The Myths of Philanthropy: Exploring Narratives that Define What is Possible
Mandy Van Deven, Zaineb Mohammed, and Erin Williams
What assumptions have we inherited that limit the transformative potential of philanthropy? And how can funders release ourselves from the constraints of these limiting beliefs? In this episode, GIA is joined by Mandy Van Deven (Elemental), Zaineb Mohammed (Kataly Foundation), and Erin Williams (Constellations Culture Change Fund and Initiative) to explore some of the narratives that underpin common practices in philanthropy and provide examples of funders that have adopted ways of thinking and being that accelerate progress toward a more just and joyful world.
Building from The Myths of Philanthropy series that was published by the Center for Effective Philanthropy, the Association of Charitable Foundations, and VITA, this conversation challenges cultural funders to imagine what becomes possible when we shift the narrative: from scarcity to abundance, from rigid structure to iterative practice, and from donor darlings to a flourishing ecosystem. Listeners will walk away with bold insights on how narrative strategy isn’t about magic words, messaging, and single stories, and a better understanding of the role funders can play through the application of resource redistribution and other acts of solidarity that enable our collective liberation.
To listen to the full episode, click here.
Jaime Sharp:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to a podcast by Grantmakers in the Arts. My name is Jaime Sharp, and I am the Senior Program Manager here at GIA. I use she/they pronouns, and I'm a light-skinned black person with shoulder-length, dark, natural hair. GIA is headquartered on the unceded land of the Lenape and Wappinger peoples. We ask you to join in acknowledging the Lenape and Wappinger communities, their elders both past and present, as well as future generations. This acknowledgement demonstrates a commitment to beginning the process of working to dismantle the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism.
What stories shape our giving? In this episode, GIA is joined by Mandy Van Deven from Elemental, Zaineb Mohammed from the Kataly Foundation, and Erin Williams from Constellations Culture Change Fund and Initiative, to explore how dominant philanthropic narratives limit the sector's transformative potential building from the Myths of Philanthropy series, this conversation challenges cultural funders to imagine what becomes possible when we shift the narrative. From scarcity to abundance, from rigid structure to iterative practice, and from singular success to ecosystem flourishing. Listeners will walk away with bold insights on how narrative change isn't just about messaging, but an application of resource redistribution, trust and collective liberation. I hope you enjoy.
Mandy Van Deven:
So, hey y'all. My name is Mandy Van Deven. I'm a white woman in my mid-40s with shoulder-length, reddish-brown wavy hair, and I use she and her pronouns.
So, I guess where we want to start is just to acknowledge that the narrative field has been deepening, expanding and gaining more visibility, and progressive philanthropy circles over the last couple of decades. And often when people in the philanthropic sector talk about narrative change, the focus tends to be on critiquing the work that's being done outside of philanthropy. And folks in the sector don't often turn their focus to the narratives that underpin the ways that philanthropy operates. And while I think that it's really important for Grantmakers to have a keen understanding of what success looks like for the groups they're funding, I also think that when we get too fixated on the ways movement leaders and narrative practitioners are operating, we can become confused about what our role is as resource stewards and overstep into agenda setting.
So, one of the questions that I've been exploring over the past few years is, what are the narratives that govern philanthropy? And what are the ways that our sector might identify and rethink some of the assumptions that are embedded in the ways that it's being designed? And what this research has found is that the norms in philanthropy both reflect and perpetuate the very narratives that our sector seeks to change. And many of the sector's common practices are rooted in narratives about individualism and meritocracy and scarcity and presumed expertise.
So, one of the ways people in philanthropy can contribute to the narrative change, even if they don't have a grantmaking budget to fund that work specifically, is by getting involved in, there's various funder learning and organizing spaces like the one that I'm part of called Elemental, that are doing this work to really name and unravel these myths that dictate how this sector functions. And because these myths and norms are standing in the way of more just and transformational possibilities, that's why it's important to do things like the Myth of Philanthropy series.
