Who’s Doing the Work? How to Shift Power and Not Just Workloads

Reimagining Philanthropy explores transformative and decolonialized approaches to philanthropy that can shift our sector from traditional top-down models toward more equitable, community-centered practices. In community, we explore how philanthropic organizations can share power authentically, center affected communities in decision-making, and build truly reciprocal relationships.

In 2021, Humanity United hosted a small in-person convening on the top floor of a local hotel just off a busy road in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. In many ways, we were as far physically from our foundation offices in Washington, DC, as possible. The purpose of this convening was to invite a small and diverse group of migrant worker advocates and survivors from the Global Majority to launch our first participatory process.

Instead of a polished slide deck, we taped a single sheet of paper to the wall where we sketched how our foundation develops funding strategies, who was involved, what the timelines look like, and how grant decisions were made. As we walked through the chart, people leaned forward, asked questions, and began suggesting how the process could look differently if those most affected were shaping it from the start.

That simple sheet of paper embodied the shift we were seeking at Humanity United, to move beyond one-way consultations toward genuine partnerships, and to surface questions about who does the work, who holds the power, and whether “participation” would change not only what philanthropy funds but, ultimately, who is philanthropy accountable to.

Community Participation in Philanthropy (When It’s Real)

Real participation means that people with lived experiences are not merely informing a single round of grantmaking but actively shaping strategy, influencing the types of grants and resources provided, and holding funders accountable.

At the heart of the matter is a desire to move beyond traditional, strategic philanthropy, where donors control strategy and funding and hope for approaches that democratize decision-making. Power sharing, in this sense, is not a formula with an end point, it involves centering and enabling community members to genuinely act as the decision-makers in allocating grants, setting priorities, weighing in on budgets, shaping strategy, and holding positions of real influence.

Community participation in philanthropy is more than a set of tools or processes that a funder adopts. It represents a deeper paradigm shift connected to principles of trust-based philanthropy or solidarity philanthropy, centered in a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Participatory grantmaking, taken seriously, aims to decolonize wealth by intentionally shifting decision-making power to people from marginalized communities with lived experiences.

A common misunderstanding of participation might lead one to simply swap who sits at the table, replacing program staff from New York or London with community members from Kathmandu or Kampala.

But this misses the deeper questions: Why does the table exist at all? Who decided its purpose? How many chairs are there, and who determines that number?

How Funders Need to Show Up

Let’s be clear about what participation means in philanthropy. It is not a focus group where foundation staff nod politely during interviews with grantees and then return to their offices to make the real decisions. Those are consultation exercises, common in foundation strategic planning. They may be useful in some contexts, but they should not be confused with participation.

Participatory methods require investments in staff capacity and the time to build trust; without that, community participation risks becoming extractive rather than liberatory.

To make meaningful shifts, funders must consider the following:

• Participatory methods cannot work without institutional backing

The responsibility to support the philanthropic institution’s capacity to embrace these organizational shifts rests with foundation boards and senior leadership—not just mid-level staff.

At a minimum, this means providing program staff with the time and resources to conduct research and build relationships with movements as they form steering groups. This work takes months, often longer, and usually unfolds alongside existing grantmaking responsibilities. Budget flexibility is also critical, allowing staff to bring in external facilitators or logistical support for in-person convenings.

• Shift power, not just workloads

Participation takes work. Trust-based philanthropy requires funders to consider who does the work—and whether that labor is matched by meaningful shifts in authority.

For community members, the visible workload includes time spent in strategy meetings, reviewing grant materials, and traveling to convenings, often under difficult conditions. Additional barriers could include translation and interpretation needs, unreliable internet access, or even government surveillance. At the same time, community participants are expected to learn funder systems, due diligence and compliance requirements, along with philanthropic giving norms—all while translating their lived expertise into foundation language.

Of course, there is no single model of participation. Yet the shared goal for these efforts is to shift decision-making power to communities. For example, participatory grantmaking, where community members make funding decisions, is the most visible model. But participation can (and shouldn’t) be limited to grantmaking, it can go even further to codesigning strategy, shaping learning agendas, defining success, and influencing how foundations show up in the field.

Meanwhile, program staff experience their own form of strain, with facilitation and coordination layered onto already full grantmaking portfolios. Executive and senior leadership can help by aligning operations teams including finance, legal, and grants management with participatory goals, so staff are not navigating internal resistance while trying to shift power externally.

