Editor’s note: We’re proud to highlight a special issue of The Foundation Review, “The Power of Listening to Communities,” sponsored by Listen to Community co-founding partner Fund for Shared Insight. This collection marks an important moment for the field, bringing together learnings about how community-centered listening practices have the power to reshape philanthropy for the better. This post by Julia Coffman, The Foundation Review’s editor-in-chief, kicks off an occasional blog series with field-level reflections based on the 10 articles in the special issue. In the coming months, you’ll hear directly from the articles’ authors, lifting up key insights, practical examples, and links to their full pieces.
Over more than three decades working in philanthropy, I’ve spent a lot of time examining what it takes to move and influence systems as dynamic and decentralized as philanthropy. One lesson has endured: if you want to understand how systems shift, study the times when they actually have.
The last decade of collaborative efforts to advance more community-centered, listening-based philanthropy provides us with one such case. What began as a set of practices championed by a committed few has steadily evolved into a broader expectation across the sector.
Earlier this year, the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy released a special issue of The Foundation Review, “The Power of Listening to Communities.” The issue’s 10 articles provide fresh insights into this sectoral shift and help to explain how it happened. They reveal that the shift emerged through a set of six reinforcing forces that together have reshaped our ideas of what “good philanthropy” means:
Intermediary organizations built tools and infrastructure
No practice becomes widespread without usable tools, shared frameworks, and enabling infrastructure. Over the last decade, intermediary organizations created exactly that: feedback systems, community engagement platforms, listening frameworks, and capacity-building efforts that have helped funders translate their values into action. Their work lowered the barriers to entry and implementation, making listening clearer and more replicable across the sector.
The special issue opens with a history told by Melinda Tuan, Rick Moyers, and Gita Gulati-Partee. The authors trace how efforts like Fund for Shared Insight helped define what listening actually means, articulating principles and practices that moved listening from a value to a concrete approach. They offer a hypothesis echoed throughout the issue: listening, when paired with intentional and equity-oriented practices, strengthens community ownership and self-determination.
Peer influence accelerated adoption
Philanthropy is a field where funders watch and learn from their peers. As more foundations tried new listening approaches and shared their experiences, the practice spread.
Several articles describe how organizations at different stages learned from one another. Valerie Threlfall’s analysis of Listen4Good, for example, shows how nonprofits — often quicker than foundations to adopt listening practices — provided a roadmap for funders seeking to be more responsive. By openly sharing tools and insights, nonprofits modeled authentic listening and influenced other funders’ learning curves.
Similarly, Elizabeth Jordan, Tryphena Clarke, and Raquel Robinson’s reflection on the Ruth Mott Foundation’s 15-year journey of “shoe-leather philanthropy” offers a long-term example of community-grounded governance and partnership. Their example is an inspiration for others about what is possible with sustained commitment.
Evidence demonstrated the power of listening
Research began to validate what practitioners had long held: when communities inform priorities and decisions, philanthropic strategies improve. Programs become more relevant, resources flow more equitably, and trust deepens.
Penelope Huang’s contribution to the special issue reinforces this point. Synthesizing six research studies, she finds that listening can produce measurable improvements in program and client outcomes when organizations close the loop on listening and act on what they hear.
Social movements exposed power imbalances
Broader movements for equity and justice made it impossible to ignore the effects of philanthropy’s power for grantees and communities. They exposed whose voices were historically centered and whose were left out. These shifts in sectoral consciousness created new urgency for funders to engage differently and with greater humility.
Several articles illustrate how funders responded. For example, authors from the Full Frame Initiative and grassroots partners introduce a Community Bill of Rights, a bold invitation for funders to move beyond token listening and treat communities as architects of their own futures.
Narrative shifts reframed philanthropic legitimacy
Narratives shape expectations, and expectations shape systems. Over the last decade, listening became part of a broader narrative shift from philanthropy as expert-driven to philanthropy as accountable and relational. This evolving narrative helped to change internal mindsets and external norms, spreading and institutionalizing philanthropic listening practice.
Examples from the issue demonstrate how narratives intertwined with practice. Gita Gulati-Partee and Katy Love show how listening, paired with participatory processes, creates relational transformation between funders and community partners. The examples in the article demonstrate how this can shift relationships from transactional interactions to shared learning and shared power.
Crises opened a window for change
System shifts can be accelerated by disruption. COVID-19 and the 2020 racial justice uprisings pushed funders to operate with greater flexibility and proximity to community needs. The special issue includes several examples that reflect this reality.
Sarah Stachowiak and Juan Clavijo’s evaluations show that communities perceive listening as meaningful only when accompanied by action and support, something many funders were forced to deliver during crisis responses.
Sonia Taddy-Sandino, Jennifer Ho, Kim Ammann Howard, and Clare Nolan describe how the Irvine Foundation’s co-design process required leaning into the messiness of shared decision-making, an approach made more urgent and more possible in a time of upheaval.
Melissa Monbouquette and Jessica Mulcahy’s insights from the BUILD Health Challenge round out the picture, showing how long-term cross-sector listening builds trust and positions communities to respond more effectively when crises emerge.
A system shifts when Its drivers shift
Together, these six structural, relational, cultural, behavioral, and contextual forces created a set of reinforcing conditions that helped philanthropy recognize the power of listening to communities. The Foundation Review’s special issue makes this tangible at both a sectoral and organizational level.
The work ahead is about making listening so integral, so expected, and so normalized that it becomes inseparable from what philanthropy is. The last decade shows it is possible to move a system. The next decade will determine how far it can still go.
Julia Coffman
Editor-in-Chief, The Foundation Review
