2 million, we've received 47 applications, and we're prioritizing organizations led by people with lived experience. Decisions will be made by March 15th, and here's exactly who's making them and how."
Practice #5: Solicit and Act on Feedback
Funders need to recognize that "philanthropy doesn't have all the answers." Grantees and communities provide valuable perspectives only available through lived experience funders almost never have.
Tools:
Anonymous surveys of grantees
Exit interviews
Regular check-ins asking "What could we do better?"
And then—critically—actually changing practices based on feedback.
The uncomfortable truth:
Most funders ask for feedback but don't want to hear criticism. They want validation, not accountability.
Real feedback means hearing things like: "Your reporting requirements are excessive and pointless." "Your program officers are condescending." "Your decision-making process is opaque and feels arbitrary."
If you're not willing to change based on that feedback, don't ask for it.
Practice #6: Offer Support Beyond the Check
Non-monetary support bolsters leadership, capacity, and organizational health. Especially critical for historically under-resourced organizations.
This might mean:
Making introductions to other funders
Sharing your network
Providing access to consultants
Convening grantees for peer learning
Offering board governance training
Offer it as a resource, not a requirement.
Some organizations need it, others don't. The difference between support and control is whether it's optional.
Why These Practices Matter
Notice what all six practices have in common: they shift power from funder to grantee.
That's the point.
The reason traditional philanthropy doesn't work isn't because funders lack information or grantees lack competence. It's because the power imbalance inherent in the funder-grantee relationship distorts everything.
When one party controls all the resources and the other party must perform to access them, you don't get honest relationships. You get crisis theater.
Nonprofits learn to tell funders what they want to hear rather than what's true. Funders learn to evaluate performance rather than impact. And the people who suffer are the communities both claim to serve.
Participatory Grantmaking: The Ultimate Trust-Based Approach
But what if we went further?
What if the people most affected by funding decisions actually made those decisions?
What Is Participatory Grantmaking?
Participatory grantmaking is "the practice of ceding grantmaking power to the very communities affected by funding decisions."
Not just asking their opinion, actually giving them decision-making authority.
Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO)
Founded in 1997-98, GEO represents 500+ member organizations encompassing 6,000+ individual grantmakers committed to "transforming philanthropic culture and practice."
Their 2008 study found troubling data:
Only 20% of grantmaking foundations said grants include enough overhead allocation to cover the time grantees spend on reporting
While 80% made some general operating grants, the median was only 20% of grant dollars when the recommended minimum is no less than 25%
GEO's position is unequivocal: Grantmakers are successful only to the extent their grantees achieve meaningful results. By not responding to what nonprofits say they need, funders inadvertently do harm.
The Robert Carr Fund: A Decade of Proof
The Robert Carr Fund's 10 years of participatory grantmaking for HIV response produced the report "When Communities Decide."
The main lesson: "Participatory grantmaking that prioritizes core funding creates positive outcomes for grantees, funders, and ultimately the HIV response."
The structure:
Civil society members and funders participate equally in governance. This fundamentally restructures power dynamics.
Not "we'll ask your input and then decide." But "you have equal votes in the decision."
The Giving Project: Training Community Grantmakers
The Headwaters Foundation for Justice in Minneapolis runs "The Giving Project" where 25 volunteers receive 6 months of training to learn about philanthropy, race, class, and power, then raise funds for social justice among their own networks.
The program's focus is "not just about raising money, but also about leadership development."
The insight:
Who makes decisions matters as much as what decisions are made.
When wealthy white donors decide which racial justice organizations get funded, they fund what makes sense to them—not necessarily what communities most need. When community members with lived experience make those decisions, priorities shift. Solutions become more culturally appropriate, more responsive to actual needs, more sustainable.
The Equity Case for Participatory Grantmaking
According to Bridgespan Group research, BIPOC-led organizations receive only 4% of all philanthropic dollars despite evidence that people with lived experience of inequities are best equipped to design solutions.
Participatory grantmaking directly addresses this disparity by shifting decision-making authority to historically excluded communities.
Why Funders Resist
If trust-based philanthropy works—and the evidence shows it does—why don't more funders do it?
Because it requires giving up control.
Foundation leaders can look at data showing unrestricted funding works and still believe it's risky. They can see participatory grantmaking produce better outcomes and still insist they know better than communities.
This isn't about evidence. It's about power.
Funders built entire careers on the premise that their expertise, their connections, their strategic thinking is what creates impact. Admitting that communities know better than they do threatens that identity.
Admitting that overhead caps harm organizations means admitting they've been causing harm for years.
Admitting that extensive reporting requirements are surveillance rather than rigor means admitting they don't actually trust the people they fund.
These aren't easy admissions. But they're necessary ones.
The Choice Funders Face
Here's what the evidence shows:
Trust-based philanthropy works. Multi-year unrestricted funding strengthens organizations. Participatory grantmaking produces better outcomes. Investing in overhead improves results.
So funders face a choice:
Option 1: Continue current practices despite evidence they don't work, and accept responsibility for the continued failure to solve social problems.
Option 2: Cede control, trust communities, and actually enable the social change you claim to support.
There's no third option where you maintain control and still claim to trust nonprofit leaders. There's no middle ground where you require extensive reporting and still claim to believe in their competence.
Either you trust them or you don't.
And if you don't trust them, why are you funding them?
What Comes Next
We have the evidence, existing frameworks and proven practices, but theory and practice are different things. What do these principles look like when implemented? What organizations have actually built democratic, community-controlled, sustainable models that work?
Next week, I'll show you real organizations that have maintained flat structures, democratic governance, and community accountability for decades while producing exceptional outcomes.
And they prove that everything funders say can't work... actually works.
Next week in Part 6: "Organizations That Prove the Alternatives Work" – Managing 14,000 nurses with no hierarchy and Arizmendi's worker-owned bakeries that pay double industry wages, these organizations demonstrate that democracy, small scale, and community control produce better results than traditional nonprofit structures.
Additional Resources
Trust-Based Philanthropy Framework
Participatory Grantmaking
Grantmakers for Effective Organizations
Evidence Base
Racial Equity in Philanthropy