← The Smart Communications Podcast
The Smart Communications Podcast
Episode 196: How can you engage in participatory grantmaking?
00:29:58
Explore participatory grantmaking and how shifting power to communities creates more just, effective philanthropy.
Loading summary
Transcript45 lines
- [00:03]
Farah Trim Peter
This is the Smart Communications Smart Communications Smart Communications Podcast Developing the Voices Developing.
- [00:10]
Big Duck Host
The Voices of Determined Nonprofits Brought to.
- [00:13]
Farah Trim Peter
You by Big Duck welcome to the Smart Communications Podcast. This is Farah Trim Peter, co director and worker owner at Big Duck. In today's episode we're going to ask the question, what can we learn from participatory grantmaking? And I am delighted to be joined by Cynthia Gibson, Ph.D. and Kelly Buhls. Cynthia uses she her and is principal of Synthesis Consulting, which provides strategic planning, program development, evaluation and communications assistance to hundreds of US and international philanthropic institutions and nonprofits. She writes about civic engagement, democracy and education and recently co authored the book Participatory Grant Making in Philanthropy. Cindy was a Senior Fellow at Tufts University and served as a member of numerous committees, selection panels and boards. She was also an adjunct professor at the Milano School of Policy, Management and Environment at the New School where she taught a class on advocacy and probably others. But I took that class 20 years ago and I am delighted to be back in conversation with her. Cindy, welcome to the show.
- [01:21]
Cynthia Gibson
Thanks Farrah, always great to see you. Big fan of yours. Who isn't? And Big Duck as well.
- [01:27]
Farah Trim Peter
Likewise. Likewise.
- [01:28]
Cynthia Gibson
One of my favorite organizations.
- [01:30]
Farah Trim Peter
We had a great conversation about 18 and a half years ago before I took this job and thank you for being a mentor and a friend to help me make this decision.
- [01:38]
Cynthia Gibson
Very exciting to watch your career.
- [01:40]
Farah Trim Peter
So let me tell you about our other guest, Kelly Buels. Kelly also uses she her pronouns and is a consultant working at the intersection of philanthropy and the New Economy movement. She is a participatory grant making practitioner, having practiced for over 15 years and helping organize the international participatory grant making movement. She is especially excited by the models that explore non competitive options. She loves unpacking the traditional assumptions that exist within philanthropy and finance and exploring new ways to be in community around money that creates liberation for everyone. She is a Just Economy Institute Fellowship, a transformative 25 committee member and a Salzburg Global Fellow. She also describes herself as a boring revolutionary, which I find quite amusing. Kelly, welcome to the show.
- [02:27]
Kelly Buhls
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
- [02:29]
Farah Trim Peter
I'm not sure how a revolutionary could be boring, but I will let you describe yourself that way. I feel like there's probably a better adjective out there.
- [02:37]
Kelly Buhls
Well, the boring revolution refers to sort of the boring work of unpacking the legal and entrenched financial structures that exist. And often in order to break them down, you have to, you know, read a lot of IRS code, which is quite boring. So yeah, we call it the boring revolution because it's often boring.
- [02:57]
Farah Trim Peter
I get it, I get it. Well, I'm glad that you do it because I would indeed find that a bit boring. But I'm glad that you are into the tedious. We need that in the revolution. All right, well, let's get into it. So I understand that participatory grantmaking is about shifting power from top down to bottom up by centering the voices of those directly affected by problems or crises, getting philanthropy to make better decisions. Cindy, what about you? How do you define participatory grantmaking in your own words?
- [03:26]
Cynthia Gibson
So a few years ago I had the privilege of being a co author with some participatory grant making experts around the world and practitioners that pretty much lays out how to do this post part and some case studies and tools. And in that publication we landed on the following definition of grant making, which is seeding decision making power about funding decisions, including the strategy and criteria about those decisions, to the very community a foundation supports. So there's a couple things I just would add to that that probably this doesn't capture as well. First of all, I think it's really important that people land on this, this part of the definition that, oh, it's all about making grant decisions. I think it's important for people to remember that grant making is a process. It involves setting priorities, strategies, funding criteria. All those kinds of things are entry points for funders to serve, for non funders to serve as equal partners in decision making. And then the second thing is that decision making is the key word here and suggests what we're calling authentic participation, which goes beyond people giving just input or feedback. Those are necessary but insufficient if you really want to get to power sharing. And then it's also part of a larger ethos. It's not just a one off or a tactic. And when I say ethos, I mean not just the external things that foundations do, but internally as well. How do they shape their organizations to be more participatory?
