What if philanthropy’s role is not to fix, but to help heal?

Philanthropy is struggling with a basic question: How much can its traditional tools repair social challenges in a world of deepening polarization, systemic racism, climate crisis, economic insecurity, and declining social trust? This raises a harder question: were philanthropy’s tools ever built for work this deep?

Foundations have become increasingly sophisticated at making grants, measuring outcomes, convening stakeholders, supporting research, and changing narratives. Yet many of the problems they seek to address remain stubbornly resistant to these approaches. And as a sector, we are moving closer to a shared understanding that we cannot solve deep problems with shallow tools.

Communities continue to experience the effects of historical and intergenerational harm. Organizations burn out while trying to address that harm. And funders, despite their good intentions, can sometimes reproduce the very dynamics of control, urgency, and disconnection that make transformation difficult.

Perhaps the question philanthropy needs to ask is not simply: How do we fix these problems? Perhaps, the sector should be asking: What conditions would allow people and communities to heal and, through that healing, to transform the systems in which they live?

This is not a semantic distinction. It represents a fundamentally different orientation toward philanthropic practice. A “fix-it” orientation assumes that the problem is somewhere out there: a broken system, an underserved population, an inadequate policy, a measurable gap. Philanthropy’s task is to identify the problem, invest in a solution, and demonstrate results.

A healing-centered orientation starts somewhere else. It examines what has happened to people and communities, what relationships and systems have been damaged, what capacities have been diminished, and what conditions might enable people to restore agency, connection, purpose, and collective power. A healing-centered approach shifts philanthropy’s purpose from fixing what is broken to cultivating the conditions that make flourishing possible.

Philanthropy must reckon with its own history

This shift requires philanthropy to turn the mirror on itself.

Much of American philanthropic wealth was generated, directly or indirectly, through systems of extraction and exclusion, including slavery and anti-Black racism, colonization and Indigenous displacement, immigrant exclusion, gender oppression, and economic exploitation. The fact that contemporary philanthropy may seek to address inequality does not erase the ways these histories continue to shape philanthropic institutions.

A healing-centered approach shifts philanthropy’s purpose from fixing what is broken to cultivating the conditions that make flourishing possible.

Looking at the history inevitably raises uncomfortable questions. Who receives philanthropic funding? Whose knowledge counts? Who defines the problem? Who decides what success looks like? Why must communities repeatedly demonstrate their neediness to receive resources? What happens when people with the least institutional power are asked to change systems while the institutions funding that change remain largely unchanged themselves?

These questions matter because philanthropic practices can unintentionally reinforce a “fix-it” dynamic. Grant applications may ask communities to describe their deficits rather than their strengths. Evaluation systems may prioritize what funders need to know over what communities need to learn. Grant cycles may compress intergenerational challenges into three-year strategies. And reporting requirements can make community organizations spend precious time demonstrating progress rather than building the relationships that make progress possible.

There is also a deeper dimension to this work—a spiritual dimension. We use the word spiritual deliberately, not to suggest religion but to describe what lies beneath the transaction of grantmaking. Every grant, every decision, and every relationship creates something beyond the immediate action. It can generate trust or distrust, hope or resignation, belonging or alienation, connection or fragmentation.

Philanthropy rarely evaluates itself on this dimension. Yet it may be what most significantly determines the legacy of philanthropic work.

Shifting attention from outcomes to conditions

The philanthropic obsession with outcomes is understandable. Foundations need to know whether their resources are making a difference. Yet, outcomes can become a trap when they become the primary definition of impact.

Consider a gardener growing tomatoes. The gardener does not pull on the tomato plants to make them grow faster. Instead, she tends the soil, provides water and sunlight, protects the plants, and creates the conditions in which growth can occur.

Philanthropy often works differently. We establish a three-year grant, identify a set of outcomes, and then expect communities to produce measurable change within the funding period. But many of the challenges philanthropy seeks to address are the products of decades or centuries of harm. Intergenerational challenges are unlikely to be transformed in a grant cycle.

What if, instead of asking “What problem can we solve in three years,” foundations asked “What conditions will allow healing and transformation to take root?

Those conditions might include trust, belonging, safety, relationship, rest, cultural connection, shared purpose, and community agency. They are harder to measure than the number of programs delivered or people served. But they may be more important to lasting change.

Intergenerational challenges are unlikely to be transformed in a grant cycle.

Healing-centered philanthropy is a holistic approach that supports the transformation of individuals and groups, fosters transformative relationships, and aligns policies, practices, and organizational norms toward healing and well-being. Shawn Ginwright coined the term “healing-centered” in 2018 as a shift beyond trauma-informed approaches. Rather than focusing primarily on the symptoms of trauma, healing-centered work asks what conditions make transformation possible.

That distinction matters for systems change. Systems are not simply policies, structures, and institutions. They are made up of relationships. When harm goes unaddressed, it can become embedded in narratives, hierarchies, policies, organizational cultures, and patterns of behavior. Trauma can make individuals and institutions defensive, hypervigilant, controlling, or numb. In that environment, even well-designed solutions can be difficult to implement.

