Participatory Grantmaking in Action: What It Takes

Brooklyn Org has a long-standing commitment to partnering with Brooklynites at every level of our work to guide our decision-making, driven by the belief that Brooklynites are the true experts on the needs of our communities. It’s why we do our annual neighborhood Listening Tours, and it’s why we invest in recruiting, training, and working with Brooklynites in grantmaking across our major programs.

This year we partnered with 60 Brooklynites as grantmaking advisors on three major programs—Brooklyn Org Spark Prize, The Just Brooklyn Prize, and our strategic grantmaking. Each advisor brings expertise of a broad range of Brooklyn neighborhoods, the borough’s history, and personal and professional experiences that contribute to rich discussions and decision-making on our where our funding goes.

Our team spends months recruiting, training, and onboarding advisors to our grantmaking committees with purposefulness and care. This work requires coordination across BKO to amplify the opportunity and ensure that our advisors have access to all the information and technology they need to do their work.

After the training and onboarding process, grant advisors join Brooklyn Org Program Officers in reviewing and interviewing nonprofits applying for funding. In 2024 alone, our advisors completed nearly 800 application reviews and 50 meetings with nonprofits. This is in addition to almost 1500 application reviews conducted by our team!

For all grantmaking, advisors come together to hash out their final recommendations in a multi-hour meeting led by our staff. Ultimately, they are tasked with finding the best fit for each grant program’s priorities from the pool of finalists, which can often be difficult and emotional work.

In total, advisors helped us award 28 new grants in 2024 totaling $2.5m dollars to nonprofits and leaders doing critical work in our beloved borough. This collaboration has been deeply satisfying and enriching to our philanthropic practice, and we’ve learned many important lessons along the way.

We are committed to continuing to improve our participatory grantmaking to create a fair and more just Brooklyn alongside our neighbors as partners in the work.