And when I was thinking about who I might invite to contribute to this series, Zaineb Mohammed and Erin Williams were just obvious choices. But before we jump into the questions about what both of you shared in your articles, I wonder if each of you can give a bit of a background on what brought you into this work, in terms of working on narrative in the context of philanthropy. So, we can start with Zaineb and then we can go to Erin.
Zaineb Mohammed:
Hi there. I'm Zaineb Mohammed, I use she/her pronouns, and I am an Indian woman in my 40s with shoulder-length black hair.
So, thank you for this question, Mandy. So for me, when I was on the social movement side of things working in communications, I worked on a narrative change campaign that was driven by one of our funders. And it was really my experience working on that campaign and working very closely with the program officers at the foundation that was very eye-opening, because I saw how this foundation was thinking about narrative and how their thinking influenced their grantmaking and their directives to their grantees. It was a pretty frustrating experience, I think both for the social movement organizations and also for the program staff at the foundations, and I think I just came out of that believing there could be a different way. Of course, I was very fresh at that point and didn't really understand how deeply ingrained these types of prescriptive funding practices were and how all of these ideas around legacy and reputation and ego were intertwined with how foundations make decisions. So, I really started working in philanthropy because I wanted to change how funders approach narrative and communications.
Erin WIlliams:
Thanks, Mandy, for the question. I am Erin Williams. I'm a biracial black woman with light brown skin. I have dark curly hair, I use she/her pronouns, and I'm on Lenape land, otherwise known as Harlem, New York. And I started my life's work in Ottawa, Canada as a youth educator for Planned Parenthood, where we framed healthy relationships, self-esteem, and other sexual and reproductive health rights and justice messages through participatory theater. And then I also worked at a women's transition home and then as the first executive director of a coalition to end violence against women, where I supported women and advocates to frame their stories in ways that would result in real safety and dignity for survivors and their children on their own terms. As challenging as that was at the time and continues to be today due to our criminal justice system, as the only formal means for restoration, repair and healing. And I went on to work and live in Jamaica where I have some heritage, supporting women with incarcerated loved ones, and then doing HIV prevention and treatment in Botswana.
And in a 40-page USAID and civil society cooperative agreement that I was working with through FHI 360, the gender analysis component was only one paragraph. So my role as a gender advisor was to build out a narrative and bring people together on how gender identity, expression, and roles have an incredible impact on how you're seen, on the healthcare that you can access, and ultimately, how you thrive. And so a lot of my work was very diverse in the early part of my career, yet really tied to storytelling. And as I mentioned, as a biracial, bilingual black woman and dual citizen with the US and Canada, I had a variety of really formative experiences in my childhood that provided me with the great privilege of actual and symbolic border crossing, code switching, and acting as a cultural translator to a certain degree, which has really made me hyper aware of how we tell our stories and to who and why.
So, when I accidentally landed in philanthropy as an intermediary grantmaker over 10 years ago and moved to New York, my journey to understand, uncover, and reframe what we tell ourselves about this country's wealth and the extraction we've seen, the generosity that we've seen, the resource redistribution that we see, and also who gets to give in quotation marks and who gets to receive, came fairly naturally to me.
Mandy Van Deven:
So Erin, your article for the Myths of Philanthropy series focuses on how the sector's practices reflect this misguided belief that the way large scale change happens is by imposing a top-down, rigid, linear plan that seeks to orchestrate predetermined outcomes. And in my work, I often advise funders that if they seek to contribute to durable and lasting transformation, then they have to approach their work like gardeners, not engineers. And you explore this really beautifully in your article by asking this question, what if philanthropy had the courage to take its cues from nature? So, can you share why this was an important way to frame what the work is that you're doing?
