Keep the
Gift Moving
F U N D I N G
A mixtape about risk, repair, and the courage to redistribute.
You’re managing stolen wealth inside a system that was never meant to change.
These episodes name the contradiction, and push you toward choices that align your giving with your values, not your comfort.
unrestricted funding, reckoning, gatekeeping, red tape, narrative change, risk + repair, internal shifts
To Sit With While You Listen
There’s no such thing
as neutral giving.
Listen with your values turned all the way up. These questions are here to help you notice where the harm still lives—and where you might be ready to move differently.
1. Trace the Source.
Where did your institution’s wealth come from? What has it funded (intentionally or not) while sitting in your investment account? What changes if you answer that without softening, out loud, and in public?
2. Name the Gatekeeping.
Where does your process replicate the very systems you say you’re trying to disrupt? Whose time are you wasting? Whose wisdom are you doubting? Who built the hoops, and who are they keeping out?
3. Own Your Position.
Which of your values actually show up in your work? It’s not just the check. It’s your access. Your platform. Your appetite for risk. Rather than a bank, how are you a builder?
Track List
A curated playlist of episodes that call you to move money with more purpose. Scroll for more.
Know the Reality
Turn Out Your Pockets
Deepening Your Impact
In order to understand how we can make the biggest impact with our time and resources, we must first understand how American Philanthropy came about, and how its early principles are still ringing throughout our field today. From here, we decolonize our own complicit roles in the system.
Know the
Reality
EP01 | Decolonize Philanthropy
“I think that deep down, a lot of progressive leaning funders still don't really want the system to change
because it provides it 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.”
- Vu Le, NonprofitAF.com
Artists and culture workers are critical now more than ever to help sway public opinion and move electoral and policy wins in the favor of those currently under the thumb of oppression. And yet, we couch their gifts in overreporting and long applications, we put strings on how they can use funds, and gatekeep critical and stolen resources.
Turn Out
Your Pockets
EP03 | No More Starving Artists!
“I think a lot of people are worried, well, then
Who am I if I'm not in control of this thing, what am I and what's my value?
Now, the irony is that co-design, facilitation, relationships are remarkably time consuming. You could very easily make the case for yourself as a facilitator of process, as somebody who is well worth getting paid by your foundation government agency, etc.”
- Eddie Torres, Grantmakers in the Arts
The call for change goes beyond applications and reporting. We must understand the role we play in this larger system designed for billionaires, and do our part in eliminating harm that consistently bombards those that we are purporting to support.
Deepening
Your Impact
EP04 | Systems Change Right Now
“If foundations aren't concerned with one, perpetuity and two, being so huge what else might be possible because
You're actually investing in the ongoing harm that you're seeking to address with your grants.
It's so complicated, but it's so necessary that we we look at this and move with intention.”
- Lorraine Ramirez, Funders for Justice
