The Fresh Sound Foundation is committed to achieving racial and social justice in society. Our emerging approach and journey toward becoming an anti-racist foundation includes listening to and learning from our grantee partners, both current and past, as they explore their leadership role and impact as agents of change. We do so with humility, as we explore our own (and our culture’s) biased beliefs, attitudes and behaviors related to race, ethnicity, gender, and economic class.
The Foundation believes in trust-based philanthropy and continues to take steps to self-assess and evolve our practice and approach to be more effective partners. We are aware that power dynamics can often be present between funder and grantee and do our best to mitigate this with the desire to build authentic relationships where shared listening and learning are central. Some of the ways we are taking steps towards trust-based practice include:
- Increased number of commitments for general operating support
- Majority of grants are now multi-year
- Simplifying our grant application process and asking for continued feedback from applicants and current partners
- Replacing written progress reports with learning calls
- Deepening our practice to center racial equity
- Ensuring we are transparent about our process and accountable to our partners
Learn more about our grant application process.