We’re excited to announce a new partnership with Magic Cabinet.

A new partnership

From the time we met the Magic Cabinet team, we knew we were deeply mission-aligned. As Inside Philanthropy describes, Magic Cabinet is an “innovative philanthropy doing an unusual form of participatory grantmaking” in Washington State and California. Over the past four years, they have quietly granted more than $45 million to 60 nonprofits in the Puget Sound and Bay Area, in unrestricted, five-year grants. They are on track to give another $10 million this year.

Magic Cabinet uses a deeply participatory grantmaking model, engaging and centering community members at every step of the grantmaking process (you can read this great piece in Inside Philanthropy to learn about their model). That made them a natural fit to partner with Proximate.

The partnership will center around two things: expanding our Grassroots Grantmaking vertical; and supporting our team as we pilot new types of series and formats, including thematic newsletters, paid columnists, and reporting fellows. 

Expanding a vertical

We share a belief with Magic Cabinet that traditional philanthropy too often takes a top-down approach, not actively engaging people with lived experience. We also share a belief that there are more effective, equitable models out there.

We will partner with Magic Cabinet to build out the Grassroots Grantmaking vertical, which will cover the growing movement to improve philanthropy by democratizing it. In the vertical, we’ll share stories, news and insights from the world of “grassroots grantmaking” – the funders working to bring philanthropy closer to the grassroots by shifting power to lived experience leaders.

We’ll lift up innovative, participatory models that drive collaborative, trust-based practices, outsource the due diligence problem to activists and community members. And we’ll explore the challenges with those models, and how they can be overcome. 

Piloting new systems

Magic Cabinet has a reputation for being a strong capacity-builder – helping their grantees think through big changes and growth. We are grateful for their support as we pilot new formats, series and operational models. That includes:

• Newsletters - we will pilot sector-focused newsletters. While Proximate’s mandate (and audience) are intentionally broad, these newsletters will focus on a specific industry, and serve the “connect” part of our mission statement.

• Reporting Fellows and Place-based coverage - we will hire our first reporting fellow, who will write several stories from Puerto Rico. We hope to utilize this model in the future as part of our intention to work with “proximate” writers whenever possible

• Paid columnists - we’ll hire our first-ever paid columnist – more to come soon!

Watch this space for more news about our partnership and what we produce!

See the full press release on our partnership, here.