- [05:01]
Farah Trim Peter
Great. Thank you. And we'll be sure to link to the guide you're talking about and other resources we share here today at the transcript@bigduck.com insights so the participatory grant making community, or I think we'll refer to from now on PGM for participatory grantmaking, recently held an event about PGM in times of intersecting crisis or poly crisis. And I understand that a core tenet of PGM in crisis is unconditional funding and trusting communities to know what's best for them Kelly, let's start with you. How do you write or speak about PGM in a way that builds confidence in this trust based approach among funders and donors, particularly when they might expect detailed reports or much stricter oversight?
- [05:48]
Kelly Buhls
When I talk to funders or donors about participatory grantmaking, I often like to start from more of a systemic view in terms of, you know, what, what brought about the expectation of having detailed reports or strict oversight. Because I think a lot of this comes out of the emergence of strategic philanthropy, which is a paradigm that's really created a lot of the problems that we're trying to solve. You know, it's this idea that, that market solutions and, you know, measurement, these are the things that are going to help us solve the problems that the world faces. So I like to kind of work backwards from understanding that that's where this desire for, know, strict reporting and oversight comes from. In participatory grant making, we believe that when grant making processes are designed and owned by communities, that philanthropy will be more effective, more democratic, more just. And so, you know, we really try to talk about that as like a systemic solution to these problems and things like unrestricted funding, multi year funding, those, you know, are solutions that communities have named as supporting them to solve the problems that they're facing. And those overlap a lot with trust based philanthropy, which is another really wonderful practice. Slightly different from participatory grantmaking in that it doesn't necessarily seed decision making, as Cindy mentioned, as a, you know, defining characteristic of participatory grantmaking. But what we find is that when you cede decision making to communities, they choose to make unrestricted grants, they choose to make multi year grants. And so you see those practices happening together a lot.
- [07:39]
Farah Trim Peter
Cindy, anything you want to add to that?
- [07:41]
Cynthia Gibson
No, I think that's great. I think one thing I would mention is that in the book, the co editors in the introduction really struggled with the figuring out what the overlap and similarities were across all these different kinds of democratizing philanthropy, which are not limited to trust based and pgm, but also include things like giving circles, crowdfunding, community philanthropy, social justice philanthropy. And we really, really struggled with that. As you know, trying to figure out the nuances of these isn't easy. What we landed on, which I personally think is a contribution to the field, probably one of the biggest contributions this book has is that we made a matrix in the book mapping out all of these different approaches. And I don't want to get in the details because they're a little heavy, but we really were looking at how decision making power is concentrated or distributed and that includes whether it's concentrated or distributed organizationally or individually and in terms of the type of donors and foundations. And so it's interesting that trust based philanthropy landed almost in the same quadrant as PG with what Kelly said, the exception being the prerogative for decision making. And trust based philanthropy often comes or rests with the foundation or the program officer.
- [09:06]
Farah Trim Peter
Very helpful. Thank you both. And I will just say we did another podcast recently with Lisa Pilar Cowan, episode 161 for our podcast listening fans out there called how can you challenge the power and practices of philanthropy? We will link to that in the show notes, but that may be another one folks want to listen to or reread the transcript of as you're trying to wrap your minds around this and does center a little bit more the trust based philanthropy approach, let's dive into another topic here and I'm curious, how do you effectively communicate that PGM aims to address the root causes of poly crises and systemic inequities rather than just symptoms of aligning immediate response with long term solutions? Cindy, you want to start us off here?
- [09:47]
Cynthia Gibson
Yeah, I would just say a couple things. To me, it's always been sort of obvious that real people living in real communities facing real challenges and the issues that funders say they want to address have a lot of wisdom and lived experience and knowledge and should be regarded as experts, the same as we would see traditional experts, which, for better, for worse, a lot of foundations still rely on to figure out strategies and those kinds of things. So as one person I interviewed once about PGM and this whole issue said, how does the program officer sitting behind a desk know more than the person who's living with the issues they're wanting to fund? I thought that was very trenchant. I will say as an aside, your listeners may know about a whole other field called deliberative democracy, which involves community residents and organizations in decisions about local policies and those kinds of things. And there's a lot of research about this that shows that having real people who are living these experiences are more effective in getting the kind of informed decisions that they want. Participants preventative budgeting is a great example of that. There's a lot, quite a bit of research coming out about the value of real people sitting at the table. Again, however, being seen as equal partners, not just people giving input.
- [11:18]
Farah Trim Peter
Great. Kelly, anything you'd add to this conversation?
