How has the I4 Definitional Matrix (I4DM) – created in large part to see more funding go toward Indigenous-led work – been used? How has it affected Indigenous-led groups, organizations, communities, and nations? The Circle on Philanthropy shares lessons learned.
The Definitional Matrix (DM) was born out of the Measuring the Circle reports (2009–2014), a research collaboration between The Circle and various funders to learn about the emerging trends in philanthropy for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities in so-called Canada.
The first report made evident that data captured from the Canada Revenue Agency didn’t provide an accurate analysis of whether philanthropic dollars that had been tagged to Aboriginal, First Nation, Métis, or Inuit went to organizations led by Indigenous people. In Measuring the Circle 2.0, Indigenous leaders provided further guidance to develop the DM.
In 2022, the Circle on Philanthropy launched the most recent version, which encompasses four broad categories for organizations: Indigenous benefiting, Indigenous informed, Indigenous partnerships, and Indigenous led. Now called the I4DM, it’s a resource to better support and understand the unique value of Indigenous-led work and how it differs from work that serves, is informed by, or is partnered with Indigenous communities. The tool aims to make the inequitable distribution of funds to Indigenous-led groups and their work visible and demand accountability for where philanthropic dollars tagged for Aboriginal, First Nation, Métis, or Inuit communities actually go.
The I4DM is a resource to better support and understand the unique value of Indigenous-led work and how it differs from work that serves, is informed by, or is partnered with Indigenous communities.
The I4DM is meant to be a guide for conversation, primarily for Indigenous groups to lead from a place of power, but also for funders and donors, non-profits and charities, researchers, and governments to observe and reflect on the policies, practices, and power dynamics that need to shift in settler philanthropy in order to uphold Indigenous rights and enable Indigenous self-determination. It aims to support Indigenous-led organizations to work alongside others and to ensure increased ownership and accountability for work in their own communities that further enable and uphold Indigenous teachings, laws, and relationships.
We want to share some of the learning and wisdom that Indigenous leaders and settler philanthropic organizations have shared with us about the lessons they’ve learned, and the challenges and opportunities they’ve faced, when putting the tool into use.
Leading funding relationships
Being Indigenous-led means being able to lead not just our work, but our funding relationships too. In this way, the I4DM has been useful for Indigenous-led organizations to assess and decide which funders to work with, to identify who has reflected on the tool and done some of the internal work to engage with them in a reciprocal way.
Nuskmata (Jacinda Mack), executive director of Moccasin Footprint Society and co-founder of the Right Relations Collaborative, says that the I4DM allows her to actively vet settler philanthropic funders, thereby shifting the typical power imbalance found in funding relationships. She asks funders to consider their own money story: “Where does your money come from?” She assesses their level of fluency about Indigenous issues, their relationships with Indigenous Peoples, and their experiences in Indigenous communities. She takes a slower, relational approach and looks for alignment in values and ongoing consent.
This really comes back to trust-based relationships and working on long-term investments like intergenerational thinking.
Nuskmata (Jacinda Mack), Moccasin Footprint Society
“This really comes back to trust-based relationships and working on long-term investments like intergenerational thinking,” she says. “There’s a lot of reciprocity, equity, relationship building, taking our time, looking at multi-year general support funding, and just giving us space to do the work we need to do.”
Nuskmata also emphasizes how the I4DM helps to undo the colonial mentality of scarcity and competition and the idea that authority lies with the person who has the money. It allows her community to practise their own governance systems, follow their own laws, be accountable to their own people, and simply enjoy themselves on the land. “It’s about really being tuned into our community, of what’s going on and what needs to be done.”
Normalizing ‘Indigenous-led’
Tara Marsden, an independent consultant who leads Hlimoo Sustainable Solutions and is the UNDRIP fellow to the Real Estate Foundation of BC, says the I4DM centres Indigenous rights in philanthropy and has helped normalize the use and understanding of “Indigenous-led” within the sector.
Marsden says that for Indigenous-led groups, organizations, communities, and nations, conventional funding criteria has felt like trying to fit into someone else’s boxes. Funding often goes through non-Indigenous intermediaries, relationships that can feel tokenistic and transactional. But she sees how the I4DM is shifting this. “People can understand spectrums, and they can understand ‘This is where I’m at. We need to be honest and accountable about that. But this is where we would like to be in the future. Maybe we don’t need to try to integrate Indigenous people into a colonial organization. Maybe we need to partner in a more meaningful way, in an equal way, or at least in an Indigenous-led way.’ So I think the really helpful thing is the focus on Indigenous-led,” she says. “That term is becoming much more commonplace now.”
