Foundations are setting about good work and hard change but still lack self-accountability 

Language out of pace with structures on the ground: Yasmeen Akhtar

 

A Lankelly Legacy Interview. Hosted by the Generative Journalism Alliance 

 

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

 

I began consulting for Lankelly Chase at the start of the pandemic. We didn’t have a historic relationship, but I knew of them and had a sense about their intention to step up. The role that I was stepping into at that point was about governance transformation. 

 

They had already taken some steps in that direction. I mean, they had taken the most significant and most material step that needed taking in terms of transforming governance – they’d included many more voices. 

 

They’d brought in several new people and were managing outgoing trustees who’d completed their terms, so it was a brand new constellation to work with.

 

How was that for you? 

 

It was a very interesting and exciting piece of work. 

 

Lankelly Chase were at this very delicate and powerful place where they had some trustees who had the historic memory and were prepared to stay on and others who were prepared to leave and make room for others, and the staff team had nominated on a number of new trustees who had been long term critical friends to the foundation. So the foundation could be quite realistic in asking themselves; what does transition look like?

 

Lankelly’s inquiry was deepening against the backdrop of sector-wide conversations around whether foundations ought to hold their invested endowments at the distance they do, should they exist in perpetuity, what role could they play in the face of an economic collapse, how might they face up to their own complicity. 

 

While in foundations the question of perpetuity is ongoing, this became much more urgent in the context of COVID, which exposed how close to the line people were living, and in the context of a growing movement seeking justice and repair heightened following the murder of George Floyd. Philanthropy was contending with itself and its commitment to its own existence and perpetuity in the face of robust interruptions that were as strong internally as they were outside of the immediate field. 

 

A lot of foundation boards were finding or making it very tricky to reconcile what they imagined was expected of them in terms of the historical intention for the endowment and what was required presently in this unfolding context. How do they reconcile a duty to maintain with a need to transform, how can they be sure about what the moment is calling for? 

 

While those were really powerful conversations to be part of, and lots of great work in foundations is happening; from participating in community, shifting the make up of their boards and teams, to interrupting how grant making has been happening so that resources are not kept away from movements or unregistered groups that need them in urgent times, what I felt was much further away was a board and team that was ready to centre the contradictions that were being made obvious in the sector, and treating these as their core governance challenge. 

 

In the first instance, the brief wasn’t to transition Lankelly Chase out of philanthropy. It was more an inquiry into where they were ‘circling around some key contradictions, how they were being together, and what would become possible if they governed for change not for maintaining what they already did’. 

 

They were looking for a consultant to journey with them as they grappled with, navigated, imagined, and set out what the change could be, while also keeping an eye on what they were already in. 

 

I was invited to sit in on all the board meetings and witness the conversations, earlier I was asked to interject and offer observations around how they were sharing space and noticing patterns or shifting power. Sometimes I was able to offer advice around how they were collaborative or in what ways they were shifting or perpetuating norms of foundation culture. I had space to share what connections I saw, what risks and challenges were surfacing, and early on I had space to ask probing questions that might open up inquiry. I was creating a space where perspectives could emerge and be held in ways that are power informed and systems informed. This was the initial and first phase of the work before it transitioned into facilitating the transition pathway. 

 

In discussions, we contended with [questions like]: What are we doing here? What is this moment? What is it calling for? Who are we accountable to? 

 

What does it mean to hold onto invested resources at this level, at the same time as being close to the work on the ground where that money could make a huge difference in the moment to communities? 

 

What does it take to play a role in being part of a system that is not meeting the needs of the moment or the people? 

 

And what does it mean to be entangled in, and continue to deepen that entanglement? 

 

A lot of the trustees had the benefit and challenge of being able to see many sides: they were in these board meetings and Investment Committee conversations, and they were coming into those spaces having seen the closure of life-giving community organisations that they themselves were actively part of. This is the power of having those close in on the ground also be around the table of choices. 

 

That created space for a much more embodied conversation around the board table, which is rare because often people rely on their distance for moving through some of the work of governing organisations. So the relationality and entanglement were being leaned into and brought in quite intimately, which is kind of the opposite approach that we tend to take in terms of governance. 

 

In the board meetings I would create space for reflection, offer opportunities for pause, and ask what questions we’re not asking, and incorporate a, ‘let’s walk onto the balcony’ kind of approach and look back at what we’re up to here. In one of those moments I was able to mirror back to the trustees that: 

 

‘Maybe don’t treat it like it’s your money, because, you know, it’s not. And it’s really uncomfortable to have to pretend that it is. I can see it’s really painful. What would happen if that truth was just made very clear then what would you be called to?’ 

 

I remember coming home sharing with my best friend that night, and saying, “um, yeah, I just told a philanthropic board that it’s not their money, and maybe they remind themselves of that every time they come into a board meeting, that would be fab”. And she was like, “Yeah, you probably need to start looking for another job”. 

 

But they were up for these really radical conversations.

 

Thank you, Yasmeen. It’s fascinating and clarifying to listen to you reflect, providing this whole picture. I’d love to hear from you more specifically on, what do you think were the key enabling factors or conditions that allowed that to happen?

 

The first thing I would say is that I think this work is in its very early stages, because there hasn’t been a redistribution, new codes haven’t been established, and new accountabilities are yet to be set. Sitting with questions is only the beginning. 

