Welcome back to Grassroots Grantmaking, where Proximate tracks the global movement in philanthropy to shift power to the grassroots.

This month we're launching a new beat: Seeding Power. The beat explores funding dynamics within agroecology – a social movement rooted in Indigenous knowledge that's gaining traction in food and climate philanthropy.

We've partnered with Agroecology Fund to explore how funders can support this work in ways that honor its roots in food sovereignty, land rights, and community self-determination – as a movement, not just a method.

Also in this issue: a conversation with the Philanthropy Project on DAF reform; a profile of European philanthropy's "rebellious teenager"; and an imagined conversation where strategic philanthropy goes to therapy.

Thanks for following, and thanks as always to Magic Cabinet for supporting Proximate from the early days.

With gratitude,

Ben Wrobel

Seeding Power

First up: how can institutional philanthropy fund agroecology, without losing the plot?

Agroecology is something special – a solution to crises of food, climate, and land that wasn’t designed in Geneva or Davos, but instead defined by social movements and shaped by millennia of experience.

Now this solution is getting picked up by the mainstream funders, to the tune of $44 billion a year. But with that attention comes a question: can a movement rooted in justice and tradition survive the machinery of mainstream philanthropy?

We've just launched a new beat, Seeding Power, to explore how agroecology can funded without being filtered. With the support of Agroecology Fund, we will feature a series of reported stories, interviews, and commentary over the next few months.

You can check out the initial batch of Seeding Power stories here; more are coming in September.

Common Ground

Shifting gears – we have a batch of new stories in our Common Ground beat, where we explore the hidden infrastructure of fiscal sponsorship.

Fiscal sponsors have matured into a major part of the social sector, managing tens of thousands of grassroots projects and stewarding billions of philanthropic dollars each year.

We’re continuing to explore this unseen infrastructure with a collection of predictions on the future of the field. The first batch includes perspectives from Seth Kirschenbaum and Tatianna Montanez; Sampriti Gangula; Cindy Gibson and Maria Mottola, Alejandra García Lezama and Frank Gargione; and Greg Colvin.

We’re still accepting pitches throughout the summer. Send your prediction idea to hello@proximate.press.

Unlocking Abundance

Last July, Proximate organized a summit for two dozen foundation staff to discuss DAF reform. I remember at one point, a donor turned to me and asked: Why are there no nonprofit leaders in this room?

Oops – that was an oversight. The fact is, when donors get together to talk about disrupting their sector, nonprofit voices are rarely in the room.

Jan Masaoka and Jon Pratt are trying to change that. Two longtime nonprofit executives, they created the Philanthropy Project to make space for nonprofit practitioners to help shape thoughtful philanthropy reform.

Grace Chai interviewed Masaoka as part of our Unlocking Abundance beat. They chatted about the project's fast growth, an current prospects for policy reform.

Grassroots Giving

The Berlin-based Guerilla Foundation could be thought of as the rebellious teenager of European philanthropy – scrappy, experimental and unfiltered.

But until 2022, its grantmaking was fairly conventional. Anna Patton wrote about Guerilla's shift to a participatory grantmaking and governance model. It’s a messy, but intentional effort to align values with structure.

Our Columnists

We have fresh insights from our columnists, each offering a distinct lens on philanthropy in practice.

Equity Overhaul

Rachel Kimber continues to write what is surely the world’s only column dedicated to the art of grants management. Her latest reflects on this year’s PEAK conference: It’s Time to Rewrite the Job Description.

Deepening Philanthropy

Joana Ribeiro Mortari imagines a conversation between strategic philanthropy and a Jungian psychologist. Read it in Portuguese and English: Filantropia Estratégica no Divã • Strategic Philanthropy Goes to Therapy.

Homegrown Horizons

For our Seeding Power series, Vincent Mwangi reflects that in East Africa, agroecology and participatory funding are "two sides of the same coin": The Land Remembers.

Repairing Development

Since the dramatic USAID announcement in February, Isabelle Clérié has released a series of newsletters, culminating in Poximate gathering more than 80 people in DC last month to discuss community-led development.

Here's what we're reading from around the Internet on this philanthropic moment:

• A new project to democratize philanthropy. If you believe, like I do, that Google Docs are the future of media, then you'll get excited about the Democratizing Philanthropy Initiative. It's a new "research-to-practice network" that's currently defining its vision out loud: they've opened up a draft position paper to freestyle commenting. Get in there before they go back to "View Only" mode!

• Never waste a crisis? A year ago, the Fund for Global Human Rights set out to map how human rights funders are navigating the #ShiftThePower push. The result is the new report The Power Shifting Shuffle. Their conclusion? Funders are most open to sharing power during crisis moments like COVID. You can also read a writeup here.

• Scrub and retreat. After the 2024 election, 1 in 12 major U.S. foundations quietly scrubbed their websites—removing language about equity, diversity, and inclusion. According to a new NCRP review of more than 700 top funders, these “self-censoring” foundations collectively give twice as much to marginalized communities as their peers – making the silence especially concerning.

Thanks for reading!

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