Equally important—and empowering—is creating a safe workplace by assessing risks and mitigating harm. Staff need permission to experiment, adjust timelines, learn, and occasionally fail, without professional penalty. This matters especially for staff from marginalized backgrounds, including women and people of color, as well as junior staff advocating for participatory approaches.

• When it comes to engaging community members, transparency and fairness must be central

Before any process begins, funders should explain how strategy is developed, how decisions are approved, and what grantmaking and operational constraints exist. This includes clarity about budgets and due-diligence requirements—both informal and formal. This is not about delivering a “Philanthropy 101” lesson; it is about building trust.

Support must reflect the realities of people’s lives. This includes equitable compensation, flexible scheduling, and access to translation services. For community members who lead organizations, it may also mean providing organizational grants, so participation does not create conflicts or financial strain.

Community members may also face tensions within their movements, such as questions of representation or movement capture. Even the most well-intentioned funder can steer grassroots efforts away from its original mission if partners are functioning within a hierarchical structure that is guided by the funding institution rather than the leadership of the communities most impacted by the challenge. Foundations can support this through coaching and shared agreements around visibility and accountability.

Further, capacity-building should be responsive, compensated, and driven by what participants say they need—not imposed as another unpaid requirement. Reducing administrative burden and top-down demands helps movement leaders direct their energy and focus on mission-critical work.

• Learning from the legacy of participatory philanthropy

None of this is new. There are participatory approaches, such as community lending circles, such as susu in Ghana, that have long had equitable participatory practice at the center.

In formal philanthropy, Cynthia Gibson, who has written extensively on participatory philanthropy, argues that philanthropy has a long history of participatory models. Feminist funds, such as the Ms. Foundation for Women, pioneered participatory approaches within formal philanthropy decades ago, building social justice networks in the 1970s.

There are many other examples. The Fondo Centroamericano de Mujeres (Central American Women’s Fund) launched participatory grantmaking centered on women’s and feminists’ movements in 2003. More recently, Global Majority-led funds like the FRIDA Young Feminist Fund have advanced participatory governance rooted in feminist-led initiatives.

Nonetheless, most funders remain resistant or, at best, skeptical of such practices. A survey of large US foundations launched by the Evans School of Public Policy & Governance at the University of Washington found that only about 10 percent of them allowed grantees or community members to decide how grant funds were allocated.

Even among participatory advocates and funders who have been early adopters, a deeper question persists whether a participatory approach is effective, especially in a moment of collapsing foreign aid budgets and rising authoritarianism.

• Participatory philanthropy can move resources quickly to where they are needed

At a time when organizations are laying off staff or closing programs, participation can feel like privileged philanthropy that is often process-heavy and disconnected from urgency. As Cynthia Gibson and Kelley Buhles recently noted in “Wherefore Participatory Grantmaking in the Age of Urgency?,” even nonprofit leaders who support participatory values often worry about practicality.

These concerns are real, and some participatory processes do add time at the front end. However, the tensions between urgency and process are surmountable. As Gibson and Buhles point out, while participatory methods may slow the first mile, they often speed the journey.

Participatory methods are not about slowing philanthropy down; they are about ensuring it moves in partnership with the people who know best how to proceed. Done well, community leadership—which is, after all, the main point of participatory philanthropy—reduces the cumulative time nonprofits spend guessing and reapplying. This also frees movement capacity for mission-critical work. These shifts allow everyone to work more efficiently together.

Looking Forward

Years after that convening in Kathmandu, our foundation continues to learn. We continuously ask ourselves:

• How can participatory methods be sustainable for program staff?
• How can they be sustainable—and genuinely empowering rather than extractive—for community members?
• How can we ensure that the needs of grantseekers are not forgotten?

For us, that sheet of paper we taped to our hotel wall in Kathmandu went beyond serving as a blueprint for our work. It was also an invitation to embark on a shared journey.

What we’ve learned is that empowering community decision-makers requires institutional humility, sustained investment, and a willingness to be accountable to those who have historically been excluded from philanthropy.

This work is worth doing, even when at first it seems hard. The real question is not whether tapping into community leadership by engaging in a participatory process is worth the effort, but whether we can afford not to try.