Listening to a community does not necessarily mean sharing decisions with it. Participatory philanthropy begins where consultation alone stops: when people affected by an issue gain meaningful influence over priorities, criteria, funding decisions, or governance.
Executive summary
Participation can range from systematic community listening to transferring direct authority over funding. Those levels should not be treated as interchangeable.
Grantmakers for Effective Organizations reported in its 2025 national study that 42% of the 765 participating grantmakers said they engaged in participatory grantmaking. That indicates meaningful adoption in the United States, but recent evaluation research also warns that the field still lacks enough evidence to determine the quality and community impact of every model being used.
Recent data also reveal a perception gap around community understanding. In Center for Effective Philanthropy research, 71% of foundation leaders said their funding priorities were very well aligned with community needs. Among surveyed nonprofits, however, only 24% said most or all of their foundation funders had priorities reflecting a deep understanding of community needs. These were not matched funder-grantee pairs, so the figures should not be interpreted as a direct contradiction, but the difference is still instructive.
The key question is therefore not simply whether a foundation listens. It is what the community is allowed to decide after being heard.
What is participatory philanthropy?
Participatory philanthropy is a continuum of practices through which people affected by philanthropic decisions take part in those decisions with varying degrees of influence or authority.
Participatory grantmaking is the more specific concept. At its strongest, it transfers authority over funding decisions, including elements such as priorities, strategy, criteria, or grant selection, to the communities a funder aims to support. Candid describes the broader practice as a continuum, while the Participatory Grantmaking Community explicitly focuses on shifting grantmaking decision-making power.
A philanthropic process becomes meaningfully participatory when community members are more than information providers. The funder should make clear what they can influence or decide, how participants are selected, how their work is supported, how conflicts are handled, and what happens after a decision is made.
Five key ideas
- Participation exists on a spectrum rather than as a yes-or-no label.
- Meaningful participation requires resources, time, accessibility, and often compensation.
- A small committee should not automatically be treated as representative of an entire community.
- Evaluation should examine decisions and outcomes, not only whether participants enjoyed the process.
- Executive summary
- What is participatory philanthropy?
- The question that exposes the real model: who still has the right to say no?
- The power spectrum: from being heard to making the decision
- U.S. philanthropy is adopting the model, but adoption is not proof of impact
- Participatory philanthropy is not the same as trust-based philanthropy
- Four decisions funders should make before recruiting participants
- 1. Define what is genuinely open for decision
- 2. Select participants without confusing visibility with representation
- 3. Budget participation as real work
- 4. Design conflict-of-interest rules before conflicts arise
- The Empty Chair Test: ten signs that participation is real
- Three ways participation becomes symbolic
- Asking people to decide after leaders have already made the important decisions
- Extracting expertise without resourcing it
- Treating satisfaction as evidence of impact
- How to evaluate participation without romanticizing it
- Frequently asked questions
- Philanthropic power can be designed too
The question that exposes the real model: who still has the right to say no?
Many philanthropic programs describe themselves as community-centered because they conduct surveys, interviews, or listening sessions. Those practices can improve decision making, but they do not automatically make a process participatory.
CEP’s Voices That Matter research found that 92% of surveyed foundation leaders considered the expertise of funded nonprofits useful for shaping their work, while 89% valued information about needs provided directly by the people their foundations aim to benefit. Listening clearly matters. Yet gathering useful information remains different from transferring authority.
That distinction shapes the framework proposed for Roberto Isaias. Instead of asking only, “Was the community involved?” a stronger question is: What decision could have changed if community participants had chosen differently?
If the answer is “none,” the process may have included consultation without a meaningful redistribution of decision-making power.
The power spectrum: from being heard to making the decision
| Level | Community role | Who retains final authority? | Main risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Listening | Shares needs and lived experience | Funder | Calling consultation shared governance |
| Co-design | Helps develop priorities or criteria | Usually shared or funder-led | Hiding which decisions were already fixed |
| Recommendation | Reviews proposals and recommends grants | Board or funder | Extracting expertise without sufficient authority |
| Participatory decision | Selects grants or allocations | Community within an agreed mandate | Limiting participation to a symbolic pool |
| Shared governance | Participates in strategy, review, or governance | Authority is distributed | Changing membership without changing institutional rules |
This is not intended as a universal taxonomy. Its purpose is to force clarity around what authority has actually moved.
