It seems hard to believe, but I think I have attended nearly every GEO conference in the last 24 years. I am clearly a GEO frequent flier! This year, as we gathered in Charlotte, North Carolina, I was struck by how much the GEO community has changed and grown over the past two decades plus. It’s a journey that is wrapped up in my own and speaks to why I am confident that philanthropy can continue to improve and truly shift power to the communities at the heart of our work.
GEO and Fund for Shared Insight, the national funder collaborative I direct, are currently working together to transform how philanthropy centers the voices of communities closest to the issues we are aiming to address. In conversations with the GEO team and other colleagues, I’ve been reflecting on where we’re seeing transformation — and inviting others to help shape where we go from here.
We’re Expanding Who Belongs in Philanthropy
The first time I felt I belonged in the philanthropic community was in 2002 when I was asked to join the GEO board. Since 1997, I had been directing a social venture capital fund, REDF, which supports employment social enterprises. We were a program of The Roberts Foundation, and we were making multi-year general operating support grants of $300,000 to $400,000 a year to our nonprofit partners, sometimes with 10- to 15-year commitments. GEO, then five years into its existence, wanted to see this kind of giving become standard practice in philanthropy.
I was honored and excited to join the GEO board. Everyone who was part of GEO believed in these practices of organizational support that we saw as transformational at REDF. Nonprofit-run businesses needed general operating support, long-term funding, larger grants — and flexibility. If an organization’s roof was leaking, they couldn’t wait for a months-long grant process to address the issue. I fully connected to the work GEO was doing, and it became my philanthropic home.
In some ways though, I was different. At those early GEO conferences, there were very few Black, brown, or other faces of color among the participants, which was reflective of philanthropy at the time. Fast forward two decades, and the attendees in Charlotte and the GEO staff were not only racially diverse but also much more representative of the diverse communities we serve. While the sector has not changed nearly enough, this reflects powerful pockets of progress across philanthropy. The recent Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy conference had 450 attendees, the largest number ever, including 16 Native Hawaiians. In June, a joint conference of Hispanics in Philanthropy and Native Americans in Philanthropy had some 1,200 attendees.
We need to continue to advance these changes across the sector. Any position in philanthropy has power, and historically that power has been reserved for the white and wealthy. Now I see a different picture of philanthropy emerging.
Equity and Effectiveness Are Converging
No doubt the pace of change has been frustrating. Almost 30 years from GEO’s founding, we’re still trying to convince foundations to provide general operating support, long-term grants, and larger grants. But there are hopeful signs. More than 170 grantmaking organizations around the country have signed a pledge presented by GEO, the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project, and the National Center for Family Philanthropy to meet the moment in 2025 with trust-based philanthropy, including flexible and reliable funding.
An important change that is allowing these shifts to happen is lifting up equity as part of the definition of what it means to be effective in philanthropy. When I started with GEO, as with a lot of philanthropic practice at the time, there wasn’t an equity or power analysis behind our work. Now we recognize that funder effectiveness is not just about the type, size, and duration of grants, but also a commitment to the principles and practice of equity.
In a similar arc, when Shared Insight started in 2014, we did not have an equity analysis informing the work we were doing. Our message was simply that listening to community was essential for nonprofits and funders to be more effective. Over time, with encouragement from our colleagues at the Kellogg and Ford foundations and learning journey visits around the country, our thinking around equity evolved, and our focus is now on what it means to listen in ways that reflect our equity values and help advance equity as an outcome.
In 2014, we were still getting questions from funders about why it was important to listen to community. Ten years later, those are no longer conversations we’re having. Now, funders are asking how to listen well, to a more transformative end. The goal of our theory of change is no longer that listening to community in and of itself is the expected standard in philanthropy, but that listening must be in service of shifting power to community.
We see GEO as a key partner in our work, not only now, but also carrying this work forward after Shared Insight reaches its planned sunset in 2026. That partnership is possible because of our shared commitment to racial and intersectional equity.
It Takes an Ecosystem
GEO’s recently released publication, Community-Driven Philanthropy: Participation, Partnership and Power, clearly builds the case that impact and equity in philanthropy are connected to listening and shifting power to community. The report concludes that the community of people needed to shape meaningful change is everyone — not just people who work in philanthropy, “not just nonprofit leaders or community activists or those working on a particular issue, but instead, it is all people.”
The publication in many ways echoes Shared Insight’s Funder Listening Action Menu, which highlights different listening practices and lifts up examples of funders doing the work to shift power. Our organizations’ efforts amplify and build upon each other, with the shared understanding that communities know best what they need.
Change in philanthropy happens through relationships — and often, through people carrying shared commitments with them as they move across organizations. Over the years, I’ve seen how a connected network of values-driven leaders — across places such as Kellogg, Packard, Irvine, Ford, and Barr — has helped shape all our work.
Shared Insight, GEO, five other partners, and supporters across philanthropy are about to launch a new campaign to make listening to shift power to communities standard practice in philanthropy. We welcome ideas and collaboration across the GEO membership, and we’re here to support GEO members who share our goal and are doing listening work. Stay tuned for opportunities to join the campaign.
It’s been my privilege over the past 24 years and more to walk alongside, and evolve with, so many people dedicated to building belonging in philanthropy. As we continue our journey, I’m excited to work together to ensure that that those with lived experience are at the center of deciding what comes next.
Melinda Tuan is managing director of Fund for Shared Insight and an independent consultant who is recognized nationally for her work in high engagement philanthropy, foundation effectiveness, evaluation, and nonprofit capacity-building. Melinda serves as a Senior Fellow at the Center for High Impact Philanthropy, on the Board of Managers for Evergreen Lodge and Rush Creek Lodge, the Advisory Board for Listen4Good, and the REDF Advisory Council. Find her on LinkedIn.
