Can settler-led philanthropy advance reconciliation?

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The Circle on Philanthropy wants to see the philanthropic sector’s commitments to reconciliation result in more funding for Indigenous-led organizations and hopes a revamped version of its Indigenous Definitional Matrix, otherwise known as the I4DM, will push the issue forward.

Originally created by Indigenous women who were part of The Circle in 2018, along with Indigenous leaders from its wider network, the matrix was revamped late last year. The publicly available tool now includes four categories: Indigenous benefitting, Indigenous informed, Indigenous partnerships and Indigenous-led, which can be used to help guide settler-led philanthropic organizations as they determine which organizations to grant to in the future and re-evaluate past granting practices.

“There’s been a lot of commitments [from the philanthropic sector] made towards Reconciliation or to the Declaration of Action, but we want to see how they’re translated into more funding to Indigenous-led organizations,” says Alejandra Bravo, manager of shared learnings and research at The Circle.  

The matrix provides settler philanthropists with questions to ask themselves and their grantees, such as: “how do you engage with Indigenous communities and ensure accountability?” and “how are you accountable to the Indigenous peoples and communities you serve?” 

For Thulasy Lettner, manager of shared learning and knowledge creation at The Circle, the matrix is something philanthropic foundations should spend time with. “It’s primarily a tool for reflection rather than classification,” one designed to “provoke conversations” internally, she says.

“It’s like peeling back the layers of an onion,” says Lettner. “The tool is asking you to go deeper and to ask really important questions that might not be obvious to some people, questions about why it’s important that this money go to Indigenous-led efforts, movements, nations. Why Indigenous sovereignty is important in the context of Canada and its history and colonialism.”

Lettner also believes this could be a moment of learning and reflecting for Indigenous benefiting organizations who tend to be more funded to by philanthropy than Indigenous-led organizations. The Circle defines Indigenous benefiting as organizations that support Indigenous causes with no collaboration with Indigenous communities and with no Indigenous leadership at the board or staff level. 

“This is really pointing towards the importance of self determination and Indigenous sovereignty. It’s the shift of not just resources but power to the hands of Indigenous folks working in their own communities to not only meet their own needs but also dream their own dreams and set their own goals,” she says. 

The I4DM is also useful for Indigenous-led organizations when it comes to advocacy, Bravo says. 

“[They can] uphold their work, their own rules and their own teachings,” Bravo says. “[They can use it] to have a relationship with funders from a place of power.” 

The revamped I4DM comes at a time of growing awareness around the underfunding of Indigenous-led organizations in Canada.

A 2022 study — Canadian Charities Giving to Indigenous Charities and Qualified Donees: 2019 — revealed that, of 29,045 grants analyzed, only 376 went to Indigenous groups and only nine of those exceeded $1 million. Indigenous people make up nearly five per cent of the population in Canada, but received only 0.7 per cent of the $9.6 billion given out in gifted funds in 2019.

 The I4DM inspired the Vancouver Foundation to create an Equity Matrix (with guidance from The Circle) aimed at improving its grantmaking process. 

“We’re trying to look at equity more broadly, including Indigeneity but not limited to it,” says Dara Parker, vice president of grants and community initiatives at the Vancouver Foundation. 

As for the Equity Matrix’s impact, it’s too early to tell, Parker says.

“We’re still in the process of distributing that first round of funding,” she says. “We’re looking forward to digging into the learnings because we saw this as a prototype and learning space. Our assumption is that looking at equity more broadly across many intersecting identities would be a really complex process.”

Program director of the Donner Foundation, Amy Buskirk, says while the foundation acknowledges and appreciates The Circle’s recent updates to the I4DM, it’s currently using The Circle’s original Definitional Matrix, which only has three categories: Indigenous charities, Indigenous-focused charities and charities that have Indigenous beneficiaries. 

“Each year, we’ve used The Circle’s matrix to look at the foundation’s grants and reflect on ways to increase support for Indigenous communities in general and Indigenous-led initiatives in particular,” Buskirk says. “The conversations sparked by the matrix and the analysis that it supports can help shake foundations out of the status quo.”

For Laura Butler, managing director of The Trottier Family Foundation, which has also been a Partner in Reciprocity with The Circle since 2021, using the I4DM has impacted the way the foundation has thought about its grantmaking processes, resulting in a grantmaking process that’s more trust-based, relational and flexible towards grantees. Butler says the foundation also used the I4DM to dig into uncomfortable truths about who it used to fund in the past.

“What we’ve taken away [from the I4DM] is a greater commitment to supporting BIPOC-led organizations or groups that are very explicit about that,” she says, citing the Foundation for Black Communities, Indspire, The Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal, Raven Trust and Teach for Canada Gakinaamaage as organizations the foundation has worked with. 

The matrix’s grantee questions help the foundation determine if a grantee is truly engaged with Indigenous communities and fully committed towards Reconciliation, Butler says, something that saves time and energy.

While The Trottier Foundation doesn’t have a specific program geared towards Indigenous communities, Butler says Indigenous communities are integrated into all of the causes the foundation funds and that Indigenous communities are also greatly impacted by, like climate change.

“We don’t specifically track the use of the I4DM, which we should be doing, but we use it to inform our review process,” Butler says. “So for example, when we receive an application that involves Indigenous communities, we are going to know if it is an Indigenous-led organization, if there’s Indigenous partnership, or if a middle-aged white lady is coming in for a one-and-done situation. We prioritize Indigenous-led organizations or projects serving Indigenous communities.” 

It may be too early to see the full impact of the revamped I4DM, but Lettner and Bravo are hopeful more change is coming. And while the matrix is a starting point for accountability, it shouldn’t be an end point.

“This is hard work,” Lettner says. “There’s clarity that the matrix offers, but there’s now a lot of work to do [within the philanthropic sector], administratively, operationally, from a governance standpoint, to make all of this real. What we’re asking them to do is to take on that work. Work through those hard [conversations] and to share what they learn.”