CUL 2-Designed for professionals who steward, influence, or make decisions about how resources are mobilised, allocated, and governed

Modular cycle 2: prospectus

Designed for professionals who steward, influence, or make decisions about how resources are mobilised, allocated, and governed

Foundation leaders, grantmakers, donor representatives, philanthropy advisors, family offices, corporate foundations, bilateral and multilateral funders, pooled fund managers

SURFACE → DISRUPT → REFRAME → PRACTISE 12-WEEK PATHWAY

Philanthropic capital carries histories of generosity and solidarity, but also of extraction, accumulation, and unequal power. Those histories continue to shape who defines priorities, who controls resources, and whose knowledge and leadership are trusted.

Modular Cycle 2: From Grantmaking to Solidarity Stewardship invites grantmakers, foundations, philanthropy leaders, and others who steward resources into a 12-week collaborative unlearning journey. Together, we move beyond examining the colonial foundations of philanthropy to exploring how money, authority, risk, and accountability can be reorganised in ways that strengthen locally led development and shared stewardship.

This is a structured space for critical reflection, courageous conversation, and practical experimentation—supporting participants to translate new insights into institutional practice. Grounded in humility, reciprocity, local agency, solidarity, trust, and reflexivity, the journey is designed for leaders ready to rethink not only what philanthropy funds, but how philanthropy relates.

The Funder Journey

STAGE	FOCUS	CORE QUESTION
SURFACE	Make visible the histories and power behind philanthropic wealth and decision-making.	What histories sit inside the resources we distribute — and who gets to decide?
DISRUPT	Confront saviourism, racialised risk, and the colonial gaze embedded in funding practice.	What funding practices must be disrupted?
REFRAME	Move from ownership to stewardship, from localisation to locally-led Development.	What becomes possible when local actors hold authority to shape the system itself?
PRACTISE	Translate solidarity stewardship into redistributed decision rights and flexible funding.	Which decisions are we genuinely prepared to share, transfer, or stop controlling?

Who This Cohort Is For

◆ Funders, Grant makers and foundations ready to examine how power operates across their grantmaking cycle

◆ Philanthropic leaders seeking to move from compliance-centred to trust-based relationships with grantees

◆ Institutions prepared to test concrete reforms — not only revisit their values statements

What You'll Examine — Eight Subthemes

1 · SURFACE

Where the Money Came From: Wealth, Extraction & Philanthropic Authority

2 · SURFACE

Who Gets to Decide? Agenda-Setting & Financial Control

3 · DISRUPT

Disrupting Saviourism: Paternalism, Deficit Narratives & the Colonial Gaze

4 · DISRUPT

Disrupting Racialised Risk: Compliance, Suspicion & Control

5 · REFRAME

From Generosity to Reparative Solidarity Stewardship

6 · REFRAME

From Localisation to Locally Led

7 · PRACTISE

Redistributing Decision Rights Across the Grantmaking Cycle

8 · PRACTISE

Funding Agency: Flexible, Full-Cost & Mutually Accountable Grantmaking

What Practice Change Looks Like

Success is measured beyond participation, in evidence of practice change across three levels.

INDIVIDUAL

ORGANISATIONAL

SYSTEMS

• Changed leadership behaviours

• Greater reflexivity and openness

• New decision-making practices

• Flexible, trust-based funding

• Reduced compliance burden on partners

• Shared governance structures

• More equitable resource flows

• Stronger local organisational ecosystems

• Shifts in dominant sector narratives

Inside the 12 Weeks

◆ Surface & Disrupt: naming the histories, narratives, and risk frameworks that sustain unequal power between funders and grantees

◆ Reframe: shifting from ownership to stewardship, from benevolence to redistribution, from charity to solidarity

◆ Practise: redistributing decision rights across strategy, eligibility, budgets, evaluation, renewal, and exit

◆ A practice-change experiment — each contributor selects one concrete, time-bound reform, visible to grantees, tested within 30–90 days

◆ A practice-change commitment template tracking what will change, who is involved, what authority shifts, and evidence of change

Format & Facilitation

◆ Cohort-based: funders, grantmakers, foundations, advisors, and philanthropists learning and unlearning alongside peers

◆ Facilitated sessions combining storytelling, critical dialogue, scenario building, and collective design

◆ Peer accountability structures to sustain reform beyond the cohort's 12 weeks

◆ A closing review of each funder's practice-change commitment and early evidence of change

Solidarity stewardship becomes real when it changes how institutions decide, fund, listen, account, and let go of control.

The question is no longer only “What do we believe?” It becomes: “What are we prepared to change, who will experience that change, and how will we remain accountable when power begins to move?”

JOIN THE FUNDERS COHORT

https://forms.gle/PhPufqNpjji22MrGA