Real People’s Fund

Real People’s Fund (RPF)

Shift facilitated two annual strategy retreats with the REAL People’s Fund in Oakland, helping a democratically governed fund clarify governance, align operations with values, and cement community ownership as a core non-negotiable.

Project Overview

REAL People’s Fund (RPF) is a community-powered fund providing non-extractive capital and holistic support to BIPOC entrepreneurs in the East Bay. During a period of transition and growth, RPF asked Shift to help its democratically governed leadership revisit how decisions are made, ensure operations keep pace with capacity, and safeguard community ownership at the center of every capital decision.

Shift Health Approach

We designed and facilitated annual, two-day strategy sessions (2024 and 2025) with an adaptive agenda co-created with RPF leaders. The work focused on practical power-sharing: clarify decision rights, align structures with values and capacity, and translate movement goals into operating agreements that hold up under real-world constraints.

Implementation

Shift facilitated a two-day working retreat with RPF’s democratically-governed leadership that combined structured discussion with collaborative working sessions. The retreat focused on tightening the organization’s governance and operating model, pressure-testing value alignment across decisions, and translating RPF’s power-building strategy into clearer strategic direction. A major output of the work was establishing explicit non-negotiables for community ownership—standards designed to ensure financial decisions remain rooted in community priorities and values, and to reinforce that economic justice requires new models of governance and power-sharing.

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days of facilitated strategy retreat

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priority facilitation focus areas

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annual strategy retreats completed together

Results & Impact

RPF leadership left the retreat with clearer governance direction and a sharper set of standards for community ownership—so the fund can grow without drifting from community-rooted decision-making. The work reinforced a core principle: shifting resources isn’t enough; the real shift is changing who holds power over the decisions about those resources.

“Community ownership isn’t a tagline—it’s a set of non-negotiables we’re building into how decisions get made.”

Namey McNamerson

client