Reducing Harm in Philanthropy
A Critical Framework for Internal Justice
Philanthropy, as it currently functions, is at a crossroads. Foundations and philanthropic institutions purport to be at the vanguard of social change—redistributing capital, amplifying marginalized voices, and funding justice-oriented initiatives. Yet these institutions often reproduce, internally, the very systems of harm they claim to disrupt externally.
This is not an unfortunate side effect. It is a structural reality.
This article offers a critical framework for reducing harm within philanthropic organizations. Grounded in radical critiques of capitalism, and informed by public administration theory and harm reduction, this approach challenges foundations to confront their complicity in perpetuating exploitation—not only through their funding practices but also through the cultures and operations they maintain.
It is a call to action: to internalize the justice we promote, to practice what we preach, and to dismantle oppressive systems from within.
The Structural Contradiction of Philanthropy
Foundations are products of capitalism. They are not neutral actors. Built on accumulated wealth—often derived from extraction, exploitation, and dispossession—philanthropic institutions function as mechanisms of redistribution that are themselves embedded within the logics of capital accumulation. They are businesses with assets to protect, brands to maintain, and influence to wield.
While these organizations fund justice-oriented work (or at least what their version of justice is), they often operate internally through structures of hierarchy, white supremacy culture, ableism, and burnout. The contradiction is clear: the mission is liberation; the method is administrative supremacy.
This contradiction is not incidental. It is systemic.
The same forces that demand “efficiency” and “impact” from nonprofit grantees are reflected internally in chronic overwork, under-compensation, and the centering of charismatic leadership at the expense of organizational sustainability. Foundations, like many other institutions under capitalism, are optimized for scale—not for care.
Optimized for scale, not for care. Bleh!
Harm Is Not Theoretical—It’s Operational
I’ll give an example: I once served on a nonprofit 501c3 board whose mission was equity-centered, and our impact was clear for the individual participants. However, looking under the hood, the processes we had in place to support staff in accomplishing our mission were subpar and actually perpetuated harm. This harmed not only staff, but also our ability to serve our participants with integrity. Even though the executive leadership was doing their best, the organization was not built to care for the individuals doing the work.
We cannot reduce harm unless we name it, but once we do name it, is our responsibility to address it. In philanthropic organizations, harm manifests through:
Unsustainable labor practices: overreliance on the passion and emotional labor of workers, especially BIPOC staff.
Hero-centric leadership: dependence on singular figures to drive programs, producing bottlenecks and burnout.
Policy violence: rigid internal policies that mirror carceral logic and control, rather than foster trust and collaboration.
Disembodied justice: disconnect between externally funded equity work and internal organizational practice.
These conditions are not anomalies, but all-too common normalizations. And they are killing our movements from the inside.
Public administration theory tells us that effective organizations should not be dependent on a single individual. Yet many philanthropic entities operate through scarcity models where staff must overfunction to compensate for systemic dysfunction. The result is a slow erosion of health, integrity, and organizational capacity.
The harm is real. The urgency is now.
A Framework for Internal Justice
Reducing harm in philanthropy requires a fundamental shift: from charity to solidarity, from extraction to co-creation, from optics to embodiment.
Your Staff is not separate from your service population: Philanthropy must recognize its staff not as separate from the communities it serves but as integral to them. Your workers deserve the same justice you fund externally, and in many cases, are literally from the communities we’re trying to serve in philanthropy.
Reparative Practices sustain trust: Move beyond DEI checkboxes. Adopt practices of institutional repair: equitable pay structures, trauma-informed leadership, and democratic workplace governance.
Collective Leadership creates buy-in: De-center the heroic leader. Cultivate distributed leadership that honors care, collaboration, and shared accountability.
Intent is separate from Impact. Just because your mission is noble doesn’t mean you or your organization is incapable of harm. It’s therefore critically important to assess how the operations of your organization uphold or perpetuate the same systems of oppression that you are trying to dismantle.
This is not a checklist. It is a cultural shift. It demands more than policy tweaks. It asks organizations to reimagine themselves, which I know is completely scary, but I promise is completely doable.
Philanthropy’s Responsibility to Dismantle Harm
To be clear, “harm reduction” in this context is not about minimizing discomfort. It is about naming and interrupting the systems that normalize disposability, silence dissent, and privilege institutional survival over human dignity.
Philanthropy, with its access to wealth, influence, and narrative power, has a unique responsibility—not only to fund transformative work but to embody it. Anything less is performative.
We must stop measuring our worth by the volume of grants we disburse or the prestige of our convenings. Justice is not measured in outputs. It is practiced in relationships, policies, and the day-to-day treatment of people within our institutions.
The process is the intervention.
An Invitation to Engage
This is a framework—but also an invitation.
If you are a foundation leader, a program officer, a board member, or a philanthropy worker: you are already positioned within systems of power. The question is, what will you do with that power?
Will you examine how your workplace reproduces harm?
Will you listen to the most marginalized within your organization?
Will you shift from “helping” to co-creating?
Will you make justice something you practice, not just something you fund?
Contact me to bring this framework into your organization. Let’s move beyond mission statements.
Solidarity begins at home.