The grief of grantmaking  

Exploring how grief plays out within and around the philanthropic field  

This piece is for anyone who has ever been part of the chase for philanthropic money, who has written a grant application and been successful, or who has made a case for a grant to be made (forcibly or politely) and been turned down.   

This is also a piece for anyone who has ever had to reject a remarkable group of people because of someone else’s decision, and for anyone who has borne the responsibility for stewarding accumulated wealth without dialogue, consent, or question. 

There is a grief to these situations. It’s quiet and looks different to the grief of losing someone you love. But it’s there and unprocessed; an invisible current, pulling everything within reach and underpinning the stilted cycle of grantmaking.  

In Martín Prechtel’s The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise, he writes: ‘Without grief the world would cease to renew itself; the world would cease to exist’. Yet in much of the western world, including my own country, the United Kingdom, we occupy a culture that barely talks about or practices grief. 

In English we use gentle euphemisms for death such as ‘passed away’ or ‘gone to a better place’, and when it comes to non-humans we ‘put down’ and ‘lay to rest’. In doing so we forget grief is an inevitable part of the experience of being alive, and often only associate it with pain, sadness, and loss. Yet, as many other cultures have shown us, grief is also about the continuation of love. It can offer a life affirming perspective and be a surprisingly creative force.  

This dual influence is what we’re denying by ignoring grief in philanthropy too. We’re suppressing that we’re angry and hurting, because we care deeply and believe change is possible, and we’re missing out on generative potential and camaraderie that follows after—that drives towards recovery, nurturing, and resourcing others. 

In other words, we’re denying the full potential of what this relationship and resource could do, be, and become, and, for our own sanity, we need to get better at honouring the emotions that exist alongside our bureaucratic outcomes. 

Grief is everywhere in this landscape and felt across all practitioners: 

1.For grantees, grief shows up when you pursue what you believe in and seek the funds to follow through. You’ll do whatever it takes to get much-needed resources, and this can mean shape-shifting the vision to fit someone else’s priorities. This process can involve grieving an organisations’ original identity and carrying the knock backs inherent in competitive funding applications. 

Some ignore this grief by telling themselves to be thankful for anything they can get. But this dynamic sets people up for failure—making it impossible to succeed without burning out or becoming disillusioned. 

2. For grantmakers, programme officers often serve as a sort of ‘shock absorber’ for communities. On the one hand, they are frontline responders, brokering resources to meet demands. On the other, they are accountable to internal bureaucracy and subject to the mental and emotional labour required to build an internal case for funding. Here, grief shows up in the gap between these needs and, commonly, in the realm of decision making. 

When executive committees make final decisions that have implications on the livelihoods of communities that have come to trust you, the currency of human relationship is weakened. This can bring in despair and a sense of personal failing regardless of how carefully the process is managed.  

3. For wealth stewards, grief is often the unspoken founding impulse of philanthropy, particularly for family foundations. They are set up in the aftermath of a loved ones’ death and linked to a desire to give back or honour that person’s life, achievements, and legacy.  

Over time however, philanthropic trusts can fall into their own structural architecture, forgetting their grief and becoming subjects of a wealth defence industry that separates rather than connects. How can those with immense privilege voice the harmful reality they’re experiencing, swimming in guilt and shame that comes with it? This is yet another way that the silence on grief prevails. 

As this article seeks to show, grief is an inevitable part of life and is widely present in philanthropy and wealth distribution. It argues that a healthier philanthropic ecosystem would require us to get better at recognising it, naming it, and tending to it.  

In Francis Wellers’ In the Absence of the Ordinary, they write: ‘We need a space strong enough to contain the associated threads that accompany grief. It must be able to hold bitterness, remorse, and heartache so intense.’ Reflecting on this, if we want the philanthropic sector, and those working in it, to be just as strong, we need to invest in the relational qualities necessary to hold the full weight of these feelings. 

Fortunately, we don’t have to start from scratch—there are many rich practices and practitioners for us to learn from, and I encourage you to explore the work of those including: Malika Devich Cyril and the resources from the Radical Loss project, Camille Barton’s Tending Grief book, and books from Martín Prechtel, Francis Weller.  

Then there’s the Grief Tending in Community UK network of people who hold grief spaces for groups, GreifSick substack from Emily Bazelgette exploring the intersection between grief and chronic illness, Healing Justice London host events and thoughtful writing on the topic, and Amber Jeffery’s Grief Gang. You can also learn more about practical tools we’ve created at The Decelerator to support organisations considering or anticipating endings too.   

It’s said that being aware is the first step to healing and by naming and acknowledging the grief amongst the waters we swim in, perhaps we can begin to heal the heartbreak so many of us are silently suffering.