The founders of Sovereign Good discuss what they see in philanthropy right now. Part One of Three.
Every advisory firm can tell you what it does. Sovereign Good exists because of something further back than that: a belief the four of us kept arriving at from different rooms, that the people closest to a problem rarely hold the power to solve it, and the people who hold that power are rarely held to the account they'd expect of anyone else. Sixty-plus combined years inside foundations, sports franchises, and small nonprofits taught us that the hard way. Closing that distance is the actual work. Everything else — the advising, the strategy — is just how we go about it.
Each of us got here on a different road. Francisco Martinez spent years inside the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, venture capital, and the MacArthur Foundation's Lever for Change, guiding gifts that ranged from $10 million to $650 million and helping shape more than $2.7 billion in philanthropic capital — enough to learn that the distance between what a funder intends and what a community experiences is almost always a governance problem, not a values problem. He still hears both sides of that distance, chairing a performing arts board and running an alumni nonprofit of his own. Joanna Aguirre spent years managing high-visibility relationships for Chicago White Sox Charities and running national sponsorship activations for Allstate, work where the story had to hold up under scrutiny nobody scheduled. That's the discipline she's watching get tested now, as the DEI commitments companies made in 2020 quietly disappear the moment the spotlight moves elsewhere. Rupal Soni built a Rural Design School curriculum and community center on the India-Pakistan border, where the plan had to survive local politics, community adoption, and a real construction timeline, not a strategy deck. She's the most senior practitioner among the four of us, and an artist, which is why she still asks the question artists ask: is this really the only way to build it? Samuel Muñeton Jr. has deployed more than $15 million in philanthropic funding, micro-financing, and emergency capital directly to nonprofits and small businesses, at the exact moments those organizations are most exposed — when money can arrive fast enough to overwhelm a small staff or break its own controls if nobody's steering it in. That's why he believes the people closest to a problem deserve more authority over solving it than they're usually given.
We wanted a way to introduce ourselves that led with that belief instead of a polished mission statement, disagreements included, not smoothed over. So we sat down with the same set of questions and answered them in our own words. This is the first of three conversations: four questions here, three in each of the next two, ten in all.
One note before you read on. We didn't file down the edges — where we see the field differently, you'll see that too. What holds us together is simpler: a shared conviction that philanthropy can be built better, and the willingness to say so out loud.
When you look at philanthropy right now, what do you actually see?
Joanna Aguirre (JA): I come at this work from the corporate side, so I pay attention to how companies actually run their giving, and a lot of corporate philanthropy was never that serious to begin with. For plenty of companies, it's a line in the annual report and a logo on a banner, a program built to manage reputation more than to move real money to where it is needed. The governance behind it tends to be thin, and giving that tracks the news cycle instead of a community's actual needs. For other companies, there is great intent, but the lack of fundamental understanding around intersectional issues means the funding strategy rests on public relations more than what would truly move the needle for communities.
Right now, you can watch it unravel in real time. As companies roll back their DEI commitments, the giving that rode on those commitments is quietly going with them. Look at Minnesota — after 2020, companies there pledged something like $2 billion toward racial equity, and a large share of it never materialized. When the pledges were tied to a moment instead of a conviction, the money walks out the door the second the moment passes. That tells you how much of it was ever real.
Here's the part I hold onto: This moment exposes who was serious. The companies that keep standing behind their giving when it is no longer fashionable are the ones worth building with, and part of our job is helping them give as they mean it, with the governance and accountability to prove it.
Francisco Martinez (FM): The field has gotten very good at talking about sharing power and a lot slower at doing it. "Trust-based" and "community-led" are everywhere now, but most funders have not changed who signs off on the money or how long it takes to move. My own organization has had to tell the same story to different funders on different forms, while each of them is sure their paperwork is the easiest.
What I think is really going on: a lot of philanthropy is built to make the giver feel good more than to change something on the ground. Most funders genuinely mean well. We just have a system that rewards the good feeling more than the result.
Samuel Muñeton Jr. (SMJ): It is extraordinarily difficult to describe philanthropy because no two philanthropic institutions, families, or individuals are alike. Each has its own culture, its own governance, its own vision for the world. Still, in my experience, I see a widening divide between the public-facing staff and the people who actually hold decision-making power.
Today's social, economic, ecological, and political challenges call for real urgency. Yet the industry standard is annual giving at the legally mandated 5%. When people change their diet, their exercise, or how much time they spend on their phones, most would agree it takes more than 5% of their effort to see a real difference. So why do we treat 5% a year as enough? The staff who are in the community every day feel that gap, and they want to do more. Most of them came into philanthropy to deepen investment in communities that have been starved of it.
Years ago, I also learned that the average annual return on philanthropic assets under management is about 6%. If that's true, then was the 5% minimum ever really about impact — or about keeping the institution alive in perpetuity? As advisors today, we can't keep sidestepping the questions of purpose, power, and legacy. Together, we want to redefine what philanthropy is capable of and meet the moment.
Rupal Soni (RS): When I look at philanthropy, the pessimist in me sees fear and a failure of imagination. What are we so afraid of? What do we actually mean when we talk about risk in this field? Philanthropy carries the least risk and the most opportunity of almost any field, and still, we don't act like it. What keeps us from leading the way to imagine and test and fund bold ideas led by the people closest to impact? There is so much beautiful potential.
The optimist in me sees everything that opens up when we stretch our courage and our imagination. As an artist, I'm always asking how we might build things differently. The way things are done is just the set of lines we've been handed, and I can't think of a clearer moment to color outside them. So much becomes possible the second we ask, "Is this the only way? Is this the best we can do?" That's the opportunity we're calling in with Sovereign Good. We are calling in the people ready to build differently.