- [11:22]
Kelly Buhls
Yeah, I think that the answer that Cindy gave is one that we hear a lot, that those closest to the problem are the best suited to help find solutions. And I think there's another one that we also hear, which is again, sort of coming from this bigger picture view of that the idea that philanthropy itself is the result of a broken economic system. And this sort of overlays with my work in new economy spaces. Um, so it's really about how, you know, like a transition to community led philanthropy is a moral imperative and it's, it's reparative, you know, it's sort of returning the money to these places it's been extracted from. So I see those two reasons given a lot in terms of, you know, how it's solving the root causes of problems we face.
- [12:18]
Farah Trim Peter
Great. Now, beyond funding, I understand that PGM also explores ways to provide nonprofits with other support, emphasizing human connection and solidarity. Kelly, can you share some recent examples of how PGM efforts have fostered connection and solidarity?
- [12:35]
Kelly Buhls
Absolutely, yeah. In the fall of last year, the participatory grant making community held a webinar called Participatory Grantmaking and Times of Poly Crisis. And it really was looking at the ways that participatory grant making can provide a really effective platform and tools for flowing money quickly and even within crises. And there were some really beautiful examples. And one that comes to mind is the RAWA Fund, which does local grant making in Palestine. And they really talked a lot about how those relationships that they had built with folks on the ground moved beyond providing grants and actually moved into providing like emotional support and care and how they, how they heard from their partners how critical that was in these times. Times just those human connections was really valuable. And another example that I can share is that the Global Resilience Fund, they shared that they did a lot of collaborating with other funders to share due diligence and share risk management. And that allowed other funders to more quickly flow funds into regions that are facing crises. So, yeah, there were a lot of examples. And I'll just say, like, even within the participatory grant making community itself, finding community among your peer, especially for funders who are grappling with what it means to be in positions of power, to be grappling with what it means to have access to funding and be making those decisions, being in a peer community creates a lot of these wonderful deep relationships that just have incredible long term value.
- [14:26]
Farah Trim Peter
Yeah, I love that advice, especially for folks who are working in philanthropy out there. And now I want to flip to folks who might be working within a nonprofit or an ngo. Most of the folks who we believe listen to this podcast are probably working in the fields of development or communications. And I'm imagining people could be listening and wondering how can they get their funder to shift their behavior and maybe explore pgm? So I'm curious with that in mind, what's one step nonprofit staff can take to really try to again get their funders to explore pgm? Or is this really just about funders getting other funders to change to that. That point you just made, Kelly, about peers. But Cindy, let's start with you. What do you think about this topic?
- [15:07]
Cynthia Gibson
So I have a couple things to suggest, but I wanted to just point out that one of the reasons that we put together this book, which by the way came out of a participatory grant making process itself with some non funders at the Ford foundation who wanted to do research studies because we wanted to convince the bigger funders who tend to be more skeptical about these approaches and they tend to really want, as we know, as Kelly appreciates evidence of its value. And so we really wanted to pull together a set of studies that the book has. It's a really great set because it's by academics and practitioners and they all use very different ways of looking at this issue. So they use case studies. Some are very quantitative, some are qualitative. It's a very powerful set, I think, of findings that hopefully will convince, particularly again the bigger foundations and in some cases mega donors, which are, you know, tend to operate like foundations sometimes in terms of the decision making. We also did this because, as Kelly knows, most participatory grantmaking is still largely occurring among organizations that are more issue or location focused because they have natural participant polls they can, they can pull from. And they also tend to be much more progressive in value orientation. We actually did try to find a bunch of conservative examples for the grant craft and it was very difficult. So we do have a chapter about conservative philanthropy in the book as well. I will say in terms of people in foundations, and you'll see that in most foundations that are reluctant to try pgm, there are usually a set of program officers or a program officer who does want to try it. But what I have found is going in to an audience of particularly big foundations and saying, hey, let's do participatory grant making scares people. It scares them because they either don't want to hand over power or they are skeptical of it and they create a lot of excuses not to do it. So a really quick story is I was giving a presentation to a startup foundation that's now become one of the biggest in the country. And it was a family foundation and the donor was interested in this. The trustees, believe it or not, were interested in it. And so the director pulled together the staff about doing a workshop on this. And I did the presentation and I talked about the expanded definition of participatory grant making that wasn't just about funding decisions. And one of the staff people came up to me afterwards and said, you know, we almost left this presentation. We weren't going to come because it was all about, you know, making funding decisions. And this foundation is never going to do that. But we stayed and we really glad we stayed because we found out that there are so many different ways to embed participation in other parts of the grant making process. So that is something to think about. I would say two other things. Start small. Take a piece of a program or a budget line item and, you know, look at that and experiment with it. Put non funders on your board, Create committees of non funders that, you know, can help you do strategizing or setting priorities. And finally, so important to remember, there is no right way to do this. I had a foundation, very large community foundation, call me and say, we're ready to do this large, huge PGM initiative across all our communities. They actually had several different communities and we were worried that we weren't doing it right. So I had a long conversation with them and I ended it by saying, you know, there's no right way to do this. Every relationship is different. It's an iterative process. All you need to have is some good facilitation. And they said, oh my God, that is exactly what we needed to hear. So that's, that's the advice I would give.
