Become a systems change funder: Alice Evans

How to fund the change when you’re part of the problem

 

A Lankelly Chase Legacy Interview. Hosted by Generative Journalism Alliance 

 

 

Alice, could you start off just by telling me a bit about your relationship with Lankelly Chase?

 

I was at Lankelly Chase for eight years. I started in 2013 as Director of Systems Change, as it was moving from Oxfordshire to London, and transitioning from a traditional foundation to a systems change foundation. 

 

When I came in as Director of Systems Change, it was fantastic. There was so much creating. I love creating. I love developing partnerships. I love trying all of that stuff out. That was brilliant. 

 

I was hoping to carry on and extend the work that I’d been doing at Homeless Link. I’d been doing stuff around severe and multiple disadvantage, and really pushing that. I was asking: How could I enable, with the freedom of having resources, more of that to happen? 

 

But when I joined, the Director of Systems Change role was new. Lankelly was saying ‘systems change’, but had no idea what it meant by that. So it was my role, essentially, to work that out.

 

This is quite a long time ago, and no one talked about systems change really at all. One of the things that my post enabled was that concept to become widespread. 

 

I was like, ‘Well, I don’t really understand this. I know we’ve got resources. If I don’t understand it, maybe let’s fund a whole load of other people’. So I funded and supported a variety of publications that, weirdly, people still tell me they use to this day. 

 

I think it enabled a contribution to the field of knowledge. But then what was more interesting for me was, what would it look like in practice, and how do you do that? 

 

We had a strategy around systems change, which was building the field, testing stuff at a place-based level, building different processes and practices about how you change systems. 

 

One of the things I worked out was that people talk about systems change as the outcome, and for me it’s the process. The outcome is that people have better lives – that’s what you’re trying to get to. 

 

All of the work we were doing in place originated from this strategy. 

 

What did you see enabled during that time?

 

The systems change work really took us into: How should we change? What does it look like for our relationships? 

 

Through that work I also realised that we were part of the problem. 

 

I used to do presentations a lot, saying, ‘The problem with the system is…’. That statement is inherently problematic. 

 

When you say ‘the problem with the system is…’, it says ‘you’re part of a system, I’m not’. And also ‘you need to change, we don’t’. 

 

When we started talking about that, which partly came out of the Systems Changers programme, we realised, ‘Wow, we really have to shift how we’re doing what we’re doing’. 

 

We experimented and started to shift. What does our learning and strategy look like? How do we relate to partners? What are we trying to achieve? What does our risk look like? How does our financial work look like? Why are we funding? And what are we trying to do with funding?

 

That led to devolving decision making and grant making. 

 

Part of what we were trying to do with the place-based work was to shift and build the capacity of other people so they could then make those decisions. But it was going to not go back to traditional grant making with the power stuff, so the System Behaviours came out of the place-based work. 

 

The thought I was having was, ‘Well, you’d have a really tiny core of Lankelly, and most of the decisions would be made elsewhere’. 

 

So it basically took us into where Lankelly is now.

 

What would you say were the conditions that enabled action like that to happen?

 

It wasn’t a family foundation, so the level of attachment to the issue and the level of personal ownership was different. 

 

There was a freedom, because we were reinventing, and at the early stages of systems change. There was no path to tell us what to do. 

 

One of the biggest learnings I had when I was at Lankelly, and I carry on having, is that no one has the whole picture. No one sees the whole truth. Holding that, questioning, is really, really important. 

 

Lankelly kept trying to find the answer or the solution, but there are multiple solutions. And some of what we are dealing with are polarities. So you have to learn how to constantly navigate and rebalance. 

 

At points, it made sense for Lankelly to take the initiative because it had this power. Other times it made sense for Lankelly to be the person who was supporting and really uplifting, because you need to have that balance and those polarities, and you’re never going to fix a polarity, because it’s a dynamic energy system. It’s like breath – you have to both breathe out and breathe in. 

 

All these foundations suck up a whole load of information, but why? Because they’re making themselves feel better? Because the trustees want to be able to tell a life story at their Christmas dinner party? They’re all valid reasons – you want to do your job, you want to feel good – but really questioning and holding the view that nothing is sacrosanct is really important when you’re trying to do this work and living the change that you want to see. 

 

You’re always going to have that power dynamic, because money is involved. Unless you’ve really explored your relationship with money, then what you project onto money is always going to come into this. Money doesn’t answer back. 

 

So you have to keep learning and you have to be aware that you’re always going to be adapting and shifting. You’re never going to be at the end point. 

 

One of the ways I knew it was time for me to leave was because I was hindering. I was getting in the way. 

 

As individuals, you go on a journey where you’re the person who’s developing all of this stuff, and then new people come in with new ideas, and you go from being the innovator to the tradition holder – I was becoming the tradition holder. 

 

What advice or reflections do you have that you feel might be of value to other stewards of resources within philanthropic institutions? 

 

One of my pieces of advice is – just do it. Don’t just talk about it. Do it, and learn while you do it. And then admit your mistakes so others can make them knowingly, because you’re going to make mistakes. 

 

Lankelly’s ability to question itself and challenge itself was uncomfortable for other people. There’s still intrigue and excitement about Lankelly handing over its resources, but there’s also some scepticism about it. 

 

Do I think every foundation should shift resources and give it? No, I don’t. I believe you need a range of funders who will meet different needs, because there are lots of different solutions that will exist depending on the context of the situation and how you’re doing it. 

 

Do I think that every foundation should be uplifting the voice of the people that they’re around? Absolutely.

 

This is where I think foundations have power – to really shift and centre the voice and experience of the communities themselves. 

 

 

Hosted and edited by Jack Becher 

 

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