An encore to a popular GEO 2024 National Conference session exploring how philanthropy can better serve communities – it starts with shifting our ways of being.
Join this “encore” of a popular GEO 2024 National Conference session for lively conversation and hands-on practice that challenge philanthropy’s MO. Instead of presenting a polished tool, case study, or set of “five clear steps to…” we’ll model a relational culture inspired by partners in the Global South that helps us see our individual and collective roles in supporting community self-determination.
This culture is rooted in an “anti-framework,” based on research and synthesis by the Global Fund for Community Foundations, that orients philanthropy and community partners to look inwards through three lenses: assets–financial and non-financial, tangible and intangible, that all stakeholders bring; capacities–strengths and gaps for all stakeholders, including funders; and trust–areas in which greater trust can optimize assets and capacities.
Participants will hear from grassroots philanthropy and community partners that collaborate through this ACT lens and then apply this lens to their own contexts by brainstorming with others in small breakout groups.
We’ll explore how conventional philanthropy’s institutionalized culture can block meaningful change despite our community-centered commitments, and how we can balance a more organic, adaptive and relational way of collaborating with structure and clarity.