Proximity: An Explainer

Spend an hour with the New Profit team and you’re guaranteed to hear one word: proximity. We believe this concept is central to achieving transformational social change in our lifetimes. So what do we mean by it?

What’s proximity in the context of philanthropy?

“You can’t understand most of the important things from a distance, Bryan. You have to get close.”

In his 2014 memoir Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson recalls the moment he received this life-changing advice. Stevenson, an attorney, discovered that the closer he got to the faces and stories of mass incarceration, the more his work and life were transformed. As the founder of Equal Justice Initiative, he now urges those who want to change society to “get proximate,” or get closer to a problem in order to solve it.

When it comes to systems change, proximity means that those closest to a challenge or need are those with the greatest insight on how to solve these problems. But too often, these are exactly the leaders and organizations who are overlooked by funders.

How does proximity drive New Profit’s mission?

We invest in leaders and organizations who hold and prioritize reciprocal relationships, lived experience, and demonstrated respect for the communities and constituents they aim to serve – then we provide unrestricted funding and tailored support to help organizations and the people who run them increase their impact, adaptive leadership, and durability.

That looks like:

• Unrestricted grants for organizations at varying stages of their growth via our Catalyze, Build, and Transform models.
• One-to-one strategic advising with a member of our Portfolio team, many of whom founded or led social impact organizations. These close coaching relationships can span years and include deep support for leadership and organizational development. 
• Learning cohorts that bring together social entrepreneurs tackling similar issues for shared problem-solving, peer support and mentorship, and rejuvenation.

In other words, we invest deeply in leaders and organizations who put proximity into practice, building out structures and processes that ensure people closest to the issues are actively and consistently shaping decisions. Then we make sure these groups have the community, capacity, and capital they need to advance their work.

What does it mean to be a “proximate leader”? 

Being a proximate leader means being meaningfully guided by the input, ideas, assets, and aspirations of the community you seek to serve.

Proximate leaders often share an identity, background, or experiences with those they serve, but being a proximate leader is also a continuous practice. During our portfolio selection process, we’re looking at both leadership and the organization as a whole to develop a full picture of proximity and how it’s embedded in a program model: How are decisions made? What does governance look like?

Some examples of proximate leadership in action from our portfolio include:

• Black Teacher Collaborative’s team of former educators and school leaders draw upon their first-hand experience to develop programs and pedagogy to support Black teachers.
• The Democracy At Work Institute (DAWI) centers power-sharing and proximate leadership in its governance structure, supported by a staff- and practitioner-led board. Through this, DAWI works to build the field of worker cooperatives and expand worker ownership to communities historically excluded from wealth building and business ownership.
• i.c. stars offers technology training, leadership development, and career readiness to young adults – and alumni of the program play a key role in the shaping of and delivery of its program.
• Refugee Community Partnership walks alongside limited English proficiency (LEP) workers to develop policy and practice recommendations informed by lived experience, centering language justice approaches for employers. 
• Think of Us demonstrates “proximity at scale” through its Center for Lived Experience Center, a participatory research, proximate policy, and community-building initiative that integrates the insights, data, and leadership of people with lived experience to re-architect the child welfare system. The initiative includes a Lived Experience Data Engine which enables people with lived experience to contribute to the policymaking process and has offered policymakers across over 20 states with direct feedback from tens of thousands of young people in or transitioning from the welfare system. 

Whether they center lived experience at the leadership team level, integrate constituent voice and decision making through their Board, or create intentional feedback loops with communities through their program design, proximate leaders and organizations recognize that staying close to an issue and the experiences and strengths of those who face it is a superpower when it comes to transformational change.

These values extend to every part of our work, including how we select the organizations that we support. Over the years, we have engaged many groups of stakeholders from the communities we support in our selection processes, including parents, young people, frontline workers, and social entrepreneurs who are alumni of our programs.

Why does New Profit care so much about proximity?

The short answer: it’s the fuel for real impact.

Organizations that stay proximate to the communities they serve build the relationships, experience, and expertise necessary to develop adaptive, impactful solutions to entrenched social problems. They see and draw upon a community’s strengths that might be overlooked and underestimated by others – and so often, this is the missing piece to creating profound change.

As funders, we also see investing in proximate leaders and organizations as a way to acknowledge the power dynamics at play in philanthropy, and approach our work as students and partners working alongside the leaders we believe in.