When Women Change the Rules: Rethinking Power in Philanthropy
Philanthropy presents itself as a mechanism for solving inequality. But the structure through which philanthropic money moves can reproduce a familiar hierarchy: People with resources decide which problems deserve attention, organizations compete for funding according to those priorities, and communities affected by the resulting decisions are asked to prove that they can deliver someone else’s definition of impact.
While the problem is often framed in terms of who gets funded and who doesn’t, a growing group of feminist funds and women-led philanthropic organizations argue that this is not simply a funding gap. It is a power gap, and closing it requires changing not just what gets funded, but who decides.
That is the thesis this essay sets out to test: Across four organizations—two in the United States, one global, and one multilateral—feminist philanthropy has treated “who decides” as a design question, not a courtesy. A courtesy is something a funder extends at their own discretion and can withdraw. By attending to design, the decision structure itself is built to share power. What follows is a look at what happens once that question moves from a mission statement into an operating system.
“The Boston Women’s Fund‘s Allocations Committee is one of the clearest US examples of this shift in practice. Rather than leaving grant decisions entirely to professional staff, the fund convenes community members—including people from both inside and outside philanthropy—to decide directly which organizations receive funding."
