Equality Fund’s framework articulates how funders can shift power to movement actors rather than consolidating control through philanthropic resources. Moving beyond charity models where funders determine priorities and measure success, the framework explores how to redistribute decision-making, resources, and legitimacy to communities leading social change. This requires funders to release control, trust movement wisdom, provide flexible long-term support, and use power intentionally to open doors and shift systems rather than directing how movements operate. The work addresses uncomfortable reality that traditional philanthropy concentrates power with wealthy elites while claiming to serve social justice, offering alternative practices that genuinely support movement autonomy and self-determination.
Key Highlights
- **Power as Fundament
al**: The framework centers power analysis in philanthropy, recognizing that resources always come with power dynamics and that claiming neutrality merely obscures how funding concentrates control with donors while extracting accountability from recipients.
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Releasing Control: Equality Fund articulates concrete practices for funders to release control—unrestricted multi-year funding, trusting movement strategy, accepting that success may not align with funder expectations, and recognizing that movements understand their contexts better than distant philanthropists.
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Redistributing Decision-Making: Beyond individual grant decisions, the framework explores how to redistribute power over funding priorities, allocation processes, and success metrics—bringing movement actors into governance roles that shape philanthropic strategy rather than merely receiving predetermined grants.
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Using Funder Power Intentionally: Rather than pretending funders don’t have power, Equality Fund shows how to use philanthropic influence intentionally to shift systems—opening access, amplifying movement voices, challenging other funders, and leveraging institutional credibility in service of movement-defined goals.
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Movement-Centered Metrics: The work challenges conventional impact measurement, showing how funder-defined metrics can undermine movement autonomy by forcing translation of complex social change into simplified quantifiable outcomes that serve funder accountability rather than movement learning.
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Sustained Investment: Shifting power requires long-term commitment rather than short-term project funding, recognizing that movement-building happens across years and decades while traditional philanthropy optimizes for annual reporting cycles incompatible with sustained social change.
Practical Applications
This framework enables power-shifting philanthropic practice:
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Foundations can adopt Equality Fund’s practices systematically, moving from restricted project grants to unrestricted movement support, from annual cycles to multi-year commitments, and from funder-determined priorities to movement-led strategy
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Community foundations can integrate power-shifting when working with local movements, creating advisory structures that give grassroots leaders governance voice rather than treating them as beneficiaries of services designed by foundation staff
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Impact investors can apply power-redistribution principles even within investment structures, recognizing that capital always carries power and intentionally using influence to support community autonomy rather than extracting control through investment terms
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Philanthropic networks can collaborate on power-shifting, reducing burdens on movement organizations through aligned practices and creating spaces for movement actors to shape broader philanthropic strategies collectively
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Individual donors can practice power-shifting through trust-based giving to movement funds led by those experiencing injustice, redistributing not just money but decision-making power about allocation
Connection With SuperBenefit
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Equality Fund’s power-shifting framework directly challenges SuperBenefit to examine how DAO treasuries and funding mechanisms actually redistribute decision-making power rather than merely changing who holds tokens—revealing that genuine power redistribution requires not just different allocation mechanisms but willingness to release funder control and trust community wisdom about priorities.
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The emphasis on movement-centered metrics rather than funder-defined success measures resonates with SuperBenefit’s understanding that coordination tools should enable communities to define thriving on their own terms instead of imposing predetermined outcomes that serve external accountability but may undermine community autonomy and learning.
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Equality Fund’s call for sustained long-term investment validates SuperBenefit’s conviction that effective coordination requires patience and multi-year commitment rather than optimizing for transaction speed—showing that genuine relationship-building and power redistribution happen across years, not through rapid iteration that extracts short-term value while undermining sustained community capacity.
Related Concepts
- Power - Distribution and transformation in funding relationships
- Governance - Decision-making in philanthropic contexts
- Community - Leadership and self-determination
- Coordination - Mechanisms for resource distribution
- Grants - Funding approaches and practices