U.S. philanthropy is adopting the model, but adoption is not proof of impact
GEO’s 2025 National Study of Philanthropic Practice collected responses from 765 U.S. grantmakers and found that 42% engaged in participatory grantmaking during the study period. GEO also notes that 35% of respondents belonged to the organization, so the figure offers a broad snapshot of the sector rather than a census of every American foundation.
A recent U.S. example shows what deeper participation can look like. In August 2026, the Council on Foundations documented a Chicago Community Trust initiative in which 20 Chicago residents helped make decisions involving $1.6 million and contributed to the design of elements such as the request for proposals and scoring framework.
However, adoption does not prove effectiveness.
In March 2026, ORS Impact and Fund for Shared Insight noted that many evaluations focus on process design, committee composition, and participant satisfaction. Researchers still know less about broader institutional and community outcomes. Their framework calls for more systematic evidence before the sector assumes that participatory approaches automatically achieve their transformative goals.
The strongest case for participatory philanthropy is not that it always produces better outcomes. Rather, it gives community knowledge and judgment a formal role in philanthropic decision-making.
Participatory philanthropy is not the same as trust-based philanthropy
The two approaches overlap substantially because both pay attention to power, relationships, and community knowledge. They operate differently, however.
Trust-based philanthropy focuses heavily on how funders relate to nonprofit partners. The Trust-Based Philanthropy Project identifies practices such as multiyear unrestricted funding, streamlined applications and reporting, transparency, feedback, and support beyond the grant itself.
A participatory model asks a different question: who gets to make the decision?
A foundation could provide flexible multiyear funding, eliminate burdensome reporting, and develop excellent relationships with nonprofit partners while still retaining exclusive authority over every grant selection. That would reflect trust-based practices without necessarily constituting participatory grantmaking.
Conversely, a community panel may select a portfolio of grants even though other elements of the foundation’s operations remain highly bureaucratic.
The approaches can reinforce one another, but they should not be collapsed into a single concept. The Trust-Based Philanthropy Project itself recognizes their shared attention to power while treating them as distinct frameworks.
Four decisions funders should make before recruiting participants
A weak process recruits community members first and decides their authority later. A stronger one reverses that order.
1. Define what is genuinely open for decision
Funders should state exactly what participants may change.
Will they select organizations? Design criteria? Set priorities? Allocate only a designated fund? Can a board reverse their decisions?
There is nothing inherently deceptive about limited delegation. The problem arises when participants discover those limits only after investing significant time.
2. Select participants without confusing visibility with representation
The most visible community leaders are not necessarily the only people with relevant knowledge.
Selection may consider lived experience, geographic knowledge, community relationships, professional expertise, age, accessibility, and exposure to the issue being funded.
No small panel can perfectly represent an entire population. Responsible design acknowledges that limitation instead of claiming universal representation.
3. Budget participation as real work
Reviewing proposals, sharing lived expertise, attending meetings, and making funding decisions require time.
Listen to Community recommends building participant compensation into the operating budget rather than treating it as an optional extra. Its toolkit also addresses administrative burden, accessibility, and different ways of supporting participants.
Within the framework developed for Roberto Isaias, the principle is practical: a philanthropic institution that pays lawyers, consultants, and evaluators for specialized knowledge should have a clear reason if it expects community expertise to be provided for free.
4. Design conflict-of-interest rules before conflicts arise
Community networks are interconnected. Participants may know applicants, have previously worked with them, or share relationships with organizations operating in the same field.
Excluding anyone with connections could remove precisely the people who understand the ecosystem best.
The answer is not to ignore conflicts. It is to define disclosure, recusal, and decision rules before applications are reviewed. Current participatory philanthropy resources address this challenge directly.
