Dialogue

Funder Spotlight: Thousand Currents

By November 27, 2017

Thousand Currents is an international development organization focused on the Global South. Their funding model is inherently trust-based, with an approach rooted in trusting the expertise of the leaders in the communities they serve. As part of our ongoing series featuring trust-in-practice, The Whitman Institute sat down with Deputy Director Solome Lemma to learn more…

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How Does Trust Show Up In Your Practice?

By October 30, 2017

The Whitman Institute has been mildly obsessed with the concept of trust-based philanthropy for quite a while now. For us, this doesn’t just mean giving multi-year unrestricted grants (even though that’s an important part of it!). For over a decade, we’ve made a point to make sure trust is embodied in our overall practice. We’ve…

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Book Review: What Makes a Risk a “Smart Risk”?

By October 24, 2017

How can funders make small yet informed risks that can help advance progress on an international level? Jennifer Lentfer and Tanya Cothran explore this question in Smart Risks, a collection of case studies, personal experiences, and analyses from 22 small international grantmakers whose organizations collectively have awarded approximately 12,000 grants and a total of $130…

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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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Philathropy and Civic Engagement

By May 30, 2017

By Kristen Campbell, Executive Director of Philanthropy for Civic Engagement (reposted from the Center for Effective Philanthropy blog) It doesn’t take a meteorologist to reveal the shifting winds in America. CEP’s aptly-titled report illustrates the sentiments many foundation leaders have felt as we make sense of the swiftly changing context in which we work. Its findings…

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