- [19:11]
Farah Trim Peter
What about you, Kelly? What do you think of all of this? Or do you have any other advice to layer into what Cindy's thinking about here?
- [19:18]
Kelly Buhls
Yeah, I love that. I heard a quote from Hannah Patterson recently who also did a report on participatory grant making, where she said, participatory grant making isn't one thing because communities aren't one thing. So every process is going to be adjusted to the needs of the community. And I would say the same thing goes with funders. There's a great saying out there. If you've met one foundation, you've met one foundation. We have a lot of conversations at the PGM community about how to talk to funders, how to get your board on board. And we always just recommend with sort of starting with the individual, getting to know the individual, getting to know what motivates them. When you're talking about power and money, it's like, deeply personal. And it's really important to be able to bring, you know, the reasons that. That are really going to speak to that funder, because there's lots of reasons that this is wonderful and that it's effective and that it's good for the world. And so I think just finding the right message based on who your audience is, that's sort of the tricky part.
- [20:28]
Farah Trim Peter
Great. So I'm hearing in a lot of this, it's about relationships, right? Who has the relationship and the person who's got maybe an open ear. And sometimes that might be a nonprofit staff person who has a good relationship with a program officer. Sometimes it might be a peer at different foundations or within a foundation. And I also hear in Cindy's answer, sort of the idea of experimentation, that looking at this completely changing every single process is overwhelming, but maybe starting with one thing and going from there. So thank you both. That was really helpful. Well, yeah. Cindy, was there something else you want to add?
- [21:00]
Cynthia Gibson
Yeah, just really quickly, I wanted to build on something Kelly said before about, you know, measurement and metrics, and that these are relational processes. They are baked in. It's not something you can, you know, use traditional evaluation processes with. And it's very exciting to see some of the PG practitioners really challenging that and coming up with very new approaches to look at. How do you evaluate, quote, unquote, these processes? The reason is it's difficult is that it's not just about outcomes. You know, what happened with this process. It's about the process itself generates really powerful outcomes, quote, unquote. And one of those includes relationships. You know, you're building relationships with your peers, with other organizations, you're building a network, you're building a movement. You know, that's part of movement building as well. It also can lead to people strengthening their leadership capacities. They have a sense of agency. All of these are process outcomes that funders actually either you don't want to look at, or they're messy. So they're really hard to look at, and they take time to, quote, assess.
- [22:12]
Farah Trim Peter
Great. So maybe we are boring and messy revolutionaries here. I dig it. All right, well, I want to get timely here for a moment. Participatory grantmaking has been around for a bit. We are recording this conversation at the end of July 2025, and it has been an intense six months, certainly here in the U.S. and I think around the world with a lot of budget cuts that have been happening. To agencies, to grant cycles, to processes. And with all of these cuts swirling around, and there's. There's so many organizations that are out there trying to do work, some of which really is immediate. And it seems like these processes might get in the way of getting funds out the door quickly. So I'm just curious with what is happening now. Is PGM still a relevant approach, since it takes what sounds like a lot of time and resources? Kelly, why don't you start us off in this one?
- [23:06]
Kelly Buhls
Sure. Yeah. And I'll just build on what Cynthia was sharing about. In participatory grant making, we always say the process is the point. And I think that that rings true now more than ever in that relationship. Building takes a longer time. But I also think that this work is the antidote to the crisis itself. So if, you know, funding the old way is sort of just reinforcing all of the challenges that we're facing in this moment. And so doing participatory grant making is actually moving us towards the world that we want to see. And so it absolutely makes sense in this moment. In fact, it's more critical than ever in this moment to be doing that work.
- [23:55]
Farah Trim Peter
And.
