Changing funding practices for a changing world

Before Christmas, I attended the Centre for Effective Philanthropy conference in Boston with about 500 people from across the trust, foundation and donor sector – many, but not all, from the US and Canada. The conference’s purpose was to ​‘engage with the most pressing issues in philanthropy’ with a strong emphasis on trust-based working and the sector’s role in tackling injustice. 

Despite the US context being different to our own, the big themes were resonant; rising polarisation in politics, instability and confusion caused by technology, and perhaps most importantly a strong sense that the challenges we now face are existential and hit at the core of what it means to try and build consensus towards a better future where everyone can find a place.

I felt the strength of the philanthropy sector in the US (and, as is often commented on, the different relationship to civil society and government). And I felt that this depth and scale meant many of the ideas we discuss in our work in the UK and Europe had in many instances been more thoroughly debated, tested and trialled in the States and therefore it offered a hugely rich site for learning (though I’d be very open to debate this!). I was struck by the focus of colleagues and determination to face things that are hard and stick with them in order to effect change. It was also affirming to be at a three-day conference where many, if not most, of the speakers (all leaders in their fields and many leaders of philanthropic organisations) were women of colour. 

This blog reflects the messages that struck me and which I think we need to consider at PHF and within the UK funding sector. It’s not a full report of the conference and I have brought together themes from a range of speakers. I really recommend reviewing the programme which can be found here and signing up for CEP’s engaging blog.

A changing climate was the container for all the other themes discussed at the conference, as it is for all our work. Environmental breakdown gives everything an urgent time horizon and puts all our work into a new perspective. The task at hand is both to act on climate directly, but also to recognise that factors like inequality, corruption and power-hoarding all contribute to destabilization and planetary degradation. Hoping for the best is not good enough and therefore we need to face up to the need to act and recognise that responding to climate crisis is urgent and interconnected work. 

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson from Ocean Lab perhaps put it most succinctly pointing out we have years not decades and ​‘any money you spend now [on climate] is worth so much more than money you spend in ten years’ time’. The call was to avoid internal strategizing and agonising about where climate might fit into funder mission, but instead to make the simple recognition that social justice work is climate work and we need to get on with it and make some big-bets that could help. 

Many speakers gave examples of accelerated challenges to liberal norms and ideals, creating a picture of a sustained backlash against moves towards greater equity and inclusion, as well as coordinated attacks on democracy. Danielle Allen from Harvard Centre for Ethics spoke of ​‘the great pulling apart’. Weak democracies, the condition of widespread disinformation and disengagement from credible news, as well as workers and families with limited assets or agency, creates conditions where we will not be able to counter climate change because we will be too fragmented and enfeebled.

We have examples of effective ways of driving change but they are not linear and they overlap. Conference speakers offered positive strategies for resourcing change that support justice, democracy, and equity which include (but are not limited to) investing in community organising, local wealth building, local ecosystems of news and information, spaces and cultural events for people to come together, and narrative building. 

Foundations like Walter and Elise Haas ​‘Endeavour Fund’ gave examples of innovative responses to resourcing change. They have moved to making seven year grants to organisations rooted in their community in San Francisco to give a ​‘holistic approach that prioritizes the well-being of nonprofit employees and promotes systemic change’.

Another example was ​‘organising in the land of enchantment’, a coalition of nonprofits who have helped secure free early childcare for most residents in New Mexico through careful, locally-rooted and values-based campaigning. 

I was struck by the way these examples open space for possibility and invite rather than demand approaches or solutions. They connect with the need for space to create positive versions of ourselves, spaces for imagining, dreaming and believing and new models of debate and deliberative decision making.

In this way, we also guard against the shadow-side of community: the parochial, inward and closed.

All of this speaks to the connectedness of things which does not suit the traditional model of foundation giving. Much of the conference debate focused on innovative approaches to funder practice which up-end the norms which have often grown-up through custom and practice to suit the organisation, not the sector or beneficiaries. Philanthropy tends to operate through strategies with fixed fields or areas of funding, which have a few things in common:

• We tend to give out small amounts of money to individual charities.
• We tend to fund as individual organisations, not collectively as a funder community.
• We don’t always share, across funders, a version of the problem or consensus on effective action.
• We tend to have systems and processes that govern our decision making which are not necessarily built on a deep understanding of the most effective way to resource change.

The Headwaters Foundation shared their approach to leading with trust and ​‘flipping’ the notion of accountability so that it works both ways from funder to funded and vice versa. As organisations increasingly work in ways that are hard to place in sector ​‘boxes’, where people organise as movements not single issues, funders will need to re-consider their own need to hold on to discrete areas of intervention.

In all of this complexity it can be hard to know how to proceed. 

It also plays into discussions of risk. Rather than situating risk in simplistic measures of competence, what if risk were much more about careful and structured resourcing of programmes and interventions that led to sustained and equitable progress? Greater proximity, staff being on the ground with grantees, observing and collecting data, making connections, seeing the bigger picture and connecting the dots – all of these could help.

How, then, to build a funding model with proximity in its thinking? How to be close enough to people and communities for them to be honest with you? How to build structures where accountability is deeply shared and honestly communicate about challenges on both sides?

One of my main reflections was that attending to the detail of funder practice and the basics of building trust are as important as contemplating bigger strategic challenges – or perhaps it is better to say that consistent and values-based funder practice is a pre-condition for being able to contribute to the bigger picture. 

This is what I’ve been thinking about mainly for our work at Paul Hamlyn Foundation:

• How we fund is not neutral – do we really know what kind of funding the field leaders need and want? Longer, bigger grants? And what kind of funding enables creativity, field building, strategic partnership development and greater attention to system change – is this more collaborative models alongside funding individual people or organisations?
• Portfolio analysis – what do we know about our fields and where we fit? How can we understand better the interconnectedness of things and sit comfortably with complexity? Better mapping and better collaboration and coordination could help, as well as acknowledging that complexity is inherent and not something to be managed out or ​‘dealt with’. 
• Learning and doing – methods of data capture, structured approaches to relationship management and good systems underpin a learning culture which can feed the funder and in turn, the grantees and communities and collaborations. This also has the effect of lightening the mental load of staff. How could our learning approaches be more open, generative and integrated?

I am also left thinking more about those areas or roles where we feel uncomfortable as funders – these might be the activist role, or the advocate, or even the directive-hand. There are clearly very good reasons for why these roles are not always (and may never be) appropriate, but does this stop us interrogating this properly and understanding our unique position so that we can do what is necessary when called?