Does Your Table Already Exist? This Is the Moment for Collaboration
This blog was originally published by Alliance Magazine and has been reprinted here with permission.
By Vanessa Stevens
At the Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) conference in Boston, I was reminded that philanthropy is not a collection of isolated institutions. We are an ecosystem whose effectiveness depends on how we show up collectively for communities in crises.
Across the U.S. and beyond, nonprofit leaders are navigating uncertainty, funding instability, political polarization, attacks on civil and human rights, and growing threats to democracy. In the recently released State of Nonprofits 2026 report, the Center for Effective Philanthropy found that nearly 90% of nonprofit leaders expressed concern about burnout and 66% reported concerns about their organization’s financial stability.
Some communities have demonstrated what’s possible through collaboration in moments of crisis. In Minnesota, for instance, when immigrant communities were targeted by the U.S. federal government, local funders responded to meet the moment. In a talk at the conference, Ambar Hanson, Executive Director of the Mortenson Family Foundation, shared how a coalition of 33 philanthropic organizations and community-rooted leaders mobilized $15 million within a few months to build the Immigrant Rapid Response Fund.
While the fund emerged almost overnight, the relationships that made it possible did not. In particular, their playbook for collective philanthropic crisis response highlights that a group of 14 Latine leaders had already been meeting for a year to build the Minnesota Latine Fund. They were a close network who could move at the speed of trust. The playbook authors advise, “You are not assembling a table later; you are activating one that already exists.”
“You are not assembling a table later; you are activating one that already exists.”
Does your table already exist?
At the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project, we believe that trust and collaboration are strategic investments, not just aspirations. It’s why we emphasize that trust-based philanthropy is more than a set of grantmaking practices. It’s also about cultivating cultures, structures, and leadership approaches rooted in trust, transparency, mutual learning, and collaboration.
While we’ve seen smaller under-the-radar funders taking bold action, sometimes quietly, we’ve also observed that many funders are looking for ways to contribute but feel isolated or uncertain where to begin. Through our emerging work sparking regional collaborations, we’ve been asking what can be done together that can’t be done alone. We’re finding that the “micro is macro,” and that no action is too little to build trust and plant the seeds for collaboration—for community rapid response, greater responsiveness to grantees, or longer-term systems change.
The strongest tables are built long before they’re needed:
Who are the funders in your local ecosystem that share your commitment to supporting nonprofits and communities under attack?
Who are the nonprofit leaders, organizers, and community members who should already be sitting at your table?
What relationships need nurturing before they are needed in a moment of urgency?
How can you resource the collaboration infrastructure that makes partnership possible in practice? Such as time, relationship-building, facilitation, and coordination.
Who can you share the Minnesota Immigrant Rapid Response Fund playbook with and discuss potential collaborations to amplify support for nonprofits and communities?
At the opening plenary, Philanthropy Massachusetts CEO Mary Skelton Roberts emphasized, “Philanthropy is democracy in practice.” Your community can’t afford to wait for a crisis to start building trust and collaboration. The urgency is already here, and democracy needs us all at the table.
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Vanessa Stevens is a Network Engagement Consultant with the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project. Vanessa partners with funders, philanthropic networks, and donor collaboratives in the U.S. and globally to strengthen participatory, trust-based, and community-centered approaches to philanthropy and social change.