Collective healing offers another possibility. It can help people and groups recognize and repair harm, transform the energy left behind by trauma into awareness and learning, and develop new ways of collaborating and thriving. The goal is not healing instead of systems change. It is healing as a condition for systems change.

Four pathways toward healing-centered philanthropy

The four mutually reinforcing pathways to a healing-centered approach require more than adding wellness programs to conventional philanthropy; they ask foundations to change how they understand their work and how they exercise power.

1. A healing-centered worldview

The first shift is internal. Foundations must examine the assumptions that govern their behavior: beliefs about power, time, expertise, risk, success, and the proper role of the funder. A healing-centered worldview asks foundations to recognize that systems will not transform without transformation among the people inside them.

At an individual level, those working in foundations must become more attentive to how the ways in which they show up matter to the systems they seek to support. Systems change is inherently human work: people coming together to navigate complex, often messy challenges. Meaningful systems change requires us to examine our inherited patterns, biases, and blind spots.  Rather than assuming that others must change, we must first ask how we need to change—and embody the transformation we seek.

This can mean reckoning with positional power. A program officer’s title enters every room before they do. Funders can notice who speaks freely in their presence and who grows quiet, which ideas get softened for their benefit, and how easily their preferences become a partner’s priorities.

It can mean examining one’s own story. Personal histories of class, race, wealth, and harm shape how funders read risk, whom they trust, and what they recognize as credible knowledge.

At an organizational level, adopting a healing-centered world view can mean examining a foundation’s relationship to its own wealth origins and its ties to historical harms. It can mean slowing down decision-making so that relationships and trust can develop. It can mean creating space for staff and boards to reflect on the emotional and relational dimensions of their work.

Importantly, philanthropy’s internal reflection should consider how personal and collective traumas affect both funders and the situations within which they work, such as community conflict, organizational rigidity and staff burnout.

Trauma affects people’s thoughts and behaviors, influences their world views, and can have a significant impact on people’s ability to flourish. Less examined, but equally important, are the organizational and systemic impacts of trauma.  Author, therapist and trauma specialist, Resmaa Menakem, writes that trauma’s systemic impacts include “constricted bodies, frozen attitudes, and closed minds” and says that “until [trauma] is addressed, changing attitudes or opening minds is largely impossible, especially on a large scale.”

A healing—centered worldview means elevating important questions: What does it mean for us, as individuals and as an organization operating in philanthropy, to model the change we seek in the community and the world? Where is trauma showing up in our work individually, organizationally and systemically and how is it impacting people’s world views and potential for flourishing? Are there historical ruptures within the community and our organization that must be addressed before healing and change can take place? And how can we best support the process of healing in our organization and communities while we pursue change within the system? 

Addressing questions such as these can begin to center a healing worldview. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation offers an important example. Its Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation initiative, developed with Gail Christopher, places healing alongside truth-telling and structural transformation. The underlying theory is that healing can build trust and relationships, which can build collective power, which can contribute to systems change. The point here is not that every foundation should replicate Kellogg’s strategy. It is that philanthropy can explicitly recognize healing as part of its theory of change rather than treating it as an ancillary activity.

2. Cultivate the conditions for healing

Once a foundation adopts a different worldview, its grantmaking practices can begin to change. That might mean multi-year general operating support rather than short-term project grants. It might mean funding organizational rest and reflection. It might mean supporting truth-telling, storytelling, cultural practices, trust-building, and community-defined learning. It might mean compensating community leaders for the expertise and emotional labor they bring to philanthropic spaces. And it might mean creating genuine opportunities for communities to shape decisions about resources.

These practices have something in common: they shift philanthropy’s attention from what resources are intended to produce to what resources make possible. Safety, connection, trust, and belonging are not soft extras. They are conditions under which people can imagine, collaborate, take risks, and exercise agency. When philanthropy ignores these conditions, it can inadvertently fund activity without building the capacity for transformation.

3. Practice “right relationship”

Healing-centered philanthropy places the quality of relationships alongside outcomes as a central concern. “Right relationship” means recognizing that how a foundation finds reciprocity with its community partners may be as important as what it funds.

This requires foundations to interrogate power. Are community organizations treated as grantees who implement foundation strategies, or as partners whose knowledge shapes those strategies? Do community members have real decision-making authority? Can grantees offer honest criticism without jeopardizing their funding? Do foundation staff show up in communities only for site visits and data collection, or do they develop relationships that extend beyond the transaction of grantmaking?

Healing-centered philanthropy recognizes a truth that conventional philanthropy often misses: Philanthropy is not outside the systems it seeks to change. It is part of them.

Even language matters. Words such as “investment,” “return,” “deliverables,” and “grantee” can reinforce a transactional relationship. Language such as “nourishing,” “sustaining,” “partner,” and “learning” can signal a different orientation.

