We Are Not Creating Dependency. We Are Building Independence.
Why philanthropy’s favorite objection is the wrong question.
Guest Post – Jason Lacsamana, Director, Programs and Partnerships
I have heard the objection in almost every funder room I have sat in. Sometimes a peer says it plainly. More often it’s a question about sustainability, an exit strategy, or a third year of general operating support.
Aren’t you creating dependency?
It is the wrong question, and it is rarely asked of anyone but the communities furthest from justice.
Here is the structural answer. Every grant we make at the St. Joseph Fund has an endpoint, and our partners know that from day one. We don’t pretend otherwise, nor do we hold the end of a grant over anyone’s head. So, the question was never whether an organization would come back for another grant. The question is what are we building together so the impact outlasts the money.
In this piece, Rob Ricigliano and Anna Muoio write about the Pando Grove in Utah. The grove looks like 47,000 aspens, but it is one organism, roughly 9,000 years old, sharing an interconnected root system. Visitors to the grove see the beauty of the trees and rustling leaves. But what they don’t see is the highly intricate and very deep roots.
The argument made in the article is that philanthropy funds what’s visible – everything above ground. Philanthropy funds trees. But the hardest things to explain to funders are what’s not visible – relationships, trust, shared learnings.
Dependency is a question you ask about one tree. Independence comes from nurturing the roots and giving them the nutrients and space to grow. Roots don’t make a tree dependent; they are what make the grove.
We adapted Ricigliano and Muoio’s chart to align with our work.
Look at the metrics row, because that is where the objection lives. How many people did you serve? Answered honestly, that question guarantees we never fund anything that takes longer than a year.
For example, in our disaster relief and recovery work, this means that case managers, in place before the event, won’t show up in a service count. We invest in disaster resilience long before a crisis, pre-identifying high-risk geographies and building local capacity through trusted partnerships because we’re not waiting for a disaster. We’re already there.
Dependency also comes from funders asking organizations to prove their worthiness instead of doing the work. During our 40th anniversary listening session, partners named the opposite – the relief of being trusted, remembered, and able to dream. If we co-design from the beginning, resource the human beings and not just the program, and build capacity that stays when we leave, then what we’re funding is not reliance. It’s readiness.
Independence isn’t something philanthropy grants. It’s something philanthropy resources.
