fundSHIFT: Creating a Shared Space Between Funder and Fundee
In his book, Decolonizing Wealth, Edgar Villenueva emphasizes the need to build a new paradigm in philanthropy that consists of “connect, relate, belong instead of divide, control, exploit” for us to heal this sector of the “colonizers virus”.
At the end of 2021, Little Big Fund, Awareness Accord and Mira Fellowship invited five global non-profit founders and five global foundation leaders to come together virtually for a series of dynamic, straightforward conversations about the shared space between them. These ten people set aside titles, accomplishments, mission statements, and funding possibilities to explore what it means to shift the often complicated processes and procedures each group follows in the fundraising space and create simpler, reasonable, and relevant practices instead.
Over three, two-hour sessions together, our essential move was to let unexpected understandings of one another, both personally and professionally, along with imaginative methods guide us to see what changes could be created and carried out in the fundraising space.
The first session was titled Connect where participants were paired with each other for 20 minutes at a time, and presented with a series of prompts to connect. The aim: to develop deeper connections with one another beyond our roles as nonprofit leaders or funders. Prompts included questions such as, “My name is…...and one thing that makes me uncomfortable about starting this conversation is….”; or “If you won the lottery and received $500,000, what would you do with it?”. However, it was not all related to fundraising – we had prompts like, “What is your favorite item of clothing and why is it your favorite?”; “Talk about your first impression of one another?” and “When and where do you feel most like your real self? Why?”.
Through a series of personal conversations in the first session, we helped develop a trusting community that would open up during the second session, titled Create, where participants were paired with one another to use the principles of design thinking to reframe the problem and ideate specific and measurable solutions to the challenge question - how might we radically change the way we communicate with each other? Below are some images from that session:
In the final session, Commit, participants shared creations and established public commitments with a measurable goal.
This inaugural fundSHIFT co-hort landed on two ideas to begin looking at more closely: application process and the unspoken power dynamics. Over the next few months of 2022, the group ‘have a go’ at drafting documents, filling in details and talking about the ideas and then come together again to see what kind of concrete effects can be created.
Stay tuned for updates about this initiative to change the way non-profits and funders can actually inhabit the fundraising space collectively and purposely.
The inaugural fundSHIFT cohort is: Teju Ravilochan (GatherFor), Christen Brandt (She's The First), Kakenya Ntaiya (Kakenya's Dream), Pavel Reppo (FineMind), Travis Ning (MAIA Impact), Kathy Bartlett (Global Education Fund - Girl Rising), Sally Skees (Skees Family Foundation), Kathy Hall (Summit Foundation), Caroline Kronley (Tinker Foundation), and Chris Van Dervort (The Ward Foundation). Our sincere thanks to Coeylen Barry from The Mira Fellowship for being an incredible facilitator for fundSHIFT 2021. If you are a funder or a fundee and would like to join our future iterations of fundSHIFT, please get in touch with us!
