Our Purpose
Our birthright is to create, grow, flourish, and cultivate paths of healing, joy, love, and restoration for us and future generations.
From 2020-2023, Threshold Philanthropy was a philanthropic organization committed to returning resources centered in holistic community care, co-creating paths that led toward our collective liberation with Black and Indigenous communities.
How we started
Threshold was started by three women in traditional philanthropy who had up close views of what wasn’t working. Fed up with the status quo, with the inequitable practices so common in philanthropy, Lindsay, Morgan, and Beth created Threshold Philanthropy in order to create new structures rooted in dignity and healing — and to embody the root of philanthropy’s origins: love of humankind.
For Threshold’s first few years, we committed ourselves to building a new culture and authentic relationships across racial lines because we believed (and still believe) that the root of harm in what we now call the United States of America was the colonization and attempted genocide of Native and Indigenous people on Turtle Island, as well as the enslavement of Africans, and the economy this country built on their backs. Because of this, we chose to center our work around Native and Black individuals, organizations, and communities, as well as the broader ecosystems that support them. In particular, we focused our work on partners in Washington, North Carolina, and South Carolina, due to the roots our founding funders had in those states.
Our roles
From 2020-2023, we embodied four types of roles in our philanthropy work.
Grantmaker
As a grantmaker, we returned resources to Black and Indigenous leaders and communities as a path to repair — disrupting harmful philanthropic strategies and co-creating new ones centered in relationships, reciprocity, and mutual accountability.
Civic actor
As a civic actor, we sought ways to use our power with love and care to reinforce building a multi-racial democracy that is fueled by transparency, courage, and a desire to shift power.
Employer
As an employer, we interrogated our internal culture, policies, benefits, and other employee supports through a lens of healing, reparative investment, and shifting power.
Economic entity
As an economic entity, we bought a lens of returning resources to how we spend and earn money. We make investments in Black and American Indian and Alaska Native partners to build prosperous communities.
What we’re proud of …
We’ve invested
We’ve invested in individuals, organizations, communities, and ecosystems in the regions where our founding funders’ wealth has perpetuated harm — providing you can push the boundaries of philanthropy to return wealth in more innovative and equitable ways
We’ve returned
We’ve supported returning money to those most impacted by racial capitalism — through reclaiming land, supporting phenomenal Black and Native women, convening and resourcing BIPOC-led power-building organizations, and celebrating together
We’ve learned
We’ve gained a unique perspective on reparations, shining attention on Native and Black folks receiving, not just convincing white folks and governments to give
We’re healing
We’ve invested in ourselves and our team, to support our individual and collective healing and liberation, and we intend to continue and carry forward this learning
Going on sabbatical
As of June 2023, Threshold Philanthropy is taking an integration sabbatical — a period of rest for the entire organization — and will be on break through the rest of 2023 in order to reflect, recharge, and restore. Philanthropy rarely takes the time to reflect and integrate what we’ve learned, oftentimes perpetuating unintended consequences and outdated thinking. Taking a break and truly interrogating our approach is a revolutionary act in our sector.