There's more money in philanthropy than ever. So why don't the problems get smaller?
FM: The money is real. The trouble is that very little of it moves fast, moves freely, or moves close to the ground.
Look at where it sits. Most large philanthropies live off endowments meant to last forever, and "forever" is a choice. It says the institution's survival matters as much as the problems' urgency. The law only asks foundations to pay out about 5% a year, and in practice, that floor becomes the ceiling. So most of the money stays invested while the problem those resources are subsidized to solve keeps growing.
Then there's how the money arrives. Grants come with strings, and with reporting that can eat more of a small nonprofit's time than the grant is worth. And the decisions get made far from the neighborhoods they're supposed to reach.
So the real problem isn't values; most funders hold the right ones. I believe the problem is the structure: who gets to decide, on what timeline, and accountable to whom.
RS: Plenty of philanthropists use philanthropy opportunistically: to do the least they can while lowering their tax burden and polishing their reputation. But this is publicly subsidized money. It has to keep circulating, or the whole experiment of philanthropy tells on itself.
SM: Government, the private sector, and philanthropy each have a part in building a better future, and each has a part in holding the other two accountable. We believe that when all three pull in the same direction, audacious change is possible. I'm ready to commit to that work for the long haul, because I think it's the only way change actually lasts.
JA: There's a standoff between knowing what's possible and having the nerve to act on it. I'll be blunt: if it were me, I would have funded lobbyists for climate action, backed bail funds for responsible protesters — no, not the January 6th kind — and covered every dollar PBS has lost. My nerve isn't the problem. The hesitation belongs to the very wealthy, who feel they have to tread lightly so they don't risk their interests, upset the status quo, or drag their families into a spotlight they never asked for.
I understand that hesitation, and I'm looking forward to working through it, finding responsible ways to head off harm before it lands. For a lot of people, what's missing isn't nerve, it's know-how. Blaming it all on a lack of audacity ignores the red tape and the unintended consequences that come with large gifts. That's exactly why we're here: to help untangle that Gordian knot and put dollars to work with the most vulnerable people's interests at heart.
What's the one question you wish every funder asked before writing the check?
FM: "Who am I accountable to, and what happens to me if I get this wrong?"
The second half is the one that matters. For most funders, the honest answer is: no one, and nothing. A foundation can back a losing strategy for ten years and still keep its building, its staff, and its endowment, ready to back a new strategy. The grantee partner who staked everything on that strategy loses the program, sometimes the whole organization. The family it was meant to serve loses a neighborhood preschool or the only health clinic in the neighborhood is quietly closed.
That imbalance is the thing almost no one wants to look at. Everyone in philanthropy measures the people they fund. Very few build any real cost for themselves when the work doesn't pan out.
Funders don't need to punish themselves. They just need to see that they have written themselves out of the accountability they expect from everyone else, and ask what it would take to write some of it back in.
SM: I'd make one small edit to this question and ask, "What happens if we get this wrong?" That word — we — changes everything.
For a first-time donor, that question can land anywhere from uncomfortable to genuinely anxiety-inducing. But some of our colleagues are already leading the way on trust-based, community-centered philanthropy, where community members themselves decide how the dollars get spent. As with any investing, nothing is ever fully guaranteed. Bringing the community into the grantmaking is one of the surest ways to improve the odds that the money actually lands.
RS: "How did this money come into my hands?"
Philanthropy would look very different if more funders led with personal responsibility and gratitude. We only call it generosity when we ignore how much of that wealth was publicly subsidized in the first place. It's a gift in both directions.
JA: "How can we make this gift do more than the dollar amount?"
A bold donor can inspire others in their circle to push the envelope too. A single gift can put a spotlight on a cause or a community that's been overlooked for years. Thoughtful giving builds momentum — it pulls in more people, invites bigger efforts, and can start to chip away at problems that have lingered for generations. Call me an eternal optimist, but wherever there's a chance to strategize and optimize, there's a way.
If Sovereign Good does its work well over the next ten years, what's different?
JA: I fantasize about grabbing a systemic problem by the root and pulling it out so completely that it becomes obsolete. Take homelessness in the U.S. The National Alliance to End Homelessness lays out strategies that would take roughly $20 billion to launch. Sustaining it costs more year over year — call it $8 billion a year for ten years, for the sake of argument. That's somewhere around $100 billion over a decade. U.S. foundations give away about $109 billion every year. So a single year of foundation giving nearly covers a ten-year plan to end homelessness. What does that tell you about what an organized effort could do if it aimed all that capacity at one problem? In my pie-in-the-sky dream, Sovereign Good helps wipe out a problem that has blocked the pursuit of happiness for people who have suffered far too long, for no good reason.
FM: There are two audiences here, and "better" looks different for each.
For the funders we advise, I want their giving to hold up even when no one is watching or clapping. A lot of philanthropy right now is organized around how giving feels to the donor. Ten years from now, I want the people we work with to have something sturdier: clear governance, a real sense of who they are and who they answer to, and the willingness to move money to what could be possible, not just what is required...
For the communities on the other end, the change should show up in ordinary life. Decisions made closer to them. Less time spent proving they deserve help. Support that arrives to build strength before the emergency instead of life rafts to survive it.
And the question I keep circling back to: what would it take for a community to be able to walk away from a funder who isn't serving it? The day that's possible, we'll have changed something real.
RS: We'd all breathe easier — literally and figuratively.
SM: I'm with Rupal. And I want our clients to feel sure about their giving — not only for the impact they made, but for the fact that they tried at all. They lived their values out loud, alongside us, and communities are healthier, safer, and more joyful for it.
Next in the series: three more questions, and more of how the four of us see the work.