by Kelley Buhles, Stephone Coward and Sabrina Wu
One summer day at Paicines Ranch, a handful of Just Economy Institute Fellows began making a plan to create a fund that would help us practice what we were learning: doing the inner work that is needed to create the conditions for a just economy, while simultaneously creating new ways of flowing capital that create community wealth and support healthy systems. This fund could be a place of praxis for everything we were learning, while simultaneously funding projects of JEI alumni who are traditionally excluded from access to capital. Two years later, the JEI Alumni Grant Pool was launched and completed its first round of grant funding.
The JEI Alumni Grant Pool is a grant program for JEI alumni created and funded by JEI alumni. Grounded in abundance, joy and collaboration, the JEI Alumni Review Committee utilizes non-extractive, trust based and participatory processes to flow funding to as many applicants as possible. The hope of the JEI Alumni Grant Pool is that making financial support available to JEI alumni will catalyze visionary work across the alumni network, provide energy and fortitude to alumni in their journeys as financial activists and create a platform for re-engaging with the alumni network to forge collaborations and relationships.
In participatory grantmaking, we often say, “the process is the point,” meaning it is important to look beyond individual grants to see the impact of and lessons learned through the process of shifting power. Our work of shifting power requires that we do things in new ways, innovate on process and reflect on what we’ve learned. The greatest value of the Alumni Grant Pool is in the learnings that are generated for the field. We are excited to share some lessons learned in the first phase of the journey.
Non-competitive Grantmaking
When exploring how to create a fund to support JEI alumni, we wanted to be sure that it didn’t create a sense of competition within the JEI community. The JEI alumni committee decided to explore using non-competitive processes to make grant decisions.
Philanthropy is based in scarcity and competition. The scarcity mindset, valued and upheld by white supremacy culture, tells us that resources are limited, and we must compete with one another in order to survive. Philanthropy creates competition by forcing grantees to apply for limited pools of funding against their peers. Accordingly, there is a growing interest in non-competitive grantmaking within the philanthropic field to create new systems that do not perpetuate theextractive dominant paradigm. Funds like the Equality Fund, which distributed $14m to 23 groups, Fenomenal Fund, which distributed $3m to 40 groups, and the Potlatch Fund, which is deeply rooted in the Indigenous worldview that wealth is measured by our shared abundance, have demonstrated that non-competitive grantmaking not only works, but creates cultures of abundance and collaboration among grantees.
Inspired by mutual aid funds, which have been an effective tool for sharing resources within marginalized communities in the US since 1793, the JEI Alumni Grant pool was designed to flow funds to those who typically experience the most barriers to funding using non-competitive and trust based processes. We set up the fund such that we believe people who say they have a need, and we trust them to take what they need and leave the rest for others. Of the 10 people that applied, 70% did not ask for the maximum amount available.
Pacing Funding vs. Urgent Deployment
Based on initial feedback we got from alumni, we planned to have the grant pool open twice a year so that those in need of funding would not have to wait for an annual process to get funds to support their work. During our first round of funding, however, we had more requests than funding allotted for. Our options were to either a) develop a non-competitive process for selecting who would receive funding, b) provide applicants with less than the minimum amount they had requested, or c) distribute more funds than we had originally planned for in the first round.
While discussing Option A, the JEI alumni committee explored non-competitive processes for selecting funding recipients, such as random drawings; ultimately, we felt that funding only some of the groups was disingenuous since we had enough funding for all applicants to receive some. Furthermore, if those who didn’t receive funding were moved into the pool for the next round, we would essentially be delaying their funding for no reason other than self-created red-tape. In the field of philanthropy, we often see “fake rules,” or self-imposed rules, that disproportionately serve the needs of the funder. In contrast, we were determined to unpack the reality of our funding options and center the needs of our community. Accordingly, we decided Option A was not the right route for us.
Option B, providing applicants with less than the minimum amount they had requested, also felt misaligned with our values. If our trust based giving meant that we believed people when they asked for their needs, we felt that giving less than the minimum amount requested would undermine that trust. We were compelled by a practice of fully funding proposals – a practice offered by JEI alum Allistair Mallillin at Common Counsel Foundation. Marginalized communities frequently under-ask for what is needed to do their work; in order to disrupt the cycle of under-investment in these communities, we felt it important to honor the practice of fully funding proposals.
Therefore, Option C, distributing more funds than we had originally planned for in the first round, felt the most aligned with our values of quickly and easily getting funding to those who need it.
Spending more, now versus saving for future needs is a tension philanthropy has long wrestled with. We resonate with the growing movement of foundations working to put themselves out of business while seeding a just economy where philanthropy does not exist. Given the urgency of the times, there is a growing call in the philanthropic sector to deploy funds more quickly now, rather than amassingfunding for future crises when it may already be too late to make the necessary changes.
Steeped in the beliefs that time is a justice issue and flowing resources to some can create collective wellbeing for many, the committee decided to ensure that people had access to as much capital as possible in the immediate moment by resourcing requests quickly and fully. Furthermore, in the hopes of providing energy and fortitude to our JEI alumni community, we felt that fully funding requests would allow those on the frontlines to feel the impacts of an influx of resources, and, perhaps, provide some mental relief to those who consistently struggle to access funding.
In the end, the committee funded everyone who applied at their minimum request amount; the remaining funds allocated for the year were split equally among applicants whose funding hadn’t reached the grant pool maximum of $15,000.
Still learning
Like any pilot program, we learned a lot. The funding took longer to deploy than we had hoped which pushed back the second round of funding, and we are still exploring how to non-extractively collect information about the lessons learned from this pilot.
We are grateful for folks who have gone before us in the work, like the Trans Justice Funding Project who wrote a brilliant piece in 2015 about Doing Philanthropy Differently, and everyone working to transform philanthropy, such as Trust Based Philanthropy and the Participatory Grantmaking Community. Given the recent backlash against trust based and participatory processes, it is more important than ever that we continue this work. We are also grateful to the fund’s many donors who have engaged, questioned and supported us on this journey. We look forward to continuing to share our lessons with the field.
Kelley Buhles is an independent consultant, collaborative leader and co-creator of new economic models that build and retain power and wealth in communities. She is a participatory grantmaking thought leader, having practiced since 2010, she has designed and supported over 20 processes.
Stephone Coward is the Economic Justice, Justice Paid in Full Campaigns Director at the Hip Hop Caucus. He has worked in the banking industry in Dallas-Fort Worth for the last two decades and received his Bachelors of Arts in History and Master of Science in Sustainability from University of Texas at Arlington. In 2016, he cofounded BankBlackUSA and the nonprofit COWRIE Initiative to continue this advocacy work of supporting Minority Depository Institutions. In 2021, Stephone became a Just Economy Institute Fellow, joining a growing movement of financial activists who are shifting the flow of capital and power to support the well-being of all people and the planet. Because of his work and passion, Stephone has been named one of Forbes Next 1000 as a Social Entrepreneur.
Sabrina Wu (she/her) is a Senior Program Officer at East Bay Community Foundation, leading the Foundation’s work on building a just and inclusive economy. In this capacity, she supports increasing access to fair capital for BIPOC entrepreneurs, grassroots equitable economic development, and moving grant and impact investing resources in more participatory and collaborative ways. She is also a co-founder of LUNAR, a cross-racial solidarity funding initiative for Asian Americans to support movements for Black and Indigenous lives.
