Myths of Philanthropy #2: Presumed Expertise, with élysse marcellin & Tesmerelna Atsbeha

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You're listening to the Philanthropisms Podcast with Rodri Davis.

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Foreign.

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Hello, you're listening to the Philanthropisms Podcast. This is the podcast where we try to put philanthropy in context. I'm your host, Rodri Davis, and this is the second in our mini series on the myths of philanthropy. And I'm joined again by Chiara Cataneo from Elemental, who's helping to curate this mini series. And this time we are joined by Elise Marcellin and Tesmerelna Atsbeha to discuss the question of presumed knowledge and expertise and sort of where we think expertise and knowledge resides in philanthropy and particularly how that's related to our attitudes towards wealth. So Elise is the resources and reparations co lead at Whose Knowledge, which is a global campaign to center the knowledge of marginalized communities, particularly on the Internet. So really kind of interesting focus that they've got as an organization. And Tess Marelna is, well, she was the senior program officer on the women's rights team at Wellspring Philanthropic Fund, which is a fund that particularly focuses on reproductive and sexual health. But actually having taken the decision to spend down, they're in the process of doing that and have announced that they're going to close their doors at the end of 2028. More broadly, Tesmerella has worked across sexual and reproductive rights for long time now, a number of organisations, including the UN and others. And so, yeah, as I say, we sat down a little while ago to talk about the idea of where expertise comes from within the world of philanthropy, and particularly sort of the presumptions and assumptions that we make about how expertise is associated with wealth and whether those were kind of problematic ideas that we needed to overcome. I won't tell you any more about it. I'll let you listen to Elise and Tesmoril give you their own thoughts. Just to say that I will be back at the end for the usual bit of housekeeping. Okay, great. Well, I'm here again with Chiara Cataneo and we're joined by Elise Marcellin and Tesmerelma Atsbeha. Hi to all of you.

0:38

Hi, Rachel.

2:54

Hi.

2:55

Hello. Well, great. Great to have you all join me. Yeah. And we're here having a conversation as part of the My Myths of Philanthropy miniseries that we've been doing for the Philanthropisms podcast. And as I said, I'm joined again by Chiara Cataneo, who first kind of pulled together the essay series that this is all based on with Mandy Van Dieven. So maybe the best place to start, Chiara, as we've done in the other episodes, if you could just say a bit about what myth it is that we're here talking about today.

2:55

Yeah. So the Myth of Philanthropy series was conceived as a way to ask contributors from the philanthropic sector to identify dominant narratives that shape the design, the sector, and also shape the way the sector operates. And we wanted to, you know, hear from people working in philanthropy how this is happening. Like what, what. How narratives are, in practical ways, shaping the sector. But also we wanted to hear from them in what ways they have experience and adopted different approaches and highlight the ways that the practical ways in which philanthropy can operate in a different way. Some of the narratives highlighted in the series were. And that we also covered through the podcast in the series, where individualism, competition, risk aversion, short terminism, scarcity, and in particular, presumed expertise. And this is the thing that we would like to tackle today with our guests. And the core question that we want to start from is what becomes possible when we expand the notion of expertise in philanthropy?

3:23

Yeah, great. Thanks very much, Kara. And I guess the starting point, I think this is a fascinating question, and one of the obvious sort of narratives that we have that tends to cut across a lot of philanthropy is this idea that wealth can be automatically equated with expertise and that those who have the most financial resources also have the most knowledge, or that their knowledge is somehow kind of more valuable or sits at a higher level. I want to ask, and maybe I'll come to you first on this, Elise, why is it that, I mean, not just in philanthropy, but across lots of domains, we do have this tendency to equate wealth with knowledge and expertise. And why is that a mistake? And what does it lead to?

4:40

Yeah, I mean, I think, first of all, thank you for having me on this show. It's fantastic to be here. And I think first is the question of why is this even happening? Why does this equation take place? And I think part of the reason is because colonial capitalism has equated money with value. So implicit in having more money is an increase in your value, and that includes an expertise in terms of whatever sort of assumptions there are about what you can contribute to society. They become inherent the greater your wealth portfolio. But why this is a problem is because that makes certain presumptions about wealth acquisition being implicitly a moral position. So having more wealth makes you morally superior in particular ways. And the challenge with that is that, of course, we know that wealth acquisition in a colonial capitalist world and in a colonial capitalist economy has been primarily driven by violence against communities, violence against geographies, violence against the planet. And so this latent assumption that wealth equals value of any kind, including even as much as, you know, spiritual. I mean, we. We hear about, for example, Steve Jobs on his whole, you know, Buddhist journey or whichever spiritual journey he went on, I can't remember, I think it was in Hinduism or something. And like, you know, somehow he's rev. Scared as a sort of like, leader now, and he's like this holy guy. And there's a way in which the uber wealthy are able to sanitize everything they do just as a consequence of being wealthy. And we see that then sort of translating into the philanthropic space, which I refer to as a sort of like a moral laundering space. So they're able to take the wealth that they've acquired, pass it through some philanthropic, you know, initiative, and then whatever harms they may be inflicting on society are immediately forgiven because all of a sudden this wealth is being transferred to these lowly people who need their resources. And it's not actually examining the extractive processes through which this wealth has been acquired, the violence through which this wealth has been acquired, and the fact that if in fact, the entire economy was designed differently to facilitate more communal forms of wealth acquisition and distribution, we wouldn't actually even need something called philanthropy to begin with.

