Incorporating Place-Based Strategies into Philanthropy

In philanthropy, it's not always easy to pinpoint the best strategy, especially if you hope to address or improve myriad issues. Within any community, there are bound to be multiple pain points that can be resolved with careful consideration and the right approach. 

Place-based strategies are an efficient solution for communities that have several needs. These strategies focus on a community's entire set of issues and tackle each in tandem with a cohesive strategy and symbiotic actions. By providing a comprehensive approach and an expected results framework, place-based strategies embrace the synergy of the proposed plan and the community to successfully address many issues at once. 

By incorporating local partners and activists and staying focused on a specific community or geographic region, place-based strategies can be easily integrated to identify the root cause of issues. They can also identify a plan for addressing those problems and generate a transformative change that lasts and truly makes a difference. Here's how you can put those strategies into place. 

Focus on the Systems that Need to Change

One of the most important factors of place-based philanthropy is a thorough understanding of the systems that are already in place within that community. Identifying the systems at work can make it easier to pinpoint the areas where those systems are failing the community members or environment. 

Understanding the community's specific needs and the systems that must be changed to address them is essential to create a solid foundation for your overall strategy for change. This can lead to a winning systemic change directly rooted in the community. 

Build Community Relationships

Truly listening to a community's members and grassroots leaders will give you the best sense of what is truly happening within that area and which points genuinely need to be addressed or changed. Gaining inside perspective and insight ensures that your efforts will make an impactful change that genuinely improves the lives of community members. 

Take time to invest in the community's opinions, reach out to leaders and groups, and demonstrate a long-term investment in the community. Doing all these things will help build the trust of the region you're hoping to support and create a lasting relationship. 

Connect With Other Philanthropists

To implement successful place-based strategies, involving other donors in general proximity can be helpful. Their prior knowledge of the community, systems or existing programs can be beneficial in developing a strategy, and the additional funding you may be able to recruit will enhance the impact of your project. 

Consider also reaching out to churches, religious groups, local officials, or service providers. There may already be programs that can tie into your efforts and help make your program a more cohesive effort serviced by existing community actions. 

Leverage Existing Resources

As you reach out to community members, you may find more resources available to help build your project than previously imagined. Community groups often have the best insight into what is already known to their members and what needs to be bolstered. 

In many cases, a community's existing resources are valuable elements that can help unite, uplift, and encourage community members and donors or volunteers. It's important to remember that valuable resources aren't always tangible, and the importance of culture and unique capabilities should never be overlooked. 

The Right Perspective

Overall, place-based strategies respect that issues like housing, healthcare, or education do not exist independently in a vacuum. They are all crucial elements to a humming community, and a significant impact tackles the systems in place, affecting all of a communities resources, people and quality of life. 

Seeing the bigger picture and the machine that ties it all together through the eyes of the people who experience it firsthand is the key to successful place-based philanthropy. Your greatest resource will always be the community members, their experiences, and their values.