Lankelly did some very daring stuff

But we still only have pockets of change, rather than a global push

 

By Esther Foreman

 

 

I knew Lankelly Chase when they made the decision to start looking into systems change. They were quite traditional – they always funded the marginalised, but their re-strategisation in 2015 started to look at funding systems change as opposed to services. We’ve been part of that because we’ve gone through our own evolution.

 

Over the years I’ve been a grantee, a grantor, a consultant, and a facilitator. I’ve been a friend to them, I’ve argued with them. The biggest thing for us has been their support in getting The Social Change Nest up-and-running. They’ve been supportive of me all the way through, and it’s hard to find that as a freelancer. Their belief in what we were doing was really helpful. 

 

When Covid hit, they were amazing. They said, ‘What do you need?’, and we said, ‘Well, we’ve worked out how to get money to the front line, to grassroots groups, without any of the risk’. They were like, ‘Just tell us how much you want’.

 

I look back at the early stages of Nest and feel a lot of gratitude for the support we got from them. I appreciate they’ve done the best they can with the people they’ve got. I’ve often thought, ‘Why have they done that like that?’ I disagree with how they’ve done it, but they’ve got a method to their madness. I don’t think they’ve done it terribly well in places – they’ve been trying to work at a grassroots and a systemic level at the same time.

 

When it’s shutdown

 

Lankelly has done some amazing stuff. They’re an organisation that is really willing to let go of control, but at the same time is also really controlling. I think they would be the first to admit that their own systems are very open and generative, but at the same time really controlling. I understand why that has to be – they’ve still got to be regulated. 

 

The board’s decision to shutdown has done a lot of damage in the communities we’ve been working with. It’s really pushed decision-making very quickly when it shouldn’t have been. There’s not been enough time to build up trust, or to get the work that’s been funded into a good enough position to move to the next stage. But there’s never going to be a good time to shut down. Whenever you do it is going to cause damage – there’s no easy way of shutting that tap off. Who’s to say if it was done a different way it’d be any less harmful?

 

There’s going to be some things that just never get funded again. Hopefully there’ll be another funder that takes its place. But that’s just the point: there’ll be another funder that takes its place, rather than actually being a reformation of the philanthropic space, which is what they hoped the shutdown would mean. I understand the decision, but I don’t agree with it. They might be falling on their sword for no reason.

 

Impact report

 

I can see bits of work where there’s been no impact. But they’ve done some really daring stuff at the same time. I think history will look back at them fondly – there’s stuff they invested in which no-one else would touch, where racism, social innovation, systems change and the grassroots all intersect. The gap that Lankelly will leave behind is the people willing to grant in high-risk areas. The tighter the Charity Commission and the banking regulations get, the harder these kinds of approaches become.

 

My message to other philanthropists would be to have an ounce of Lankelly’s courage. 

 

The system will eat you up and spit you out because it doesn’t want you to exist. Look at your risk tolerance and have an honest conversation with your board about what you’re actually doing. How radical do you want to be in investing? Are you going to take a punt on the people that are going to be there long after you’ve gone?

 

There are some amazing risk-takers, but a lot of grantors and philanthropists have a very low risk tolerance or only fund what’s trendy. But the world is burning down, climate change is happening, and we’re going backwards, not forwards. Where do you go if you cut the funding for those grassroots, marginalised voices?

 

Grant funding in this country is appalling. If you compare us to the US, there’s so little money flowing into spaces that are thinking about proper radical change. Lankelly was really scratching the surface – they could have done it more boldly. They could have been more purposeful in where they directed resources to make a bigger impact. The outcome of that is that we’ve got pockets of change, rather than a big global push.

 

When you’re granting, learn from the impact Lankelly’s had. What can you do together? How do you create more impact in more radical spaces, a more holistic view of change? So you’re not just cracking the system open, you’re funding the solutions that are going to rebuild it afterwards.

 

 

Story Weaving by Jack Becher and Sam Gregory

 

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