Meet the Snow-Redfern Giving Circle

April 29, 2024

Participatory Practices Journey

Snow-Redfern Foundation recently initiated a humble journey to explore how we might evaluate and improve our practices to empower youth, inspire change-makers, and energize partnerships for impact.  The journey, thus far, has allowed us to begin creating a participatory practices framework that is guided by our values: youth voice, community wisdom, meaningful engagement, collaborative learning, and shared accountability.

Participatory practices, including participatory grantmaking, aids us in shifting power to, and sharing power with, those most impacted by our work and funding.

Youth and Communities as Decision-Makers

We believe that youth and communities know the issues impacting them and have a deep understanding of how issues and solutions intersect, and that we have a responsibility to begin breaking down the binary between youth/community and decision makers- meaning redefining who can make change and who should make decisions about grant making.

“Participatory approaches leverage the invaluable knowledge and insights that can be gleaned only from firsthand experiences and cultivate partnerships that enable individuals to play an active role in shaping their own destinies. Participation can mitigate power imbalances; surface the most-effective solutions; promote trust, accountability, and transparency; and lead to more equitable philanthropy”, as reported by Fund for Shared Insight.

Giving Circle

In the months to come, we intend to share much more about this incredible journey and shared learning, but today we are blessed to share that we have six incredible community members from across the state that have agreed to help us with the creation of our first statewide Giving Circle for Snow-Redfern Foundation.

This group of incredible individuals, all of which possess a gamut of lived experiences, expertise, knowledge, and community activism, are coming together to maximize the generosity, hope, and power that is inherent in communities across Nebraska, while partnering with Dr. Maya Chilese to sculpt a model for how Snow-Redfern can begin to implement Participatory Grantmaking, including next steps for engaging youth in this participatory model.

We will provide updates over the next few months so you can get a glimpse of the incredible work of our Giving Circle, but today we want to introduce you to these amazing humans!

Meet our Giving Circle

L-R:  Trudy Merritt (North Platte), Andrea Evans (Lincoln), Faith Mills (Scottsbluff), RuAnn Root (Hastings), Jamie Legate (Kearney), Stephanie Vadnais (Lincoln)