Erin WIlliams:
Yes, I love this analogy, Mandy, of being a gardener versus an engineer. And I think in fact, we could take it further, because a gardener does have oversight and decision-making power on the plot of land that they're tending to, and which plants thrive and which don't, and where they should go, etc. So I could say or I would say that those working in philanthropy should, and they don't always do this, but I think that they should and actually they can support the enabling conditions for the ecosystem to blossom and bloom. Such as providing fertilizer, soil, and water, and we can go deeper on the metaphor maybe in another podcast about the sun and other things that support positive thriving ecosystems. But clearly, philanthropy and grantmakers are not the only ones that are providing that fertilizer and water. And in thinking about what communities provide, I think they also provide fertilizer. And more often than not, that fertilizer is rich actually in lived experiences and the nuanced understanding of what works. And we see that through mutual aid, kitchen table giving circles, remittances that we see happening globally in the billions of dollars, for instance.
So in continuing with this analogy of nature, as you asked, Ilegvak, my co-author who is a culture bearer filmmaker and educator and was a network member of Constellations, and I used mycelium as a metaphor to illustrate that transformative change efforts are not as clear-cut and straightforward when it comes to social justice, anti-oppressive, and decolonial movements. And in fact, the intricacies of testing and iterating and trying anew is a natural process that many of our ancestors knew. And sadly, through colonialization and cultural erasure, we've lost a lot our sacred connections to the earth and to the planet and we've imposed our way on the environment and its surroundings. And we try to squeeze things into these categories, into binaries and into boxes. And what happens, particularly in philanthropy, is that we reinforce a myth that structure and logic models specifically lead to better and stronger outcomes.
Now, don't get me wrong, I like a logic model, but it's not the only way with which we can understand how change happens. And when we're talking about structures, whose structures are we actually talking about? And it's just not how social change works. So, we know that there are just a myriad of roles that contribute to transformative work. We have artists and healers and culture bearers and lawyers and communicators and journalists and advocates and organizers, and they're all playing these roles that are decentralized. To some degree they're interconnected and sometimes they're concurrent. And what's happening is, all of those roles are supporting knowledge, information that's spread underground, getting to communities that are in need and getting to communities who are doing the work to change the world that we want.
So at Constellations Funds, it was housed at the Center for Cultural Power. We tried, it was an experiment. We tried not to buy into the myth of outcome predetermination. And we did this by funding through a narrative system that turned away from a rigid, artificial, and formulaic structure, and siloed thematic priorities.
So for example, three of the narratives that we utilize in our narrative system were, we steward the past and future, we thrive when we care for each other, and we determine our lives and our futures. And I have to say that this narrative system was created by the founding design team that were nominated from this group of 80 practitioners, activists, and funder co-conspirators who dreamed up the Constellations Fund in 2020 as a three-year catalytic spend down fund that was housed at the Center for Cultural Power. So, the community created the narrative system. And through that narrative system, we funded all types of narrative and cultural strategies and strategists. And I say that specifically because organizations and individuals we believe are key to strengthening the narrative ecosystem. And we funded folks who could see their work as amplifying one or more, many times more because so many things are so interrelated, more of the narrative frames.
And as I mentioned, it was an experiment and it was different, it was new. We tried and we tested it and we would love to see others trying radical new ways of funding like this as well. And in addition to the narrative system, we also experimented with participatory models that relied on referrals and endorsements and community panels to make resourcing decisions.
And then lastly, I'll mention that just like mycelium and how nutrients move underground to where it's needed and why that metaphor is so powerful is because after understanding what our network wanted, we were able to then provide narrative and cultural strategy workshops, kinship calls to strengthen relationships, and redirected resources to a mutual aid fund after the climate disasters in Maui and Guam. And so, we were able to try and meet the needs of community based on what we were hearing. And I'm excited to say that the impact report is due out by the end of this year on what we learned, for others to take a look at.
Mandy Van Deven:
That's great, thank you. So, one of the things that we commonly hear in philanthropy spaces is that there isn't enough money to do what's needed, right? Whether it's protect democracy or prevent climate disaster or stop a genocide that's happening in plain view. But in the United States alone, as of March 2025, private foundation assets totaled more than $1.5 trillion in the US alone. And the combined assets in donor advised funds was nearly 250 billion. And I think it's useful to make these kinds of astronomical figures a bit more concrete. And so, I'll do that by sharing that if you were to spend $100,000 every single day, it would take you 28 years to spend $1 billion. And that assumes that you're not accruing interest or investment gains on that money over that 28-year period.
