About
Twenty years inside the work.
I have spent my career designing and running the models through which philanthropy delivers: strategies, programs, funds and services, and the economics, systems and teams that hold them up. I care about this work because I have seen it from both ends.
At a glance
- BasedWashington, DC. Working nationally.
- NowManaging Director, Advising Services, Tides Center
- BoardTreasurer, Moore Philanthropy
- EducationMSW, Stony Brook University
BA, Niagara University - ElsewhereLinkedIn
I am Managing Director of Advising Services at Tides Center, the country's largest fiscal sponsor, where I lead the advising practice: a team of senior advisors and the cross-functional teams behind them, the economics and pricing of the service model, our relationships with a national portfolio of social change projects, and the practice's part in the organization's transformation and growth.
Before Tides, I was Director of Operations at Borealis Philanthropy, a philanthropic intermediary that houses donor collaboratives funding movement organizations. I was Director of Knowledge and Grantmaking at the Kataly Foundation, where I designed and ran grantmaking processes and the knowledge systems behind them. I worked on the grantmaking operations side of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and I led fiscal sponsorship operations at NEO Philanthropy across more than seventy sponsored projects. Earlier still, I built and ran workforce development programs for people with developmental disabilities. The fee-structure and cost-to-serve work along the way still shapes how I think about what it costs to run a mission well.
I grew up in the kind of community much of philanthropy says it wants to serve, and I came to this work through direct service and organizing. I carry that with me. It is why I pay attention to who carries the weight of a process, who is treated as a partner, and who gets to decide.
I serve as board treasurer of Moore Philanthropy, and I take on advisory engagements through Subaltern Strategies selectively.
About the name
Subaltern
The word comes from Gramsci by way of the Subaltern Studies historians, who set out to write history from the standpoint of the people the official record had left out.
I chose it because it names the standpoint I try to bring to this work: to look at a funding system from the position of the people on the receiving end of it, and to design as if their experience is the measure that matters.
Short bio
For programs and introductions.
Please feel free to use it as written.
Ray Meadows is the founder and principal of Subaltern Strategies, an advisory practice working with foundations, intermediaries, collaboratives and donors on strategy, program and service design, and the economics and teams that carry them. He is Managing Director of Advising Services at Tides Center, where he leads the advising practice of the country's largest fiscal sponsor. He previously served as Director of Operations at Borealis Philanthropy and Director of Knowledge and Grantmaking at the Kataly Foundation, and held grantmaking and fiscal sponsorship operations roles at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and NEO Philanthropy. He is board treasurer of Moore Philanthropy and holds an MSW from Stony Brook University. He lives in Washington, DC.
Let's start with a conversation.
Tell me about the work you are trying to do. I will be honest about whether I am the right person for it and whether I have room.