100% MISSION ALIGNMENT: APPROACH
We're all in: 100% mission alignment means we seek out every possible opportunity to channel our resources toward gender, economic, and racial justice.
Over the past decade, we've never wavered in our commitment to 100% mission alignment.
This commitment goes beyond financial assets. We consider people, knowledge, relationships, and lived experiences as equally vital in creating meaningful change. By leveraging every resource toward our mission–from our financial to our human capital–we’ve expanded what’s possible in our work for justice.
This approach represents a big departure from philanthropy's business as usual.
Under US tax law, foundations are only required to distribute 5% of their assets annually as grants, which means 95% of foundation resources are usually invested in conventional financial markets with the singular goal of maximizing returns, completely disconnected from their mission. In fact, investments made by many organizations frequently undermine the issues their grantmaking aims to address.
We call this the 5/95 model, and it's how traditional philanthropy is designed to preserve wealth in perpetuity, rather than deploying it fully toward change.
Over our decade of work: $100+ million deployed through grants, investments, loans, and creative capital. 100% aligned with our mission.
Here's how we've approached 100% mission alignment in our practice.
Impact Investing
Putting our money where our values are
Capital can be a powerful force for creating the world we want to see: one of shared abundance, collective thriving, and democratized power, where no one is left behind. But our financial system wasn’t designed to distribute prosperity widely or fairly. It emerged from and continues to operate as a cornerstone of economic systems that extract from marginalized communities while concentrating wealth elsewhere, across generations. To build a more just world, we needed to reimagine investing from the ground up.
Integrated Capital
More tools, more possibilities
Grant dollars alone, while powerful, can’t create the just and vibrant futures we envision. Integrated capital allows us to deploy the full spectrum of financial tools—grants, recoverable grants, low-interest debt, credit enhancements and non-extractive equity investments—in tandem with non-financial capacity-building resources. By meeting organizational needs at the right stage and supporting their growth over time, we enable communities to create sustainable ecosystems that reduce philanthropy dependency and amplify their own self-determination.
Grantmaking
Reimagining our process, standing alongside our partners
For philanthropy, this moment demands more than traditional, transactional grantmaking. It requires standing alongside our partners with all of our resources at the ready; not just financial, but relational and institutional. As authoritarianism rises globally, our partners are not just defending rights; they’re demonstrating what truly democratic alternatives look like. Not just through the work that they do, but the ways that they do it.
Relationship-centered Philanthropy
Transcending transactions, centering humanity
The path toward collective thriving requires all of us to honor our full humanity, as well as the humanity of those around us. Relationships are more than a means to an end: they are at the heart of the bright future we’re working to build.
