How do we ensure our actions don’t replicate the exclusion we strive to dismantle?

It’s a question that, for me, remains the true legacy of our work together

By Max French 

I first began working with Lankelly Chase as a learning partner, a role that required me to move fluidly between observation, reflection and collaboration. From the outset, I sensed a deep intellectual curiosity at the heart of the organisation: a drive to discover the language, techniques and ways of working that would truly serve those on the margins of society.

Lankelly Chase’s constant has been its willingness to question its own methods. Lankelly has really thought deeply about how it works on behalf of the marginalised and excluded in our society, I observed early on, noting how grant-making, systems thinking and place-based approaches were all up for debate. This openness meant that strategies often changed, not as a sign of indecision, but as evidence of rigorous self-scrutiny.

In its first phase, the foundation leaned into systems thinking, a technocratic approach that sought leverage points within complex social systems. As I worked alongside teams, it became clear that this methodology provided clarity, yet sometimes obscured the deeper structural injustices undergirding those systems. Over time, Lankelly Chase moved away from this idea that we need to work systemically as a foundation, using techniques and methods that came from systems thinking, place-based working and relational grant making, and began grappling instead with the very architecture of late-stage capitalism.

Reframing race, class and identity

This strategic shift brought a new focus on racialised and class-based dynamics. Lankelly Chase started to centre conversations around power and identity in ways it hadn’t before. Where earlier frameworks risked treating systemic issues as abstract, this turn towards the lived realities of race and class injected fresh urgency. It felt quite new and different for a lot of people, sparking debates about mission and language that continue to this day. Despite these evolutions, the organisation’s core intention to avoid reinforcing the very dynamics that marginalise those it serves, has remained steadfast. I don’t get a sense that the fundamentals have shifted all that much, changes in strategy, personnel and even board composition represented not a rupture but a recalibration around an enduring purpose.

In my view, the transitions have been staged and nuanced rather than abrupt. Even decisions as dramatic as pressing the self-destruct button on the foundation reveal an arc of thoughtful iteration. Things have always felt like they’ve been changing, whereas, I think for other people, it’s felt more dramatic than it has for me. My role as a learning partner has been to bear witness to these transformations, tracing the lines of continuity amid change. 

Through these phases, what has endured is Lankelly Chase’s willingness to hold itself to account – to ask at every turn, “How do we ensure our actions don’t replicate the exclusion we strive to dismantle?” It’s a question that, for me, remains the true legacy of our work together.

There’s no scaffolding; you bring your own agency

To endure in Lankelly’s world, you had to arrive fully prepared to steer yourself. No one would lay out the path or tell you which junction to take. You were expected to lean in, to take initiative, and to become a co-creator of the foundation’s ambitions. Those who flourished here had restless, self-starting personalities. Those who didn’t, found themselves lost in the openness. 

That freedom, however, came at a cost, particularly for the change agents tucked into Lankelly’s place-based systems work. These were people doing extraordinary things – knitting marginalised communities into new power structures, nudging senior commissioners to shift budgets, reimagining the civic machinery itself – yet they were given little more than goals and a nod of encouragement. Guidance and emotional support were scarce. Time after time I saw these individuals internalise that pressure. An entire project could unravel overnight and the person at the centre would shoulder the blame for failures that were never theirs alone. They held themselves to impossible standards, wrestling with guilt over outcomes no single person could control.

I found myself filling the gaps – meeting for coffee, listening without judgment, reminding them that the real experiment was much about learning through failure. I sensed an unspoken judgment, that perhaps these people simply ‘weren’t cut out’ for the emotional toll. I disagreed. I believed the real issue was asking individuals to pioneer uncharted territory without the safety nets we all need. 

That tension between radical freedom and the responsibility it imposes remains unresolved. But acknowledging it, and tending to the human side of systems change, may be the only way to keep this work both bold and humane.

When relational philanthropy tips into hidden favouritism

Even in a model built on trust and relationships, I noticed early on that some people simply carried more weight than others. The same hands-off approach that empowered autonomous changemakers also left many without the emotional support they needed. Lankelly’s tiny core team couldn’t stretch to that depth of care for every partner, and that absence quietly shaped who stayed in the game and who drifted away.

Yet within that vacuum, a new dynamic emerged and the confident, forthright individuals began to attract disproportionate attention. Their clarity of vision won them ears with senior staff, sparking a subtle form of favouritism. Meanwhile, equally capable, but more reticent practitioners, struggling under the weight of undefined emotional labour, rarely surfaced. I kept thinking, if we rely purely on relational ties, without intentional checks, we risk amplifying the voices of the already loud while sidelining those who may need more support to speak up.

That paradox between radical trust and the imperative of fairness felt like an unresolved chapter in Lankelly’s playbook. A handful of explicit debates could have helped us hold those tensions more deliberately, instead of letting them fester beneath the surface.

In the end, the story of Lankelly Chase wasn’t just about placing trust in individuals or dismantling rigid frameworks. It was about wrestling with the very question of how a foundation can remain both open and equitable, how it can give people freedom without abandoning them, and how it can learn deeply without losing its nerve to change.

You carry Lankelly’s freedom forward, just not its format

I’ve learnt to approach every foundation knowing that few will move as fluidly as Lankelly Chase. That freedom to pivot at will, to trust people without rigid terms was a luxury born of a particular context. I’m unlikely to find another organisation operating so unstructured. 

So instead of chasing their format, I carry their spirit; entering every collaboration with willingness to get my hands dirty, to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with frontline practitioners whose insights eclipse boardroom debates. That means, first, seeking out shared purpose. In Lankelly’s world I was sometimes stretched thin – pulled between academic obligations and the pull of unpredictable learning projects. Staff sometimes weren’t sure how to deploy our academic curiosity. I’d be asked to vote on strategic matters I had no mandate to influence. I’d insist on clarity – are we advisers, co-researchers, or project evaluators? Establishing that up front saves everyone from unintentional power grabs.

My time at Lankelly revealed urgent questions for all resource holders: What does it mean to hoard or to redistribute endowed wealth? If the default of philanthropy is to hold fast, the radical act is to demand that every foundation justify why it’s keeping resources in reserve, rather than simply spending them at will. Lankelly’s decision to press the big red button, ceasing to exist in its previous structure, was audacious. Yet the true test lies in whether decentralised grants reach those excluded, or replicate old power imbalances on a smaller scale. 

Pioneering is not enough; you must learn in the open. Lankelly’s brave choices went largely unshared, cloaked in confidentiality. The real opportunity now is to publish the messy details: successes, failures, and all the debates in between. If they and others like them invite the sector into that conversation, they won’t just reset norms around spending and investment. They’ll light the path for genuine, communal learning, turning isolated experiments into a communal quest for fairer, more effective philanthropy.

The very questions I pose to the foundation apply to my own practice. The conversation no longer charts only Lankelly’s journey, but maps the outlines of my own.

That intermingling of observer and observed is, perhaps, the truest meaning I take. Our ideas rarely exist in isolation; they ripple outward, touching colleagues, partners and inevitably, ourselves. 

Story Weaving by Tchiyiwe Chihana 

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