Critical Thinking

Messages To Trust when Hate is the Headliner

By September 15, 2017

Like so many of you, we at TWI are wounded by the events of Charlottesville that took place in August. Our values for equity, humility, critical thinking, dialogue, and human decency are being courageously demonstrated by so many, in so many places like Charlottesville on behalf of the criminalized and vulnerable.  Let us continue to…

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4 Lessons in Rapid Response Grantmaking

By May 4, 2017

In December of 2016, TWI allocated $250,000 in rapid response funds to protect and build power within communities most vulnerable to the rollback of civil and human rights promised by the then new administration.   Rather than create a new system, we leaned into our trust based grantmaking process to expend the $250,000 by the…

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Trust As A Starting Point

By October 21, 2016

What if we as funders started with trust, instead of making potential partners “earn” it?  Vu Le starts our sibling blog posts today by questioning the assumption that grant seekers need to prove their basic trustworthiness to funders. Indeed, up-ending this premise has been inherent in TWI’s approach since we started making grants. TWI’s 9 Practices…

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What’s M.I.A. (Missing In Action) in the GOP Debates?

By March 4, 2016

As last night’s debate demonstrated again, the GOP debates in this 2016 election season look more like ridiculous reality television than robust, complex, and respectful discussion of matters of meaning – particularly in addressing the deep needs and divides of this nation.  One ancient definition of debate is to “smash together” which certainly seems to be…

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Piercing the Illusion: A Culture of Political Art

By July 29, 2015

[image artwork by Opal Tometi] I’ve been deeply moved by the stories and images from the Cleveland conference that brought together over 1500 leaders spearheading the movement for black lives. Like the catalysts for my musings on Feeding the Philanthropic Imagination, the inspirations from Cleveland provide a potent and timely example of rewriting narratives towards social…

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