Trying to do things differently

But sometimes getting in the way of themselves

 

By Derek Bardowell

 

 

Thinking back now, it doesn’t sound particularly revolutionary or radical. But going back ten to fifteen years, we’re talking about a sector that was still really quiet.

 

No one really knew what the hell it was doing or where it was spending its money. There wasn’t much thinking around systems change, very little thinking around how you support or resource minoritised communities. There wasn’t much of a narrative around diversity and leadership. There wasn’t discussion around how people were using their endowments. This stuff is all relatively new. For philanthropy, it was just its own slightly mythical, weird, wobbly world, giving out money, seeming to look good.

 

So when [Lankelly] came along, at the time, it was really, really unusual. I think they definitely played a role in shifting the narrative towards the kind of influence that an institutional philanthropist could have.

 

Thinking in systems

 

In the early days Lankelly Chase were really concentrating on systems thinking and systems change, and what that would mean for a funder. 

 

That’s not to say that people were not doing it before, but they were talking about it across the whole organisation. What seemed incredibly novel when they came around was that they were really looking at things not around individual blame and individual responsibility, which institutional philanthropy has a tendency to do – Lankelly very much took the view that systems put people into disadvantaged positions. 

 

They also took the view that “institutional philanthropy doesn’t have the money to answer all the problems. It needs to be catalytic. And because there isn’t a huge level of money going into systems thinking or systems change, this is where we can have the most impact of our money.”

 

That was definitely new – something that other funders were not diving into institutionally. 

 

Shifting the narrative 

 

They ended up being a slightly rogue organisation, as far as the rest of philanthropy was concerned. Everyone liked them and took them to be this super smart, precocious but slightly petulant child in philanthropy that wouldn’t last. 

 

Then after two or three years, they were still around. 

 

Suddenly some of the narrative in philanthropy was starting to change as a result of some of the work they were doing. You started to see other funders dip their toes into it.

 

They might not have been doing it, but they were trying to understand where the flow of funding might start to go in institutional philanthropy, and changing accordingly, in terms of the narrative in order to fit into that. 

 

You were also starting to see some new players start to be unearthed in the field, who were either not funded before or were not recognised before. So the larger funders had to started to shift.

 

Standing for something 

 

There was a level of intentionality around trying to do things significantly differently, and them being quite forceful. When I say ‘forceful’, I don’t mean that as aggressive in any way, shape or form, but having a stand about something. 

 

Funders at the time – and probably largely still to this day – didn’t really stand for anything. So you weren’t really sure, when you got in the room with most funders at the time, what their real opinion was going to be. Most people were saying the same things and trying not to be too political or controversial.

 

Looking back, it wasn’t all good. But it was a funder that was making a stance against something. 

 

They [Lankelly] were probably one of only a handful of funders trying to do anything different.

 

Certainly of the mainstream, institutional funders. They are in that 1% of people that are using, I think, this independent funding effectively.

 

I would have been one of the very few Black people [working] in a major funder at the time, and it was always difficult in that spot, because you would have your views on what change looks like, but because you were a minority and often minoritised, you were often gaming the system a little bit. So you would see these guys talking and in the one sense, you’re like, ‘Damn, at last, someone’s talking.’ And then on the flip side, you’re like, ‘Is it going to last? Is this real? Is this authentic?’ 

 

Getting in the way of themselves

 

While a lot of the stuff [Lankelly] were doing was very positive, the flip side of it was they started to replicate some of the behaviours of institutional philanthropy, which is: we believe our own voice a bit too much, we are writing or communicating or advocating in a way or a language which is isolating communities.

 

So they got in the way of themselves, in the way that lots of funders do when they haven’t fundamentally devolved power enough to have the right people around the room. 

 

If you are not substantially releasing funds that could make the work that you do extinct, and if you’re not devolving power within that context, then somewhere along the line you are really going to get in the way of yourself with all of these resources.

 

I think one of the issues is that [funders] need to either understand or intellectualise it themselves in order to resource it. If you haven’t devolved power enough to have the right people in the room, then it’s always going to come down to judgments of the people that are in the institution. And if they can’t get to the point of understanding, they’re not going to fund it.

 

I think that commitment to devolving power means that they have been less inclined in recent years to get in the way of itself, because it’s not trying to preserve power. 

 

Having honest conversations 

 

Honesty, about the journey and the story, is paramount. 

 

There’s been a lot of hurt and damage for people that have been involved because of the type of work that they’re doing. If you don’t tell the story, it really doesn’t inform the sector around what this takes and how to mitigate those issues. 

 

It tends to be the case that no one really wants to tell funders the full story. That’s understandable, because it’s human lives and human beings that are involved, but probably one of the most valuable acts is to really canvass those that have been involved over the years and be honest about it. 

 

We are in a sector that is really ‘nice’, that pats itself on the back for the quite low-bar achievements, is unwilling to have honest conversations about this work. As a result of that, everything still remains behind closed doors. 

 

If this narrative enables people to be more honest and to acknowledge what politics means in philanthropy, then it would go a huge way to giving current funders – particularly as we’re going to be experiencing loads more new people coming into the market as individual donors, new foundations or people distributing in different ways – a model of sorts for how people can do things differently; this will be really valuable.

 

 

Story Weaving by Jack Becher

 

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