It’s Time for Funders to Move Into Swift Alignment With Movements — Participatory Processes Can Help
As we collectively navigate a new political reality that has devalued and divested from equity, justice, and inclusion, funders must interrogate how we think about movement impact and progress. Community wisdom fuels our ability to make lasting change: if it’s progress we seek, it is time to set aside funder-led goal-setting and fundamentally reorient ourselves to support our grantee and community partners.
At Borealis Philanthropy, we are proud to have maintained and grown our commitment to the frontlines of movements for equity and justice. At Borealis’ Black-Led Movement Fund and Communities Transforming Policing Fund, a core part of this approach has meant continually moving into closer relationship with our movement partners.
As our funds transitioned to participatory grantmaking, we began revisiting our reporting, impact, and evaluation processes for greater values-alignment and community-rootedness. To better understand what this could look like in practice, we partnered with Social Insights Research, a research and evaluation firm that utilizes participatory and liberatory research methods, and together embarked on a learning journey that we would come to call The Movement-Defined Learning Project.
