Participatory Grantmaking Principles, Potential, and More

According to the report “Walking the Talk in Participatory Philanthropy,” there’s been a recent push for engaging communities in funding decisions. This demand challenges the existing power imbalance between those who give (funders) and the communities that are impacted.

Inclusion has been a recurring theme in philanthropy, but participatory grantmaking has recently emerged as a bridge between philanthropic decision-makers and the people they seek to benefit. But what is participatory grantmaking, and how can it be practically implemented to bridge that gap?

In this guide, we’ll answer these questions and more, covering the following topics:

• What Is Participatory Grantmaking?
• Top Research Publications and Resources on Participatory Grantmaking
• The Case for Participatory Philanthropy
• How Does Participatory Grantmaking Work?
• Challenges and Barriers to Adoption
• How to Measure Success in Participatory Philanthropy
• How to Enable Participation With Digital Tools
• 3 Participatory Grantmaking Examples

Participatory grantmaking requires participation from not just communities, but all parties in the philanthropic process—including grantmakers and nonprofits. 

What Is Participatory Grantmaking?

Participatory grantmaking is an approach to philanthropy in which funders integrate community input into funding decisions, shifting decision-making authority to those most affected by philanthropic decisions.

The fundamental ideology behind participatory grantmaking is this: Funders (or impact investors) generally lack diversity, as found in a report by The Council on Foundations. Without the ability to resonate with the community’s lived experiences, funders struggle to develop thoughtful and effective solutions to the community’s problems.

Rather than simply consulting community members, participatory grantmaking allows communities to decide who and what to fund, driving outcomes that are more directly aligned with their populations’ needs.

Top Research Publications and Resources on Participatory Grantmaking

Participatory grantmaking is an evolving trend in philanthropy that necessitates ongoing experimentation, informed by insights and best practices from thought leaders in the industry. Our article draws upon concepts from some of the leading theoretical resources, but we’ve also consolidated a list of useful resources if you’re interested in learning more:

• Cynthesis Consulting Publications: A collection of publications by Cynthia Gibson reviewing the need for a participatory approach to philanthropy and its potential applications in grantmaking.
• Participatory Grantmaking: Building the Evidence: An overview of how participatory grantmaking works, its benefits, and challenges to implementing it.
• Fund 101: What Is Participatory Grantmaking?: Firsthand insights from John Kabia, the Children’s and Youth Rights Program Director, who has successfully implemented a participatory initiative in his own work.
• Deciding Together: Shifting Power & Resources Through Participatory Grantmaking: A report by Cynthia Gibson exploring lessons learned and insiders’ tips from numerous grantmakers practicing a participatory approach.
• Participatory Grantmaking: Has Its Time Come?: A paper commissioned by The Ford Foundation that provides a comprehensive overview of enabling participation in philanthropy and proposes a framework to help grantmakers get started.
• Fund for Shared Insight’s Participatory Philanthropy Toolkit: Conversation starters, practical tips, sample templates, and other tools to help grantmakers start implementing participatory approaches.
• Four Imperatives for Centering Communities in Philanthropy: A report detailing strategic guidance for funders looking to implement participatory practices in their grantmaking processes.
• The Participatory Grantmaking Community: A global collective of more than 2,000 members working to practice participatory grantmaking

In addition to the above educational resources, measurement and reporting tools are critical to tracking the impact of your participatory grantmaking efforts. We’ll cover the ways that these tools can support participatory grantmaking in more detail later, and you can also reach out to the UpMetrics team when you’re ready to try it out for yourself.

The Case for Participatory Philanthropy

The need for collaboration is clear, but why is participatory philanthropy the solution? These approaches drive benefits across the nonprofit sector:

For communities: 

• Greater voice and influence. Most notably, participatory grantmaking gives communities direct input into decisions that affect them.
• Empowerment in community issues. These processes promote civic engagement, which yields further opportunities for local leadership.

For grantmakers: 

• Improved funding outcomes. Community-informed decisions lead to more effective grantmaking, meaning funders can address the issues that matter most.
• Stronger alignment with community priorities. When communities set funding priorities, grantmakers ensure they’re properly allocating resources.

Keep in mind that nonprofits, as the impact producers within these communities, play a vital role in this process. While direct collaboration between grantmakers and communities helps funders appropriately prioritize initiatives, nonprofits are tasked with putting this work into action. Grantmakers must collaborate with both nonprofits and communities to make greater progress in their overall missions.

