Shift Power Through Participatory Investing.
By the very nature of lived experience, the people closest to problems have the most relevant perspectives on solutions, yet often lack access to the power needed to make an impact.
Billions of dollars of philanthropic assets are held in investments—funds that can be leveraged to shift power, create impact, and propel their mission through Participatory Investing.
We’ve designed a tool to help funders explore what Participatory Investing could look like within their institution.
Participatory Investing Toolkit.
In March 2022, Common Future launched the Action Lab: Participatory Investing—a partnership with the World Education Services (WES) Mariam Assefa Fund—with 16 leaders from 8 participating institutions. During this year-long initiative, we learned about, experimented, and applied participatory strategies and principles through institutional projects and a collaborative fund.
Together with the Action Lab: Participatory Investing cohort and indispensable support from numerous advisors, we’ve aggregated our learnings, core principles, and some existing examples in this toolkit to make this work easier for other institutions and catalyze the field of Participatory Investing.
Participatory Investing
An investing approach that ensures communities that have been historically excluded and harmed by traditional investment structures hold meaningful power and ownership over capital strategy, design, implementation, and outcomes.
The definition above was created to establish a common language for the Action Lab. Participants, advisors, and facilitators jointly drafted this definition in order to set the foundation for codifying our work together.
“The key to being non-extractive is relationship building”
Enjolie Lafaurie, Cihuapactli Collective
Toolkit Chapters:
Participatory Investing is a way of viewing the work. It should be iterative and deeply integrated into an institution—it is not a box to check.
Why Participatory?
Because systemic racial injustices are rooted in economic motivations, participation and sharing power are critical levers in any racial or economic equity strategy.
Participatory Investing, at its best, ensures that models, solutions, and perspectives rooted in community are uplifted and prioritized in investment decisions.
Investment decisions are rarely made by the communities the capital aims to serve. Those who do make decisions often lack lived experience around the challenges being addressed. Community participation in decision-making de-risks investments by centering the experiences of those who are closest to the challenge an institution is seeking to address. This leads to more informed investment decisions.
The communities that funders serve have unique insights and knowledge about what works for them, what doesn’t, and what possible solutions could help them prosper. Additionally, participation cultivates buy-in and a level of community stake in approved deals. Participation enriches an institution's knowledge and broadens their potential for learning. Participatory strategies, when done right, can help repair harm from hundreds of years of oppression.
Active participation means building trust and relationships. It means facilitating connection and creating opportunities for self-determination within communities. Participation means both communities and institutions bring their strengths to the table. It is a pathway for you and your institution to live into your values.
Why Investing?
Foundations in the United States hold over $1 trillion in assets—93% of which are invested in Wall Street rather than being used for the common good.
The vast majority of capital within philanthropy is held in investment vehicles far removed from the communities funding institutions aim to serve. If an institution isn’t consciously working to align these assets with its mission, its impact is often limited, extractive, and detrimental.
Not only is this capital often not working to propel an institution’s mission, but decisions on the allocation of these assets are regularly made behind closed doors.
Even more than grant capital, investment capital allocations are often shrouded in secrecy and decisions lack transparency.
These billions of dollars are both a responsibility and an opportunity. Charitable institutions receive tax-exemption status on all of their capital—not just their grant capital. In order to be good stewards, institutions have a responsibility to leverage all of their assets toward their mission. Leveraging investment capital also provides an opportunity for institutions to scale their grant impacts and make powerful, systemic changes in the communities they serve. Choosing to activate an institution’s entire portfolio of capital changes the conversation on what’s possible.
Who is this toolkit for?
Staff, leadership, and boards at philanthropic institutions interested in learning about Participatory Investing.
Staff, leadership, and boards at philanthropic institutions ready to integrate Participatory Investing strategies and practices.
Anyone working in or with the field of philanthropy who would like to learn more about Participatory Investing. This could include community leaders and organizations, and philanthropic support organizations hoping to advocate for more community participation.*
*Note: This toolkit is not currently structured for community-led stakeholders but there are still strategies, language, or tools that may be useful. Keep an eye out for more community-focused resources in future iterations!
“This participatory process allowed investees to get creative with the terms of the investments we were seeking because we started with a blank slate—the lack of prescription opened up new possibilities.”
Jen Lewis Walden, Build Healthy Places Network & SHIFT Health Accelerator
About the Toolkit
This toolkit is an invitation for funders to think differently about who has power within their institutions and how decisions are made. The methodology presented in this toolkit does not provide all of the answers for how to integrate Participatory Investing into your institution. Instead, it poses questions and asks you to reflect on the context of your work to develop a strategy that is both edge-pushing and realistic for your unique institution. Participatory Investing is not a linear process—there are many paths toward making progress within this toolkit no matter where your institution is starting and this toolkit aims to reflect that. This site is intended to be a starting place, not an end point.
To see how this toolkit relates to other frameworks in the field, click here.
Would you like to work through this process as a team? Download our facilitator guide here.
Although Participatory Investing is a nascent field, the content outlined in this toolkit is based on experience, research, established investing functions, and well-known models such as the Community Engagement Spectrum. The principles, skills, and strategies are the beginning of learning and experimentation around Participatory Investing in an institutional context—models and examples of this work are emerging and often at a relatively early stage.
This toolkit is a first iteration. We’re excited to learn from you and other users to continuously improve it, develop additional helpful tools, uplift examples and experiments, and support the development of the field.