Project Overview & Focus

The Better Food Policy Fund was launched to support food policy councils across the United States – local and regional groups working at the intersection of community and government to shape better food systems. From the very beginning, the fund was designed to be different from traditional philanthropy. Instead of concentrating decision-making with donors or national experts, the goal was to create a participatory process

My role as a strategic consultant and facilitator was to help the fund’s nascent Independent Advisory Committee (IAC) design and run the fund’s first round of grantmaking. The charge was not only to distribute money, but to do so in a way that built capacity, minimized burden, and changed the tone of philanthropy itself.

Systemic Context

Traditional philanthropy frequently asks grant recipients to write cumbersome applications, produce burdensome reports, and compete against each other for tiny pools of money with strings attached. Even well-intentioned funders often reinforce a culture of scarcity and mistrust when they misjudge the way in which they attempt to engage. The result is discouragement, not collaboration.

Food policy councils are doing important work in communities across the country, but they are often underfunded, underrecognized, and overstretched. Many groups struggle with high turnover and organizational trauma.

Yet every council brings strengths and creativity to their work. The question for us was how to recognize and celebrate those strengths while distributing limited funds fairly, in a collaborative way that attuned to their capacity to engage with the funding opportunity. We also wanted to improve upon others’ participatory grantmaking efforts, building upon their lessons learned.

What Was Needed

Councils needed a process that didn’t pit them against each other. They needed applications that were short and reflective, not exhausting. And they needed a selection process that felt transparent and fair, even if they weren’t funded.

Instead of the usual heavy applications and rejection letters, we aimed for a process that minimized burden, honored the many different ways and places in which councils operate, and distributed funds in a way that felt both fair and celebratory.

My Role & Approach

My role was to support the Independent Advisory Committee while keeping them closely connected to the wisdom of the wider council community. That meant listening for what mattered most in the field, feeding those patterns to the IAC, and then helping them work with that input to design a grantmaking process. As the IAC gave input, I would frame the emerging picture so they could see it take shape and make decisions accordingly. Throughout I continued to build the group’s capacity for engaging in consent-based decision-making.

The process that emerged looked roughly like this:

• Councils filled out a simple application based on best practices they themselves had identified. The intent was that the reflection would be useful to the council even if they weren’t funded.
• Half of the grantee spaces were filled with groups nominated by IAC members – an invite-only format. For the remainder of the grants, applications were pulled randomly. Each selected applicant was checked against a diversity matrix – region, rural/urban, longevity, governance type, etc – to make sure the final grantee cohort reflected the breadth of the field. Councils that added diversity were kept; those that duplicated existing dimensions were set aside.
• Every application selected was then reviewed. IAC members looked through applications to find what the applicants were doing right, based on the best practices identified by the fund community. No applications were rejected for falling short.
• To verify the selected groups, a cultural anthropologist engaged council members in group storytelling sessions, capturing stories in their own words. Councils could reuse these recordings for other grants or communications – an added benefit beyond the funding itself.

What Shifted

This approach shifted the emotional tone of grantmaking. Instead of rejection letters, councils received messages of gratitude and encouragement: every council was worthy, and selection was limited only by resources.

Members of our community reflected that shift back to us:

• “This is headed in the right direction. I’m glad to be part of it.”
• “I am really happy to see the emphasis on unrestricted funding and guiding principles. Great work.”
• “Thank you for such a thoughtful and engaging process. We appreciate this opportunity to learn and grow.”
• “I’m feeling appreciative that y’all are trying new ways of grantmaking.”
• “It’s been really helpful as a funder to learn about new ways to review and select awardees with an abundance mindset.”

The process built capacity across the field. Even councils not selected gained by reflecting on best practices. Those who were funded walked away not just with dollars, but with stories they could use to strengthen their own future work.

Internally, the IAC expressed great relief in the process that emerged. One member said that they had anticipated this to be a grueling responsibility – and were surprised at how energized they were to come to each meeting. The process allowed movement, lightness, and group flow.

Reflections & Insights

But this process wasn’t without tensions. Some members of the community felt that randomization wasn’t “strategic” enough, or that established councils would be a safer investment. Staying with randomization and diversity allowed us to lean into celebration rather than competition.

Others raised questions about shared gifting circles, where councils would decide among themselves. We considered it, but realized it could backfire if participants hadn’t yet built the trust or done the self-reflection work required.

Choosing to select grantees randomly and then gauge their alignment and fit was an idea that really challenged beliefs about who deserves funding and why. It was so far from conventional practice that the idea of it felt a little scary. (In practice, however, it felt liberating.) I think the initial fear of random selection led the IAC to adopt a hybrid approach, where some participants were short-listed into funding through IAC nomination while others were randomly selected from a general applicant pool. In retrospect, I wonder whether a simplified version – where all grant recipients are chosen randomly – would prove even more beneficial in building a stronger sense of “we” among the fund community.

Ultimately, for me the greatest learning was how deeply the idea of competition and judging were seated in my own beliefs about funding – and how much energy it takes to attempt to judge fairly. It was profoundly liberating to shift the burden of judgment to a lighter-weight framework, where randomness carried the heavier lift of deciding which groups to consider. It freed IAC members from reading 140+ applications. It sidestepped implicit bias. It changed the engagement to being more like a “treasure hunt” than an evaluation, unlocking joy along the way – rather than “gotcha” moments. And because it allowed us to really simplify the application, we were able to reduce the barrier of entry for applicants.

By lowering the burden, celebrating strengths, and using randomness as a way to create fairness, we changed the experience of what it means to seek (and allocate) funding. Councils could see themselves not as competitors, but as part of a wider community where everyone had value. And IAC members could sidestep the risk of moral injury that occurs when having to choose between equally qualified candidates. A process that could have been draining became life-affirming instead.

The fund is still young, and sustainability will depend on growing the pool of donors. But this first round showed that it’s possible to redistribute not just money, but trust, fairness, hope, and joy.