Episode 1

Decolonize
Philanthropy

Listening Guides

In this first episode, we unpack how American traditional philanthropy was founded, and how its very guiding principles have choked the industry from doing exactly what it’s meant to do—

Get the resources where they are needed, by means of the people who are affected by both the problem and the solution.

featuring

  • Kumi Cultural
    Founder and Principal

    Michele Kumi (久美) Baer (she/they) is a social justice practitioner working in facilitation, organizational development, and coaching. Over the course of their career, Michele has led programs that have increased participants’ comfort with practicing equity in the workplace; generated more authentic relationships among colleagues; cultivated clients’ senses of agency and belonging; and seeded new funding and programs. She is the Founder and Principal of Kumi Cultural, a consultancy that supports people in igniting, kindling, and sustaining their capacity to practice equity and liberation. A lifelong dancer, Michele’s sensibilities as a mover shape how she strategizes, facilitates, and collaborates.

  • NonprofitAF.com

    Vu Le (“voo lay”) writes the blog NonprofitAF.com. He is the former executive director of RVC, a nonprofit in Seattle that promotes social justice by supporting leaders of color, strengthening organizations led by communities of color, and fostering collaboration among diverse communities. Vu is a founding board member of Community-Centric Fundraising. He has degrees in Psychology and Social Work. Vu has two kids, ages ten and seven, and watches way too much television when not causing trouble.

  • National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy
    Executive Director

    Aaron Dorfman is president and CEO of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP), a research and advocacy organization that works to ensure America’s grantmakers and wealthy donors are responsive to the needs of those with the least wealth, opportunity and power. Dorfman, a thoughtful critic, frequently speaks and writes about the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion in philanthropy, the benefits of funding advocacy and community organizing, and the need for greater accountability and transparency in the philanthropic sector. Before joining NCRP in 2007, Dorfman served for 15 years as a community organizer with two national organizing networks, spearheading grassroots campaigns on a variety of issues. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Carleton College, a master’s degree in philanthropic studies from the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University and serves on the boards of Capital & Main, The Center for Popular Democracy and re:power.

  • NDN Collective
    President & CEO

    Nick Tilsen (He/Him/His) Oglala Lakota, President and CEO of NDN Collective is a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation. Nick has over 20 years of experience building place-based innovations that have the ability to inform systems change solutions around climate resiliency, sustainable housing and equitable community development. He founded NDN Collective to scale these place-based solutions while building needed philanthropic, social impact investment, capacity and advocacy infrastructure geared towards building the collective power of Indigenous Peoples. Tilsen has received numerous fellowships and awards from Ashoka, Rockefeller Foundation, Bush Foundation and the Social Impact Award from Claremont-Lincoln University. He has an honorary doctorate degree from Sinte Gleska University.

Listen & Scroll

Read along and check out resources as you listen.

segment 1: giving, radicalism, and love
narrated by Tom T. Young

segment 2: the gospel of wealth
with guest Michele Kumi (久美) Baer

segment 3: imbalance of great power
with guest Vu Le

segment 4: elite views from the boardroom
with guest Aaron Dorfman

segment 5: we are all related
with guest Nick Tilsen

segment 6: wrap
narrated by Tom T. Young

listening guides
download transcript

segment 1

giving, radicalism,
and love

narrated by your host,
Tom T. Young

  • Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

    We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

    [ music picks up; upbeat theme ]

    Host

    Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

    For the Love of Radical Giving, you are tuning into a GIA Reader miniseries that deconstructs traditional philanthropy and celebrates the joy and power of giving out of love.

  • Host

    I'm your host, Tom T. Young. I'm a proud co-founder of Vital Little Plans, an artist giving circle and Flannel & Blade, a queer-owned communication shop for good. I first learned about the world of philanthropy through my work with ArtPlace America, and since then I've been working with nonprofits, foundations, and artists to advocate for more unrestricted funding towards individuals and community organizations.

    Take my hand as we jog through some incredible interviews with radical visionaries who are actively working on reshaping this philanthropic landscape towards a more just and equitable future for all.

