We're proud to share that Tamarack Institute has been named a finalist for a WINGS Ecosystem Builder Award (WEBA) in the category of Capability: Building Skills, Knowledge & Expertise. WINGS is a global network of philanthropy support organizations, and the WEBAs recognize “organizations and individuals who strengthen the systems, relationships, and infrastructure that help philanthropy contribute more effectively to social change.”
Being recognized - alongside The Circle On Philanthropy and other peers from across the globe - reflects something we hear from the communities and funders we work with: philanthropy is a critical component of the transformational change.
What We Were Nominated For
Our nomination opens with a provocation: The Power of Place: Philanthropy as Change Agent for Community-Led Systems Change.
This is our work. We do it in many ways.
Through workshops, courses, coaching, publications, and convenings, we build the skills, mindsets, networks, and confidence that philanthropists need to engage differently – to centre community voice, adopt collaborative approaches that are rooted in local places, and invest in the long arcs of systems change. The WEBA nomination, in the Capability category, is recognition that this work is shifting how funders work.
Through longer-term engagements, we work alongside funders to design and test participatory grantmaking approaches, create community engagement frameworks, and design place-based, community-driven strategies that address local needs AND actually shift systems. In Peel, Ontario, we partnered with the WES Mariam Assefa Fund to support a resident-led People's Panel that co-designed and allocated $600,000 toward immigrant economic mobility - one of Canada's earliest known participatory grantmaking experiments.
We support towns, cities, and regions that want to change a dimension of poverty at a community-wide scale to invite everyone to contribute to that change. Funders are essential to sustaining and scaling place-based efforts, and Tamarack's role is to help them engage in ways that strengthen community agency and leadership. Through years of peer learning convenings and co-creation with funders, 48% of the 150 place-based partnerships we support now have philanthropy at their stewardship tables.
Funders are uniquely positioned to bridge local innovation and provincial or national policy, and, through case studies, conversations, and convenings that make community-driven change more visible, we connect place-based efforts to policy and macro systems change. Our work shaping the National Advisory Council on Poverty's consultations, our contributions to Ontario Trillium Foundation's nonprofit data standards, and the World Economic Forum's attention to an open letter to philanthropy that we coordinated are examples of how we amplify local, place-based knowledge and integrate this essential perspective into larger systems conversations.
We sense the patterns emerging across our network to organize large-scale responses, like the open letter to philanthropy and the Canadian Collaborative Funding Initiative to support national and global conversations about how power, resources, and decision-making can shift toward communities.
Looking Ahead
Durable, systemic change depends on a continuous investment in relational infrastructure: the everyday connections and networks that make sustained collaboration possible. If programs and policies are the bricks of community change, relational infrastructure is the mortar that holds them together. At Tamarack, this work is tangible. Through our networks and our capacity-building efforts, we actively build the relational infrastructure that enables communities to collaborate effectively, developing confidence in themselves and building trust in each other over time. Relational infrastructure is therefore an essential pillar for civic life. It builds on the collective resilience to navigate conflicts, counter polarization, and foster pluralism, ultimately strengthening democracy.
Philanthropy is a critical part of this work. When funders understand community context deeply, trust local leadership, and collaborate across portfolios in service of transformational results, they are powerful catalysts for systems change. So, strengthening philanthropy's capacity and culture isn't separate from our north star work — it is north star work.
We're humbled to be a finalist, and inspired by the communities, funders, and partners whose work this recognition reflects. The WINGS process has given us an opportunity to step back and articulate what we've built, and to see it reflected back.
Regardless of what’s next, we'll keep aspiring to work in public, share what we learn, and build conditions where funders and the many other actors in communities can build things that last.
Stay tuned for updates on the WINGS awards. And if you're a funder curious about how to collaborate for systemic, community-driven change, reach out!