How to Fund Like a Narrative Strategist
- Our Collective Practice
- Nov 21
- 5 min read
Article
As “narrative change” has become a trending topic in philanthropy, the work of liberation movements risks being overshadowed and co-opted by funder-driven frameworks that have a history of eroding the deeper, more durable efforts led by the individuals, organizations, and networks on the front lines of change. In a time of political targeting of civil society, it becomes all the more important to protect and build from the groundwork that’s been laid and follow the lead of those who have the greatest level of practical experience in navigating rough terrain.
At the 2025 Narrative Power Summit in New Orleans, our organizations—Elemental, Our Collective Practice, and the Constellations Culture Change Fund and Initiative—held a session to demystify institutional philanthropy, clarify its relationship to narrative power building, and share insights about the funding landscape. Despite the uptick in foundation chatter about the vital role that narrative plays in advancing social, political, and economic transformation in the long term, this rhetoric is not reflected in the material reality of what most foundations are actually funding.
A Time of Transition
Although public declarations are sparse, we have received an abundance of anecdotal evidence that philanthropic funding for narrative work has receded in the United States as key funders quietly alter their strategies. Earlier this year, Constellations Fund announced that it could no longer continue its resourcing model as an intermediary grantmaker reliant on source funding.
Other prominent organizations in the narrative field such as The Opportunity Agenda and IllumiNative have also announced that they have or will be shutting down. Yes! Magazine—a vital movement publication—announced its closure in June 2025 after nearly 30 years of journalistic solutions-oriented storytelling.
When 50 experts on narrative power building are centered in funding discussions…funding can look radically different from what we see today.
In sharing these examples, we aim not to dissuade, but to be clear about the conditions in which we are operating, so that people and organizations building narrative power can make informed decisions on how to judiciously apply their resources—including time, energy, and attention—in a challenging and unstable environment.
In New Orleans, during our 90-minute session, we sought to move beyond the flawed logics of philanthropy that have constrained narrative change work, creating space for movement communicators and narrative organizers to draw on the wisdom of their experiences and imagine approaches to funding that would reflect their highest needs and priorities. Through a codesigned activity, movement communications and narrative organizers identified how funding criteria and practices needed to change for narrative strategies to succeed.
This was not simply a theoretical exercise. The activity served to demonstrate that when 50 experts on narrative power building are centered in funding discussions and decisions, the practice of funding can look radically different from what we see today. As foundations reconsider their strategies and redesign their approaches to narrative grantmaking, we can encourage them to adopt this clear, specific, and practical guidance that reflects what the field knows to be most necessary and effective.
Evidently, we hope foundation program officers take this guidance, summarized below, to heart. But nonprofit readers, too, can advocate for these changes. Altering funding practices is hard. A broad movement to push for these changes is needed, if the narrative strategies advocated by field leaders are to become common practice.
Four Funding Practices That Strengthen Narrative Infrastructure
Practice 1: Funders must stop stealing the ball from their teammates and instead act as resource stewards
Funders often allow limiting beliefs to stand in the way of moving money. They can also forget that there is power in the position they are occupying. Social movements have all the expertise they need to do research, strategize, design, experiment, and iterate. They need funders to demonstrate solidarity and transfer ownership by resourcing existing narrative strategies and emergent innovations that are governed by and directly accountable to communities.
Practice 2: Fund narrative infrastructure and ecosystems, not issue-based content
When it comes to narrative power building, relationships are key infrastructure. The networks of trust, collaboration, and shared purpose are what make economies of scale possible. Yet too often, funders prioritize discrete products and outputs over the durable relational systems that sustain the work.
Instead of overfocusing on content, funders can encourage more meaningful connections and collaborations by funding the entire ecosystem rather than individual organizations. One way to do this is to ask grantees, “Who else do we need to fund for you to be successful?” and then fund who they say. This helps enable reciprocal relationships, intersectional collaborations, networks, and coalitions.
Likewise, funders can prioritize the intangible dimensions of the infrastructure by resourcing the care for narrative workers, whose role requires them to be consistently exposed to trauma, in-person and online. This might look like ensuring organizations are sufficiently funded to provide staff with health benefits and paid time off, but it also includes sabbaticals and somatic practices.
Practice 3: Fund generationally, or at least for a five-year term (without strings)
Lasting change requires long-term investment and the flexibility to pivot as conditions change. Having a realistic expectation of the time horizon on which metanarratives and cultural mindsets shift implores funders to provide resources for a duration of time that best serves that outcome.
Related to this is physical infrastructure. If groups own buildings, they have space to work and hold community meetings. Funders can assist organizations in acquiring ownership of physical spaces, which then have the added benefit of being a potential source of autonomous revenue.
Believing that a foundation can engineer outcomes sets us all up for failure.
Practice 4: Fund through the failures and know there will be many of them along the way
Building new worlds requires experimentation, iteration, and learning from mistakes. Over the course of our lives, we have all discovered that things don’t always go as planned. Believing that a foundation can engineer outcomes sets us all up for failure. Instead, the narrative field needs philanthropy to provide resources to expand its capacity to account for unexpected changes and rapid shifts in unforeseen directions.
If…narrative power is foundational to communities’ ability to advance a more just world…then how this work is resourced must change.
Moving Forward
Philanthropy has the capacity to absorb real risk and buffer communities as it supports the narratives needed to build a world that is caring and just. The terrain is always shifting. If advocates believe that narrative power is foundational to communities’ ability to advance a more just world and heed the lessons learned from a century of narrative organizing wins, then how this work is resourced must change.
Movement leaders do not have to wait for philanthropy to change, and in fact they never have. For funders that aim to be real partners, they will need to identify and cultivate the conditions that fortify narrative infrastructure. This includes adopting the solidarity practices that allow narrative ecosystems to flourish and taking steps to prevent philanthropic backsliding.
The knowledge of how to move our collective assets in ways that can build a just world is readily available. Many in the narrative field and in philanthropy are putting that knowledge to good use, but there is always room for more to join.
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