So, I think that we would do well to be skeptical of this idea that philanthropy suffers from resource scarcity, right? Because these figures just plainly demonstrate that there is financial abundance being held in these funding institutions, and many of them are choosing not to redistribute that while simultaneously manufacturing a narrative of scarcity. And Zaineb in your contribution to the Myths of Philanthropy series, you this paradox in detail and you ask us to consider, what gets lost when making money, not giving money is the priority. So, can you talk about where this logic of scarcity shows up in philanthropy?
Zaineb Mohammed:
Yes. Thank you for this question, Mandy. And when you lay it out like that, it becomes that much more absurd to think about foundations saying there's not enough money. So the logic of scarcity, I think it really shows up everywhere in philanthropy, both in funding practices and in internal processes as well. And I think part of what we have to understand is that the root of this issue is the belief that the foundation is in the best possible position to eradicate some kind of social ill. So if a foundation believes this, then of course, they have to believe that they have to exist in perpetuity because who else will solve these problems? And if they have to exist forever, then they believe they need to hoard resources, doling them out in bits and pieces so that they'll always have an enough for future giving. So, I think that's really at least part of the root of the problem of scarcity in philanthropy.
And when you think about what happens when foundations believe that their billions and trillions of dollars are a scarce resource that needs protecting, we start to see all of these scarcity-driven practices. So, a few examples. I think one of the most obvious ways that we see this is funders cut back their grant making budget because they had a bad investment year or the markets are down. So I think when funders don't see high returns on their investments and their endowments, and when they're focused on, how long can we make our assets last and how much can we grow our assets? The priority, going back to your original question, becomes much more, making more and more money rather than redistributing more and more resources.
Another way that I think we see scarcity show up is in narrowly defined grantmaking practices that are focused on single issue areas. So for anyone who's reached out to a funder to do fundraising, I'm sure that folks have heard funders present things as choices. Like, well, we could fund this or we could fund that. We could fund this group or we can fund that group, or we can fund in this issue area or that issue area, or we can only fund this part of the work. And all of that either or type of thinking comes from a scarcity mindset and again, a desire to preserve funding for future use.
And also in terms of the processes, these onerous grant applications and reporting requirements that ask movement groups to constantly prove impact within extremely short periods of time, that again comes out of this idea that these are very scarce resources so funders have to be exceedingly judicious in deciding who gets these resources. So like I said, I think it really shows up everywhere, and what ends up happening is that funders create this cycle where movement groups are dependent on them and they're in this constant race to prove their worth according to a funder's metrics and that of course centers the foundation. And ultimately what that scarcity mindset is doing is preventing groups from building the kind of shared wealth and prosperity that could eventually make them independent of philanthropy.
Mandy Van Deven:
Thank you for laying out that context, Zaineb, and sharing what some of those opportunity costs are when funders operate with a scarcity mindset. Something else that you talk about in your article are a variety of ways that funders can shift toward an abundance mindset and embed new ways of thinking into the practice of resource redistribution. So, what are some of those practices?
Zaineb Mohammed:
Sure, thank you for this question as well. So I work as the Communications Director at the Kataly Foundation, which is a spend out foundation. And I want to emphasize at the outset, I don't think Kataly has all the answers when it comes to this, but I do think we have a good practice of asking the right questions and adopting a learning stance. So, that kind of informs some of my thinking here.
Kataly is in the somewhat unique position of being a spend out from the beginning, so we never intended to exist forever or to exist in perpetuity. And so, some of the practices that Kataly has that I think have helped us to resist this mindset of scarcity are that we make bigger catalytic grants from the beginning, rather than the sort of standard approach of a small grant that's like a test balloon to see if someone is worthy of future investment, which is typically how a foundation operates.
