Six Ways to Shift Your Philanthropic Mindset

In a session from the 2023 Journalism Funders Gathering, Crystal Hayling, former executive director of the Libra Foundation, shares six ways to shift your philanthropic mindset to meet the past and be an active force in bending history’s arc toward justice.

Extraction to Regeneration

•  Society’s fixation on metrics, such as GDP, reinforces the myth that eternal growth is possible or even desirable.
• Abundance is possible only when greed is limited and investments renew communities and the planet.

Individualistic to Interconnectedness

• Traditional philanthropy, driven by donor intent, further distances donors from the communities they seek to serve.
• Trust-based philanthropy offers a different path by prioritizing equity and fairness through long-term relationships, shared problem-solving and transparent communication.
• New models of philanthropy, such as the Democracy Frontlines Fund, offer a different approach that emphasizes mutuality,  learning, connection and empathy.

Objective to Experienced

•  Objectivity assumes that all things are equal, while experience centers history, context, and values.
• Centering the people most impacted by an issue expands our understanding and leads to better solutions.

Mechanistic to Organic

• Philanthropy often treats social change like an assembly line: mechanical, efficient, and linear. But solutions to complex and social problems can’t be streamlined.
•  Funding community change is more like tending a garden than it is like designing an assembly line.  It requires diversity, patience, care and consistency. Not every plant will thrive, but that doesn’t mean it’s a failure.

Dominion to Reciprocity

• Philanthropy is a two-way street. Donors give, but they also receive.  Habits of oppression encourage donors to see themselves as givers and others as takers, but receiving a gift does not make the recipient less than the gift giver.  Giving isn’t a conquest, it is a relationship of mutuality and equals.

Hate to Love

• In a world defined by fear, love is the practice of understanding one another. It asks us to tell the truth even when it is uncomfortable. Real bridge-building requires honesty.
•  We can learn from communities that continue to persist and prioritize love after profound harm.

Source: Crystal Hayling