The El Pomar Foundation in Colorado provides one example of this principle. Its approach to rural communities rests on the premise that those closest to community challenges are often closest to their solutions. Local leaders participate in shaping resource allocation and strategy, shifting philanthropy from distant oversight toward shared stewardship. This is not simply better grantmaking. It is a different relationship to power.

4. Root the work in a love ethic

The fourth pathway may be the most challenging. bell hooks described a love ethic as a disciplined commitment to mutual growth and the dismantling of domination. Applied to philanthropy, a love ethic asks a simple but demanding question: How do I show up in ways that affirm the dignity, sovereignty, and wholeness of the communities I seek to support?

Love, in this sense, is not sentimentality. It is accountability. It requires funders to examine how their power is exercised and whether their institutional practices reproduce the domination they seek to challenge.

It can mean giving community members actual voting authority rather than advisory roles. It can mean paying people for their expertise and emotional labor. It can mean establishing mechanisms through which grantees evaluate foundations, and allowing that feedback to affect funding decisions, staff performance, or governance. It can mean funding joy and celebration alongside crisis response. It may even mean questioning philanthropy’s assumption that foundations should exist in perpetuity rather than considering whether resources could be returned to communities within a generation.

A love ethic changes the question from How can we make our philanthropy more effective? to How can we use our power in ways that contribute to collective flourishing?

A foundation experiments with healing

The McCune Charitable Foundation in New Mexico provides a particularly instructive example. In 2018, McCune launched an initiative focused on justice and came to understand healing as an essential component of that work. It subsequently created the Fostering Racial and Gender Justice in Healing Community of Practice, a multi-year cohort in which funders examined power, identity, trauma, and philanthropy’s role in community healing.

What is striking about the effort is its pace. Rather than immediately producing strategies and frameworks, participants spent substantial time examining their own histories, identities, and relationships. The work created spaces for grounding, reflection, silence, shared rituals, artistic expression, and breaking bread.

What if foundations didn’t ask: What problem can we solve in three years? What if, instead, they asked: What conditions will allow healing and transformation to take root?

The participants did not simply talk about healing; they practiced it. The Community of Practice also changed relationships between funders and communities. Participants experimented with more collaborative grantmaking, flexible reporting, multi-year general operating support, and responsive resources for communities facing political harm.

The experience demonstrated an important principle: The process of transformation must embody the conditions that the transformation is intended to create. A foundation cannot credibly promote trust while operating through distrust. It cannot ask communities to practice collaboration while maintaining unilateral control over resources. It cannot fund collective well-being while burning out its own staff and demanding urgency from its partners. The means and the ends must align.

What would change?

Imagine philanthropy giving up the role of problem solver long enough to become a genuine learner alongside communities.

Imagine valuing relationships as much as results. Imagine foundation boards spending time examining the origins of their wealth and the power that wealth gives them.

Imagine grantmaking processes in which communities do not have to perform their pain in order to demonstrate their worthiness.

Imagine funding rest, cultural practice, celebration, and joy with the same seriousness with which philanthropy funds crisis response. Imagine five- or ten-year commitments rather than three-year cycles when the challenge demands a generation.

None of this means abandoning rigor, accountability, evidence, or measurable outcomes. It means placing those tools inside a larger understanding of how transformation occurs. The question is not whether philanthropy should measure impact. It is whether measurement should remain the organizing principle of philanthropic practice.

Crucially, a healing-centered approach does not mean avoiding difficult questions or retreating into individual wellness. Collective healing can involve confronting historical harm, redistributing power, repairing relationships, and changing institutions. It can be demanding, uncomfortable, and deeply political.

Most importantly, healing-centered philanthropy recognizes a truth that conventional philanthropy often misses: Philanthropy is not outside the systems it seeks to change. It is part of them. Therefore, philanthropy’s own transformation must be part of the work.

The sector has an opportunity to move beyond the familiar cycle of diagnosing problems, designing interventions, measuring outcomes, and declaring success. It can begin asking a different set of questions: What has been harmed? What needs to be restored? What relationships need repair? What conditions would allow people to flourish? And what would it require of philanthropy itself to become part of that healing?

The wisdom behind these questions is not new. Healing, relationships, reciprocity, belonging, and collective responsibility are deeply rooted in traditions that long predate modern philanthropy. What is new is the possibility that philanthropy might bring these ideas into the center of its practice.

The choice before the sector is not between fixing and doing nothing. It is between continuing to treat symptoms through increasingly sophisticated interventions, or recognizing that durable transformation may require something deeper. Philanthropy has spent decades learning how to make better grants. Perhaps the next frontier is learning how to be in relationship differently.

Perhaps philanthropy’s most powerful contribution is not to fix communities, but to help create the conditions in which communities can heal, reclaim their agency, and transform the systems that shape their lives.

The invitation is not simply to do philanthropy differently. It is to become different through the work.