Participatory grantmaking

Special collection

Participatory grantmaking encompasses a range of models, methods, challenges, and insights. At its core, this approach to funding cedes decision-making power about grants to the very communities impacted by funding decisions. This special collection gathers the experience and insights of funders who have shifted power and builds on the wisdom explored in the GrantCraft guide "Deciding Together: Shifting Power and Resources through Participatory Grantmaking".

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Letting the Movement Decide: FRIDA Grantmaking Report

November 19, 2015

FRIDA and TLP launched a Grantmaking Model Evaluation of FRIDA's work in February 2015. The aim of the evaluation is to assess, after three grant making cycles, FRIDA's impact and effectiveness in supporting young feminist groups. This resulting report serves to document FRIDA's practices, test FRIDA's assumptions on the model's impact, and offer recommendations for improvement. Many key learnings have already been used to adapt the model. This report utilizes existing materials on FRIDA's grantmaking model, including outreach and internal documentation, and a number of interviews with FRIDA staff, advisors, founders, grantees, and applicants.

Funding Free Knowledge The Wiki Way : Wikimedia Foundation's Participatory Grantmaking

January 1, 2015

This report is a comparative review of the Wikimedia Foundation's grantmaking practices, situating the work of the Foundation within a larger field of practice in philanthropy called Participatory Grantmaking. As authors of "Who Decides?: How Participatory Grantmaking Benefits Donors, Communities, and Movements," The Lafayette Practice (TLP) found that Participatory Grantmaking is an effective and impactful strategy for resource distribution. Simultaneously -- and perhaps more importantly -- they found that Participatory Grantmaking is a powerful movement building strategy, increasing movement resources of not only money but also knowledge and self-determination. In 2014, The Lafayette Practice conducted new research on the Wikimedia Foundation to provide a first ever, in-depth insight into the Foundation's unique grantmaking practices in the context of this philanthropic strategy.

Who Decides: How Participatory Grantmaking Benefits Donors, Communities, and Movements

April 21, 2014

The Lafayette Practice conducted research and interviews to analyze and compare the practices of eight premiere international Participatory Grantmaking Funds (PGF). TLP examined existing data regarding the qualitative aspects of the funds and their grantees, including functions, roles, and budgets.Participatory Grantmaking emerges from a practice of grassroots activism, with assumed belief that decision-making participation of people impacted by the fund's programs will guarantee that grants are allocated to those most deserving. Participatory Grantmaking models have proliferated over the past several decades. Yet there has been little research or documentation to analyze the assumptions and outcomes of the methodology.The funds included in this report are:Disability Rights FundFRIDA -- Young Feminist FundGMT InitiativeHIV Young Leaders FundInternational Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC) HIV Collaborative FundRed Umbrella FundRobert Carr Networks FundUHAI -- the East African Sexual Health and Rights Initiative.