“Cooking the Rice…” - Trust-based philanthropy

I loved reading this post on the Equality Fund Canada website by one of the amazing feminist minds in philanthropy, Angelika Arutyunova (I know her work well from AWID, where she authored several outstanding reports about the funding of feminist movements). It was thought-provoking not only for grassroots organizations seeking to figure out the intersection of fundraising and resource mobilization (hint: start by shifting from a competition to a collaboration mindset) but also for funders seeking to support systemic change. Organizations need one another to create an ecosystem of change—working on the same issue from different angles and with different emphasis, collaborating on advocacy and reaching different communities with services, for example. But funders need organizations at the grassroots, too, to achieve the social transformation they want to see. This is exactly the “cooking the rice from the bottom and the top” that Abby Disney talked about years ago (a phrase I seem to recall her crediting to a Filipina feminist activist…). How can we move philanthropy to this more collaborative model, to more trust-based practice? I am dreaming of an experiment, with a funder or small group of funders, where we identify a geography-specific project and fund a group of partners working on systemic issues in their community from a range of vantage points… it could be a way to both bring more resources to an underserved community and connect small organizations with new funding, while also giving funders an opportunity for learning, going deeper and exploring a trust-based philanthropy model. Any takers?