There’s a growing recognition that many of the gains of the last quarter century for children, particularly for the most vulnerable and marginalized children, arestagnating or reversing. Increasingly, philanthropy has begun to understand that shifting money directly to the grassroots level, particularly for work led by children and youth themselves, holds significant potential to transform communities.

However, the sector has also begun to understand that this work is chronically underfunded. That’s why a group of donors coordinated byElevate Children Funders Group, where I serve as executive director, set out last year to better understand current philanthropic practice to support child- and youth-led work at the community level.

OurShifting the Fieldresearch — which was conducted with youth co-researchers and included a literature review; key informant interviews; focus groups; and online surveys with funders, child- and youth-led community-rooted groups themselves, and non-funders — found that many current philanthropic practices are unproductive or even detrimental to the very impact philanthropists seek. The research also identified six key ways that funders supporting child- and youth-led groups should shift their strategies and practices to achieve greater impact.

  1. Acknowledge and rebalance power. This includes being aware of other systems of oppression present in the funder-grantee relationship, strengthening intergenerational collaboration, ensuring that children and youth’s perspectives inform all phases of programming (from strategy development to evaluation), and shifting decision-making to children and youth.
  2. Bear the burden.Funders are encouraged to take responsibility for the time, resources, and adaptations required to immerse in a process of transforming the funder-grantee relationship.
  3. Amplify the voices of children and young people. These practices focus on efforts to support movement building and ensure that the voices of children and young people are taken seriously.
  4. Offer flexible funding. Using this type of funding — in which dollars are not attached to restricted projects — demonstrates that children and youth are trusted and believed in, and that the changing nature of their environments is acknowledged.
  5. Implement participatory grantmaking. This practice involves shifting power in grantmaking decisions from foundations to the people most affected, who are the ones with first-hand knowledge and experience on the issues funders seek to address. While not all study informants were familiar with this practice, participatory grantmaking is already seen by a number of funders (and backed up by studies and evaluations) as a promising practice with the potential to democratize philanthropy.
  6. Engage children and youth beyond the grantmaking cycle. Children and youth who participated in our study greatly valued when relationships with funders go beyond being simply transactional. This involves, among other things, offering other opportunities to these groups to advance their work, such as through networking.

Read the full article abouthow funders can better support child- and youth-led grassroots groupsby Heather Hamilton at The Center for Effective Philanthropy.