How Does Participatory Grantmaking Work?

As Medium’s article on participatory grantmaking explains, there are numerous ways to practice this approach. From creating decision-making panels to putting grant recipients at the forefront of fund dispersal, there’s no established process to follow. In other words, funders must take a trial-and-error approach, implementing participatory practices independently to find the framework that best fits their community’s needs.

As a grantmaker, this means considering what steps you can take at each phase of the grant management lifecycle to incorporate more community input. NetSuite defines these phases as pre-award, award, and post-award, and we’ve provided some steps below that can make these processes more participatory:

• Pre-award phase: Before the grant is awarded
• Request community input regarding local needs and funding gaps
• Establish an advisory panel of community members to review applications
• Ask for panel input on eligibility criteria
• Award phase: When making the grant
• Involve a community panel in reviewing applications
• Allocate non-financial resources such as mentorship or capacity-building support
• Allow applicants to respond to any feedback
• Post-award phase: After the grant has been distributed
• Work with grantees and community members to define reporting requirements and success metrics
• Collaboratively review outcomes and impact reports to measure your effectiveness

It’s important to note that the above opportunities also have limitations. We’ll review these drawbacks in more detail shortly, but grantmakers and communities should work together to modify these processes based on their needs and goals.

Challenges and Barriers to Adoption

Despite its promises, participatory grantmaking faces a few challenges. However, the benefits of this model far outweigh its drawbacks, and several opportunities exist to address these challenges to establish a more sustainable approach.

Barriers that may exist include:

• Challenge: The participatory grantmaking process’s time and resource intensity may deter grantmakers from engaging.
  • Solution: Streamline impact measurement processes with tools and pre-established frameworks to reduce the time and resource commitment for grantmakers. For example, funders can leverage an impact framework to track their progress and easily review data with consensus panels.
• Challenge: Communities can become disinterested in participating if their suggestions aren’t taken seriously.
  • Solution: Grantmakers can build trust and motivation by providing transparent feedback that clearly communicates how the panel’s input shaped decisions. Additionally, impact reporting systems that incorporate community-defined success indicators draw a direct connection between decision-making and results aligned with local priorities.
• Challenge: Potential conflicts of interest and competition for funding may interrupt the effort’s cohesiveness.
  • Solution: Grantmakers and communities should work together to develop clear governance structures and conflict-of-interest policies that promote fairness. A collaborative effort from grantmakers, the community, and impact producers will yield an aligned effort toward a shared vision.

While the lack of a standardized approach to participatory grantmaking contributes to its perceived drawbacks, this process ultimately allows funders to support communities and grantees in ways that extend well beyond the immediate grant cycle. A long-term, structured approach shifts the power back to communities and the nonprofits that serve them, giving them greater control, resilience, and the ability to pursue their missions sustainably.

How to Measure Success in Participatory Philanthropy

Unlike traditional philanthropy, where outcomes are often tied solely to programmatic results, participatory grantmaking generates additional value through community engagement, power-sharing, and capacity development. As such, grantmakers must apply a broader, more inclusive lens when measuring their impact.

To measure success, analyze performance from start to finish by asking yourself the following questions:

• How many people from the community were engaged in the decision-making process? 
• How diverse was their representation? 
• How often did they contribute throughout the grant cycle?
• Did participants feel heard, respected, and meaningfully involved? 
• What changes or initiatives resulted from the participatory process?
• How did the experience impact participants? For example, did participants feel they acquired leadership skills?
• What changes did the community experience as a result of these efforts? 
• How was the broader philanthropic or nonprofit ecosystem influenced? 

Ultimately, continuous development is at the heart of participatory grantmaking. No two organizations will measure success the same way, and your organization may change its definition of success over time. 

What’s most important is remaining adaptable to your community’s needs and implementing the right tools to align your grantmaking processes accordingly. Along with impact reporting tools and frameworks, collaboration with impact producers is critical to driving meaningful change.