    Before we begin, let's get aligned on some vocabulary. [ ‘ping’ sound effect ]

    Giving. We define giving as the act of transferring something of value from oneself to another without expecting a direct or immediate return. Notice the absence of an exchange or of monetary value. Instead, giving is a circulation of reciprocity and mutuality that over time benefits everybody through community, cohesion and regeneration. This is an ancient concept that goes back way before our hunter and gatherer ancestors. [ ‘ping’ sound effect ]

    Radicalism. Angela Davis once wrote, "Radical simply means grasping things at the root." Radicalism seeks to address the fundamental causes of problems rather than providing superficial solutions. This often involves questioning and challenging deeply entrenched systems of power and privilege. [ ‘ping’ sound effect ]

    Love. bell hooks has one of the most healing definitions of love that I've ever come across. "Love is the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth. Love is as love does. Love is an act of will, namely both an intention and an action."

    So why does giving need to be radical in the first place? How did we go from communities of mutual giving to a country that has become dependent on the charity of large foundations to fix its problems, problems that were likely caused by those foundations namesakes in the first place? As Dr. King aptly suggests, we do exist in a network of mutuality and we're seeing the effects of this play out in real time in Palestine, Sudan, Congo, and many other colonized places in the world. While western philosophy prods us into a culture of individualism and consumerism, we stray further and further from the very tools that allowed us to survive and thrive for generations. Art itself, the beautiful manifestation of selfless giving has become over commodified to the point where we don't even recognize it as a gift anymore.

    In order to return to our roots, we must practice getting better at both giving and receiving gifts with joy and love. We must understand and respect the life cycle of a gift, where it came from, how it's held, and where it's going. In this first episode, we unpack how American traditional philanthropy was founded and how its very guiding principles have choked the industry from doing exactly what it's meant to do, get the resources where they're needed by means of the people who are affected, both by the problem and the solution. Let's get started, shall we?

    [ music transition ]

Resources

Resource & Prompt Round-up
[ Funder / Funded ]

segment 2

the gospel
of wealth

with guest
Michele Kumi (久美) Baer
Kumi Cultural

begins at 4:21

  • Michele

    What lives at the root of a desire to exist forever? What is that about? Why is it there? Who and how is that being perpetuated? I mean, there's just a lot of questions to dig into around why permanence seems to be a really deep desire within philanthropy.

    Host

    This is Michele Kumi Baer. She is a social justice practitioner, facilitator, educator, and a parent of a very cute cat named Chio.

  • Michele

    What we often refer to as philanthropy today is a very particular type of philanthropic practice that takes place in a very, say, contemporary western and US-based form of philanthropy that is this industry that has origins in the late 19th century.

    Host

    When we talk about the original philanthropists, somehow I always think of rich Greek guys handing out money. Something tells me that's not the case.

    Michele

    These were people, cishet white men who amassed vast amounts of wealth through the exploitation and extraction of labor and land, and these were people who really took up the call of racial capitalism and of patriarchy and of colonialism and who practice it really, really well in order to amass and hoard this great amount of wealth and money that they were literally hearing from their advisors like, this is too much damn money. You have to figure out what to do with this.

    Host

    How did this ideology even start though? Why were all these terrible systems of oppression found right at the heart of early philanthropy?

    Michele

    So when I teach folks about this time period, I often go to Andrew Carnegie's, Gospel of Wealth.

    Host

    The Gospel of Wealth, an instrumental document that set the stage, the tone, and the ethics for American philanthropy.

    Michele

    And within this charitable proposal there was a very clear ideology that Carnegie espoused. It was his belief that poor and working-class people were not capable of managing money well, rather it was the "really valuable men of the race," his fellow capitalists who were the ones who needed to decide for poor and working-class people, what their needs were, how money should be spent in service of their needs, and ultimately how those monies should be administered and distributed and managed.

    Host

    So it was after these essays came out that we began to see the rise of early American foundations, the Russell Sage Foundation followed by the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations, and we see the origins of these lasting to today, right?

    Michele

    Right. We're still living in a society where so much power to determine and influence what constitutes the public good is disproportionately wielded by an elite group of mostly white people. And that ideology that Carnegie and others espoused is still alive and well in philanthropy today.

    Host

    I mean, if you look at many of these foundations websites today, you're going to see them praising the early efforts of their namesakes without acknowledging the source of their wealth.

    Michele

    Over the last few years, more and more colleagues in philanthropy have been offering what I think is a really apt reframing of the sector, which is to say that this contemporary modern form of philanthropy is money laundering. And to say that meaning that foundations have gotten really skillful at disguising the origins of their financial assets, the activities that produce them, and distributing them in ways that further that disguise.

    Host

    Right. And it's not just the foundations that are holding up these power dynamics.

    Michele

    The non-profit structure has been used for a long time by wealthy white elites as a way to reinforce their power and dominance and to institutionalize elite control over what is considered a public good.

