Approach to Philanthropy

Guided by Values

The Trust is guided in all its activities and grantmaking by the following values: Dignity, Respect, Humility, Interdependence, Stewardship, and Justice.

Proactive and Responsive

At this time, the Trust makes grants to returning grantees and to new organizations by invitation only. Unsolicited funding requests are not currently accepted. However, the Trust remains interested in hearing from organizations that may be eligible for future consideration. To learn more, please see Grantseekers.

Learning and Collaboration

The Trust’s grantmaking has always sought to promote justice and equity for its focus populations. With its 2024-2028 Strategic Plan, the Trust commits explicitly to a vision of creating a more just society. For many years, the Trust has endeavored to adopt grantmaking practices that collectively have come to be known as trust-based philanthropy, however, we are far from experts in that approach. Through a commitment to learning, relationship-building, and collaboration with our grantee partners and the communities they serve, we are committed to making additional progress in this area in service of the Trust’s vision and values. We seek to become a more transparent funder, to reduce barriers and mitigate burden, to embrace a more holistic framework for risk assessment, and to commit to a model of stewardship that acknowledges our mutual accountability with our grantee partners. Additionally, we seek to better incorporate the voices of people with lived experience into our program areas and into all aspects of the Trust's work. The Trust is committed to redressing the power imbalances between funder and grantee to support the relationship building that transcends traditional transactional philanthropy and leads to more effective partnerships with our grantees.

Types of Grantee Organizations

Because the Trust is interested in supporting organizations that strive to achieve a lasting difference in the lives of the people they serve, many grants are awarded to organizations that provide direct services to individuals. In addition, people within the Trust's focus populations interact with a network of systems, yet many of these systems fail to adequately provide the intended support. Many are dysfunctional, underfunded, and/or exacerbate inequities and injustices because of inherent biases. Therefore, the Trust also makes grants to organizations working at the systems change and policy levels to address these challenges. The Trust’s 2024-2028 Strategic Plan seeks to increase support of systems change efforts to complement the Trust’s investments in direct service organizations. Please see Recent Grants for examples of typical Trust grants.

Flexible Funding

Believing that effective organizations know best how to allocate resources, the Trust aims to provide the least restrictive funding appropriate to a grant's purpose; sometimes that is program support, and other times it is general operating support. More than half of the Trust’s grantmaking is for general operating support. The Trust may also consider requests for capital support from established grantees. Other forms of funding for existing grantees may include smaller short-term grants for immediate needs or to respond to urgent priorities that arise from disasters or other unanticipated events.

Duration and Size of Grants and Multi-Year Funding

Most first-time grants awarded by the Trust are for one year, with multiple-year grants of two or three years in duration considered from organizations that have already successfully completed one grant cycle with the Trust. The Trust is committed to long-term funding relationships with its grantee partners, and many effective and well-aligned organizations receive consecutive grants from the Trust over many years.

The size of a grant from the Trust is matched to the organization’s need, capabilities, opportunities, scale of impact, and the program’s fit with the Trust’s priorities, as well as the organization’s historic pattern of support from other institutional donors, its developmental stage, and the Trust’s overall availability of funds. The Trust prefers to invest alongside other funders and rarely makes grants that represent 100% of a project’s budget.

Due to its finite grantmaking budget, the Trust may implement a pause in funding or end a funding relationship with a grantee, usually after several years of grant funding, to reflect a change in program strategies, to ensure that the Trust has uncommitted grant funds available for organizations new to the Trust, to direct resources to underfunded geographic areas, and to ensure that funds are available to support emerging needs.