Scarcity mindset, turf guarding, asset hoarding, and gate-keeping are frequently used vocabulary in traditional philanthropic fundraising. For many grassroots social justice organizations, fundraising for their organizations is often a stressful and anxiety-inducing process. The process of grant writing can be hard, arduous, and takes time away from the actual work of organizing in the trenches. This process also pits organizations against each other, where a few organizations with well-developed fundraising muscles (better grant writers, proximity to funders, the institutional polish grassroots groups cannot afford) raise most of the funds, leaving many behind, and creating resentment, divisions, and fractures running straight through the heart of our movement. Every hour we spend competing for resources is an hour authoritarian forces steal from our own organizing. They don’t need us to lose – they just need us to stay divided.
However, there is an alternative – collaborative fundraising, where many organizations join together to raise funds together to resource the collective movement. When organizations from different backgrounds come together for fundraising, the impact doesn’t just get bigger, it gets better. Suddenly, we are not just writing a proposal together, we are building a coalition. Collaborative fundraising brings together movement-aligned partners who normally do not work and talk with each other, especially if they are separated by geography and issue-areas, and allows them to tackle the broader system-wide oppression they face collectively. At its core, we believe that different forms of oppression (racial and economic injustice, attacks on immigrants, anti-LGBTQIA policies, Islamophobia, wars, and other oppressions) have a common root and require an intersectional approach to uproot this collective oppression. Collaborative fundraising makes that possible. It gives us a practical and concrete way to build the coalition, resource the collective movement, and combine our energies to build a better world.
How Do We Need to Be Together to Practice Collaborative Fundraising?
Collaborative fundraising is not just a strategy—it is a practice of reimagining power, resources, and relationships within our movements. To do this work together, we must first ask: How do we need to show up for one another?
Our Shared Values
- Open, honest, and transparent conversations: we have open and honest conversations about our capacities, our real needs, and what we bring to the table. No posturing.
- Expanding possibility together: by collaborating, we open doors to funding opportunities that no one of us could pursue alone. We believe our collective access is greater than any individual limitation.
- Increasing our collective success: collaboration increases our chances of success across the board.
- Decolonizing philanthropy: the current competitive model mirrors extractive, colonial systems. Collaboration strengthens everyone. This is how we decolonize philanthropy—shifting from hoarding to sharing, from individual gain to collective care.
- Operating with rigor, compassion, and accountability: we hold ourselves to high standards, through mutual responsibility and care.
How It Works: Our Collaborative Fundraising Model
- Any movement partner can initiate: any partner within our movement ecosystem can bring a funding opportunity to the table for consideration.
- Two key questions – what is the common purpose that brings us together, and what makes us the right partners to achieve the change we seek?
- Each collaboration is unique: collaborations are shaped by unique individuals and organizations. It’s up to the partners in a collaboration to define how they’ll work together and who will take on which responsibilities.
- True partnership model: we are co-owners of the process and the proposal.
- Budget as percentage: we structure our budgets based on equitable percentage contributions, not arbitrary splits.
- Making the invisible visible: we explicitly list what each partner is contributing to the partnership and the proposal—including labor, relationships, knowledge, and resources that are often unseen or undervalued.
- Everything in writing, with full consent: every detail is documented, and no proposal is submitted unless every partner group has signed off. We establish a process to review and provide feedback before applications and reports are submitted.
- Proactive communication and collective problem-solving: if we miss a deadline or hit a bump, then we communicate preemptively and troubleshoot together.
Conclusion
Collaborative fundraising is perhaps harder than going it alone. It requires more calls, more vulnerability, and more trust. But it is also the way to win in the long term. A movement fragmented in well-resourced islands surrounded by a sea of under-resourced grassroots organizations is a recipe for disaster. It fractures us and leaves gaping holes in our collective defense. Extremist forces don’t hesitate to march through these holes and claim the ground, while we are too busy competing with each other for scraps.
When we shift our mindset from hoarding to sharing, individual gain to collective power, and scarcity to sufficient, we break our silos and reduce fragments in the movement. It is the foundation we need to protect our people. To defend our communities. To resist those who would rather see us compete than combine. And ultimately, it is how we build a new and better world rooted in justice and liberation for all.
Are you interested in exploring collaborative fundraising ideas together? If so, send us an email at grants@southernvsision.org – we would love to dream with you.
