On June 25, Shift Health Accelerator welcomed community leaders, funders, healthcare professionals, and changemakers from across the country for a virtual conversation celebrating the launch of our Participatory Investing Toolkit. What began as an opportunity to introduce a new resource quickly became something more—a shared reflection on what it truly means to shift power, build trust, and reimagine how investment decisions are made.

The conversation focused on the relationship between capital, governance, and decision-making. Participants discussed how institutions can move beyond traditional funding models by creating opportunities for communities to participate in shaping investment priorities, informing funding decisions, and defining desired outcomes. The challenge is structural: the health ecosystem sits on over $500 billion in investment capital, and almost none of it is governed by the communities whose health it’s meant to serve. 

Hearing directly from partners, Rhia Ventures and Real People’s Fund, who are putting these ideas into practice, reminded us that there is no single roadmap. Jonalyn Denlinger, Managing Director of The Real at Rhia Ventures, shared Rhia’s response to the structural challenge in launching a catalytic capital fund, shaped from the start by what reproductive and maternal health enterprises said they actually needed. Shift partnered with Rhia across every stage of that process, ensuring the strategy was guided by community-led enterprises rather than institutional assumptions alone. Victoria Nichols, a member of Rhia’s Community Advisory Council through her work at Free the Pill, described that an ongoing trust-based process to shape the fund feels genuinely different and co-created. Tash Nguyen, Board member of Real People’s Fund, further illustrates how RFP explicitly treats capital deployment as a power-building decision, including an investment policy that redefines risk — seeing small businesses taking a political stance not as a liability but as a shared commitment.

Whether redesigning investment strategies, building community-governed funds, or rethinking how organizations share decision-making, each example demonstrated that meaningful participation depends on intentional processes, shared learning, and a willingness to work differently. The Participatory Investing Toolkit was developed to help organizations take those steps in practical ways.

The conversation also highlighted the complexity and centrality of trust when shaping more participatory processes. Participants reflected on demonstrating shared values,, enabling community advisory structures to be truly connected to decision-making, and ensuring accountability to community leaders. Rather than emerging from a single engagement, trust was described as something that develops through transparency, responsiveness, and shared responsibility. Building on our Nature of Trust framework that outlines the conditions to establish and grow trust, the group explored thought exercises like: “What would it actually look like for community members to hold real decision-making power over health resources — and how close or far is that from your current reality?” 

That spirit of collective learning is what inspired the Participatory Investing Toolkit. It is not intended to be a prescriptive guide or a finished framework. Instead, it offers practical tools, reflection exercises, and conversation starters that organizations can adapt alongside the communities they serve. 

We are grateful to everyone who joined us, shared their experiences, and challenged our thinking. If you were unable to join, please check out the webinar recording on our Participatory Investing page. As participatory investing continues to evolve, so will this work. We hope the toolkit—and the conversations it sparks—helps more organizations move beyond engaging communities toward sharing power with them. 

If you’re thinking about how participatory investing could strengthen your work, we’d be happy to explore how Shift can support your team through strategy, facilitation, and implementation.