John Esterle

Finding hope: How our long-term grantee partners shaped TWI

By March 25, 2022

“Statistics show that when folks are welcomed back and given access and told ‘your voice matters’ and they are embraced they do much better in society. For a lot of our folks, they feel they have never been heard at all in their lives.” – Selinda Guerrero Selinda Guerrero is the New Mexico Field Organizer…

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The End of the Road We Know

By December 20, 2021

It’s hard to believe that we’re at the end of 2021 and that The Whitman Institute will be closing down in a matter of months. This last stretch of the road is certainly not what we originally envisioned when we decided to spend out a decade ago. We closed the office a year earlier than…

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Foundation Leaders, It’s Time to Shrink the Gap Between Words and Deeds

By November 20, 2020

Originally published by and reposted with permission from the Center for Effective Philanthropy.  As a longtime advocate for multiyear general operating support (GOS), reading CEP’s recent report, New Attitudes, Old Practices: The Provision of Multiyear General Operating Support, was a sobering and frustrating experience. The Whitman Institute, which I co-lead, started making grants in 2005….

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Our Spend-out: What’s Changed, What’s Next

By and June 22, 2020

When we last wrote a reflection on TWI’s spend out, we lifted up our uncertainty and vulnerability as we looked to 2022 as well as our commitment to being transparent about the journey ahead. Here we are, over a year later, and uncertainty and vulnerability remain constant companions – as they are for just about…

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The Urgency of Trust-Based Philanthropy

By April 1, 2020

This post was originally published at the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s blog. “It was so important just to be treated like a human being.” “As a woman of color, I can’t tell you what it meant to be approached by a funder I didn’t know who saw me and trusted me.” “DO SOMETHING!” These comments…

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