    Host

    Right. And to help with that institutionalization, the US government has passed key legislation throughout the evolution of philanthropy that continues to encourage the extraction and hoarding of wealth. In particular, the 1969 Tax Reform Act established the minimum charitable payout for foundations to just 5%. It's remained unchanged for the last 55 years.

    Michele

    Folks speak to the 5% payout rate a lot, and we've been speaking about it a lot in the field, especially since a lot of foundations made a commitment early in the pandemic, a pandemic, which is still happening now, by the way. They made a commitment to increase their payout rates and a lot of those commitments have since dissolved and foundations have gone back to a policy that was intended to ensure that institutions can continue in perpetuity.

    Host

    Speaking of continuing in perpetuity, today we're experiencing what many may consider a Second Gilded Age, marked by an unprecedented amount of wealth disparity in the tech industry. And yet, individuals like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and many others assume global responsibility for making a positive change in the world.

    Michele

    I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area on Ohlone lands. I experienced the Silicon Valley, as it were, expanding, and the place I grew up in is pretty unrecognizable to me in some ways. I don't want to discount the intellect and intelligence it takes to create and design these technologies. I also think it doesn't necessarily mean that someone is qualified to do racial justice work, to do gender justice work, to do disability justice work. I do not think that tech giants are qualified to do social justice work full stop.

    Host

    So you have these billionaires who have stolen their status through the extraction, exploitation of resources, labor and data, who disguise and hide their wealth inside of foundations. I mean, it's starting to make sense as to why these philanthropic giants don't want to change.

    Michele

    They are too attached to or enmeshed within or unable to see that they are very deep, very real residues of The Gospel of Wealth, right? They are attached to being patronizing. They are attached to being domineering. They are attached to being able to dictate what grantees do and expect compliance back.

    Host

    This conversation often makes me feel a little hopeless, thinking about tackling big and old systems like this, it's not an easy task.

    Michele

    It's not a requirement of being a changemaker that you always have to have hope on every day. I think being in those hopeless moments is equally important because it reminds you of the stakes. It reminds you of why this is hard and it reminds you of why you're doing this, and it's also important to be hopeless because you're probably trying to move other people who are hopeless. So being able to empathize with them, support them, be present with them is deeply important.

    [ music transition ]

Resources

Resource & Prompt Round-up
[ Funder / Funded ]

segment 3

imbalance of
great power

with guest
Vu Le
NonprofitAF.com

begins at 10:45

  • Host

    When we talk about power in philanthropy, we're really talking about the power to make choices about what to do with limited hoarded resources.

    Vu

    A lot of donors will care about puppies and kids and those things are really important.

    Host

    This is Vu Le, a writer, speaker, vegan, Pisces, and the founder and author for Nonprofit AF. He often calls out the bullshit of the non-profit industrial complex.

  • Vu

    But oftentimes the things that are less heart-tugging are the ones that society really needs us all to focus on. And unfortunately, because of the power dynamics, we oftentimes don't get the resources we need to really focus on addressing them.

    Host

    So what ends up happening to these resources?

    Vu

    You have a bunch of nonprofits scrambling to try to get some funding from you. That money should have been, could have been paid in taxes and would have done a lot more for society, I would say, instead of sitting there and there's no legal requirements to actually distribute any funding at all.

    Host

    Ah, I'm beginning to see the issue here.

    Vu

    So now we still have a bunch of people avoiding taxes, hoarding money, and then getting to determine which issues we focus on in society.

    Host

    It seems like the problem and the solution are staring right at us. Why is there such a resistance to change, especially with progressive funders who often say that they want to support these important movements?

    Vu

    I think that deep down a lot of progressive leaning funders still don't really want the systems to change because it would create an existential threat to them. Because if many of the liberal things, many of the progressive things that we have been working for would be actualized, then a lot of foundations would be out of business.

    Host

    And so this is where that power dynamic comes into play. Systems are put in place to uphold that power, even if it is a small slice of a larger pie.

    Vu

    I always joke that if like MLK were here and he's like, "Hey everyone, I have a dream," the response from a lot of progressive funders would be like, "Oh, well that's a really great dream, but I want to make sure that you are scalable and you're like research-based, and is there a theory of change for your dream? Is it realistic?"

    Host

    Wow, this would totally be the case today, wouldn't it?

    Vu

    But then the reality is that they still restrict a lot of the stuff we can do. They give one year grants, which becomes untenable. You can't do anything in one year. Conservative foundations give 20 or 30 years at a time. They are very much focused on changing the systems and changing society and not about their ego necessarily, ironically.

