Recently, we hosted a session called Centering Care: A Funder-Partner Learning Lab on Trust-Based Philanthropy in collaboration with EMpower at IFRC 2026 to move the conversation around “trust-based philanthropy” out of the abstract and into a tangible reality.
We set out to create an honest, multi-voiced space to explore three core pillars of grant-making and fundraising:
- Power & Equity
- Care & Accountability
- Sustainability & Wellbeing.
Our aim was simple but important: to bring forward both the relational values and the practical tensions that shape funder-partner dynamics. What follows are reflections drawn from table discussions, participant insights, and the questions that continue to challenge our sector.
What We Set Out to Do
Too often, trust-based philanthropy is discussed as an aspiration rather than a practice. This session aimed to:
- Examine how power actually operates in funding relationships
- Explore care not as sentiment, but as an accountable practice
- Interrogate what sustainability means for organisations and the people within them
- Create space for candour, complexity, and disagreement
The goal was not consensus, but to steer conversations that bring forth clarity and aspects of collaborative practices that can shift in the ecosystem.
What Emerged at the Tables
A. Care & Accountability: Care as Discipline, Not Charity
Participants reframed care as an intentional and structured way of working. What builds trust:
- Reliability and consistency over time
- Credibility rooted in expertise
- Transparency and appropriate vulnerability
- Recognition of interconnectedness and community-led futures
- Using funder skills beyond capital, networks, advocacy, accompaniment
The hard truths that surfaced:
- Expectations especially from funders quietly reinforce power imbalances
- Rigid reporting structures can become extractive rather than supportive
- Care requires time, not just flexible funding mechanisms
What became clear: While there was strong agreement that care-centred frameworks matter, a vital question in the room was: What does this look like operationally, day to day?
B. Power & Equity: Naming Power Changed the Conversation
Explicitly addressing power shifted the tone from theoretical to practical. Key themes included:
- The contrast between contractual relationships and relational ones
- The need for a shared dictionary/understanding to define “trust” more clearly: participants arrived with very different interpretations
- Moving beyond transactional donor-grantee dynamics driven by approval cycles
- Humanising donors while still interrogating institutional authority
- Recognising how deeply habits are embedded in MEL systems and operational processes
What became clear: There was a clear appetite to examine how equity manifests structurally, not just rhetorically.
C. Sustainability & Wellbeing: Beyond Financial Longevity
Sustainability was understood as relational, operational, and systemic, not merely financial. Participants highlighted:
- The importance of realistic time horizons for meaningful impact
- The challenge of operationalising flexible funding within real staffing constraints
- Bringing donors closer to on-the-ground realities without performative exposure
- Practicing humility in attributing outcomes
- Making reflection an embedded discipline, not an afterthought
- Recognising organisational capacity as a form of infrastructure
- Packaging work in ways that acknowledge collaboration rather than individual ownership
What became clear: Wellbeing emerged as both organisational and deeply human, calling for the “humanisation” of everyone in the funding relationship.
The big takeaway: Trust as a Way of Being
Across discussions, trust was described less as a funding mechanism and more as a posture. It requires: humility, empathy, reliability, appropriate intimacy, reciprocal, not unilateral trust and a willingness to agree to disagree.
The room signalled strong emotional readiness to engage with these shifts. However, there was also a recognised shared challenge: intellectual alignment across the ecosystem remains uneven.The silver lining comes from the knowledge that our hearts are in the same place, and we are all in it together figuring out the practical “how-to” of making it work.
Where This Leaves Us
The session was designed not to settle the complexities of practicing trust-based philanthropy and fundraising in India, but to deepen understanding and encourage meaningful conversation.
If there was one shared recognition, it was this:
Trust cannot be operationalised without confronting power, and it cannot be sustained without care, for institutions, for communities, and for the people doing the work.
These conversations offered valuable direction as we, as an enabling organisation, continue supporting grassroots changemakers and helping steer ecosystem dialogue toward practices that are not only more equitable, but more human.