Nicole Campbell is Co-CEO and President of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (RPA), where she helps philanthropists, collaboratives, and nonprofits design effective strategies and structures to achieve impact. With more than two decades of legal, governance, and operational experience, Nic has advised leaders and boards across the globe on grantmaking, organizational design, and governance.

During a recent visit to an Afrofuturism exhibit, I was struck by a simple but profound question: If past injustices have shaped our current realities, what does that mean for our futures? This question has stayed with me since our All Staff Gathering in Montgomery, Alabama, last month. It challenges us to imagine futures not constrained by the systems we inherited, but inspired by the futures we can create. 

I did not learn resilience and how to work towards a more equitable future because of today’s political climate. Growing up in Barbados and the South Bronx shaped how I understand community, belonging, justice, and opportunity, and has made me resilient, committed, and, most importantly, hopeful. Over the course of my life and career, I have been welcomed into rooms where my voice was valued, and I have been outside closed rooms where I had to work twice as hard to get the chance to enter. I have experienced the privilege that comes with leadership and the marginalization that comes with being a Black woman navigating institutions that were not designed with unapologetic leaders like me in mind.  

As a result, I have learned that systems can either expand or constrain access to opportunity. I have also learned that difficult moments do not last forever, and they can prepare us not simply to survive, but to build something stronger on the other side.  

During our time in Montgomery, Bryan Stevenson reminded us that we must stay proximate to the people and communities most affected by injustice. Through the Equal Justice Initiative, he has shown us that confronting difficult truths is essential to creating the conditions for a more just future. That lesson also extends to philanthropy. If we are serious about advancing justice, we must be willing to ask harder questions, not only about where resources flow, but about who defines the problems, who shapes the solutions, who determines acceptable risk, and who ultimately holds power. 

Still, justice is not simply about repairing harm. It is about creating the conditions for communities to flourish, imagine new possibilities, build generational opportunity, and experience joy. Philanthropy has the opportunity, and I would argue the responsibility, to help create those conditions. 

These days, we are reminded almost daily that transformation is rarely comfortable. It often requires us to let go of familiar structures and practices before we can build something better. We are currently in one of those moments. We critically need movement leaders to connect organizations, shape narratives, organize communities, build coalitions, and sustain momentum long after moments become movements. Movements do not emerge because philanthropy funds them. They emerge because communities organize, reimagine, and lead. Philanthropy’s role is not to direct those movements, but to help create the conditions in which they can thrive. 

This reality is why I believe Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (RPA) plays such an important role in reimagining and transforming the sector and life outcomes for historically marginalized communities. As a global social justice convener, connector, and co-creator, RPA has a unique opportunity to partner with brave leaders, funders, and projects to scale transformational ideas worldwide effectively. 

For decades, philanthropy has often measured success largely by the amount of money it distributes. The next generation of philanthropy must be measured differently. It will be measured instead by the socio-economic conditions it helps create: whether communities have greater agency over their own futures, whether institutions and systems become more equitable, and whether philanthropy has the bravery not only to discuss and fund change, but to change itself. 

At RPA, we believe philanthropy must become braver, more culturally competent, more globally connected, and more accountable to the communities it exists to serve. We also believe this transformation must happen in partnership, built by, with, and alongside communities with humility, trust, and an unwavering respect for local leadership, lived experience, and cultural context. 

If philanthropy invested as intentionally in movement leaders, community organizers, and locally rooted institutions as it does in what is familiar, we could transform a system that too often rewards competition into one that fosters and incentivizes collaboration, learning, shared leadership, and collective impact.  

This kind of transformative investment creates a future where enduring community authority, capacity, leadership, abundance, and wealth become the norm rather than the exception: 

• Black, Brown, Indigenous, and other historically under-represented community-led organizations routinely receive sustained, multi-year investments to create sustainable change;  

• Communities most impacted by injustice hold decision-making authority in setting priorities, governing philanthropic resources, assessing risk, allocating resources, and defining success; 

• “Trust-based” philanthropy evolves beyond streamlined grant-making practices to become genuine partnership where funders account for systemic injustices; and 

• Philanthropy recognizes long-term nonprofit financial resilience as mission-critical instead of treating sustainability as an administrative cost. 

Philanthropy can build this future if it is willing to fundamentally reimagine its role as not simply determining how resources move, but shaping how power, trust, accountability, and opportunity are shared, and creating conditions for communities to thrive. 

At RPA, we aspire to help lead that transformation, not because we have all the answers, but because we believe our unique role is to convene, connect, challenge, and build alongside funders, nonprofits, movements, and communities around the world to help philanthropy become more proximate, more culturally competent, braver, and ultimately more willing to share decision-making with the communities they support. 

The future of philanthropy will not be shaped by those who retreat or wait for certainty to act. Certainty rarely precedes bravery, and the lessons we need to lead bravely in this moment are not new. Philanthropy will be shaped by those brave enough to question inherited assumptions, dismantle inequitable systems and practices, and imagine something better to galvanize community power and curate just and joyful futures.

I believe this future is possible, and I believe RPA and our generation of philanthropic leaders can help build it.  

I intend to spend the next chapter of my leadership doing that work, with bravery, care, and joy.