A New Chapter for Tara Health
By Elise Belusa, Executive Director, Tara Health Foundation
Dear friends,
In the eight years since I joined Tara Health, initially as a program officer, almost everything has changed. And yet, as I write this, I see that the foundation’s most enduring spark still persists: our eagerness to challenge norms, take risks and push beyond the comfortable boundaries of conventional philanthropic practice.
They say the middle part of a story is the hardest to tell. In my current role as executive director of Tara Health, I'm acutely aware that we're navigating through the middle. Our beginning is behind us, our conclusion is visible on the horizon, yet we're embarking on a significant new phase of our work — one we hope will contribute meaningfully to the broader conversation about the role of institutions and people in creating change.
The Call to Action
For years, our grantees, partners, and peers called on powerful institutions, like ours, to confront an uncomfortable truth: the money and power we hold and steward are often built upon the very unjust systems we seek to change. Their call to action has been clear: break from the status quo, dismantle long-standing power structures, and redistribute to reimagine.
Like many of you, we’ve done our best to listen deeply. Though spending down has always been Tara Health’s plan, we have shaped the “how” of our spend down in response to these calls to action. We’ve committed to transferring 100% of our resources to the movements we support over the next three to five years. We’re now also committed to engaging with the broader philanthropic and investment landscape, seeking to understand our place within it and how we might contribute meaningfully to its transformation.
What’s unfolding at Tara Health is a long, incomplete, and nonlinear journey of transformation. We are reimagining nearly everything: from how we build and support staff, to who serves on our board, to how we’re governed, how we invest, make grants, define impact, and more. We’ve shifted our mission, our vision, our organizational structure, our relationships, and ourselves in response to our growing understanding of power — how we hold it, how it shapes our work, and how transforming it could perhaps be our most meaningful impact.
The Landscape
The contours of this new landscape are both encouraging and challenging. The tools for transformative change are largely at our fingertips — documented and ready for use. Yet, something crucial seems missing: the collective will and courage to fully embrace this change. Many of us who steward significant resources grapple with deep, disquieting questions about transforming our power, privilege, and control. At Tara Health, we’ve found that doing so can be complex and sometimes painful. But beyond the discomfort, beyond the fear of loss, we’re discovering unexpected purpose, connection and even joy.
This discovery guides our final commitment: to document and share, honestly and vulnerably, our collective and individual experiences reckoning with and relinquishing our historically unjust status, capital and power. By telling our stories — the struggles, breakthroughs, and ongoing questions — we can contribute to building the collective will our world needs and deserves.
Transforming power is a complicated, often winding journey. It is deeply personal and profoundly collective. As we move from the middle of our story to our final chapters, we’re committed to sharing what “transforming in action” has looked like for us in its raw, unpolished truth. Hopefully, our experiences will inspire others to do the same.
Join us in the months and years ahead as we continue sharing our experiences in this new blog. Next month’s post will feature our founder’s perspective, and we invite you to engage with these stories, challenge our thinking and share your own journey.
Your story, like ours, is part of this broader narrative of reimagining what’s possible. As we move forward, we hope you will breathe with us, dream with us and grow with us. Because ultimately, the transformation of philanthropy — and beyond — isn’t just about changing systems or practices. It’s about changing ourselves and, in doing so, expanding what’s possible in our work and shared world.
Best,
Elise