5:18

Yeah, absolutely. And Tesmo, I don't know if you want to come in there as well on this question.

7:44

Yeah, I mean, I could not have said it better. That I think that is giving a really beautiful picture of all of the pieces. And I think to speak to sort of modern philanthropy and the sector as it is now, particularly private philanthropy, you have a lot of newer wealth that's been generated through tech and finance in one generation, where you have these founders who have. Who have, you know, built or been part of building innovations that have completely shaped society, you know, that have changed the day. The everyday ways in which people are, you know, able to do things and been part of these. These massive innovations. And that building of a platform or a product or, you know, or, you know, some sort of a market inside of the capitalist system is seen as this, you know, very holy knowledge that we are all meant to kind of worship. And that is not, to me, that is, you know, very, very narrow in terms of a type of knowledge, yet it is given so much higher value than the knowledge of lived systems. And there's a way in which there's. There's sort of this belief that you can convey, and you see it often with these very technical or, you know, technological solutions to deeply, you know, systems problems. And that there's sort of this idea that the ability to create something is conveyable, to then dismantle a system or to change a system. And they're completely different types of expertise, I would say. And those are not. It's not conveyable. It's not. It doesn't translate yet. That is the approach. And often what, you know, there's. There's particularly some of the larger funders who come with. They already know what the strategies are and they're just looking for implementers to implement those strategies. And that, I think is. Is where you get in very problematic territory if you actually are trying to change systems.

7:48

Yeah, it's really interesting. There's loads I want to pick up on there. One thing, particularly as you were talking, it made me. There was a question that I'd sort of scribbled down for myself earlier, which you touched on a little bit. And I wondered if there's a sense that particularly, particularly a lot of the sort of extreme wealth that we're talking about now is wealth that's coming out of the tech world and whether you feel there's anything kind of qualitatively different about that from previous examples of extreme wealth, where obviously there's this kind of narrative that wealth in itself represents some form of value. So if you're rich, you somehow have value and know stuff. But when you add on the additional layer with tech wealth, there's this sort of element of mystery that the knowledge that they have about technology is, as you say, almost kind of holy knowledge that the rest of us have to appreciate and respect but, you know, can't possibly ever attain for ourselves. Do you think that that's kind of adding to some of the challenges at the moment, that the way that we view technology and our relationship to it?

9:55

I would say, I mean, I think I'll just quickly jump in. I think that it. There's a way in which they want to apply that same. The same, you know, approach to all problem, you know, to all issues, to all problems. And it's very. It's an ahistorical and kind of like without context approach. And it doesn't, it doesn't engage with. In the same way that a lot of, like, tech and the solutions coming out of tech don't engage with the ethical quandaries, it doesn't engage with the ethical quandaries or history or the context. And it's, it's built for very specific, you know, very specific populations or very specific audiences or, you know, markets to say. So that would be. But, but I do think it's, I mean, the other quick thing I would say is that what, when you have this transfer of wealth that we're now going to see to second generations, I think you, you had a couple of examples of folks who were founders who had lived experience, let's say, of fascism or lived experience of some sort of, you know, lived during the Second World War, like had these experience of, you know, anti Semitism, et cetera. And now you're having new wealth holders who have experience of being investors. And I think that's a very different way of seeing, you know, the world. And they're looking maybe not to build institutions that are going to be in partnership, but looking to have a list of investable options. So that's probably a deeper conversation for another time, but it is a shift that we've seen in philanthropy.

10:45

Yeah. And something I would say as well, just to add on to that is also the fact that I think in some ways the process has shifted and in some ways the process is exactly the same. The ways in which it's the same is the fact that as far as we can see, there is almost a new religion being formed of tech and finance. Right. There's a reification process taking place, and there's a reification specifically of the leaders of these spaces. And they're put in this particular sort of positionality where they're seen almost as infallible and their perspectives are therefore given credibility that the rest of us simply don't have access to and will never have. And what's really interesting about it is the ways in which these are people whose expertise has nothing to do with the topics that they're oftentimes talking about, but they're positioned as the experts who can solve these problems, exactly as Tess Morelna was talking about. Right. And we can look at some of the examples coming out of the tech sector now. We have people like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel who are ostensibly dangerous to society. Like there's no other way to describe their impact on society. And yet their positionality is one such that they are given sort of, you know, unfettered access to political systems to be able to influence how those systems, you know, operate and to basically redesign economy in their favor. I mean, we know that over the last couple years the tech sector has gained trillions of dollars of wealth, has generated hundreds of new billionaires, and doing so While simultaneously, for example, the U.S. economy is I think, at something like 3 point something percent growth. Right. But when you extract the tech sector, it's actually at something, it's less than 1%, I think something like 0.4%. Right. So we're seeing where there's a massive investment in this space because we see these people as almost godlike figures who are going to solve all of the world's problems. And we know that's false because they're creating more problems than they're solving. And up to now, the tech that they're inventing can't even do what they've been promising for the last five years. So other than having created a really easy to use chatbot, what global problems have been solved as a consequence of the mass proliferation of AI, for example? The answer is none. Nothing has been solved. In fact, we are now seeing exacerbated problems with water usage, with land rights, with several issues that indigenous communities specifically have been fighting to resolve are now completely almost insurmountable challenges because a handful of billionaires have been able to basically control what happens at geopolitical scales, which is, you know, essentially a new religion. That's, that's the crusades all over just now in tech and finance.

