Advanced concepts in modern philanthropy
If you’re seeking transformative change, or as you begin to navigate real-world challenges, you may find yourself increasingly aware of the complexity of many societal problems. The reality is that many of the challenges that philanthropy seeks to address can only be solved in coordination with other sectors and by taking a big picture view. This requires a shift in mindset, from being a funder of individual projects or organisations, to understanding and participating in an ambitious programme of social change.
In this section, we look at some advanced concepts for ambitious donors.
Tackling interconnected issues
One potential difficulty when organising giving into themes is that it can create hard borders between issues. An example is funding health projects separately from education projects, without considering how health impacts a child’s ability to learn and attend school. There may, for example, be cultural factors in certain regions to consider, such as an expectation that girls stay home during menstruation.
Ultimately, philanthropists can organise their giving beyond singular themes if it may provide opportunities for more meaningful change. A good starting point is to ensure you are well informed about the root causes of the issues you would like to help address. This way, you can understand whether a more open approach would help.
Framing issues
Some donors choose to frame their giving through a lens. A lens is a priority issue that the donor has decided to address, often alongside others, after a period of research. A lens can help donors to view an issue across themes and sectors comprehensively.
Lenses allow donors to look critically at themselves, their operating models and approach, as well as the organisations they seek to fund and the wider issues at play. A donor may select organisations most aligned to their lens or seek to help organisations (or whole sectors) build better practices over time.
Examples of lenses include:
- Gender equity: Acknowledges that dominant cultural and historical attitudes, conceptions and behaviours have fuelled inequitable outcomes for women and girls.
- Climate: Recognises a complex interplay between climate change and issues such as economic activity, access to health, clean air and water, education, housing, food systems, democracy, indigenous knowledge and justice, and migration.
- Restorative/reparative: Acknowledges that wealth may have derived from immoral or extractive practices and prioritises redistribution of power (including decision-making in philanthropy) and resources.
- Social and racial justice: Focuses on addressing the factors that perpetuate injustices, and shifting power to oppressed groups. As well as providing funding and resources, this approach can directly challenge the status quo.
Systems change
As we have seen, many challenges philanthropy seeks to address (such as poverty, the climate crisis and violence against women) affect whole cultures and societies – and thus involve multiple dimensions.
As you build a picture of your chosen problem area(s), you may begin to see how influencing the wider system surrounding the issues could be key to lasting change. Systems can include beliefs, values, power structures, resources, institutions, laws and policies.
Changing systems can be the hardest, but arguably the most important, work for philanthropists. However, systems evolve over a long period of time, in response to actions from many participants. It can also be difficult to predict how a system might change or be influenced at any given moment.
As such, donors need to be more open to risk, more flexible, more aware of potentially long time horizons and more intent on collaboration.
If interested in systems change, it may be useful to recognise that a philanthropist’s job may not be to change the system directly, but to help create the conditions for change, enabling opportunities for partners (be they charities, government agencies or other organisations) to learn from each other and chart their own paths. The quality of your relationships will be as important as what you bring to the table when it comes to actually influencing change.
Putting this into practice
Although these more advanced concepts can take time and research to understand, it is important to be aware of them if you would like to contribute to lasting change. While it is not possible to delve into detail within this Guide, ample resources and examples are available if you would like to learn more.
A solid starting point is to undertake a thorough analysis of the issues you are interested to tackle, identifying key players in the field and ensuring you understand the root causes. See our chapter Creating a philanthropy strategy to find out more about how to conduct a landscape analysis.
If any of the above concepts appeal to you, we suggest you also find a community of social purpose organisations and donors who are already practising these approaches in a field that is of interest to you. What can you learn from them?