    Host

    So what about the little people on the ground? What kind of power do we have in this fight among giants?

    Vu

    So community members are really vital because we are the ones who have the most power, but in order to do that, we have to organize way better, and it hasn't been funded very well. Funders are kind of terrified of it. They don't want to fund community power. They don't want to build community power in many ways because again, it provides an existential threat to them.

    Host

    So we have this imbalance of not only power, but also resources and the ability to allocate them. Can you give us an example of how these dynamics play into this systemic imbalance?

    Vu

    Right now we have a philosophy called donors centered fundraising where it is all about treating donors like heroes, make sure that they are in the center, make sure that their needs and their wins are the ones that we prioritize.

    Host

    And when one person is getting more of the attention, they create an imbalance in the relationship that's ultimately supposed to be about the work on the ground.

    Vu

    I don't think that's a good partnership because you can't really have honest conversations, uncomfortable conversations that are necessary to change the systems and status quo if that is the dynamics that you are engaged in.

    Host

    When I think about community power, I think about local small grassroots efforts. But when I think about abuse of power, I think about these giant global issues that we're seeing play out in front of us on our screens. How can we possibly navigate these extreme scales of battles for power at the same time?

    Vu

    I think that this sort of balance between globalism and localism is something that we need to do a much better job just paying attention to and trying to find balance for. Because once you do pay attention, you become overwhelmed about just the horrific things happening in Sudan and Congo and Tigray and other places, and of course Palestine. But I have actually been optimistic because I've been seeing people in the local spaces like leading marches and protests and getting the city council members to speak up and to call for a permanent ceasefire and support Palestine to condemn what Israel has been doing.

    Host

    This is a lot to hold in our hearts and minds, and many of us are only beginning to take steps in this radical new direction. What can our listeners do to help move themselves in a direction that can ultimately tip the scales of power back into the hands of the impacted community?

    Vu

    I don't think many of us actually sit down and start thinking about how complicit we are in maintaining the status quo. We do not acknowledge that our livelihoods depend on the existence of inequity and injustice so that many of us get paid to help fight it, not just get paid, but we have a sense of value and a sense of worth that is tied up to doing this work.

    Host

    We're asking you to confront yourself with some challenging and deep questions, dear listener. The long road to collective liberation is full of uncomfortable change. Vu is asking us the hard question.

    Vu

    What would it take to actually achieve this sort of systemic change where you are not necessary, nonprofits are not necessary, philanthropy is not necessary? Because everyone is stable and have decent jobs and housing and education, they don't need philanthropy anymore.

    [ music transition ]

Resources

Resource & Prompt Round-up
[ Funder / Funded ]

segment 4

elite views
from the boardroom

with guest
Aaron Dorfman
National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy

begins at 16:42

  • Aaron

    My mantra that I say to myself is, I provoke with love to build movement towards justice.

    Host

    This is Aaron Dorfman, President and CEO of NCRP.

    Aaron

    The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy is the only independent watchdog and critical friend for our field. We have been biting the hand that feeds us for almost 50 years.

  • Host

    So how does biting the hand that feeds you actually help the field of philanthropy?

    Aaron

    Our role is to create a desire to change. We are trying to create enough discomfort at enough institutions that they feel sufficiently motivated to decide they want to change and get better.

    Host

    So it's putting the pressure on these organizations to deliver, holding them to account.

    Aaron

    Great leaders will reckon honestly with the truth when faced with an uncomfortable fact. Great leaders will help their institution learn, evolve, and be better, be what more of what the world needs from them. Small leaders will fight back against whoever's calling them out.

    Host

    Okay, so NCRP is motivating these leaders to make more responsible choices in the way that they give, essentially through public shaming. Or to say it another way, calling them in.

    Aaron

    Our hope is that this sparks a real movement in philanthropy for more and more funders to reckon honestly with the harms caused in the creation of the wealth that makes philanthropy possible, healing really is impossible without that.

    Host

    It's frustrating to hear that the more progressive institutions are resisting progress. Shouldn't we be seeing more rapid change with liberal philanthropy? Where's the friction coming from?

    Aaron

    It's fundamentally an elite worldview that's coming up in the boardroom, and that is an obstacle. People are institutionalists, they want to protect institutions. They want slow and incremental change. So that's I think, a huge barrier to more radical forms of giving.

    Host

    This is what Vu was just talking about. We're being out organized. What will get us this more long-term consistent radical funding?

