It’s time to be bold beyond the rhetoric

If philanthropy is serious about supporting social movements, it needs to be ready to take risks and have skin in the game. Risks, because the call and response nature of movements requires an emergent and experimental approach. Skin in the game, because what’s needed is accompaniment and solidarity over ‘expertise’ and ‘rubrics’. As a funder-civil society collaborative we have walked with two incredible partners over the years in supporting social movements. Their solidarity has been a keystone of our collaboration. It would be comical, if it weren’t sad, to see now how social movements have become so much the rage that money is accumulating or sitting idle, while donors figure out what social movements are or how to work with them. [Read the commentary on page 5]