I think the really helpful thing is the focus on Indigenous-led. That term is becoming much more commonplace now.
Tara Marsden, Hlimoo Sustainable Solutions
For Marsden, the matrix is broad enough to accommodate the diversity of Indigenous communities without pan-Indigenizing (assuming that all Indigenous Peoples can be grouped into one identity and disregarding the many distinct cultures, languages, governance structures, histories, et cetera). The I4DM is not a checklist but rather a tool that can be customized and fine-tuned based on the decision-making processes, protocols, languages, relationships to place and land, and governance structures of different Indigenous-led groups. “Indigenous-led is place-based,” she says, quoting Michelle A Sam.
Advocating for direct funding
While normalizing the terminology “Indigenous-led” has been helpful in the Canadian context, Lourdes Inga, executive director of International Funders for Indigenous Peoples (IFIP), increasingly uses the term “Indigenous organizations.” Guided by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), IFIP advocates for direct funding to Indigenous organizations. “We want to be unapologetic about our calls for funding Indigenous organizations,” she says. “And if receiving funding entails working with an intermediary, it should be the decision of the Indigenous organizations who is the right partner for them.”
The challenge with grantmaking guides or tools is how philanthropy ultimately uses them.
Lourdes Inga, International Funders for Indigenous Peoples
It is difficult to find a definition of “Indigenous organizations” that works across the global context, but Lourdes explains that it all comes down to Indigenous rights, worldviews, and self-determination. While she sees value in the I4DM, IFIP’s mandate means it doesn’t have a need to define or name the Indigenous-benefiting and -informed pillars. In the end, this is consistent with the goal of the I4DM, which was not to provide clear answers but to provide a pathway toward more funding for Indigenous-led work.
“The challenge with grantmaking guides or tools is how philanthropy ultimately uses them,” Lourdes says. “That’s why it is so important for our organizations (The Circle, IFIP) to make those clarifications, in ways that are in alignment with Indigenous worldviews and, in IFIP’s case, the global Indigenous movement. IFIP distinguishes between Indigenous Peoples’ organizations versus non-Indigenous organizations; it’s not only about having one Indigenous staff or majority Indigenous staff, but also what is at the heart of an organization, who is informing and guiding the mission, who they are accountable to, and if there is Indigenous self-determination. The philanthropic sector is still working to understand how to partner with Indigenous organizations. We are here to support and advise them.”
Unintended uses of the I4DM
The I4DM was designed to be used by settler philanthropic organizations in its full form to guide internal reflection on how to shift policies, practices, and power dynamics in service of Indigenous-led work. However, it has not always been used in this way.
There were some settler philanthropic organizations whose excitement about the I4DM moved them to use and adapt it quickly in their grant adjudication processes. However, we were always clear that this matrix was never intended to serve as a checklist or a “policing” tool for settler philanthropic organizations to use in their granting processes. We feared that if misused in this way, it could create more barriers for Indigenous-led groups to access funding, as it would reinforce the power imbalance between funders and grantees when asking applicant organizations to share if and how they are Indigenous led, while also obscuring the need for deeper learning journeys and internal changes to de-centre white supremacy culture within settler philanthropy.
We were always clear that this matrix was never intended to serve as a checklist or a ‘policing’ tool for settler philanthropic organizations to use in their granting processes.
We also learned that others adapted it to use for all equity-deserving groups. We encouraged organizations that wanted to use or adapt it in their granting practices with other equity-deserving communities to look internally first. We encouraged organizations to reach out and connect with the equity-deserving communities they have relationships with to understand if these communities had existing frameworks to facilitate funding to equity-deserving community organizations, highlighting that the I4DM is not an equity matrix.
We created the Guidelines for Use to invite people to join us in listening to Indigenous leadership about the importance of investing in Indigenous-led work specifically, as the I4DM was the result of a long journey of listening to Indigenous advisors, members, and leaders and understanding their work to advance Indigenous self-determination and sovereignty.
Pathway toward more accountability
The I4DM is one of many tools – including UNDRIP, the Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action, the Philanthropic Community’s Declaration of Action, and the White Dominant Culture & Something Different worksheet – that settler philanthropic organizations have used to improve their relationships with Indigenous communities. These tools, used in concert with the support of Indigenous consultants and in relationship with Indigenous communities themselves, have helped provide clear guidance on Indigenous rights and on language that names and prioritizes Indigenous self-determination. But most importantly, they’ve supported organizations to go on an inward learning journey.
