Reimagining Philanthropy Through Shared Power: Thrive’s Community Grantmaker Initiative

In a field where community-changing decisions often rest with a small group of foundation staff or major donors, a crucial question emerges, who truly has the skillsets to determine which strategies deserve funding? At Thrive Philanthropy, we are committed to transforming how philanthropy works and we continually seek to create more equitable systems that center those closest to the issues. At Thrive, we also believe that those with lived experience and cultural wisdom—the activists and community members themselves—are the most important voices in philanthropic decisions.

Thrive is reimagining philanthropic power through our Thrive Community Grantmaker initiative, a community-driven, participatory grantmaking model designed to dismantle traditional philanthropic power structures and create more equitable pathways for funding global food systems change.

The Challenge: Power Imbalance in Traditional Philanthropy

When I founded Thrive Philanthropy, an intermediary grantmaker, I was responding to a persistent problem in our sector: the disconnect between those who control resources and those who understand the nuanced realities of on-the-ground work. This disconnect is particularly pronounced in global grantmaking, where Western funders often determine priorities for communities they may never visit, let alone understand.

As a BIPOC-majority, women-majority global team, Thrive Philanthropy brings a unique perspective to addressing these systemic inequities. Our funding approach is grounded in trust-based philanthropy, dismantling funding accessibility barriers, upending grantor/grantee power imbalances, and centering grantees’ success. We fund primarily grassroots organizations across 6 continents and nearly 100 countries working toward just, plant-rich food systems change—work that sits at the intersection of food sovereignty, nutrition access, climate justice, and animal welfare.

One Solution: Thrive Community Grantmaker

In early 2025, we launched Thrive Community Grantmaker with a simple but radical premise: What if we invited those with lived experience and cultural wisdom – both our grantees and small-scale community donors – to lead funding decisions?

The model works as follows:

1. Decision-Making that Centers Lived Experience and Regional Wisdom: We center the knowledge, experience, and wisdom of those who are directly impacted by Thrive grants and/or those who otherwise have lived experience but would not have opportunity to participate in grantmaking. Thus, we invite to the funding decision-making table, current Thrive grantees and smallscale, individual donors.
2. Nomination Without Burden: Each round, we randomly select three current Thrive grantees as nominees for the Thrive Community Grant, and we intentionally require no additional work from these nominees so that they continue to devote their energy to their mission.
3. A Surprise Unrestricted Grant: Our community grantmakers collectively select a Thrive Community Grantee, who then receives this unrestricted, extra grant in addition to their existing Thrive funding.

Results One Year In

One year in and the results have been overwhelmingly positive:

• Lived Experience Feels Valued: Grantees report feeling genuinely heard and valued for their regional wisdom. While small-scale donors report appreciating that their contributions to the pooled fund make a collective impact beyond what their individual donations would achieve alone.
• Mutual Support: To our pleasant surprise, several grantees have chosen to become monthly pooled fund donors themselves, many stating their reason is “to give back”, creating a culture of mutual support and community among our grantees.
• Deeper Relationships: Deeper relationships and trust are developing between Thrive staff and grantees, as well as among grantees themselves. And as a trust-based practitioner, Thrive continuously seeks ways to build stronger grantee relationships that lead to a deeper sense of partnership.

Yet perhaps most telling of the impact are words directly from a Thrive Community Grantee showing that being selected for the grant not only supported their work, but offered recognition, motivation, and a sense of community. Joy, a young woman living in Nigeria who recently launched a new grassroots, food justice organization, Vegan Journey Advocacy, dedicated to using plant-based food to improve the health and wellbeing and animal welfare of her community, shares:

“We are honored to be the first Africa-based Thrive Community Grantee, a milestone that celebrates not just our work, but the incredible rise of the plant-based and climate-conscious movement across our continent, Africa. This Thrive Community Grant recognition is a shared victory for every compassionate heart that believes in a kinder, greener, and more sustainable planet. To our fellow grantees and partners, thank you for standing with us, sharing our vision, and helping us plant the seeds of change in communities. Your love, encouragement, and faith will continue to inspire us every day.”

Continuous Learning

In all transparency, Thrive continues to reflect on areas for improvement. One key question we’re wrestling with is, does our current model perpetuate a competitive “winner” paradigm when one organization receives top votes and funding while others do not? And if so, is reinforcing a competitive dynamic a value we want to embrace?

True to our participatory approach, we’ve taken this question directly to our Thrive Community Grantmakers. To date, participants have expressed comfort with the current model, yet we remain open to evolution. This openness to adaptation reflects our broader philosophy: trust-based philanthropy is a practice of continuous learning and adaptation alongside our grantee partners, rather than a static set of top-down procedures.

Join Us in Reimagining Philanthropy

Thrive Community Grantmaker is one of our attempts to move beyond rhetoric into action and to reimagine funding structures where those most impacted by funding decisions have the most meaningful voice in making those decisions.

As we collectively work to transform philanthropy, let’s continue asking the difficult questions: Whose knowledge counts? And how can we design systems that honor the wisdom of those closest to the issues we seek to address? Thrive doesn’t have all the answers, but we’re committed to walking this journey with you, of reimagining what philanthropy could be when we truly share power.

Jessika Ava, MS, MPA (Choctaw) is the Founder and CEO of Thrive Philanthropy, a global grantmaker and movement-builder with a mission to accelerate alternatives to factory farming and create just, plant-rich food systems worldwide. Learn more at www.thrivephilanthropy.org or connect directly at jessika.ava@thrivephilanthropy.org.