12:23

Yeah, really interesting. And I guess sort of thinking about how that gets filtered into philanthropy. I mean, in a way the, the journey into institutional philanthropy might be less straightforward for tech billionaires because lots of them are choosing not really to do things in very traditional ways and to kind of bypass a lot of these structures. But if we are thinking about things like foundations and more, more kind of mainstream structures for philanthropy, what does it then look like when our attitudes towards wealth and how that's equated with knowledge filter into that? Do you find that not just the people who are the wealth holders themselves, but the people who work within that ecosystem in foundations also end up equating their position in relation to that wealth with having a certain level of expertise. And is that something that people working in philanthropy need to try and kind of work against quite actively?

15:15

Yeah, I can jump because I can speak directly from personal experience. Having worked on both sides, you know, having worked, you know, as a program implementer for, you know, 15 years and then as a, as a grant maker, a funder for the last nine. I think I always start out of like, if you want to work in the space, you have to be willing to do your own internal work around money and power and heal your relationship with money. And that's not a small thing. But to me, that's like, that's the. That's the beginning. And it's, it's very. I mean, in very concrete terms, I think you have to look back at your childhood and your upbringing and how you were. What were the relationships with money, you know, and power in that and thinking about that. I mean, I always think about how my mom would say that I was good with money and my brother, like, money would burn a hole in his pocket is what she would say. And that has shaped my ideas. And then, you know, what. What was that related to? What behaviors was that related to? Right? And I think that is. That is a lot of, like the beginning. And if you don't do that work, then it's very difficult to be engaged because there's all these assumptions that you're bringing into these relationships, assumptions about if folks don't have money, then, you know, then they're not able to handle money. Right? And then there's this absorption capacity myth, right? That's. That's really all around, you know, having money. And is. Is it itself seen as like an expertise and the ability to spend money, the ability to manage it and have the systems for managing it. Your familiarity with the, you know, finance system, which is intentionally made very, very difficult to understand.

16:05

Right?

17:51

It's like there's. The terminology alone is so complex. Right. And so I think that to me is like a muscle that. That really has to be built in relationship. And part of it is like actually doing that work. Part of it is being in community with other funders or other grant makers who are doing that work. There's some really, you know, great work that like Solidaire Network is doing with wealth holders as well as grant makers, whether, like, can take a, you know, like can be in a guided sort of group in a cohort and learning together. And I found that a lot of the spaces, like networks of funders where you're having these conversations is a really important way of like, interrogating that and then to be able to together push back on. On some of those narratives. But I think the ones that, you know, I talk about in my myths piece is like this, this like myth around overhead costs, right? This I was taught, because I did a procurement training when I worked for the UN when I was very early in my career, that overhead costs should not be more than 15%, right? And so that was like, you know, burned into my brain. And so then I had to unlearn that and understand, like, what does that even mean? What are, what are we considering overhead Costs and the other one is around convening spaces or collaboration, you know, funding for collaboration also. Another myth like that is those costs are important. Like the value of that is oftentimes much more valuable than quote, unquote, activities, which is often the service delivery model has been applied.

17:51

Right.

19:30

We use a procurement model. I mean, the UN procurement training was based off of the military. Right. Like, this is how these things get embedded in the system. They never. And then they just never get questioned. And so I think for me that unlearning was really important. And that's like the big part of the work as an individual working in. In the system.

19:31

Yeah.

19:51

I think this relates very beautifully to what Elise was also talking about in her piece, this dimension of plurality and multiplicity. It would be interesting to, to hear from you how this plurality and multiplicity can actually take shape in your work, what it can look like.