The Empty Chair Test: ten signs that participation is real
This article’s exclusive framework for Roberto Isaias asks ten questions before a funder describes a program as participatory:
- Can the community change at least one material decision?
- Were criteria established before knowing which applicants would benefit?
- Can the funder explain who was included and who was not?
- Do participants receive enough information and preparation to make informed decisions?
- Are compensation and accessibility costs part of the budget?
- Are conflict-of-interest rules known in advance?
- Can the funder explain when it may override or intervene in a community decision?
- Does the organization close the loop by explaining what happened afterward?
- Does evaluation examine the decisions and outcomes, not only participant satisfaction?
The purpose is not to create a score. It is to make the distribution of authority visible.
Three ways participation becomes symbolic
Asking people to decide after leaders have already made the important decisions
What happens: funders set budgets, priorities, eligibility rules, and strategic assumptions before community members join the process.
How to recognize it: participants can only rank options preselected by the funder.
Better approach: involve people earlier or describe the process accurately as consultation.
Extracting expertise without resourcing it
What happens: residents and nonprofits spend hours in interviews, meetings, or review panels without adequate support.
How to recognize it: organizations with the least capacity absorb the greatest cost of participation.
Better approach: include compensation, preparation, accessibility, and administrative support in the design.
CEP found that 56% of surveyed nonprofits said none of their funders provided financial or nonfinancial assistance for feedback collection, despite foundations’ heavy reliance on information from nonprofit partners.
Treating satisfaction as evidence of impact
What happens: an evaluation declares success because participants felt respected or heard.
How to recognize it: there is no evidence about changed decisions, institutional behavior, funding patterns, or community outcomes.
Better approach: separate process quality from program and community effects.
How to evaluate participation without romanticizing it
ORS Impact’s 2026 evaluation framework proposes examining three audiences: participants, the funding institution and its staff, and the broader community. It also separates process, results, and wider effects.
For participants, questions might include whether their authority was understandable, whether the process was accessible, and whether their expertise changed decisions.
Funders, evaluation can examine whether criteria, relationships, grantmaking procedures, or institutional assumptions changed.
For communities, the questions become harder: did the funding reach different organizations, did communities shift their priorities, and did the process create intended or unintended effects?
Evaluating participatory philanthropy this way avoids two simplistic conclusions: dismissing it because it is more complicated than traditional grantmaking, or assuming it must be superior merely because more voices are present.
Frequently asked questions
Philanthropic power can be designed too
Money determines how much can be funded. Governance determines who gets to decide what deserves funding.
The growing use of participatory grantmaking in the United States shows that this second question is becoming more important. Research also cautions against easy conclusions: participation, quality, and impact are not interchangeable concepts.
For Roberto Isaias, the useful standard is transparency about authority. A mature initiative does not need to claim that every power imbalance has disappeared. It needs to show what authority was shared, with whom, under which rules, and what the organization learned from the outcome.
Participatory philanthropy becomes substantive when community participation has the power to produce a different decision.
Verified sources
- Grantmakers for Effective Organizations. “2025 National Study of Philanthropic Practice”. 2025. 2025 National Study of Philanthropic Practice
- Center for Effective Philanthropy. “Voices That Matter: How Nonprofits and Foundations Engage With the Communities They Support”. 2025. Voices That Matter — CEP
- Listen to Community. “Participatory Philanthropy Toolkit”. Participatory Philanthropy Toolkit
- Participatory Grantmaking Community. “Participatory Grantmaking Basics”. Participatory Grantmaking Resources
- Candid. “Participatory Philanthropy for Individual Donors”. 2021. Participatory Philanthropy for Individual Donors
- Trust-Based Philanthropy Project. “Participatory Grantmaking and Trust-Based Philanthropy”. Participatory Grantmaking and Trust-Based Philanthropy
- Council on Foundations. “How 20 Chicagoans Came Together to Make $1.6 Million in Grants”. 2026. Chicago participatory grantmaking case