As a settler colonial institution, there is a fear of messing up. There is a fear of doing harm . . . So I think that the I4DM provides us a pathway and the language to unlock that and move forward.
Rudi Wallace, Hamilton Community Foundation
Rudi Wallace, vice-president of grants and community initiatives at the Hamilton Community Foundation, describes how the I4DM gave “shape to an intention”: “As a settler colonial institution, there is a fear of messing up. There is a fear of doing harm. And that leads to potential inaction or delay. So I think that the I4DM provides us a pathway and the language to unlock that and move forward.”
Similarly, Mark Gifford, CEO of the Real Estate Foundation of BC, says that “the I4DM put some structure and thinking behind the intention.” He says, “It has been a useful tool to assess and define work along that spectrum, in terms of leadership, relationships, or program design. It connects the values that we’re expressing with action we can measure and be accountable to. And it helps us communicate our priorities with grantees and partners.”
The I4DM connects the values that we’re expressing with action we can measure and be accountable to.
Mark Gifford, Real Estate Foundation of BC
Hayley Gilgan, Indigenous liaison at the Peter Gilgan Foundation, says, “We didn’t skip past the guidelines or reflective questions that accompany the matrix. We are fully engaged with them, and it is helping us learn and work towards building reciprocal relationships with Indigenous Peoples. It supports our commitment to being accountable to our own learning and not adding more labour to Indigenous people. We used the I4DM to inform the development of our granting program for Indigenous youth, which provides flexible, unrestricted, and multi-year funding for Indigenous-led organizations supporting Indigenous young people. This tool has been an important guide as we strive to rebalance relationships and shift how we choose to show up as funders.”
This tool has been an important guide as we strive to rebalance relationships and shift how we choose to show up as funders.
Hayley Gilgan, Peter Gilgan Foundation
This inward learning journey is facilitating changes beyond grantmaking: settler philanthropic organizations are working on changing how they categorize grantees, how they collect data about where their funding is going, how they develop their strategic plans, and how they invest their endowments. Ultimately, the I4DM has prompted them to reflect on whether they are being good partners with the Indigenous communities they work with and whether those partnerships are meaningful.
Collecting and sharing data
The I4DM was created in large part to see more funding go toward Indigenous-led work. In the spirit of accountability, we ask organizations to collect and share data with The Circle that describes how Indigenous-led work has benefited from the use of the I4DM. For example, the Real Estate Foundation of BC reports that the proportion of its funding going to Indigenous-led work has gone from less than 5% to more than 60% in three years. This is a remarkable increase in a relatively short time and an example of how a settler philanthropic organization can take on the internal work to make this kind of change happen.
But beyond voluntary use by settler philanthropic organizations, the I4DM can be used to inform data collection by the federal government through the Canada Revenue Agency and Statistics Canada. Currently, there is no accurate way to know how much philanthropic funding in Canada goes to Indigenous-led work. Data collection across the sector is focused on measuring “populations served” rather than who is leading the work, and this creates a barrier to understanding how much funding is upholding Indigenous rights and enabling Indigenous self-determination.
Changes to the CRA’s T3010 form that are informed by the I4DM would allow the federal government to track and report this data. While we encourage individual settler philanthropic organizations to report how much funding they are directing toward Indigenous-led work, ideally as a percentage of their total assets, we would ultimately like to see this data being collected and shared in a consistent, transparent, and accountable way across the whole sector.
Evolving the I4DM
It is clear that the I4DM has been a useful tool for both Indigenous-led groups and settler philanthropic organizations to facilitate increased funding to Indigenous-led work, and to do so in a way that cultivates good relationships.
We expect to adapt this tool to incorporate some of these learnings. We want to both refine and expand the description of “Indigenous-led” to reflect the wisdom of Indigenous leaders and the diversity of their practices of self-determination and governance. We also want to continue learning about what Indigenous partnerships look like and the quality and depth of these partnerships. We were inspired by the learnings that emphasized how engaging with this tool helped get things started, and how it helped deepen and strengthen relationships within organizations and with Indigenous communities. It is only through reciprocal relationships that the necessary shifts to policies and systems can be embedded.
In the end, the I4DM is a tool for accountability, and we hope to see this reflected in the actions taken by those who use it.
