For a long time, we did things just because that’s how they’ve always been done. But we’ve retrained ourselves to ask more questions: Why are we doing it this way? Who benefits? Who might not? What unintended consequences might result from this approach?

Funder

It was wonderful to get funding that wasn’t about this is what we need you to do — it was about trusting that we knew what was needed and gave us the chance to do that.

Community

What I’m hearing most is that folks need to understand you're committed long-term. They can’t lead or design or steady the ship when they’re feeling that fragility around funding.

Intermediary

I think everyone is waking up to the reality of what uncertainty means. It means that the health and mental well-being of those working in organizations doing essential work becomes fragile. I think this crisis is a wake-up call. I hope funders will develop more awareness and humanity in how they think about philanthropy, how it’s administered.

Community-serving organization

If we’re doing things that get in the way of our partners winning, we need to stop. So, what are we doing that gets in the way?

Funder

A lot of people are really suffering in the U.S. right now, and we don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but there’s a weird sense of excitement in some of the spaces I’m involved in. It’s like we can localize and build community care infrastructure.

Intermediary

What if we just kept asking the community what they wanted from us, rather than making it up ourselves? And what if we built mechanisms to engage the community systematically, so that everything we do is influenced by the people we say we’re here to serve?

Funder