Dimple Abichandani
San Francisco Bay Area
Website
LinkedIn
Contact: dimple.abichandani@gmail.com
she/her
Most often works with: Family Foundations, Private Foundations, Community Foundations, Individual Donors/DAF Holders, Intermediary Grantmaking Organizations, Pooled Fund/Donor Circle, Philanthropy Serving Organizations
Challenges most often addressed:
Dimple works with foundations, individual donors, and boards to navigate the challenges and opportunities defining philanthropy today, helping institutions evolve from outdated practices toward more responsive, proximate, and impactful approaches to resourcing change.
Over the past year, she has been deeply engaged with funders through her widely praised book, A New Era of Philanthropy: Ten Practices to Transform Wealth Into a More Just and Sustainable Future (North Atlantic Books, April 2025), bringing its framework to life through keynotes, speaking engagements, podcasts, and confidential advising relationships.
Building on that momentum, Dimple is leading several active projects to bring philanthropy into the new era. She is working with foundation boards on governance, one of the sector's most persistent obstacles, helping them align values with practice and build approaches that are more accountable and proximate to the communities they serve.
She is also addressing the sector's slow pace of change and lack of cross-organizational collaboration by supporting funder change agents through communities of practice in the US South and internationally.
Across all of this work, Dimple brings her skills as a strategist, sensemaker, and storyteller, building the sector's capacity to move from charitable giving to transformational change.
Dimple Abichandani is a nationally recognized foundation leader, philanthropic advisor, social justice lawyer and author of A New Era of Philanthropy: Ten Practices to Transform Wealth Into a More Just and Sustainable Future. Her widely praised book reimagines how philanthropy can meet this moment of democratic crisis and accelerating inequality.
For two decades, Dimple has brought innovation and new purpose to funding institutions. She currently works with foundations, individual donors, and boards to navigate the challenges and opportunities defining philanthropy today, helping institutions evolve from outdated practices toward more responsive, proximate, and impactful approaches to resourcing change.
As Executive Director of the General Service Foundation (2015–2022), she aligned the foundation's grantmaking, investments, and governance with justice values. She was the founding director of the Rise Together Fund, a donor collaborative at the Proteus Fund that advances a multiracial democracy by investing in communities targeted by Islamophobia. She also led the Center for Social Justice at UC Berkeley School of Law, where she founded a Social Justice Innovation Lab to bring multidisciplinary approaches to solving systemic challenges.
Dimple's leadership has been recognized with a Scrivener Award for Creative Grantmaking and a National Center for Family Philanthropy Fellowship. She serves on the Board of Directors of Solidaire Network and has served on the boards and steering committees of the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project, Northern California Grantmakers, and Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees. Dimple is based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
