Working Together for Repair: Collaboration and the Practice of Reparative Philanthropy

Over the past few months, the Bold Ventures team has been reflecting deeply about the ways philanthropy can be a tool for repair and sharing insights on what this approach means and how to get started on your Reparative Philanthropy journey. 

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A vital part of our work is supporting philanthropic intermediaries and donor collaboratives as they build knowledge and capacity to advance equity and repair. This got us thinking: What does philanthropic collaboration look like in a world where we are building for repair?

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Much has been written over the years about the growing impact and potential of philanthropic collaboratives. Bridgespan’s annual survey of collaboratives captures the current collaborative landscape well, highlighting the surging popularity of collaboratives over the last decade and identifying the ways collaboratives are poised to advance social change differently. Notably, the majority of collaboratives go further than traditional philanthropy to promote equity and justice, field and movement building, and leaders of color. 

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These are important and encouraging starting points, but in our own work, we’ve seen the start of something more. We’ve seen that collaboration can be a place to practice repair. Below, we invite you to think about how a reparative framework might shift and improve your practices.

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How Collaboration Can Be a Venue for Repair

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For us, Reparative Philanthropy represents an urgent opportunity to advance racial repair and build a more just and liberated future. A commitment to repair transforms how we give by centering the wisdom, leadership, and lived experience of communities that philanthropy has historically excluded from decision-making and resource allocation. 

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We know this approach can work well: Communities harmed by extraction and exclusion have been practicing repair, resilience, and mutual aid for generations. But we also know it requires a significant shift in mindset and practices within philanthropy. 

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Through our work supporting collaboratives, we know that these spaces foster connection and encourage donors to participate in critical philanthropic endeavors that might otherwise feel intimidating or too risky. With this in mind, we see collaboratives as ripe venues for the experimentation required to move meaningfully toward repair.

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What We’ve Learned About Collaboration & Repair

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What can collaboration look like in a world where we are building for repair? Here is what we have witnessed while facilitating collaborative efforts at Bold Ventures:

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Fostering Courage, Experimentation, and Risk Taking to Meet Growing Needs

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Simply put, it is easier to be courageous, to experiment, and to take risks when you have company. In these times of great need—with growing attacks on DEI initiatives, rollbacks of civil rights protections, and expanding wealth inequality—we know that it will take more than just staying the course to make real change. 

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Movement leaders and communities go to work every day to build a future in which we all can thrive. They need philanthropy to have the courage and will to do the same—and often to follow where they are already leading. Matching the courage of movement leaders won’t be easy. It will require funders to think creatively, try new approaches, and make mistakes. With the support, encouragement, and accountability of partners outside of their own organizations, collaboratives can be a safe space for funders to step up and answer the call from their communities.

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Moving Beyond the Usual Suspects

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Collaborations can also offer opportunities to expand networks and connections beyond the usual suspects. Done right, they can also ensure that community voices are central.

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The We Rise Together Fund, an initiative of the Chicago Community Trust (CCT), provides a strong example of how a grantmaking process that involves close collaboration with community members can yield new ideas grounded in community needs. By recruiting a cohort of community advisors to help define issue areas, refine strategy, and review applications, CCT expanded its reach to new organizations. In fact, 75 percent of the organizations that were considered for funding and 50 percent of those funded had not been previously funded by CCT.

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Building new relationships takes time and effort. But examples like the We Rise Together Fund show the incredible value of bringing different voices to the table. Expanding the conversation sparks curiosity, generates new ideas, leads to deeper learning, and extends empathy, making possible the honest dialogue and sharing of collective wisdom that repair requires. 

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Building Trust and Accountability for Change

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One of the keys to Reparative Philanthropy is building relationships of trust where mistakes can be acknowledged, learned from, and repaired. 

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In an often-siloed sector, we’ve seen that collaboratives offer a unique opportunity to build connection, belonging, and trust—which can, in turn, open the door to asking harder questions, going further, and learning more together. With stronger, trusting relationships comes an increased sense of accountability to each other, as well as to the cause and communities the collaborative is coming together around.

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Shifting Money Mindsets and Power for True Collective Action

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Redistributing extracted wealth and ceding real power to community-led organizations and movements are central practices for Reparative Philanthropy. To be honest, getting this right isn’t easy. 

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Real power-sharing lives in the details: who’s in the room, how decisions get made, and what scaffolding holds it all together. At Bold Ventures, we know it’s about moving from intention to practice, even if incrementally, and accepting that this work may get messy and take longer than we wish. 

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We also know that, with these shifts, collaboration can become reparative: It can act as a power-focused correction to traditional philanthropy, shifting the mindset from one in which money and power are scarce and must be hoarded to one in which abundance,  generosity, and truly collective action become possible .

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Closing

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We are keenly aware of how hard it can be to rethink philanthropy in these terms, but we know from our own lived experience that it’s possible to travel this path. Indeed, collaborative efforts that bring together communities, movements, and donors are uniquely positioned for the risk taking and experimentation so critically needed in these times.