Transcript of TBP portion of Convening
Panel participants: Van Pham, Holly Cook, Sara Daley, Erin Zollenkopf, Tammy Wilhoite
HOLLY - Hello Everyone. Thank you so much for being with us here today. We appreciate you taking the time to learn more about trust-based philanthropy and our grantee partners. We will be weaving in the answers to the questions you submitted with your registrations and, if we have time, we may be able to take some questions a little later. If we don’t get to those questions we will address them through a follow-up email so, if any questions bubble up for you during our meeting here today, please put them in the chat. All right! Our panel is made up of five of us from the Grants Steering Committee who are immersed in this work. We will each introduce ourselves. I co-chair the Grants Steering Committee with Tammy, who is going to get us started.
TAMMY - Thanks Holly. Welcome everyone. You may be asking, what is trust-based philanthropy?
The trust-based philanthropy project, which is at the forefront of this movement but is clear that they did not create the concept, defines it as “An approach to giving that addresses the inherent power imbalances that exist between funders, nonprofits, and the communities they serve. At its core, trust-based philanthropy is about redistributing power -- systemically, organizationally, and interpersonally -- in service of a healthier and more equitable nonprofit ecosystem.”
To illustrate how we at ninety-nine girlfriends have been working to incorporate these values over the past year and a half—and are always continuing to learn and evolve—we are going to break down the six practices of trust-based philanthropy one at a time and we will each provide an example of the way we are incorporating the practices into our work. Holly, will you please start us off?
HOLLY -- Be transparent and Responsive - We are transparent about our eligibility requirements, our timeline, and what we are intending to fund. An example of this is our funding priority statement which we draft each year to help nonprofits determine if they should invest time applying for an impact award with us or not. We believe this is working because, this year, we received fewer applications that were more in-line with our funding priority. The priority statement also guides our grant review teams in their decision-making. We are responsive by holding grant info sessions with potential applicants and listening sessions with former applicants and community partners and incorporating their feedback into our processes and practices. Van will you take it from here?
VAN -- Hi I’m Van and I co-lead the Impact Team. Simplify and Streamline Paperwork - Last year we simplified and streamlined our application and reporting. We moved from a longer, two-phase application process to a simple online application that only asks questions we truly need answers to and that are clear and direct. Organizations do not need to hire anyone with special skills to complete our application and they should have access to everything we are requesting at their fingertips. In addition, we threw out our old reporting process and asked them to share with us what they wanted us to know about how our funding had supported their work. If you have reviewed any of the reports that we shared recently you probably saw that each grantee partner had their own way of communicating with us and all of them accomplished the goal. Erin you’re up next.
ERIN -- Hi, I’m Erin and I lead the Financial Review Team and I’m the Chair of the Governing Board. Do the homework - instead of having a multistage process wherein we ask applicants to provide increasing amounts of information as they advance, we take it upon ourselves to learn about them. We can do this by learning about the subject area they work in and learning about their organization through their application, their website, open-sources of information like guidestar, and the questions we ask them in our virtual site visits. This applies to our financial review as well. We do not ask applicants to prepare special spreadsheets of data for us but instead request financial documents that any organization should have readily available. We review those documents to determine the applicant’s sustainability and also review its financial management practices, ensuring the finalists are in compliance with State and Federal agencies. It’s your turn, Sara.
SARA -- Hi everyone. I’m Sara and I am GRT coordinator with Ramona Cahn. Give multi-year unrestricted funding - These ideas have been bubbling in philanthropy for some time, but the pandemic shifted our perspective dramatically towards less restricted funding - it really exposed how much grant requirements were depleting our community non-profits, who were already stretched so, so thin. Making our funding less conditional is all about leaving the control in the reins of the people who understand their community and how to support them. It not only gives flexibility to grantee partners to address constant challenges, but it builds trust with them, and opens up doors for us to learn more and support them better. Instead of asking our grantee partners to put on a show demonstrating their flawless execution of their work as we imagine it, we can use that energy to be good students, and learn how they keep adapting to offer meaningful support to their people. And in turn, we are inspired to improve and tailor what we’re bringing to the table. Some of you may know that our funding can run up to two years, but because we can’t predict what we have to give each year, we’re still working on a way to stretch out our grants over longer periods of time. One of the reasons why is that longer term funding makes room and time for the deeper, more patient, harder to measure work of systemic change.I sometimes have to remind myself that as funders, we ARE the system, and the bravest thing that we can do to advance equity is to bring trust into that system. When we give control to a qualified, trusted partner through Trust Based Philanthropy, and when that practice becomes part of our culture as a collective, that’s what we’re doing. Tammy?