 

What has happened is an analysis and I hope some ground making. Beyond the announcement, there is some core preparatory work: preparing the ground to better understand, to better step up, to better step in, to what’s possible, which still remains unknown. As the trustees often reminded us ‘it is hard to be the thing while changing the thing’. 

 

As time has gone on, I’m imagining there’s more clarity of possibilities. But, really, what we’ve been up to is holding the commitment and the promise of transformation, for all of this time and trying to prepare the ground to step out of ‘what is’, and that in itself has taken, and does take, quite a while. It is messy and imperfect. How did your perceptions of Lankelly Chase change during the ground to step out of ‘what is’, and that in itself has taken, and does take, quite a while. 

 

How did your perceptions of Lankelly Chase change during this time?

 

If I’m thinking of perceptions that got challenged, then I imagined Lankelly as acting as a joined-up actor within a field that could also become joined up and work as a wave in the direction of change. 

 

I realised separation runs deep, deeper sometimes than even the desire for change, especially change that is unmapped. The way work is organised institutionally and sector wide is disparate, it is made up of multiple individual, thoughtful, powerful, curious, careful actors, but they are not interconnected and they are deep in separation. This is true of Philanthropy broadly and not unique to Lankelly but it has been a lesson to understand how hard it is to undo this kind of survival code. 

 

To the detriment of big change, all actors are not always aligned and committed to the hows and whats in the same moment, which is not uncommon at all, but it does mean navigating a much more complex and wider set of often diverging interests in the moment of deep change and even resistance, and that’s a tricky job. I felt myself deep in this territory.

 

It sure is. How might your experience with Lankelly Chase change your approach to the work as you go forward?

 

What I’m learning from my work with foundations is that they have a baseline lack of accountability set out for themselves, this combination of unaccountability and resource creates a power that attracts lots of interests, they can all be sincere and worthy but still too unaligned to large scale change, and most people will get swallowed up on entry. 

 

Although foundations are charities, they have access to resources in a way in which other charities don’t. They don’t work within the same psychological reality of other civil society actors, and it then creates quite a unique culture, very different to charities. 

 

The culture is much closer to a think tank, where you have the freedom to follow your curiosity without the usual levers of accountability – working with time-frames, publishing findings, being accountable to participants, and of course to funders. 

 

Whereas with a funder, they’re the judge, jury and executioner. What I mean by that is that they can set their own inquiry, they can set their own resources, and they can set their own parameters. Then they are only relying on themselves and those whom they choose to witness what. In my experience, the short termness of consultants and the rotating door of trustees and other stakeholders keeps the status quo going. 

 

So what I’ve learned from working with organisations of that kind of culture is to go in much earlier and much more strongly on the mutual learning and strong structures of mutual accountability.

 

Wonderful. Echoing other conversations we’re having. Thinking about the philanthropic sector as a whole, what learnings can be taken from your experience with Lankelly Chase for the wider field? 

 

One of the things that I’m seeing happening in philanthropy is getting the language [aligned] with the work. And getting the pacing right, in terms of: 

 

Do you invite people into transformative work before transformative action? 

 

A lot of newer funds now, the ones intended to be; post-colonial, anti-racist, power-informed funds – are inviting really radical actors to participate. What that does is that the pacing of the articulation and re-coding of the cultures within the philanthropic institutions is off, because you’re reaching for the language and the expression before you’ve set the ground in-house to be able to meet that. 

 

I’m wondering what that’s creating in the ecosystem of change. 

 

Outside actors are having to engage with philanthropic institutions who define themselves in new terms, and those new terms have not become the lived reality of the way in which actors within that institution operate – they don’t have the structure in which to operate in that way. 

 

While it’s a wonderful fantasy to be a transformative funder, I think we are not there. So we are confusing ourselves, and the wider communities we are working alongside or in service of as funders, by not getting the pacing right in terms of, ‘what have I actually learned and what have I actually done with what I have learned to shift the structures and the shape of this work and the behaviours in this organisation?’ 

 

If the thing that you’ve been up to is to be very inclusive and accessible, then talk in specific terms about that: shift behaviours that are specific to that learning, create structures around that specific wisdom that you now have access to, and be in conversation around that. Don’t jump from a point to one way ahead without following each step through. 

 

Then set out how you are getting to the other things, because you probably wouldn’t have gone from a capitalist, extractive system to a radical, transformative system in the last five years because these conversations have suddenly become available to us. 

 

That’s what I see in the wider sector, which I’m watching and really curious about. 

 

How do you dial down on the premature expression, while still keeping the fire lit for people wanting to move in that direction? 

 

What we’re in, this swinging between some people ‘get it’ and some people don’t ‘get it’. Some people are ‘in’ and some people are ‘out’. Some people are ‘part of the problem’ and others are ‘part of the solution’. If you’re on that track, then we’re probably fooling ourselves. 

 

So that’s the kind of thing that, broadly in the philanthropic sector, I’m interested in – right-sizing, repositioning, keeping the motivation and the commitment, but doing it with truth and honesty and pace and compassion. 

 

Thank you so much, Yasmeen. 

 

 

Hosted and edited by Jack Becher

 

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