So, those small grants prevent long-term thinking and experimentation, and they actually limit the type of impact that funders typically want to see. You're not going to see the complete overhaul and transformation of policing by giving out $100,000 a year grants to organizations. So, I think also for Kataly, we can't fund everything, but we do our best to fund with an ecosystem mindset rather than focusing on any one individual organization. So, one of the central parts of approach is that we have a practice of asking all of our grantee partners, who else do we need to fund for you to be successful? So, I think how that can resist scarcity is by making clear that we're still committed to that grantee partner, but also asking, who else are they in relationship with who needs funding? So the idea being that we want to reduce some of that sense of competition or pitting against each other that can happen in the funding universe.
We also don't have reporting requirements or specific measures of impact that we ask grantees to meet. We look to our grantee partners to tell us what kind of impact they want to achieve and see our role as supporting them to make that impact with more resources. We really think that the groups on the ground are the experts on what impact that they should be aiming for.
And I think the last thing I'll say is we try to really start from a place of yes. And as we get closer to the end of our spend out, which is coming in a couple of years, of course there are things we have to say no to, but I think in philanthropy, the knee-jerk reaction is often just to say, "No, there's not enough for that." It's like an automatic to start from that sense of, no, we don't have enough. And one thing I appreciate about Kataly and our leadership is that we really do put in a good faith effort to see, do we have the resources to make something happen? Right now, I think as a lot of us know, there's a lot of urgent needs because of the rise in authoritarianism in the United States. And we are trying to lean into the mindset that if we can be rigorous and be creative, we can find a way to meet the needs of the moment, while also maintaining our commitments to our existing programs and grantee partners.
So, having a finite amount of resources that a spend out does might seem kind of counterintuitive to an abundance mindset, because especially as we get closer to the end there is actually a set amount of money that Kataly has left. But I think what's important to remember is that it's not about the number. It really is about more of that mindset around scarcity or abundance. We don't think of it as, okay, we're going to give these resources to these groups and then they're going to use them up and they'll be gone. I think that is definitely a scarcity mindset. And abundance mindset requires this belief that we can redistribute money in a way that people will continue to regenerate those resources within their communities.
Mandy Van Deven:
Thank you for that reframe. We've talked a lot about what the narrative conditions are in philanthropy today, but I want to shift gears and invite both of you to engage your imagination and offer a proposition for the future. So, we'll start with Erin and then move to Zaineb. What becomes possible if philanthropy adopts the narratives we need to build the world we long for?
Erin WIlliams:
Thanks, Mandy, this is a beautiful question because dreaming is not necessarily something that philanthropy funds. And so, it's really nice to be able to have a space to do that. And I think that if philanthropy wholeheartedly adopted the narratives we need to build the world that we long for, and some of those are regeneration, reciprocity, collaboration, multiple ways of knowing, possibility, etc, I think that philanthropy would be working itself towards its own obsolescence, full stop, and without any debate. And it would not see itself as necessary long-term, Zaineb touched on this a little bit, and the self-importance that philanthropy holds would fade.
And for me, the ultimate goal, particularly in the US and in North America, but not exclusively, is that indigenous, black and other descendants of people of color who built this nation through slavery and forced displacement and reproduction, would receive transformative land back and reparations to account for the atrocities that their ancestors endured. So that's the dream for me, that's the ultimate north star.
And as we work towards that social, political, and economic equality, we also have to acknowledge and be okay with and embrace to a certain extent all of the complexity, the nuances, and then the contradictions that come as we work towards that and focus on solutions from all sides. So, I think what's possible is more and better funding, we like to use that sort of language. And what we mean by that is that there would be more spend out and there would be longer term funding on a horizon of 10, 15, 20 years. Narrative works in the long term. It's not in these short stints of funding envelopes. And so as Vouli likes to say, "My God, multi-year general operating dollars would be what we would see more consistently."