TAMMY -- Solicit and Act on Feedback - As Holly mentioned, we have listening sessions with our partners so we can learn how we can improve our processes for a better experience for them and future applicants. We take the recommendations they make to heart and we use them to improve our processes and the experience of partnering with us. One example is how we hear from finalists at our Meet the Finalists event. This year, we are trying a new approach suggested by our partners which involves an interviewer asking the finalists some questions in a relaxed setting. They will have the questions in advance and can use notes if they choose, instead of “performing” on a stage under stress. Van, can you bring us home?
VAN -- Offer Support Beyond the Check - We provide liaisons to work with each grantee partner to help communicate announcements and calls to action that the grantee partner would like to share with ninety-nine girlfriends. We also amplify social media posts and provide an opportunity for girlfriends to learn more about organizations they may want to support directly. We are continuing to learn how we can do more to partner beyond the check. Holly, back to you.
HOLLY -- It looks like we do have time for some questions so I’m going to read some of these out and call on our panel to respond.
Sara, this is a good one for you: What are the greatest benefits of tbp and what are the greatest risks?
Risks: Getting it wrong, hurting someone else through misguided efforts or insensitivity. Saying out loud what you intend to do, then failing. Ineffective use of funds
Benefits:
TBP = equity. It creates a culture shift.
When we practice TBP with our grantee partners, sooner than later, everything we do brings in trust. TBP to all the elements of our work. TBP becomes a natural extension of our values and practices. The good news: TBP is already part of our culture because we operate as a volunteer collective. In order to do what we do, we have to trust each other. Perpetuating power dynamics takes unnecessary time and energy for funders and grantees. It places importance on what nonprofits are doing, and how they are doing it, rather than how they present their work. Trust is motivating for everyone who experiences it!
TBP Considerations:
What are the costs of NOT practicing TBP vs. the risk of money not well spent? Do you want to make a commitment to systemic equity? If so, where you have agency, use it to build trust with people you don’t know, people who have less material, and more wisdom because of it. Many of us feel the pressure of making the best decisions and funding the best organizations, handling our girlfriends’ resources with care. This is a form of control, a choice to believe that we know better. We are here to learn, and the tuition is cheap, especially as we learn from our mistakes.
Van, can you please speak to this one? How are we evaluating tbp’s relative effectiveness? -- We evaluate our effectiveness through ongoing conversation and direct feedback from the organizations that we serve, through listening sessions with our grantee partners. We invest in the expertise of those who have the experience of our approach to grantmaking, and compensate them for their consultation to help make our processes more equitable and approachable.
Tammy, please take this one: Is tbp more about philanthropy trusting grantees or developing two-way trust? -- Tammy - We keep hearing questions about how we can trust what will be done with “our” money. When we contribute to ninety-nine girlfriends we begin trusting our organization and our review teams to use the money we have contributed wisely and they take great care to select non-profits with proven track records. The questions should be why WOULDN’T we trust them and why should they trust us? Trust takes time and it’s necessary that it goes both ways for a beneficial relationship. Holly: And we need to remember that the nonprofits are the experts in their work.
And one last one for Sara: Have any problems arisen in our first years of tbp? -- Sara? I wouldn’t call them problems, but it has been a big shift for some of our members. Because of how we are structured, many of our reviewers are new to grantmaking, and the responsibility of handling our girlfriends’ resources with care, and funding the strongest organizations for greatest impact, can be daunting. On the flip-side, our more experienced grantmakers have learned the work within a system that has not shared its power with the communities it aims to support. For some, not having a project to evaluate makes it more challenging to determine which organizations best align with our mission and funding criteria. All of us in GRT Land are learning together that continuing to fund non-profits the way we have in the past is a form of control, a choice to believe that we know better. This is a huge learning opportunity for us, and our tuition is cheap!
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