Participatory Grantmaking: What Practitioners Have to Say (NonProfit Quarterly, 2023): Participatory grantmaking is based on movement frameworks that have been around for centuries—and has roots in community distribution models that have been practiced for millennia. Even in today’s formal philanthropic sector, it has a considerable track record.
Participatory Grantmaking Is Your Future (Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2022)): Funders must abandon top-down, one-sided funding approaches in favor of partnerships with the disability community.
Learning to ‘Embrace the Beauty of What Exists’: A Conversation About Participatory Grantmaking (Fund for Shared Insight, 2022): Two community participants in Fund for Shared Insight’s participatory grantmaking initiative interview Ciciley Moore, a program officer at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, about what it was like to experience a grantmaking initiative where the people most impacted by the funding decisions decided how the process would work and where the money would go.
Participatory Grantmaking: How We Failed, and What We’re Learning (Kataly Foundation, 2022): In this piece, Marni Rosen, Senior Advisor to the Kataly Foundation’s Environmental Justice Resourcing Collective (EJRC), and Shaena Johnson, EJRC Program Officer, offer reflections on the process that has happened within Kataly to facilitate the Collective’s grantmaking, where there were breakdowns in communication, and what the impact has been.
An L.A. Program Takes a Unique Approach to Participatory Grantmaking — Putting it to a Vote (Inside Philanthropy, 2022): Instead of relying solely on program officers, board members or committees to decide on the funding priorities, the Goldhirsh Foundation asks the people of Los Angeles to decide which issue areas get funded. This is done through the annual LA2050 Grants Challenge, which first launched nine years ago.
How a Philanthropic Family Is Putting Power in the Hands of a Historically Under-served Community (Inside Philanthropy, 2022): This Inside Philanthropy profile explores the story of the Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation, a neighborhood-focused nonprofit organization dedicated to uplifting southeastern San Diego through community engagement, economic development, and real estate development.
Getting Your Board on Board with Participatory Grantmaking (GrantCraft, 2020): Addresses some of the most common concerns of embedding participatory grantmaking approaches.
Who Owns Philanthropy? A Look through an Antiracist Lens(Nonprofit Quarterly, 2020): Questions the uses, effects, and basic ownership rights of philanthropy in a democratic and racialized context, applying it to disaster philanthropy.
Big Philanthropy Faces a Reckoning, Too (The Nation, 2020): It’s time to challenge philanthropists and their foundations to open up their grantmaking decisions to those who’ve been marginalized.
The Historical Case for Participatory Grantmaking (HistPhil, 2019): Makes the case that participation has always been part of philanthropy as a value, ethos, and practice.
A Funder Collaborative’s Promising, Participatory Model for Diversifying Arts Funding (inside Philanthropy, 2020): Housed at the New York Community Trust and guided by funders and arts practitioners, the Mosaic Network and Fund serves as a promising and potentially replicable model for foundations looking to better engage historically underrepresented communities.
Not Just Cute Faces: Youth Grantmakers Are Strengthening Philanthropy (NCFP, 2016): Youth are driving grant dollars to organizations that are changing communities through more than 800 programs around the world.
How Youth Are Advising a Foundation Leader and Guiding a Major California Grantmaker (inside Philanthropy, 2020): The California Endowment’s President’s Youth Council is one of many examples of the far-reaching potential of getting young people involved at the highest levels of philanthropy.
Additional Resources on Participatory Grantmaking (GrantCraft, 2020): GrantCraft’s comprehensive collection of blog posts, articles, and other online media produced on the topic.