There would be one application. Just Fund has an application that allows movement groups to access resources from many different funders using one application method. So, that's an opportunity. Another opportunity and what would be possible is that collectives, unregistered groups, young people, and elders would be funded in ways that meet them where they are. And what would also be possible or could be possible is that we would see much more participatory funding models happening and being expanded not only in intermediary or collaborative philanthropic groups, but also in private philanthropy as much as we could see possible. So, that's an opportunity. I think philanthropy could fund rest. It could fund radical sabbaticals, dreaming, as I mentioned earlier, healing justice, restorative and transformational justice, transnational solidarity.
And I love the question that Zaineb posed about, who else would we need to fund to be successful? That's an incredible question that funders could be asking. And so people may say, "Well, we need to fund creatives, culture workers, sex workers, trans communities, adolescent girls." And what is possible is that we would be funding climate and racial disability and gender justice that's expansive and overwhelmingly unapologetic. And I think in addition to that, as I mentioned, we would be supporting and funding movements that are pushing for reparations and land back narratives and cultural strategies to make those concepts really understandable and irresistible to everybody because it does support everyone's well-being when everyone is provided with what they need to thrive. I think in addition, and my dream is that we would have an end to call out and cancel culture in our progressive and transformative movements, and we could rediscover that while we might not agree on everything, we can agree on enough to make significant moves forward.
And lastly, I think what is possible is that the comfort for some few elite folks is not the measure by which change moves. What would be possible is that change would move at the speed of not only trust, but also of the current discomfort and inequality that we see for many across our communities. So I'll stop there, but there are so many additional things that I think are possible, and I really invite others who are listening to draw up a list of their own and share that with folks that they work with either in their communities and/or in their foundations.
Zaineb Mohammed:
I think if funders could see ourselves as co-conspirators who are liberating resources for the good of social movements, we would see these movements have the space and freedom to be so much more bold and experimental. And to Erin's point, be able to kind of act upon some of these dreams and big ideas without worrying every second about, how am I going to prove this to this funder that I deserve more money? We would see the impact of their work exponentially increase. And that's so ironic about it, is that funders are so obsessed with impact, but it's actually the practices of philanthropy that hold all of us back from the kind of impact that we want to see.
So, I think a lot of it is about letting go, letting go of the idea that, again, back to what you were saying, Erin, this sort of self-importance, this belief that funders have this exclusive set of expertise to solve social problems. If we could let go even just of that, I think we would start to see the glimmers of a future where philanthropy doesn't need to exist because our communities hold the resources they need to create the future that we all want.
Mandy Van Deven:
I just want to thank y'all for giving us that mandate and the many, many paths that folks can take to move these ideas forward, because we don't have to move them all forward at once. Sometimes each of us can just carry a little piece, and that adds up in a collective way.
I also want to bring in a slightly different lens, and one that's often overlooked because philanthropy tends to focus on grantmaking when we're talking about narrative work. And Zaineb, you and I have both held a role that's a little unique when it comes to the relationship between narrative and philanthropy, because both of us have led strategic communications work at a few different foundations. And something that's not openly discussed a lot is that this is often a precarious position to be in because of philanthropy's history as a method of reputation laundering for the ultra wealthy. And as a way of bringing our conversation to a close, I wonder if you'd talk about why we co-wrote a chapter in the Liberation Stories anthology that was just released, and what you are hoping that chapter might achieve.
Zaineb Mohammed:
Thank you for this question, Mandy. Yes. So it was really an honor to write this chapter with you for Liberation Stories: Building Narrative Power for 21st Century Movements, an anthology that was published by the Radical Communicators Network this June.
So Mandy, you and I started working on this chapter in 2021, and I don't think we finished it until maybe 2023. So, I think that our thinking on these questions evolved over time as our own roles were shifting within that time period. And so, I think it's like sometimes people see how a foundation approaches its own communications as completely separate from how they fund communications and narrative. But what stood out to me, I think as we worked on the chapter to your point in this question, is how intertwined those things are. And I think what you and I wanted to do is we wanted to write about the narratives that are holding philanthropy back from the future it says it wants to create. And some of those narratives are really deeply tied to how foundations communicate about their own work.