    Aaron

    The conservative foundations and wealth holders have been laser focused on a 50-year plan to take over the country and how they deploy their philanthropic dollars in pursuit of that has been a key piece of the puzzle.

    Host

    So why in the world can't us progressives get our act together? We can fundraise, we can advocate, we can organize, we can host DEI workshops. Where's the disconnect?

    Aaron

    Having all the right arguments doesn't get the football across the goal line, power does. And our side has systemically under-invested in the kind of power building that is necessary to make sure that radical and progressive ideas can win the day in the electoral arenas.

    Host

    It sounds like we could take a few lessons from the conservative funders handbook. What are some other ways that we're missing the mark?

    Aaron

    They're investing in people and ideas and power building for 10 or 20 year time horizons and liberal center left and progressive funders still change their course every three or four years, especially those with living donors. They get a new idea and they abandon what they were doing before, sometimes with no real responsible exit strategy for these groups who had been relying on their support. So that's no way to build a movement that can seriously contest for power.

    Host

    It feels like funders are creating structure for structure's sake, and it's always at the expense of the person asking for money.

    Aaron

    Every time an ED is up till one in the morning working on your 14 page proposal for a 5 or $10,000 grant. Every time they're working on a detailed report on that same grant, that's time they aren't spending building power, winning on the issues. It's really short-sighted.

    Host

    And these executive directors are the leaders we should be investing in to actualize the work, not bog them down with applications and reporting.

    Aaron

    One of the more promising things that I've been seeing happen lately is instead of making your grantees fill out a long written report and turn it in, some funders are moving to having a conversation with the program officer, and then the program officer writes it up and the program officer is the person best able to translate that into whatever needs to go in the file.

    Host

    For folks at home who feel like this kind of changes and possible. Remember the long game. We invite and encourage you to use the resources available to you to make the necessary change within and without these systems.

    Aaron

    We absolutely need great people who have a radical vision at the program officer level, the program director level, the VP level, the CEO level, and as trustees of foundations, we need folks with this more radical vision of how philanthropy can contribute to a democratic society. We need folks to stick with it for the long haul and make the change.

    Host

    We need to support the creative people willing to imagine and actualize radical futures, to unlock opportunities and to fight the real threats we're facing today.

    Aaron

    Take the threat of authoritarianism and the white Christian nationalist movement very seriously and to up the urgency of how you're going to use philanthropy to make sure that those forces do not prevail in this battle for what do we want America to be?

    [ music transition ]

Resources

Resource & Prompt Round-up
[ Funder / Funded ]

segment 5

we are
all related

with guest
Nick Tilsen
NDN Collective

begins at 22:38

  • Nick

    We made a huge conclusion that white supremacy lives in the field of philanthropy and that our job is to not reform those institutions of those organizations, but to build new ones that are from the ground up, that come from the movement, that come from lived experience in doing the work.

    Host

    This is Nick Tilsen. He's the President and CEO of the NDN Collective, which is responsible for moving over $100 million to indigenous led efforts in a 6-year period. A feat never achieved in traditional philanthropy, particularly by an indigenous led organization.

  • Nick

    The most important thing is that whenever they took the land from our people and through the process of colonization, what they did is they not only took the land, but they took our decision-making power over our lives, our communities, our food systems, economic systems, education systems, and they took that away from us.

    Host

    But isn't that what these foundations are trying to give back towards to help repair?

    Nick

    The only reason why philanthropy has had resources to "give" in the first place is because the origins of their resources directly came from these atrocities and the injustices around them. And there's a direct correlation between those injustices that happen today.

    Host

    So it's not just a call to fund indigenous people, but to fund indigenous led initiatives directly and flexibly.

    Nick

    We see philanthropy in the sharing of resources and the rematriation of resources as a fundamental part of our theory of change. And so we exist because we want to move money and decision-making power over that money out of mostly white-led institutions of philanthropy and move them into not intermediaries, move them into directly impacted movement infrastructure organizations who are actively doing the work and actively partnered with communities in an intentional way.

    Host

    It's about giving back these stolen resources and the agency to allocate them.

    Nick

    The highest impact and most radical way that philanthropy can ever show up to solve problems is to invest into the self-determination of indigenous people who have been directly impacted by settler colonialism and by the current economic conditions and the current, so-called democracy that we live under.

    Host

    Can you explain to us what you mean when you say indigenous self-determination?

    Nick

    When we say community self-determination grant, we're talking about trust-based philanthropy. We're talking about trusting in the fact that the people that we are investing into are going to be in their community for generations and that they're in the best position to be resourced to solve the problems that they are directly being impacted by.