19:51

Yeah, I mean, I think. Thank you for that question. It's a brilliant question. I think the thing about the imagination is that capitalism deprives of us. Deprives us of it. Right? Like, we are all experiencing this sort of like, deficit in imagination, but the reality is that plurality actually is how we access new ways of thinking and doing and practicing. Right. So, for example, whose knowledge is a very community based and community grounded organization? One of our teams. But all of our teams engage in community practice, sort of relationships. But our LAMI team, which is our laboratory Archives and memory team, have specifically formed like a UK community of practice around memory work and archiving. I think when it comes to imagining alternative systems and alternative realities, it first requires us to, and this speaks to Roger's question around, like the work that the individuals in the space have to do. It first requires us to acknowledge that we actually don't have the answers. We have the questions. Right. And if we have the questions, then it means that we need to actually exist in partnership and in solidarity with the various people who may be able to help us not just expand those questions, but start to answer them. And I think when we imagine what, you know, a different method of philanthropy could look like, the first thing I think philanthropy has to do is to start to question how do we actually make this practice or this space redundant to the extent that it is no longer needed because there is no such thing as, well, hoarding anymore, where there is now a need to redistribute it because a handful of people have been able to kind of like consolidate it. And that starts by being in community with what we refer to, in whose knowledge as unusual and unlikely, right? Like the people who you would not normally be in conversation with, the people who would not normally be in the room with you, are the very people whose perspectives and opinions you need to be seeking. And it also requires us to also dismantle the concepts and the constructs that we have become beholden to. So, for example, a grant application process is an onerous process that's designed for no one. It's primarily designed to mitigate the risk of the grantor rather than to encourage the participation of the grantee. And I think even the language of things like grant and funder are things we have to challenge. This should not be the perspective we're holding. Instead, we should be taking the perspective of how do we actually liberate rather than control resource flows? And in order to do that, we have to think about, well, what are the barriers? So I've already said, you know, be in partnership with other people, you know, get at that community grounded level, but also examine why resource flows are stymied and moving in particular directions. Right? So an indigenous community working in a largely non digital space is not going to have the same access to financial infrastructure to even, even the Internet, for example, right. Is not as accessible as it might be to, you know, a city based ngo, right. In a global north territory. So I think for us to really get creative about how we shift philanthropy, how we shift the ways that we experience and express through our plurality, we really have to come into contact with people who we would not normally be in contact with. And it requires a high degree of humility from the actors who have positioned themselves as experts. Right? Like the philanthropists set the agendas. Right? They are the ones who decide what will happen. But like, for example, with our community practice, we don't set the agenda. We exist in relationship with our community as conveners of a space that allows certain kinds of conversation to happen that will then determine what the next steps are, what does the community actually need, and then we take action based on that. And really and truly, I think it also requires us to examine the histories of these spaces as well, and to acknowledge that historically, these are paternalistic spaces that have positioned themselves. Talking here specifically about philanthropy, that has positioned itself as the problem solver and the one that can actually, you know, bring about this radical transformation which is in and of itself a myth. Because if that were true, then why is it that a minority or a minor value or a minor percentage of the actual wealth that is held by philanthropy gets transferred? If it were really about liberating the resources and the resource flows, then 90% of that budget would be going out to communities, not 10, which is often the dynamic. So I do think it really does require us to think differently from the start about what we're even interacting with, the systems we're interacting within, and to challenge the ways in which we're even conceiving of resource flows and how people should be able to access or interact with them.

20:14

It's really interesting. And in terms of that question about sort of plurality of different forms of knowledge and bringing those together and, as you say, kind of bringing actors into the room that, you know, certainly if you're working in a philanthropic institution, you normally wouldn't necessarily kind of engage with in practical terms, what does it require to do that? Because it strikes me that obviously there are the kind of entrenched attitudes and biases to overcome, but there are also sort of barriers around language and how you get people to kind of interpret and respect different forms of knowledge. So to kind of convene those spaces. What does that look like? And what are some of the main challenges that you have to overcome?

25:18

Yeah, that's. I think we can have a conversation about. That would be an entire separate podcast.

25:55

Well, yeah,

26:01

but I would say there are a few. The first is, as you mentioned, sort of like that internal mindset and perspectiveship. Now, the challenge is that we're dealing with two levels, right? We're dealing with the people who actually make the decisions, and then the people who execute those decisions. Where this work begins really depends on who has the power to make those decisions. Right. And so there is a bit of a sort of a dance there where you have to figure out, where does it even start. Right. But let us, just for the sake of conversation, say that we've entered into an experience where the decision makers are open and willing to hear the conversation, and they're like, yes, we want to make changes. Right. I think the first point would be to do some degree of investigation into what are they already doing? Well, when it comes to resource flows and redistribution, and then examine the gaps. Who is not being resourced? Why aren't they being resourced? What is it that we would need to do in order to ensure that those communities get resourced? Then we also have to confront some of the realities that oftentimes get downplayed. Because, of course, you know, we want to keep favor with investors or we want to keep favor with whatever different stakeholders. And so we downplay certain realities, not least of which is the fact that the majority of philanthropic Institutions are in English speaking countries or use English as their main language of communication. That can't continue. It has to shift. And even if it's just starting with the usual suspects, that's a starting point. But we have to shift and start to explore, well, what are the languages of global majority peoples. Start there and work backwards to how do we actually build connections with those communities as well. I think another thing that would then have to happen is that there would have to be a willingness to actually invest in the infrastructure that would facilitate some of that exchange and partnership. So it might start off like for example, having intermediary funds, for example. That's kind of like the happy middle ground that a lot of philanthropists are more comfortable with. But it might eventually move towards you actively investing in supporting the development of infrastructure in under resourced geographies or localities. So for example, we're talking about the fact that in certain territories what you might need is access to a building. Right. I think, Tess Miranda, you were kind of talking about that earlier. Like I need that funded. I don't need to do 15 projects with your logo on it. I need to actually build something so that my community can work here. It is going to require us to even shift our relationship to what can be resourced and recognize that the communities that we are engaging, that sort of like now we're talking about that sort of trust based relationship, they have the expertise to know what they need and we have to trust that their insights are valid as a consequence of their lived experience as well. And sort of really seeing lived experience as a form of expertise that no amount of reading can replace. Right. Like being in the thing and watching the thing from the outside are two very different perspectives. And also acknowledge that maybe you've only built connections with only one group of people who have one kind of perspective. But what would it look like to build an ecosystem where the information flows facilitate that kind of continuous learning and continuous sharing and sort of really transitioning away from centralized power to distributed power. And maybe it means that philanthropic actors have to actually come together so that they could build that to make that happen as opposed to everybody sort of competing. But you know, capitalism again has taught us competition is natural. My argument to that is cooperation is natural, competition is a matter of environment. Right. Like actors in a particular ecosystem will compete when that ecosystem is deprived of a particular resource. But that's not the normal way in which ecosystems function. They have always been cooperatively organized. And so what are the cooperative models? Not just literally a co op, for example, which is one way. But what are the ways in which we could be working collaboratively to facilitate a new way of even existing in this space? And that's going to really require dismantling quite a lot of what philanthropy holds as it's sort of like risk threshold and barometer for what's possible.

