The Ethos of Being Trust-Based: Reimagining Funder Roles in a Trust-Based Context

Trust-based philanthropy encourages us to rethink our notions of traditional philanthropic roles, which tend to prioritize transactions over relationships. In fact, a trust-based approach encourages us to understand our roles as partners working in service of nonprofits and communities. Traditional Philanthropy has institutionalized and perpetuated harmful tropes about funders as experts and nonprofits as needy people who need to be held accountable. This has been perpetuated institutionally through our grantmaking practices, but also in less obvious ways, such as job descriptions, theories of change, program descriptions, and the language we use to describe our work. In this session moderated by Shaady Salehi of the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project, we will:

• Identify how to recognize these tropes when they’re present in our work
• Explore strategies to intentionally name and undo them
• Reimagine various aspects of our work in which we can set the stage for more authentic relationships, i.e., those rooted in values of power-sharing and genuine collaboration
• Learn strategies for applying a more collaborative, partner-oriented approach