Who do you call when you’re stuck between how change happens and how it gets funded?
The Fito
Funders Hotline
Bring a real question.
Get connected to a funder who’s tried it.
Join a community of funders who ask, answer, and learn from each other, on the practical side of funding networks, movements, and systems change.
You've experienced it time and again.
Progress looks like relationships, not outputs. Strategies evolve. Change takes a decade, not a grant cycle.
Yet our funding tools are still built for single organizations and predictable plans.
Are you a funder who...
Supports networks, movements, alliances, communities of practice, or ecosystems.
Has hard-won lessons in participatory, relational, and collective funding.
And still finds more questions than answers about the “how”.
The hardest questions show up mid-work
Who should decide?
What goes in the budget?
What counts as progress?
What do I tell my board?
They come not at a conference workshop but on a Tuesday afternoon – with a decision due on Friday.
Somewhere out there, a funder has tried it
For years, the Fito Network has convened and researched hundreds of network funders, gathering their questions, practices, and lived experience.
We’ve already matched dozens of questions with what funders have tried.
And we've found funders are often happy to share what they learned – if someone asks.
The hotline connects you with peers who “get it”, when you need them most.
How do I...
Real questions we’ve received – and the funders who answered them.
Erica McCloskey
Mastercard Foundation
Adequately budget for and support partners learning?
We allocated £3 million for learning infrastructure – including relationships, peer learning, and field capacity.
Liv Jackson
Joseph Rowntree Foundation
Built on trust,
not transactions
Asking and answering is just the start. The hotline is a community as much as a service.
A place to be listen.
To admit what we don’t know.
To ask the questions we wouldn’t ask elsewhere.
And to connect as humans, laugh, and play.
Alongside on-demand matching, you’ll find:
Practice clinics
Test a new grant process, strategy, or evaluation plan with a small circle of peers before you take it live.
In-person gatherings
Moments to meet face to face, swap stories over a meal, and turn peers into friends.
Stories Library
A growing collection of how funders have tackled real questions, in their own words.
Share your experience
Help a peer through something you’ve already lived, and see your lessons travel further.
Monthly digest
A monthly round-up of emerging questions, community insights, and shifts we’re noticing across philanthropy.
Born from a circle of funders
In 2026, 15 funders spent nine months together in the PANDO Funding Root Circle.
We traded practices.
Challenged each other.
Ran small experiments.
Connected and played.
When it ended, many of us felt we had only just begun.
The hotline is how that work continues, and how we open our doors to more funders, both those with questions and those with lessons to share.
