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Jess Feingold, Common Future Chief Strategy Officer
Each year on Giving Tuesday many of us prepare for what is both an exciting yet exhausting time of year. Appeals, asks, campaigns, and more from thousands of organizations sharing their impact and hoping to raise more than the previous year.
But the frenzy around this time of year illustrates the inequity in philanthropy. Specifically, the competition and short-term thinking that encourages a scarcity mindset and places undue burden on organizations that can least participate. More broadly, nearly two years into the pandemic, we are seeing a "return to normal" that shifts focus and responsibility to individuals and small nonprofits to capture dollars and not the institutions that choose to (or not) fund them.
At Common Future, we know there is another way.
We envision a culture in philanthropy that prioritizes justice and not funder recognition or praise. We envision practices in philanthropy that prioritize getting money out the door with no strings attached instead of adhering to an old operating system. We envision stories in philanthropy that uplift the impact of a wide range of grantees and do not position the funder as the hero.
In this newsletter, we discuss what it takes to make these shifts. We're laying the groundwork for Common Future’s next chapter, where we'll push funders to take action towards equity by modeling a new way forward. We're past the time for tinkering and revising. We need to do things differently from the ground up.
We hope you'll share how you, too, are bringing justice into all you do.
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