Seven leading organizations focused on improving philanthropic practices have launched Listen to Community, an initiative calling on funders to transform how they work by building authentic relationships, grounded in listening, and changing the balance of power so that people and communities have a meaningful voice in decisions that affect them.
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It comes at a time when philanthropy faces mounting scrutiny and concerns about credibility and relevance, and it’s geared to navigate the current climate. Every time a project that communities neither need nor want receives funding, funders risk perpetuating injustice, wasting resources, and eroding trust — and possibly causing harm. Yet embedded in these challenges is an opportunity for philanthropy to underscore its relevance and strengthen trust by embracing what Listen to Community organizers call “power with” rather than “power over” approaches that begin with listening.
Philanthropy fulfills its highest purpose when it listens deeply, responds courageously to what it hears, and shifts power where it belongs — to community
Listen to Community brings together the strengths and aligned actions of seven core strategy partners: Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy, Feedback Labs, Fund for Shared Insight, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, National Center for Family Philanthropy, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, and Native Americans in Philanthropy.
The initiative is advocating for philanthropy to move beyond its well-documented tendency to talk a lot about the importance of listening without following through with meaningful action. It encourages funders to listen in ways that take into account power dynamics, enable reciprocity, and lead to greater community ownership and self-determination.
I hear in my job every day from community members who feel that their relationships with their funders aren’t meaningful. These relationships are not reciprocal, or respectful. And a lot of that has to do with how funders are actually listening and what they’re doing with what they hear.
Momentum for change
A growing number of foundations have begun embracing community-centered listening practices, creating momentum that initiative organizers believe can reach a tipping point among funders. Listen to Community’s goal is to have more leaders and staff in foundations listen to impacted communities, respond to what they hear, and build authentic and equitable relationships.
We've seen significant success with individual family foundations embracing listening practices, but not nearly enough are doing this work. There's powerful potential when many foundations come together around these practices – this initiative is the opportunity to create that significant action at scale.
Lean into lived expertise
As we forged relationships with community leaders and organizations throughout Washington, we also looked inward with a similar question: Who is worthy of a foundation job? There is a certain pedigree, a certain look, and a certain prestige when it comes to who holds positions in our field. We weren’t interested in any of that.
What we are interested in is hiring people who reflect the people we are accountable to and have expertise in delivering change with communities. It is no coincidence that people with the deepest expertise on how to advance equity and racial justice also are representative of the state’s beautiful tapestry. Their lived experiences are shaped by factors including race, ethnicity, gender, immigration status, sexual orientation, and status related to public assistance, the justice system, and disability. If you browse any of our open job listings, you’ll find that philanthropy experience is not a requirement, and that we prioritize candidates who are connected to and live in certain Washington counties that are currently underrepresented on our team. We rarely recruit out of state.
We operate this way because grantee organizations have asked us to. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that when I first took this role, I assumed we’d only have an office and team in Seattle and perhaps that was sufficient to serve this vast state. I quickly learned I was wrong. Community leaders shared they value a local connection with funders to deepen relationships. Now, we know that to call ourselves statewide we must hire a team statewide. In addition to Seattle, we have an office in Pasco, and team members working remotely in more than a third of the state’s counties. This approach extends to how we recruit board members, where we host meetings and convenings, where and with whom we spend our dollars, and of course, where we make grants.
Relationship-building is not one and done
After those first 18 months on the road, one thing was clear: relationship-building, listening, and learning will be our forever work as a foundation. Our entire team still spends a good amount of our time traveling, meeting with community leaders, and taking time to learn about the issues that impact our state. Our goal is to have direct relationships with community leaders, not so we can call ourselves an expert in every community, but to know the experts in every community. To us, this is the work. Our strategies are strong only because of it.
We are kicking off our 50-Year Vision this next year, our long-term work that was informed by thousands of community visits, grant reports, conversations with community leaders, and reflections gathered at our convenings. It took six years for us to arrive at this point, and I would not have done it any other way. Yes, some critiqued us for not having a strategy from year one, but we were unwavering in our belief that we could not be the partner communities and leaders were asking for without authentic community relationships. Developing trust takes time and in the long arc of our work to transform the balance of power in Washington to ensure equity and racial justice, six years is a blink of the eye.
What we’ve been able to do so far is because we took time to listen and learn. If you read our latest annual report, it shows that in 2023 we funded organizations in 35 out of 39 counties and committed grants to 20 Tribal nations. More than 78 percent of the organizations we supported are led by people of color. Funding is not the only measure by which we keep track of our statewide approach. We supported a wide range of convenings held across Washington in direct response to grantee feedback saying Inatai is uniquely positioned to facilitate connections among leaders and organizations all over the state.
This fall marks my sixth anniversary at Inatai, and I am so incredibly proud of what our team has built together. We have grown to more than 60 people, updated our values and mission statement, reintroduced ourselves with a new name, and granted a grand total of $264 million to diverse organizations throughout the state. Each and every one of these decisions was an intentional choice, underlined by what we learned through our relationship-building with the communities we are accountable to.
Listen to Community
