The Origins of Trust-Based Philanthropy: An Interview with Pia Infante

9/13/2023

Ever wonder where the name “trust-based philanthropy” came from? The roots of the framework and movement trace back to The Whitman Institute (TWI), a San Francisco-based grantmaking institution that sunsetted in 2022. The Trust-Based Philanthropy Project team sat down with Pia Infante, former Co-Executive Director of The Whitman Institute, to get the scoop. 

Trust-based philanthropy seems to be quite the buzz phrase, but many people don’t actually know the origin story. Can you share how this concept came to be?

It was all inspired by The Whitman Institute’s grantee partners after we made the decision to spend down following the financial crash of 2009. It was a time when most foundations were constricting their giving, while thousands of people were losing their homes, retirements, and savings. Leaning into our values, TWI’s staff and board decided to deliberately accelerate and increase our giving towards inevitable spend-down, sunsetting both operations and grantmaking by 2022.

Even though the spend-down was projected out for about a decade, our first priority was to let our grantee partners know. We wanted to both inform them of this change that would impact their future funding, and also involve them in determining our strategic focus for the remainder of our time. The answer we got was surprisingly simple:  “Don’t let your gravestone read ‘they were one of the good ones.’ Instead, persuade other funders to be more like TWI.”

What did grantees mean when they wanted more funders to be like TWI?

(laughs) We used to describe it as “be like John Esterle” – a principled, thoughtful, caring human being who treats others with dignity and respect.  In John’s own words, we strove to learn from and be inspired by our grantee partners’ wide array of creative and dedicated efforts and to offer to be of service to them in any way we could. But in our grantee perception report [conducted by the Center for Effective Philanthropy], our partners actually articulated specific practices that were meaningful to them. They conveyed a sense of “shoulder to shoulder” collaboration that felt markedly different from conventional philanthropy, which often prompted an anxious power dynamic of “dancing for your supper.” 

They highlighted the value of multiyear, unrestricted funding; our focus on conversations and learning over paperwork and reporting; and the genuine sense of relationship we conveyed through transparency, communication, and care. These insights eventually were developed into how we articulate the six grantmaking practices of trust-based philanthropy today.

Why did you specifically name this approach “trust”-based?

When we took a look at the aggregated feedback in our grantee perception report, we noticed a fascinating recurrence of the word trust. Basically, when grantees were invited to describe our approach, many noted that, by being treated with trust, it cultivated their sense of trust in us. We strived to demonstrate trustworthiness by being consistently dependable partners – from supporting leaders through difficult moments, to providing flexible or supplemental funding in changing circumstances, to being invested in both the what and the how of achieving shared goals. We were really moved by this powerful insight, and decided to name the approach “trust-based” based on what our grantees were saying.

The truth is, if it had been just up to us, we probably would have called it “relationship-based philanthropy” – but we took the cue from our partners and ran with it. And when we shared this framing with other like-minded funders, it really resonated with them in terms of how they were approaching their work at the time. It’s wild to see how far we’ve come since then … the phrase has taken off in ways we never could have imagined!

Now that trust-based has gained wider recognition, what is the most important thing funders should understand about the approach?

The six practices are often seen as the full expression of trust-based philanthropy, but I’d like to highlight the ethos underneath that lives in the realm of how we embody practices, in the culture and structures of an organization. This ethos is really what TBP is all about – it’s greater than the sum of the practices.

What does “ethos” mean exactly? And what does that look like for TBP?

(laughs) Ok, I’m going to borrow this from Google dictionary: “Ethos is the distinguishing character, sentiment, moral nature, or guiding beliefs of a person, group, or institution.”

I think it's important to note that TWI’s approach to partnership had a moral nature to it; we had a vision for a deeply democratic multi-racial society where all beings and communities were self-determined and well-resourced.  We acknowledged that our socio-political and economic structures were intolerably inequitable, and we were highly concerned that the racial wealth gap was widening while resources and strong public infrastructure had been under attack for decades.  

These sentiments and values serve as the foundation of trust-based philanthropy. We wanted to be part of the effort to reimagine and rebuild a strong social fabric, and we thought our best bet was to try and leverage any influence we might have in philanthropy to address these moral concerns. Being a foundation of relatively modest size, we understood that solely writing checks would be insufficient for this motivation, so we made it a priority to embody and promote a trust-based ethos.  This includes de-centering our own [funder] preferences in service of the greater good. This requires us to prioritize relationships while still being aware of the power differential between funders and grantee partners – and finding creative ways to work together from that place of reckoning.

Who is the trust-based philanthropy movement accountable to, and how do you measure its success?

Even though [the trust-based philanthropy movement] is a funder-to-funder organizing effort, our accountability is to nonprofits and social movements, not philanthropy.  Part of our ethos (there’s that word again!) is that we ultimately answer to nonprofits and communities to gauge success. For me, the call to action from TWI’s grantee partners is the driving force behind our work; and I will be satisfied that the call has been delivered upon once we get widespread feedback from nonprofits that power dynamics have shifted in a way that allows them to lead with a sense of abundance, self-determination, and radical collaboration.

Pia Infante is the Senior Fellow at the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project.