Trust as tender: Decolonizing mindsets to reimagine power and accountability in community philanthropy
This paper explores the idea of trust as social capital, and poses the questions: What would it mean to take the trust communities already hold seriously, at the scale of international funding relationships? What space would that open up for genuine collaboration within the wider system? What would it look like if trust came first, and funding followed it, rather than the other way around? Those questions, rather than any theory of change, is where this paper begins; and it is why community philanthropy, sustaining itself through indigenous knowledge and collective agency long before any funder arrives, sits at the centre of the paper.
Author: Lena Bheeroo, 2024 / 2025 #ShiftThePower Fellow and current Possible Now Stitching Fellow
Published by: GFCF
Published: October 2026