So, I think my hope for our chapter and for the anthology is that both comms workers within foundations and program staff within foundations read this chapter and see how these harmful narratives about scarcity and authority and expertise are showing up in their work, both from the side of PR and foundation communications, and on the grantmaking side. I don't think you and I have all of the answers, but I think it's the kind of thing where sometimes when you read about patterns in practices, it helps you see how you might be upholding those patterns and practices within your own work, even without meaning to. And I think we all know a lot of really wonderful people who work in philanthropy who are very values aligned and who, until you start to be faced with this set of questions or with these very stark examples, you might not see how what you're doing could be harmful in some way or another.
And so, my hope is funders read the whole book, read all of this incredible work that social movement leaders have been doing to disrupt harmful narratives and seed new narratives for decades. And they'll read our chapter too, and they'll find some ideas for where to go to continue learning. We close our chapter by naming some of the networks and spaces where people are really thinking about how to transform practices within philanthropy, and those are the spaces where funders can get curious about how to change things within their own institutions.
Mandy Van Deven:
Thank you, Zaineb, and thank you, Erin, both of y'all, for being a part of the Myths of Philanthropy series, and for taking the time to have this conversation. I also want to share our appreciation for Jaime and the Grantmakers in the Arts for giving me the opportunity to come back for another episode of the podcast and share some of Elemental's work with your members. We're really grateful to continue to partner with you.
Jaime Sharp:
Thank you again for listening in to Grantmakers in the Arts podcast. Thank you so much to Mandy, Erin, and Zaineb for joining us for today's episode. You can check out more of our podcast episodes on Reader.giarts.org, and we look forward to you tuning in next time.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Mandy van Deven, is the co-lead of Elemental, a funder learning and grantmaking initiative that cultivates conditions to resource narrative power. She is also is the founder of Both/And Solutions, a global consulting collective that draws on professional expertise and lived experience to provide strategic advice to individual wealth holders and philanthropic institutions, enable organizational and field learning, and design and implement funding initiatives that advance gender, racial, economic, and climate justice. She serves on the boards of Puentes, a network that builds the narrative infrastructure of social justice movements across Latin America, and Thousand Currents, which mobilizes resources to frontline communities and grassroots movements in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean.
Zaineb Mohammed is the Communications Director at the Kataly Foundation where she leads the foundation’s efforts to share its learnings about wealth redistribution and racial justice grantmaking and investment practices with the field of philanthropy. As a social change communicator now working within the field of philanthropy, Zaineb is committed to interrogating power and centering the experiences of those most harmed by injustice. Prior to entering philanthropy, Zaineb served as the Communications Director at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights where she led the organization’s work to change the narrative around punishment and public safety. Zaineb also serves on the Leadership Team of the Radical Communicators Network (RadComms), a community of practice for social movement communicators. A former journalist, fact-checker, college admissions officer, and paralegal, she took a long, meandering journey before finding her path in the world of communications and narrative strategy.
For the past 10 years, Erin Lynn Williams (she/her/elle) has held leadership roles in intermediary philanthropic institutions that resource activists and movements advancing sexual and reproductive justice and narrative and cultural strategy. As an advisor, facilitator, and coach, Erin has also led journeys for philanthropists who want to deepen their value alignment and giving practices in service of social justice, repair, and liberation. Erin is a Black mixed-race radical listener, trust-based grantmaker, and change catalyst and has lived and worked in Canada, Belgium, Botswana, Jamaica and the U.S. as an advocate, counselor, and sexuality educator. Erin holds a Master of Social Work from Carleton University and a graduate certificate in Principles and Practices of Organizational Development from Columbia University. She weaves her love of singing, dancing, theatre, somatic, and mindfulness practices into her life and work. She is currently an Artist in Residence with Our Collective Practice and is learning to DJ. Erin speaks English and French, is motivated by cultivating deep relationships and trust, and tries her best to live up to Kay Ryan's words: “Intention doesn’t sweeten. It should be picked young and eaten.”
