How do funders transform themselves into changemakers?
The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy is asking this great question. In a new white paper, Families Funding Change: How social justice giving honors our roots and strengthens communities, NCRP highlights how some family foundations make advocacy, community organizing and civic engagement central to their work to address root causes of social problems. NCRP believes that family foundations’ values-based approach to giving positions them to do bold, changemaking work, and calls on more family funders to discover the power of social justice philanthropy.
Based on an evaluation of Foundation Center data, the report finds that only 9 percent of grant dollars from family foundations goes to social justice work, compared to 14 percent of the sector as a whole. While we can speculate that the families drawn to social justice philanthropy are those whose values and missions perfectly align with building leadership in disempowered communities, social justice philanthropy holds potential for a much broader array of family funders.
Social justice funding is changemaking, and changemaking is a form of philanthropic leadership. In my interviews with experienced philanthropists, I have learned that all funders hold the potential to make a transformative shift into leadership. This kind of leadership encompasses the goals and actions of social justice philanthropy. It means using money as well as non-dollar assets – such as deep connections with communities and the freedom to take calculated risks – to catalyze change on important and urgent problems.
Through my work at Exponent Philanthropy, I’ve met dozens of funders around the country pioneering new ways of doing and thinking without the support of a sizeable staff. Changemaking by small-staffed funders is transforming how people think about and approach the most important and urgent issues we face. Bold and daring, it is shifting the status quo.
I believe many more family foundations and philanthropists could embrace their power to provide the authentic, responsible and bold leadership necessary for change.
What is the pathway to leadership? What are the first steps?
The Starting Point: Passion and Curiosity
Two qualities put funders on the road to changemaking: passion for an issue and a curiosity to learn everything they can about it. These funders are driven to make sense of things, reflect on their knowledge, look for patterns and connect the dots. This drive takes funders on a journey to a level of insight few people have attained.
To do this, they make full use of the following:
- The freedom they have as funders to delve deeply into an issue.
- Their unique perspective to see across organizations.
- Their unique access to people in positions of knowledge and power across the business, government, academia and the nonprofit sector sectors, who provide them with valuable insights.
- The passion to persist and follow the path of learning wherever it goes.
Passion and Curiosity Lead to Vision
As they push further, they see new ways of doing and thinking – ways of changing how people think about and approach important issues. In doing this, they make imaginative leaps, seeing beyond what is currently possible and leaving assumptions behind.
One funder put it this way:
“Leadership in philanthropy is having the ability to take in lots of information, take in others’ perspectives and focus it for a purpose. The knowledge and perspective gained offers the ability to ‘see places you can’t see.’”
Enter the Mystery of Leadership
How is it that some funders make the journey from vision to bold action and leadership? Once changemakers begin to understand their issue, a really powerful thing happens: They get hooked on learning. They venture deeper into their issues, until they figure out things no one else has really understood and discern how to make change.
Changemakers then use all the assets and capabilities at their disposal to make their vision a reality. They venture far beyond making grants to convene, commission research, raise public awareness, nurture community problem solving, influence policy, mobilize, matchmake, nudge, cajole and put pressure on stakeholders to stay on course. They spend as much as 60 percent of their time, even 70 percent, out in the community or focused on the issue, becoming activists, brokers and catalysts.
The most powerful thing about this process is that it acquires its own forward motion. The journey to deeper insight takes funders places, and changes them. It is transformative. Indeed, seeing pathways and leverage points for change, and realizing that change is actually feasible, inspires these powerful qualities:
- Confidence and open-mindedness to new and untested ideas.
- Flexibility, adaptiveness and a willingness to follow the path wherever it leads.
- The ability to lift their sights and think much bigger and more systemically than they had before.
- The courage to take greater calculated risks and be daring.
In this way, philanthropy that has the deepest, most far-reaching impact and influence, begins with the humblest of acts – reaching out to listen deeply, and learn.
Many wise, savvy philanthropists in Exponent Philanthropy’s community taught us about this transformational journey, and I believe many more family funders can be changemakers if they appreciate their unique power to acquire knowledge, engage people and ask questions. Family funders, in particular, should read Families Funding Change and ask the questions needed to expand the effect of their philanthropy.
Allow yourself to fall in love with an issue and make it your own. Dive in, and see where your learning takes you.
Andy Carroll is senior program director at Exponent Philanthropy.