26:03

Yeah. In terms of. I can see you nodding along to a lot of that. I wonder if there are bits of that you want to pick up on or anything you want to add.

30:31

Yeah. I mean, obviously, there's, like, so much richness to dive into. And I agree. There's like a whole other podcast that we could do. And so many, you know, it sparks so many things for me. I mean, one thing I wanted to pick up on is just thinking about the cost, the cascading of power dynamics. Right. And at least, you know, talked about there's the decision maker and then there's the implementer. And in the current way that most institutions are set up, you have these power relationships that are happening internally in the institution, and then also power relationships that are happening between institutions. Right. Which is related to size, size of portfolios, size of institutions, the political positioning of different philanthropic institutions in different spaces. And that, I think, is important to attend to in thinking about dismantling or being or, you know, working together. And what's one really important piece for that, I think, is organizing of donors, like indoor donors, organizing themselves, doing the labor themselves, being responsible and accountable for their own labor around that and really being in community with each other, which means being accountable to each other. And that's a really tough thing because philanthropy has so little in terms of accountability systems built into it.

30:38

Right.

32:01

And so being accountable to. If you're part of a, you know, a collaborative of gender funders, accountability around how do we want to fund? How are we trying to shift our practices? What are our commitments to each other and to the. And to the movements that we're serving for this? And those are, like. I would say that is some of the toughest work that I felt like I experienced was the engagement with other funders and really trying to do deep work because, you know, it's. And I talk about this in my piece, there's this sense of almost like learned helplessness or powerlessness of folks who are working in these systems, which is, you know, just part of the way the system operates. But it's not. To me, that's not very. I can't think of a better word besides helpful to be in that system with this degree of power. And then Sort of calling yourself helpless or calling yourself powerless and. And not be thinking creatively on how you. And one of the. One of the ways besides, you know, doing the work on yourself and thinking about the relationship that you have with partners and how you're structuring that, but also being in relationship with other funders and being in authentic, real relationship, which requires you to sometimes push each other and make each other uncomfortable.

32:01

Right.

33:25

And thinking, like, you know, what are the levers you have? And these are real conversations that are happening. I mean, just very recently, I've had these conversations. What are the levers that we have to try to influence the president of your foundation?

33:26

Right.

33:38

What are the networks? Who do we have access to? Who can find Hillary Clinton or whatever?

33:39

Right.

33:44

Like, that's a real thing. So I think that is a. That is like, a really important way of organizing that funders need to be part of and cannot be opting out of and like being an island on their own. And then the second piece, I think, is around humility. And I. I find the humility thing like an very aspirational, but also kind of fraught because I feel like I've seen humility be weaponized in many ways and without really in an extremely, like, unequal power relationship. What are humility behaviors if you're not actually trying to shift that power dynamic in the relationship? And I think language is a perfect example.

33:44

Right.

34:27

How can you be a humble grant maker if you insist on everything being in English or every communication being in English or. Or all the communication being written? You know, and so this is the kind of stuff which I struggle with, because it's almost a performance of humility versus actually thinking of, like, structurally, what would we need to be to sort of, like, take our version of expertise or what we believe to be our expertise out of the equation? And that's what true humility is, is modesty around your own value.

34:28

Right.

35:01

And I think that's. That's really where the sector, in many ways, is not really matching. You know, words are not matching action.

35:01

Yeah. And I think. I mean, I think certainly if there's a sort of performative humility going on, that's probably even less helpful. At least I can see that you want to come in as well.

