What Do We Really Need to Know About Change? Reflections for Philanthropy Practitioners Working with Families and Staff
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If you work in philanthropy – especially with family-led foundations or mission-driven teams – you're likely familiar with the feeling of walking a tightrope between the historic ways of doing things and better-aligned strategies to who we are now. Change is always in the room. And yet, we often underestimate what people require to change their minds, their behaviors, or their direction.
Maybe it’s a family matriarch considering participatory grantmaking, or a board wrestling with the decision to sunset the foundation. The resistance isn’t about the idea, it’s about everything beneath it.
Before you launch a change effort, pause to ask: What’s actually going on here? Not just in what’s on paper or what the stated plan might be – but what’s happening in the culture, the relationships, the body language, the silences. Change becomes possible when people feel seen, and when they see the same picture, even if they feel differently about it.
“Most change efforts fail not because the strategy is flawed, but because the human side of the transition wasn’t honored.”
This year I dove deep into change: through taking a ChangeFit 360 management course, reading books like How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief and Persuasion and Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization, and reconnecting with my undergraduate psychology degree. Here’s what surfaced:
1. Change and Transition Are Not the Same Thing
Change is external: a new strategy, a re-organization of staff structures, a funding shift. Transition is internal: the emotional, cognitive, and social journey people take to accept and adapt to that change.
Understanding both is essential. Most change efforts fail not because the strategy is flawed, but because the human side of the transition wasn’t honored.
Change is often designed from the outside in: new strategy, new roles, new org charts. But sustainable change happens from the inside out. People need time and tools to metabolize what’s shifting, not just in their tasks, but in their identity, sense of purpose, and relationships. This might include making extra space for processing and encouraging individuals to journal, engage in peer reflection, or receive supportive coaching.
2. Culture Eats Change for Breakfast
If people don’t feel safe to try new things, admit fear, or fail without punishment, they will resist. Not because they’re stubborn. Because they’re human.
Macrocultures and microcultures at the organizational level and in teams, determine whether people feel safe to ask for help, trusted to make mistakes, and recognized positively for adapting. If we want change, we have to grow cultures of wholeness and experimentation, not just compliance.
With a recent client, this meant helping to slow down a strategic planning process to involve all of the staff, not just the leadership team, knowing that others will not implement just because “I told you to.” Just as importantly, this starts to shift the culture to one of collective input, rather than top-down decision-making.
3. People Change Because of Relationships, Not Just Reasons
We tend to think facts or logic will persuade people. But as moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt explains in his book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, we make most decisions intuitively and use reason primarily to justify them, not to reach them. Facts alone rarely move us.
The real levers of change are:
Belonging: People need to know they won’t be socially exiled if their views or behaviors shift and even more so that the change will mean an increased sense of belonging.
Kindness + Dissonance: We also change when relationships challenge us and offer us a safe place to land. How Minds Change had a powerful story of former Westboro Baptist Church members who left only after forming real friendships outside the group. This might sound extreme, but I've seen similar patterns in philanthropy, with board members who shifted from “we've always done it this way” only after forming genuine relationships with grantee partners.
Consistency + Curiosity: Change happens through slow accumulation, which is frustrating when we’re living in a period with so much urgently required change. Unfortunately, for the urgency, it’s much more than a one-time moment of learning the reasons why you need to change. Invoking space for curiosity and providing opportunities to try something new and see impacts are key.
So yes, the logic matters, but it’s not enough. Just as important is thinking about who is telling the story: Are they trusted? Are they perceived as kind and credible? Are they willing to listen?
And when you think about these relationships, it’s also important to remember relationships aren’t neutral. They’re shaped by identity, history, power, and context. In philanthropy, that means surfacing how legacy, positionality (e.g., founder vs. next gen, staff vs. board), and social norms shape how people experience and respond to change. For philanthropic families and staff, that might mean naming unspoken hierarchies, reckoning with past decisions, or creating new norms of trust and accountability.
4. Behavior Drives Impact – Not Plans or Systems
You can have the best logic model in the world, but if no one behaves differently, nothing actually changes. Behavior happens when people know what to do, believe it matters, and get feedback that it’s working. Autonomy, mastery, and purpose are stronger motivators than compliance, especially in mission-driven environments.
In the end it’s the people, not plans, that make change happen. This is why the more effective frameworks for change management (like Prosci’s ADKAR model), emphasize that organizational change can happen only when individuals change.
5. Change Fatigue is Real – and It’s Predictable
Many of the families and organizations we support are facing overlapping changes: new leadership, shifting values, evolving strategy, increasing scrutiny. That’s a lot.
When people are saturated with change, they burn out. They get cynical. They check out. And philanthropy – where roles are often inherited, not chosen – can amplify this fatigue. If we ignore human needs, change will fail. Especially in philanthropy, where people are expected to hold complexity, privilege, and pain at once, individuals need time to metabolize change, not just implement it.
What helps is providing contextual framing to help everyone understand the “why” behind the change. And with this, allow for questioning and embrace learning. It’s also important to make sure not everything changes at once and maybe even recognize when change shouldn’t happen. As a former Development Director, I watched funders change strategy every 2-3 years and wanted to scream: “What impact is really possible with this kind of churn?” Change fatigue is real on both sides of the table.
6. Some People Will Go First – and That’s OK
You don’t need everyone to be on board at once. Models like Rogers' Adoption Curve show that the majority will follow when a small, visible group of early adopters starts living the change. Large-scale change also requires significant numbers of people and then groups to change at a high density to shift society as a whole.
Instead of trying to convince every doubter, ask:
Who are our early adopters? How can we make these folks our champions?
Who are the percolating clusters - small groups where energy is building - that can spark a cascade?
Where are we already seeing traction, and how can we build from there?
You don’t need to convince everyone and quite honestly, not everyone will adopt changes. You need some leaders and eventually a tipping point will be enough for the change to be “sticky.”
7. We need to invite reflection, not resistance
That’s why listening tools like deep canvassing, street epistemology, and motivational interviewing are so powerful. They don’t argue. They explore. They ask open-ended questions:
What made you feel this way?
What would shift your confidence in that belief?
When did you first begin to think this?
This isn’t about “winning” the argument. It’s about assisted metacognition; in other words, helping people think about their own thinking. With one family foundation client, this specifically meant creating space in a retreat to make individual connections between staff and board members with open-ended questions and individual personal sharing. These connections led to a better understanding of where people are coming from and fostered a sense of unity and belonging.
8. Change is Messy. Make Peace With That.
You can’t spreadsheet your way into transformation. Change isn’t linear, and people are rarely in the same stage at the same time. Some are grieving. Some are energized. Some are quietly watching to see what happens.
Give space for all of it. Track behavior, not just checklists. Celebrate small wins. And remember: Just because someone isn’t loud doesn’t mean they’re not shifting.
So, What Do We Do With All This?
Whether I’m sitting with a family in transition, a staff reimagining their grantmaking, or a board wrestling with a new strategy, here’s what I’m carrying in:
Lead with belonging and relationship.
Make change a shared journey, not a directive.
Focus on behavior, not just buy-in.
Ask more questions than you answer.
Celebrate the ones who go first.
Design for human pace, not just institutional deadlines.
I'm still learning all of this in real time. Some days I get it right; creating space, asking better questions, and celebrating small shifts. Other days I rush past the human stuff because timelines feel urgent. But the more I practice paying attention to what's beneath the surface, the more sustainable the changes become. If you're doing this work too, I see you. It's hard. And it matters.