How Centering Equity Deepened Cross-Team Collaboration

The program operations and grants management teams at Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies (MACP) both lead and participate in collaborative organizational and grantmaking change efforts. In reflecting on the PEAK Principles of Narrow the Power Gap and Learn, Share, Evolve, the team surfaced stories about hosting and joining cross-functional collaborations, with themes around inclusion, equity, and trust as core to our approaches.   Hosting Collaborations By Sarah Small When I started at MACP in 2021, I stepped in to facilitate and lead an initiative focused on using our diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) commitments and grantee and staff feedback to embed equitable practices more intentionally in our processes. Our programs and cross-functional leadership team asked us to review our application process. We then invited program officers and program associates, as well as representatives from finance and legal, to codesign a new renewal application process and consulted as needed with programs