35:11

Yeah, I just. I really wanted to build on a lot of what Tess Mirella has said, but to specifically focus on that accountability piece as well, because something that came up for me when you mentioned that is just this idea of metrics, right? Like, even the things that philanthropy measures as valuable are in and of themselves constraining the capacity to move past a particular way of operating. And I think in response to that, I think something that philanthropy can really spend some time, I think, wrestling with is what are the politics, practices and principles that are actually driving decision making. If the values that are actually informing what happens next are not community grounded and community led, if the people in the institution are not from the communities that are meant to be beneficiaries. And even that language is problematic because it presumes benefactor who can then bestow benefits upon a particular population. Right. Then we're always going to actually be doing this dance where it's really mostly performative. Right. Where there isn't any real humidity, because the very way that the things that matter get measured and get constrained by those metrics limits what's possible. So I think even, for example, the obsession with quantitative data over qualitative data and the delegitimization of qualitative data is something that philanthropy also has to confront with. Right. Like, it can't just be that I have to report to you that I had this number of people in a workshop and that I spent this much money and that I own. And you know, they always have. Depending on the size of the grant and the grantor, you may even have caps on human resources and what you can spend on people. Like those kinds of things, like, how do we expect people to get to work if all you ever want them to pay for our outputs? Right. And we have to shift away from this project management style of deciding who should be resourced and move towards a more holistic sort of what is the vision we're all collectively trying to work towards? What is the reality we're trying to exist within? Some of that is not going to be captured in statistics. It's going to be captured in the things that can't actually be defined even by verbal language. Even the obsession with verbal language is something that I think we have to really unpack and shift away from if we hope to get something that drives really deep rooted, you know, ancestral and reparative change.

35:19

Yeah, I think that point about measurement is a really important one. It makes me wonder, actually, one of the questions that came up in sort of previous conversations in this series which is linked to that is whether part of the problem as well is that the narrative about what it is to be good at philanthropy or to be good as a grant maker is so tied up with this idea that your job is to define the problem, identify the solutions, and then sort of choose how Resources are deployed and a totally different model that is more about you kind of taking yourself out of the picture and handing over power. We don't necessarily have the narrative that says what it is to be good at that. So there's a kind of danger that there's an existential crisis for people who work in foundations who don't really know what their role is in this new paradigm that we're trying to sort of move towards. Do you think there's a challenge around that?

37:49

Just connected to this, what you were saying now, Rodri, there's also this notion and to what Elise was saying about measuring and evaluating. It's really connected to this very linear sort of monolithic vision of change, how change happens and what time is needed for change to happen. And I love that in this conversation we have covered, you know, from the history, from the past and looking at the history to the future and to what we can do in the present. So I'd love to hear your thoughts. The relation of power over the notion of time and the linearity of time and what time as what time is needed to do certain things and how things should be proceeding in a certain sequence.

38:34

Do you want to start or do you want me to start?

39:24

I can start. I have a lot of. I think.

39:27

I feel like we're both excited about it.

39:30

Exactly. I mean, I think what I, you know, what I. When I mentioned before earlier about this, the shift towards investable options for one off, you know, one off grants or one up, is also this shift towards this very quick, quick wins and big bets.

39:32

Right.

39:52

And I think these are really harmful ideas coming out of venture capital and other sort of, you know, finance trends which need their own analysis. But what it creates is like this pressure for impact in a short period of time, which is. Doesn't align up with any reading of how change happens. Right. And I think I heard this great panel at Change Philanthropy, it was like, you're always losing until you win. Right? Like, you're losing, losing, losing, losing, losing. And I think when you look at policy change or looking at, you know, trying to shift, like, electoral results, all of that, you. You not. You're not in, you know, this idea that you can put bets down on something and win.

39:52

Right.

40:39

Is not the right framework for social change. Right. Social change is built over generations and it's putting seeds and watering them and tilling the soil. And even in the darkest moments of, like, where the work that you're doing is having to go so far underground that they can't even speak of it and having, you know, worked on abortion in many countries with full total restrictions, like where people can't even the chat group has to be careful about what words they're using to talk about the work that they're doing. Even that is like building for that change in the future. And I think that is the part that gets missed. And there's this desire to move away from that because there's no. There's no sort of chance for policy change. And I think my experience with, you know, finding a portfolio of work in Latin America around reproductive rights and having some big wins because of legal change and how that gave me a cache internally in my foundation that I was able to leverage into resourcing other geographies where the opportunities were much less visible or the analysis that was coming out was. Was not very positive, was some way, you know, was my way of trying to sort of work around that. But what I see often is that sort of like, how do we get in so that we can attribute that win to ourselves? And we used to joke about, is it in the New York Times or the Washington Post? Is there an article about it? Because that in. Is very influential with folks, right. That just gives you just a tiny peek into kind of how we're measuring change. And that's on the policy side. And then there's a whole other conversation around this effective altruism stuff where there's really like this focus on measuring bodies receiving services. And I think that is very harmful because when you put a number value on a body receiving a service, you're not taking a. To count all of the contextual factors and you're never going to have.

40:39

You're.

42:44

You know, there are always going to be places because of the. Because they're, you know, island states, because they're in a, you know, less accessibility for many, many reasons where it's not cost effective to provide services to those populations. But does that mean that they don't have the right to those services? I mean, there's just so much like moral quandary that comes out of using those types of frameworks.

