I Want to Build Relationships in a More Reciprocal Way

As a program officer at the Foundation, here’s what I’m learning about relationships.

Last year the Foundation refreshed its grantmaking approach to focus on racial, social, and economic justice. For us, living into this work means transforming not only what we do as a foundation, but also how we do it. Our commitment to justice pushes us to explicitly acknowledge our role and responsibility in shifting harmful systems—starting with ourselves.

Take for example, how we build relationships.

As a program officer, I’ve always understood relationship building as one of the most important parts of my job. But until recently, I hadn’t fully recognized how it connects to white supremacy and racial justice.

What is white supremacy and how do reciprocal relationships counteract it?

When I say white supremacy, I mean the white dominant norms that are pervasive in philanthropy. Too often, our sector defaults to one-way, transactional relationships that reinforce harmful power dynamics and ways of relating to each other.

White professional norms push us to define relationships within the context of our work, and these norms influence and support specific goals or purposes. This is potentially harmful because it limits or compartmentalizes how we show up and interact with one another. It doesn’t allow us to bring our full humanity and selves to our relationships.

I want to build relationships in a more reciprocal way. What does this look like and feel like to me? Two of my experiences are valuable examples. The first is when I met a tribal elder from the Spokane Indian Reservation in northeastern Washington. He warmly held my hands inside of his and said, “We are related.” He went on to explain that this was both a greeting and responsibility to care for me like a sister or granddaughter.

The second example is when I received a handwritten note from a grantee partner: “Thank you for your steadfast partnership and consistently showing up. I value the connection you have to our work and to me as a person. I feel seen, heard, and valued because I believe we can give and receive without judgment. . . . I derive sustenance and strength from our relationship.”

These two anecdotes show how reciprocal relationships are grounded in and affirm our humanity, hearts, spirits, and interdependence. They are forged over time, with deep intentionality and care.

Reciprocal relationships help shift power and accountability to those most impacted by injustice.

I’m learning to see reciprocal relationships as an essential—but overlooked—starting place for working with community partners in ways that are more just.

Owning my whiteness early on, openly and vulnerably, is one way I’m showing up differently in relationships. By shifting power and accountability to people directly impacted by injustice, I hope to create the conditions for a more reciprocal relationship to emerge. In each conversation, I’m challenging myself to share from my heart, listen deeply, reflect back what I’m learning, and think more intentionally about my responsibilities:

• How can I show up more authentically and fully?
• How is my understanding or worldview evolving?
• How can I contribute to disrupting white supremacy and building a more equitable future, within my personal and professional life?
• What commitments or actions would be the most meaningful?
• And, perhaps most importantly, how do I welcome radical honesty and truth-telling with myself and others, so that I can be held accountable for the many times I unintentionally cause harm or am not doing enough?

How an experience with the Lummi Nation changed me.

When I first visited the Lummi Nation in northwestern Washington nine years ago, I didn’t have much experience working with Native communities, nor did I have a deep understanding of different worldviews. I was invited by one of our long-term grantee partners to learn more about how they were addressing the root causes of poverty, grounded in deep listening to Lummi community members.

Their definition of poverty was profound: “Poverty is when one, some, or all of our values are missing that make a fully functional individual, family, or community.”

The Lummi community views poverty in terms of loss of language, culture, traditions and ceremony, sense of self, and also their relationships to each other, the environment, and the land. In transparency, when I first heard this, I was struggling to understand what they meant and how to reconcile it with what I had been taught about poverty as a monetary measure.

But then I went for an early morning run along a cattle pasture, lined with banners of the Lummi values. And as each of their values came into focus through the mist, it hit me. I began to understand how these shared values carry cultural wisdom about who the Lummi are as a people, the importance of their ways of life, and how they cherish being good relatives to one another.

I quickly got lost in reflection about my father’s recent passing. A wave of grief and gratitude swept over me as I thought about my own values—the ones my father taught me.

With each step, I reflected deeper on how beautiful it was to see the world from the Lummi’s perspective. I recognized and appreciated how different things would be if we put values and collective care at the center of everything we do.

Deep in thought, I forgot I was running. A few steps later, I ran straight into a cattle guard and wiped out on the pavement. As a former volleyball player, I instinctively dropped my shoulder as I fell, and it was badly injured. To this day, I have a permanent—but very meaningful—scar.

Reciprocal relationships ground me in the heart and humanity of our collective work.

I like to think of the scar as my body’s way of remembering how that experience changed me.

On a personal level, it shaped how I processed my father’s death and it caused me to think more intentionally about what I want to pass down to my own kids.

In my role as a program officer, it helped me learn what it means to honor different worldviews.

And overall, it confirmed, and continues to remind me, that our Foundation’s relationships with community partners like the Lummi Nation have changed our collective understanding of “poverty” and “prosperity” in fundamental ways. We have moved away from an economic frame toward a grantmaking approach focused on advancing justice so that communities can thrive on their own terms. This approach is more holistic and honors the different histories, cultures, worldviews, and values of the people we serve.

As I reflect on this story now, it grounds me in the heart and humanity of our collective work. We need to spend more time learning with our hearts and allowing our relationships with communities impacted by injustice to transform our ways of thinking and being. I hope that I (and we) continue to carry many “scars”—they are beautiful and essential on this journey.