    Host

    Trust requires us to let go of control, even from a system or program that we're charged with overseeing.

    Nick

    One of the biggest farces that exist out there that comes from philanthropy and it comes from white supremacy, is that somehow us as indigenous folks, as black folks, don't have the capability to pull off maneuvering and managing resources. Yet as indigenous people, we're some of the most regulated people in the world.

    Host

    How can our listeners, many of whom work in philanthropy, leverage their power towards promoting indigenous self-determination?

    Nick

    If you're a philanthropist that cares about "racial justice," yet you don't want to invest in directly to the impacted people. It questions whether you're about change or whether you're about charity, because there's a difference between change and charity. Change is about solving problems and investing directly into impacted people. And charity, quite frankly, is about your feelings. Charity is about how you feel about your giving, and the reality is we need to build a stronger analysis.

    Host

    This ideology is both radical and ancient. Where do you look for inspiration to guide this powerful movement?

    Nick

    Indigenous ecological knowledge and indigenous languages comes from our being in nature. It comes from watching what happens in nature, and we use that to inform our decisions, to not take more from the earth than we need, to not engage in extraction, but to engage in regeneration.

    Host

    See, this resonates with me so much deeper than the more, faster, better mentality that we get from capitalistic philanthropy.

    Nick

    You see it in every indigenous language in the world. There's a phrase or a saying that says that we are all related, all systems, all people, all living things. I'm Lakota. In Lakota, we say Mitákuye Oyás'iŋ, which means that we are all related. It's not just a saying, it's not just a tagline. It's a way of making decisions from that place.

    Host

    [ ‘ping’ sound effect ] We are all related.

    Nick

    If we make decisions from the place that we are all relatives and all systems are related, then we'll make decisions that directly impact the well-being of Mother Earth in weighing them equally with the ability to house and feed our people, the ability to meet the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

    Host

    Mother Earth is indeed the most generous giver that I know. It sounds like we have many lessons to learn from her in the way of giving radically.

    Nick

    I've sat in ceremonies with indigenous people from all over North America and have been able to back it up with resources and resources that don't have strings attached. And this is the key. This is the radical giving part that I see happen is that when people receive resources from other indigenous people and there's no strings attached, their first reaction is, really? Because they have not had that experience before. And imagination begins to unlock and opportunity begins to unlock. And there's some magic that happens there in those moments.

    Host

    And so how do you think we can all experience that magic a little more?

    Nick

    I challenge philanthropy. I share that call to action with them because the reality is these problems are solvable. But is philanthropy going to step up and actually do something courageous and do something radical like giving moving assets, land, money, resources directly into indigenous, black and directly impacted folks? Or are you going to continue to gatekeep the resources that came from our demise? And so your act of doing that is actually an act of justice. And so I share that call to action to the field of philanthropy.

    [ music transition ]

Resources

Resource & Prompt Round-up
[ Funder / Funded ]

segment 6

wrap

narrated by your host,
Tom T. Young

begins at 29:41

  • Host

    We covered a lot of ground today, folks. Everybody's still keeping up? We heard from Michele who helped us decolonize philanthropy. We heard from Vu who broke down the power dynamics within giving. We heard from Aaron who calls out philanthropic organizations for making poor choices. And finally, we heard from Nick who reminds us that we are all related and to unearth the extractive roots of our wealth and privilege.

  • Host

    I hope you take their gifts with you today. You are not alone in your radical pursuits, and I hope you find community at GIA or in other spaces to support you in making necessary changes to your actions within philanthropy. Check out the GIA Reader website for resources and more information about this episode's guests. In our next episode, we'll unpack all the beautiful ways in which radical community-driven giving is making waves in our current geopolitical landscape.

    I want to take a moment to thank all of our guests for their contributions, to GIA for hosting and producing this miniseries, to Flannel & Blade for your ongoing support, and to Nadia Alokta for your friendship, guidance, wisdom, and wealth of knowledge. And thank you for listening.

    This has been For the Love of Radical Giving.

    Give often, give lovingly, give radically.

    [ music playout  ]

Next Episode…

EP02
The Joy of Collective Giving
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Resource & Prompt Round-up
[ Funder / Funded ]

Check Out the Episode 01

Listening Guide

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Resource & Prompt Round-up
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Select one that best suits you today.

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For Folks Currently Relying on Philanthropic Support
Movement Leaders, Cultural Producers, Teaching Artists

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