What does it take to shift power in philanthropy?

In May 2023, Firelight’s Director of Learning and Evaluation, Dr. Sadaf Shallwani, joined a series of donors at Catalyzing Change 2023 for a panel discussion on power imbalances in education funding around the world, why they matters to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and what funders can do differently.

The panel was moderated by Atti Worku of the Africa Visionary Fund and included Muza Gondwe from the BHP Foundation, Gail Campbell from the Zenex Foundation, Raman Sidhu from the Octava Foundation and Stephen C. Opuni from the IDP Foundation.

The following is an extract from Dr. Shallwani’s remarks during the 90-minute session. Her remarks were made in the context of education funding but they are equally applicable to any sector of grantmaking or philanthropy.

What does shifting power mean for Firelight?

For Firelight, shifting power takes place both internally and externally - within our own organization and in our interactions with grantees, with other donors and with other stakeholders.

At Firelight, shifting power necessarily involves thinking and doing differently across agenda setting, decision-making, knowledge generation, and voice and representation. To put it simply, when we think about shifting power, we think about -

  • Power over wealth and resources

  • Power over data and knowledge

  • Power over narrative and imagery

  • Power over framing, conceptualization, interpretation, analysis, and decision-making

Can you give us some examples of how Firelight actually shifts power?

First, our initiatives and funding focus on issues, priorities, and actions that are set by communities, not by donors, by outsiders or even by Firelight. When Firelight begins to think about grantmaking, we first establish partnerships with communities themselves who nominate community-based organizations that are grounded in and recognized by their communities as doing important work. Then we supporting those CBOs to work hand-in-hand with their communities – including children and youth - to identify and analyze the key issues facing them. Only after that process of learning and planning is complete do CBOs actually submit a join proposal for funding with their community, built around the community’s agenda.

The second example is how we go about learning and evaluation. In traditional development philanthropy, funders commission an external evaluation to see whether and to what extent a project or program is meeting their objectives and targets. At Firelight, we flip this dynamic by having the community determine what success looks like, having them work with the CBO grantee-partner to identify what indicators of success and indicators of progress might look like, and then having the CBO grantee-partner and other community members conduct the evaluation. The main goal is not to monitor, judge, or assess the worthiness of the CBO or the community’s programs from an external funder’s perspective – the goal is for CBOs and communities to have the knowledge and data that they need in order to assess whether their actions are making a difference, and where they might need to course correct.

Do you have any practical suggestions for how to start shifting power?

First, we need to redefine success, impact, sustainability, and effectiveness. As donors, we really need to place more value on -

  • Deep and lasting change in systems and root causes;

  • Empowered communities, community-driven action;

  • Meaningful improvement in community members’ lives, and reaching more people in need;

  • Sustainability of impact; and

  • The communities’ and local civil society’s own definitions of impact, change and success.

Second, we need to place less value on –

  • Traditional definitions of reach or scale

  • Cost per beneficiary, cost-effectiveness

  • Pre-determined program adherence or Global North indicators of quality

Third, we need to reconceptualize the role of grassroots civil society organizations. When we step outside the traditional paradigm of “program or project” success, we can see a more powerful form of success - deep and lasting systemic change at the grassroots level. Grassroots organizations are critical to systemic change because they -

  • See their own effectiveness not as a project or a program or a service, but as the capacity to build and use relationships with local stakeholders towards systemic change;

  • Are holders and sharers of knowledge, experience, and expertise; and

  • Are strategic activists and practitioners – that are important for both local and global discussions and decisions.

Finally, we need to deconstruct and reconstruct funder-grantee relationships. Community and local leaders, activists, practitioners need to be present in development discussions and decision-making – both in our internal organizational processes and in broader sectoral discussions. We also need to use solidarity and justice approaches (rather than charity based, top-down approaches). Funders can more effectively support community-based grantees by establishing and nurturing relationships, systems, and processes that are –

  • Respectful;

  • Trust-based;

  • Less restricted;

  • Long-term and relational; and

  • Mutually accountable.

What final advice would you give other donors?

Power sharing along with mutual respect, agency and learning can support the solidarity that is needed in philanthropy for long-term transformative systems change.

It’s a journey and I want to encourage each of us to start by making small shifts – in how you think about things, how you listen, how you talk, how you engage. Over time, these small changes build up and move you into transformation.

Firelight