Participation With Real Authority: A Grantmaking Charter That Makes Power Inspectable

1. Begin with the study’s account of power

Mogotsi and Hauger draw on 19 interviews with grantmakers working in sub-Saharan Africa [1]. They examine participatory grantmaking and identify changes in visible decision authority alongside persistent constraints, including resource scarcity and back-donor demands. The study also describes new power relations that can emerge when community participants become allocators. Participation does not remove power; it changes how power is exercised and who can challenge it.

For a family foundation, the central design question is which decisions it is willing and authorized to share. A consultation about priorities is different from a binding allocation decision. The proposed charter makes that distinction explicit before asking community members to invest their time or expose sensitive experiences.

2. State the nondelegable constraints honestly

Identify the grant pool, its purpose, the decision timeline and any restrictions that participants cannot change. Explain the reason for each restriction in accessible language. Do not call a process community-led if the donor retains an undisclosed veto over every substantive outcome. If legal or fiduciary obligations limit delegation, qualified advisers should define those limits before recruitment begins.

The foundation should also state what happens if the participants recommend an uncomfortable but permissible allocation. A credible commitment includes a process for documenting a refusal and allowing challenge. Transparency about a limited mandate is more respectful than an expansive promise that disappears when the recommendation differs from the donor’s preferences.

3. Design representation beyond the easiest contacts

Identify who is affected by the funding and who is usually absent from advisory spaces. Language, location, disability, connectivity, employment schedules and social standing may shape access. A group recruited entirely through the foundation’s existing network can reproduce the same exclusions under a participatory label. Explain selection criteria and how they can be questioned.

Budget for participants’ time, access needs and support. Compensation and practical assistance should be designed with relevant professional guidance and local context. Avoid making unpaid availability a hidden qualification for influence. Provide a way to contribute without public exposure where participation could create personal or political risk, and collect only information necessary for the process.

4. Give participants usable information and decision rights

Prepare materials that explain the available choices, constraints and trade-offs without requiring specialist philanthropic vocabulary. Allow participants to request clarification, seek independent perspectives and revise the process when important information is missing. A decision right is weak if only foundation staff can interpret the evidence or frame the feasible options.

Record how priorities become criteria and how criteria shape allocations. Preserve minority views and the reasons for decisions. Establish conflict procedures for participants with relationships to applicants, while recognizing that community knowledge often arises through such relationships. The task is to manage relevant conflicts transparently, not to disqualify everyone close enough to understand the problem.

5. Create a route to challenge both donor and panel

Community representatives can acquire gatekeeping power of their own. Provide a proportionate process through which applicants or affected people can raise concerns about exclusion, favoritism, inaccurate information or inaccessible procedures. Name a person or body able to respond without simply referring the complaint to the people whose conduct is questioned.

Pause an allocation if a material conflict is undisclosed, if participants face retaliation, or if promised authority has been withdrawn without explanation. Distinguish a legitimate constraint from a donor’s discomfort with the result. Preserve corrective decisions, including changes to recruitment, information or the scope of delegation, so that learning can affect the next round.

6. Evaluate agency as well as administrative completion

After the cycle, ask whose priorities entered the process, which decisions participants actually controlled and which donor preferences remained decisive. Seek views from recipients and unsuccessful applicants, not only the panel or foundation staff. Monitor burden and unintended exclusion alongside timeliness and distribution of awards. A completed meeting and an attractive group photograph do not demonstrate a shift in power.

The source mainly interviews grantmakers rather than end users and does not follow power dynamics longitudinally. It cannot establish that this charter produces better outcomes or that a single model transfers across jurisdictions. The practical contribution is a record of authority that can be compared with experience: what the foundation promised, what participants could actually decide, and how those affected could question the process.

Source, attribution and limits

[1] Keratiloe Sishoma Mogotsi; Tyler Dale Hauger. Exploring Participatory Grantmaking in Sub-Saharan Africa: Current Landscape, Practices, and Power Dynamics. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations (2024-11-11). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-024-00694-z. CC BY 4.0.

Primarily grantmaker perspectives, not direct end-user evidence. No longitudinal design or causal evaluation of impact. Contextual qualitative findings do not prescribe one transferable participation model.

Prepared by the Family Office Private Wealth Journal editorial research desk with AI assistance at the direction of Dr. Freedom Cheteni. Original research authors retain full credit and are not authors or endorsers of this companion. This proposed process has not been evaluated in a new empirical study; no independent peer-review acceptance is claimed. This is educational analysis, not individualized investment, legal or tax advice.

Implementation record

Open the cited sources

1. [1] Keratiloe Sishoma Mogotsi; Tyler Dale Hauger. Exploring Participatory Grantmaking in Sub-Saharan Africa: Current Landscape, Practices, and Power Dynamics. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations (2024-11-11). ↗