How to Enable Participation With Digital Tools

Openness and flexibility are the building blocks of effective collaboration, and technology can carry much of that load to make participatory grantmaking processes more efficient. When it comes to impact reporting, pre-established frameworks and digital tools can:

• Surface critical metrics: Define what success looks like in the community’s eyes, and track your progress toward those goals.
• Streamline data collection and analysis: Monitor metrics that constitute success in both your process and the outcomes of any grants awarded.
• Organize data into easily-readable dashboards: Make data easily digestible (and shareable) with intuitive dashboards.

As with every aspect of your participatory approach, gather feedback from community members actively involved in your grantmaking processes. If you haven’t already implemented software, ask for community input on whether such a solution would be beneficial. Once you adopt a platform, gather continuous feedback on whether or not it’s useful!

3 Real-World Examples of Participatory Grantmaking

Make It Your Own (MIYO) by the Case Foundation

The Case Foundation’s Make It Your Own (MIYO) grant program is heralded as one of the first attempts at national participatory grantmaking. The program encouraged individuals from around the country to set grant guidelines, review proposals, and vote on which proposals should receive funding. Out of 4,641 total applications, 20 grant winners were selected through a voting process led by civic engagement leaders and the general public. 

Winners received:

• Access to technology that enabled project idea sharing and online fundraising
• $100 toward launching an online fundraising campaign
• A $10,000 grant to fund the project idea
• The opportunity to meet and collaborate with other finalists

According to the report, 80% of MIYO grantees were still highly engaged with their projects two years after the grants were awarded. Their projects achieved several markers of citizen-centered work, including better collaborations with community partners and a focus on longer-term cultural change.

Building Local Alignment (BLA) by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF)

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s (RWJF’s) Building Local Alignment (BLA) initiative was designed to advance racial and health equity by empowering community members to act as equal partners in systems-level change. After a two-year process of recruiting Grant Advisory Committee (GAC) members and reviewing request for information (RFI) responses, the committee chose three grantees to start work on designing their own participatory grantmaking processes.

After grantees were chosen, GAC members reflected on the process and concluded that effective participatory grantmaking must account for a few key considerations:

• Build ample time into the process. Gathering community members from diverse backgrounds and perspectives means accommodating the time needed for members to get acquainted, develop their processes, and address any issues.
• Invest in the infrastructure to support a successful process. Assistance from foundation staff, experts, and consultants equips community members to make informed decisions without removing their decision-making power.
• Create clear expectations for participant engagement. The way committee members participate greatly impacts which voices and lived experiences you amplify during the grantmaking process. Setting standards to maximize engagement from as many participants as possible ensures fair representation.

In the end, the BLA initiative revealed a pressing need for flexibility in participatory grantmaking approaches. As RWJF’s case study on the initiative points out, “participatory grantmaking is a multifaceted, iterative, nuanced process…every group will tackle it in different ways with different results.”

The Indigenous Tomorrows Fund (ITF) by Native Americans in Philanthropy (NAP)

Native Americans in Philanthropy (NAP) has a long history of participatory grantmaking efforts, but its new model, The Indigenous Tomorrows Fund (ITF), places special emphasis on engaging young decision-makers. By transferring decision-making authority to young leaders (ages 14-24), the ITF initiative aims to support projects that strengthen community well-being and cultural continuity from the perspectives of those who understand their communities’ nuanced needs the most.

The ITF will:

• Launch a diverse advisory committee
• Provide participatory grantmaking training to youth grant reviewers and decision-makers
• Award 24 grants of $30,000 to nonprofit organizations, schools, and Tribes
• Develop an evaluation framework and document learnings
• Expand over the course of the next five years to continue funding solutions

NAP’s approach does more than enable community members to make decisions—it equips them to do so through committee training, flexible outcome measurement, and a long-term, cyclical plan.

Wrapping Up

Participatory grantmaking offers a clear path toward more equitable and impactful giving. By inviting those most affected by funding decisions to share power and shape outcomes, grantmakers unlock both deeper trust and longer-lasting change.

This powerful approach to listening, learning from, and leading alongside the communities at the heart of philanthropic work presents an urgent opportunity to pursue collaborative grantmaking approaches. When nonprofits and grantmakers commit to learning from each other and from the communities they serve, they’ll rebalance the equation of power in service of the greater good.

Want to keep learning about community-centered impact? Check out these additional resources:

• How to Measure Social Impact Like a Pro: A Full Guide
• Social Return on Investment (SROI): Measure the Intangible
• Trust-Based Philanthropy: A Guide for Impact-Minded Orgs