By surrendering some control, philanthropists can do even more good
by Meg Massey and Ben Wrobel
When the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves launched in 2010, it attracted the attention of deep-pocketed donors due to its audacious, headline-grabbing goal of distributing 100 million clean-burning cookstoves to underprivileged households and rural villages around the globe. The New Yorker called the movement to design such appliances "the quest for a stove that can save the world."
But after 8 years and $75 million, it had become apparent that the alliance had fallen well short of its goals. It had built and distributed the stoves on schedule, but there was an unexpected hitch: People didn't want to use them. One woman told a journalist that the "clean" stove simply didn't cook food as she wanted it to; another thought it cooked too slowly.
This is an all-too-common story in philanthropy. An ambitious, well-meaning plan has one fatal flaw: The people at the center of the problem were not sufficiently consulted. However, a growing number of philanthropists are starting to do things differently, using a model called participatory grantmaking.
Participatory grantmaking is the process of shifting decision-making power over grantmaking to the very communities most affected by the grants. It's a structural fix to the broken power dynamics in traditional funding — a way to change philanthropy from closed, opaque, and expert-driven to open, transparent, and community-driven.
