Make
Shift Happen
You’re invited.
We’re tackling the tough questions about how philanthropy must transform in service of gender, economic, and racial justice. Come explore with us what it means to work differently to support change as we try to lead with relationships, share power, and transform from the inside out.
We know firsthand how difficult this is. We’ve faced our own resistance, made countless mistakes, and continue to learn from movement leaders who generously challenge our assumptions.
Now, we’re embracing the vulnerability of honest reflection. Follow along with our ongoing series, Make Shift Happen–offering up stories, reflections, insights, lessons learned, and breakthroughs–as we work to transform philanthropy, starting with transforming ourselves.
The Human, Relational Work of Systems Change
By Elise Belusa, Executive Director
Our journey toward racial justice asked each of us to set down the performance of goodness and step into real relationships.
Episode 15 of Make Shift Happen is called “The Personal Work of Systems Change,” but listening back to my conversation with Ruth, I keep thinking it should be called “The Human Work Necessary for Systems Change.”
Can We Heal Philanthropy’s Money Stuff?
By Elise Belusa, Executive Director
We’re all longing for the same thing: healing from capitalism’s harms.
In Episode 11 of Make Shift Happen, Maria Nakae, Senior Director of Just Transition Investing at Justice Funders and Tenesha Duncan, CEO and founder of Orchid Capital Collective, talk about the healing work necessary to realize a future where we all can flourish.
Shifting Power to Find Connection
By Ruth Shaber, MD, Founder and President, Tara Health Foundation
How shifting power can help us find belonging and community beyond our dollars
A key moment of Episode 6 in our Make Shift Happen Conversation series centers on Tara Health’s board governance. Rachel Robasciotti, a Tara Health Foundation Board Member and founder and co-CEO of Adasina Social Capital, shares a story about our work to restructure power within our organization—and what’s possible on the other side.
Sharing Wealth, Strengthening Community: From Extraction to Beloved Community
By Mia Reilly
“I want security in community because where I come from—that’s the only real security there is.”
This comes from Rachel Robasciotti, founder and Co-CEO of Adasina Social Capital and Tara Health Foundation Board Member, speaking with Nwamaka Agbo, founding CEO of Kataly Foundation and managing director of Kataly’s Restorative Economies Fund, in our latest episode of the Make Shift Happen Conversation Series.
Short on Funds, Long on Relationship: Spending Out to Meet the Moment
By Elise Belusa, Executive Director
The full experience of being a spend out means finding a role without capital.
I’m excited to share the latest in our Make Shift Happen Conversation Series. In it, Glen Galaich, CEO of the Stupski Foundation, and I explore the ways spend out foundations stand apart in a moment and landscape marked by retreat and fear.
Philanthropy: The Origin Story
By Elise Belusa, Executive Director
When we reckon with philanthropy’s origins, we open up to connection and transformation.
I’m honored to share the first release of our Make Shift Happen conversation series. It features Tenesha Duncan Bose, now founder and CEO of Orchid Capital Collective and former program officer here at Tara Health, in conversation with Maria Nakae, Senior Director of Just Transition Investing at Justice Funders. They dig into how the origins of philanthropy are fundamentally at odds with what movements for justice need from foundations holding vast amounts of money.
Make Shift Happen: Coming October 2025
By Tara Health Foundation
At the Tara Health Foundation, we believe that in order to realize a world where all people have full control over their bodies, lives, and futures, philanthropy has to shift the flow of power and resources.
We're not the first or the only people to believe this: our work to do philanthropy differently exists within a long lineage and thriving ecosystem of changemakers already modeling different ways forward.
Shifting Power and Resources to Build the Democracy We’ve Never Had
By Elise Belusa, Executive Director
In this crumbling present, how do we hold onto vision? How do we nurture hope and find joy? At Tara Health, we’re examining what we can do with our power, influence, and institutional resources. Again and again, this reflection has led me to confront an uncomfortable truth about philanthropic structures: despite our best intentions, we know that private foundations are deeply undemocratic spaces.
In the Spaces Between: Moments of Change at Tara Health in 2024
By Elise Belusa, Executive Director
We believe real change happens when we create room for authentic relationships - both the challenging parts, the beautiful ones, and all the spaces in between. In this Annual Update, we’re sharing our full reflection on 2024 - an honest look at what it means to transform from the inside out.