42:45

Love all of that. And I feel like this is a difficult one for me to talk about because my brain has lit up on fire. I have. I had to take off my glasses because I was then able. I was having sensory. It's too much. First of all, I think from a very personal perspective, once upon a time when I was a teenager, I think I realized time is a myth. I was like, oh my God. This concept actually doesn't Exist. Like there's actually no way for us to definitively capture and measure time. And it's interesting because I think discussions in quantum physics, which of course I am a very sort of like, I just, I find this field fascinating, I have zero expertise in it. But a lot of it is kind of aligning with this almost sort of meta, spiritual metaphysical perception of time that is embedded in indigenous communities perspectives of time, which is that time is nonlinear. Time cannot be processed as simply existing, you know, past, present, future. You know, quantum physics even kind of, kind of gives us some basis for this, which is that there's a concept to be understood of time as being collapsed. All of these periods exist simultaneously. And we kind of can think about this more conceptually with our linear frameworks as well. When we think about the fact that if you think about things that have happened in, in the past, they're happening again right now, and they will most likely happen again in the future. And if you collapsed all three of them, you'd probably realize a lot of trends are taking place that could have been predicted, could have been avoided, et cetera. So when we talk about the ability to even interact with time from a position of power, something that I don't think we take into deep consideration here, is the fact that even expecting these quick wins, as Tess Morelna was saying, is a privilege because you are operating within an environment where this is even possible. But when you're operating an environment where time is ancestral, where things are generational, where time is where we don't, where, for example, honoring our guardians colleagues talk about the fact that in their indigenous spaces they don't use solar time, they use lunar time. It's a very different cycle. So when even the construct of time is treated with such objectivity rather than subjectivity, we do a disservice to the communities who we're interacting with. Right. And I, for example, exist in an island state, a post colonial island state, to be very specific. And there are elements of my culture that are almost snapshots of the histories that were brought here. And they're also very rooted as well in the shared trauma, the collective trauma that our, our society has experienced historically and continues to experience. And how do you quote, unquote, fix that? You can't fix that with a one year grant. You especially can't fix that with a one year grant of like 15,000 US. Which countries like mine are more likely to get that kind of funding rather than the $1 million project to do something, you know what I mean? And when we see things in this way that you have to be able to complete it in X date. You are already setting us all up for failure. When it comes to systemic change. It's always just going to be, as Tess Miranda said, about the bodies counting the bodies, counting the outputs. There's always something to count. And that's of course, the consequence of not just colonial capitalism, but also Western hegemony, is this need to count and to name things so that you can then control it, where maybe that's actually not the answer. Maybe there's a certain degree of slowness that we actually need to embed in these processes so that what we could create is sustainable and not just marketable.

43:13

Yeah, that's really, really fascinating conversation. I'm aware. I mean, thinking about the tyranny of time that we are coming up on the hour that we've got for this and there are all kinds of other questions I want to ask, but I'm a bit worried they'll take us down all kinds of rabbit holes. But, I mean, it's not a small question, but one that I wanted to ask towards the end of this, just to sort of look ahead, is do you have any kind of optimism that the urgency of the current moment, which in itself is not necessarily reasonably optimistic, that urgency is about quite how many elements of the sort of polycrisis that we find ourselves going through economically, socially and politically. There are throwing up challenges of all sorts. But is there any sense that that urgency might change some of the dynamics of the things we've been talking about, perhaps in terms of the attitudes towards where knowledge sits and how we should value different forms of knowledge? Do you think within philanthropy it could be a catalyst that drives more positive behaviors of the kind that we're talking about? Or conversely, is there a danger that everything will retrench back to known ways of doing things and that we'll have to fight even harder to get some of this change?

