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.
These very types of conversation are the through thread for my years at Tara Health; heart-led conversations that our love for humanity is calling for. As Maria points out, that love for humanity is the root meaning of the word “philanthropy.”
I think about the heart-driven work we need to do when Tenesha talks about looking for a place in philanthropy that feels more innate and intuitive, like our human drive toward relationship and connection. But as Maria shares, philanthropy’s origin story is really a story of isolation, of isolating resources from community, whether through extraction that enabled the disproportionate accumulation of wealth in the first place, or through privatizing and sequestering resources through the tax-sheltered 501(c)3 structure.
If we truly want our philanthropy to work in service of our love of humanity, we need to transform its roots of isolation into mechanisms for connection. Tenesha gives us a snapshot of what that looks like:
The way that we move in community doesn’t look like how a philanthropic grant proposal looks and wants you to be structured. It’s nonlinear. New relationships emerge. The world changes. Everything flips on its head.
It’s not an easy path, flipping the world on its head. But it comes with—and requires—a lot of love, community, and ultimately, thriving.
I’m game. Are you?
Justice Funders is a partner and guide for philanthropy in reimagining practices that advance a thriving and just world. We use their Just Transition for Philanthropy framework to inform our thinking and find inspiration and are honored to join their Spend Out & Regeneration Convening and Community of Practice.
Orchid Capital Collective invests in ecosystems where reproductive care, economy, and community meet. They're stewarding the remainder grantmaking dollars in our birth equity portfolio and carry forward our legacy of funding with integrated capital. As a Tara Health Portfolio Lead, Tenesha was instrumental in evolving our focus to include an intersectional analysis of gender and race.
We’re grateful for the contributions of both organizations to our collective work.
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