Resourcing Trust-Based Philanthropy

A year ago, Woods Fund Chicago launched our strategic plan — a map to guide us in becoming a more aligned, accountable, and bolder foundation. This stimulating process invited us to interrogate every aspect of the organization. A key objective was to embed the framework of Trust-Based Philanthropy (TBP) into all aspects of our work — our infrastructure, management, governing structure, and grantmaking. Often TBP is utilized as only a grantmaking framework, and yet, its principles challenge us to do so much more. At Woods Fund Chicago, we have been using the TBP framework to assess how trust manifests in multiple areas of our work and what changes we need to make to cultivate trust in our relationships. Questioning our work in this way has also allowed us to examine our grantmaking processes, staffing structure, and the Foundation’s corpus.

Organizational leaders initiating change must not only commit to making the change, but resourcing the change, even when it involves risk and discomfort. Six months into implementing TBP, we realized that we needed to recalibrate our expectations of each other and shift some of the ways we were working as a team. This led us to making several changes. We invested in a new grants management portal that aligns more with TBP and our relationship-building with prospective and current grantee partners.

We decided to re-envision the Program Officer role at Woods Fund Chicago and wanted to take on the brunt of the grantmaking process, instead of delegating it to grantee partners and applicants. This has meant that Program Officers are responsible for more aspects of the grantmaking process than in the past. We also wanted Program Officers to have a deeper engagement with grantee partners and their work. This illuminated that actualizing our vision also required the Foundation to increase staffing capacity, so we recently expanded the program team from two to three Program Officers. This has made the size of Program Officers’ portfolios more manageable.

We also determined that resourcing TBP meant examining the utilization of the Foundation's corpus. Like many foundations, years ago Woods Fund Chicago decided it would exist in perpetuity and not pay out above 6%. We strongly believe, however, that for the Foundation to truly advance our mission and stand in the values of TBP, we could no longer adhere to a 6% payout and to being constrained by the false perception of perpetuity. As a result, Woods Fund Chicago did the following: 1) increased the Foundation’s payout to 11% starting in 2023, 2) invested in the Foundation’s infrastructure, so we could be better practitioners of TBP, 3) expanded the Foundation’s staff and strengthened professional development supports, and 4) enhanced supports for grantee partners beyond grantmaking. We’ll also be implementing a multiyear funding structure in the coming year that will support grantee partners’ organizational resiliency and visioning.

Although these decisions were made last year, the work of implementing, assessing, learning, and adapting is ongoing. 

At Woods Fund Chicago, we’re continuously learning that practicing Trust-Based Philanthropy requires foundation leaders and their teams to fully examine their organizations and embed this transformative framework throughout their work. As foundation leaders, we must have the curiosity to examine, the will to change, and the courage to act to bring our organizations’ social justice missions to life. Our grantee partners and the communities they serve deserve nothing less.