- [23:56]
Kelly Buhls
And I think, too, like, there are so many different ways to do participatory grant making. I think we often see a really similar form, but there are so many examples out there of really cool and interesting different ways of people sharing power. And so there are faster models, there are quicker models, there are easier models. And so I think just being able to have that creativity that's centered in relationship, there's really a lot of options that can meet the moment that we face.
- [24:27]
Farah Trim Peter
Cindy, anything you want to add to that?
- [24:30]
Cynthia Gibson
Yeah, So I actually was, as Kelly knows, I was grappling with this a couple months ago, watching, you know, sort of the demise of our democracy and the, you know, the urgency that a lot of nonprofits were feeling about getting resources from other sources than government because they were being cut back. And I was hearing from foundations and funders saying, should we really do participatory grant making? It takes too much time. We need to get funds out the door. Which I appreciated. So I raised this question to about 15 practitioners, thought leaders in the field, not just a PGM, but philanthropy overall. And I asked them that question, and I said, what's the answer to this question? Like, what would you say? And they said, pretty much to a person that it's both, and that foundations need to get urgent funds out the door quickly. However, they shouldn't abandon an approach that has at its core the democratic values and processes we value. So, you know, they said foundations, keep your eyes on the end game. You know, if we're fighting for a democratic values, shouldn't we be doing more PGM rather than less? But, you know, that raised another question for me is how do you balance those two approaches then, you know, I mean, what does PGM look like if you're trying to get urgent funds out the door at the same time? And some foundations I know are really struggling with this internally in terms of the debates that are coming up about should we do urgent funding or should we do participatory processes? And it's led to, as one funder told me, quote, difficult conversations. So I would actually always end by saying that participatory grantmate doesn't have to be slow all the time. There are intermediaries out there with ready made systems, have a lot of experience. They know how to do this effectively and efficiently. A couple of them are brooklyn.org in your neighborhood, Farah Movement Strategy Center, Bush foundation, the Disability Rights Fund, Haymarket Global Green Grants. Some of these are actually case studies in the book as well.
- [26:43]
Farah Trim Peter
All right, well, it's time for us to wrap things up. If you're out there and you want to learn more about all of this, you can connect with Cindy's services, review her many publications, including the book that she co edited recently and has mentioned a few times@ synthesisconsulting.com and synthesis is spelled C Y n T H E S I s. You can also read some of Kelly's publications and learn more about her work@buellsconsulting.com and that's B U H L E S consulting dot com. Be sure to also head over to LinkedIn and follow Cindy and Kelly and participatory grantmaking community of practice. Now before we go, I wonder if you have any other parting thoughts you'd like to share. Kelly, why don't you start us off?
- [27:31]
Kelly Buhls
Sure, yeah, I'd love to just invite folks to join the participatory grant making community. We have a website with lots of resources like how to understand participatory grantmaking for beginners and also a pretty active Google group where people share questions and resources. You know, we're working to grow a movement of people looking to transform power dynamics within philanthropy.
- [27:57]
Farah Trim Peter
Great. And I just want to put a plug in that the website for participatory grantmaking community is just simply participatorygrantmaking.org Now Cindy, what about you? Any other parting words? You'd like to share with us.
- [28:09]
Cynthia Gibson
I wanted to end this by a quote from a practitioner who runs a very, very large nonprofit all across the country. And her response to this was a mic drop at the Ford foundation get together. And her quote is community is already together, already organizing, already dealing with this. The real question is, will those with money, power and privilege stand strong? Because let's be clear, if folks are willing to abandon what they once claimed was, quote, important, that only proves how performative it was all along. This is not the time for savior design, for stepping back under the guise of it's too hard for marginalized communities. What's really happening is people trying to save themselves from discomfort and from the challenge.
- [28:59]
Farah Trim Peter
Great. Well, thank you so much for joining us today and everyone out there. Have a great rest of your day or evening.
- [29:05]
Big Duck Host
Are you a fan of this podcast or Big Duck's other resources on nonprofit communications? If you are, we'd love to hear from you. Please drop us a line by writing to helloigduck.com to tell us what you're working on and what topics you need help with. We also welcome getting your feedback via reviews. You can review this podcast wherever you listen. We'd love to hear from you.
- [29:28]
Farah Trim Peter
This is the Smart Communications Podcast, Developing the Voices of Determined Nonprofits, brought to you by Big Duck.
- [29:35]
Big Duck Host
Big Duck is an agency that puts smart communications in the hands of nonprofits. We help our nonprofit clients develop strong brands, strong campaigns, and strong teams, and advance their missions and achieve their goals.
- [29:48]
Farah Trim Peter
Connect with us@bigduck.com.