47:02

Yeah, I can start. I mean, I, I feel like we are in a moment where there are multiple forces working at once and there that it's, it's seeing a collapse of systems. And now it's, you know, how are, how are these, how are those who are working in philanthropy responding? Or, you know, and I think there's a way. I, I heard someone speak who's part of a trans network here in the US who are under extreme attack, and they talked about, part of it is emergency response, part of it is maintaining the long ongoing work that they're doing, and then part of it is holding space for building for the future. I think it was the most helpful framework for me in that moment for not losing my mind. Right. Because it's. You feel this, like, constant, which is, like, on purpose, right? This constant sort of like battering, you know, on a daily basis. And this, you know, almost there's a. There's a way in which you can sort of try to. To latch on and hold on to what we had, as if the systems or what was, you know, what we had in terms of the resources that were going to different movements or the structures, the aid, you know, in international development structures, as if those were great. Right? And like, holding on because you don't want to lose that when they're really. Were not working very well for the vast majority of who they were supposedly built to serve. And so I think there is that sort of. Those are different forces that are at work. Some folks are really trying to claw back and hold on, and some folks are, you know, we're. We're letting go, we're releasing and we're building for the future. And I think it's important to see this, like, as Elise was saying, in a broader, like, you know, bigger picture and longer time frame because the systems are collapsing and there will be new systems that emerge. And how do we ensure that who is building those new systems is taking into this broader, you know, definition of expertise or this broader spectrum of expertise. And so that's, for me, that's very helpful of, like, not getting too mirrored or mired in that everyday kind of battle. And I do think that that work is so critical like that. That resistance work that's happening, let's say, in Minneapolis in this moment, the mutual aid work, those are all, you know, they're not. Those are not new technologies that are being brought upon. Those are very ancient technologies of collective care that are being activated for this moment. And I think that that's like giving us some, you know, some ideas of how new, newer systems could be built or how they could be strengthened over time. I think the last thing I would say about this is that there has to be a change, but there is definitely a sense of this scarcity or this backing away that's happening or risk aversion that's happening. And then there are some examples, I think, where there's some questioning and a space, an opening for some change. And I think one of the. Just to pinpoint a couple, I think that raising this idea of why payouts are at a specific percentage is just an example of challenging something that the majority of my time in philanthropy was not something that was really challenged. I think that is something, again with crisis, with the pandemic this happened. There generally is a loosening of some of the restrictions. And I think the key with that is to just ensure that that remains. And there's also. Sometimes what I've seen is like a loosening of the. Of this sort of silo or the. The buckets of the way that work is categorized. And so those I see as some, you know, some very small seeds of shifts and changes, but I really think. Oh, yeah, and the last one, sorry to keep going, is. Is also thinking about alternative structures in terms of resourcing. So like multi entity, etc. But I think all of that are very. They're small seeds. And what. What will happen is really, you know, unclear at this. At this moment.

48:06

Yeah. I mean, so much, so many gems there. I kept taking notes, like, curiously, like, to remember things I wanted to say because. Well, first of all, I think I want to just start a little anecdotally. Just like just now while I was speaking, my cat was screaming outside the door, and I thought, I need to do something about this. These people can probably hear her screaming. They're probably like, what's that? And what that brought up for me was a sense of regulation. I think what happens next is going to be about how regulated the actors who have the capacity to drive change actually are, and how willing they are to accept that mortality is not the antithesis to continuity. People are not going to necessarily survive until the change that we are building towards is realized. But we have to act as though every step we are taking is feeding into the next one. And that's where that sort of like generational timeline of change is really valid, because that's also when you. Then when you think of progress not as something to be financialized, but something to be practiced, then you are able to see a trajectory where each action you take is about building towards something as opposed to completing it. And I feel as though this moment, the optimism in me is that there's a statistical concept known as regression to the mean, which I think is a useful sort of concept, because it's a concept that I think exists throughout sort of like philosophical or intellectual spheres.

52:48

Right.

54:19

We call it balance. And, you know, the more spiritual or homeostasis in biology, there is always this idea that systems will eventually balance. I believe that that is exactly what will happen. You also hear about the pendulum swing. Eventually it will swing the other direction. Like, we know that things will change. The question is like in what direction and how Tess Morello talked about these seeds. I think that's really important to understand as well, because something that a myth of colonial capitalism is that it's the hub of innovation, which is. That's just a farce. Colonial capitalism has invented nothing new except marketing. What it did though, was to effectively harness existing, exceptionally functional, productive systems towards a capital end. And I think that when we recognize that we actually already have the knowledges and the wisdoms and the imaginations and the expertises that we need to build new realities and to build new systems, there is a certain underlying and fundamental need for that hope that kind of fuels a lot of this work to be used as a sort of an eternal well that we tap into to continue pushing. And I think that's where we can really see reparative justice as a lens through which we can look at next steps. If we approach the work we're doing as a vehicle for repair and really disarm ourselves around this concept of reparations as just like taking money, like, oh goodness. Some of the perspectives around reparations really are emotionally charged. And I understand it. I understand why, especially people who have been co opted into the exact systems that we've all been co opted into, who don't see themselves as individually contributing to them, would be resistant. Which is why I think it's important that we don't just talk about transferring wealth or any of those things, but building systems that repair harms and using this idea of reparation and repair as the fundamental perspective that we're consistently going back to. And that will then mean that the next steps become clear. Because now we realize, okay, if we want to repair harm, if I have said or done something to somebody that has hurt them, and I know that I'm supposed to say sorry, My resistance to saying sorry is work I now need to do. I need to figure out how I take that resistance and channel it into action that actually heals the relationship rather than, you know, brings it it. And I think that that's true at the systemic level as well. We need to really get honest about what are the stories we need to be saying at that institutional and systemic level. And how do we start to build systems and infrastructure and institutions that facilitate that rather than continuing to exist in the system as is and hope that somehow we could re channel energies or refocus energies towards these goals that they were never designed to. So I think, you know, just as a, as a sort of an optimistic lens for where we go next. I believe Reparative justice is actually the anchor.

54:19

Yeah. Great thought on which to leave things and just remain to say thanks ever so much to both of you, to Elise and Tesmerelna for coming on the podcast and for a really fascinating conversation. I'll put links in the show notes to places where people can find the essays that you wrote and and lots of other kind of relevant reading they might be interested in. Thanks again to Kiara for joining me. I hope everybody's really enjoyed this series. I found it really fascinating and thought provoking. Just remains to say. Yeah, best of luck with all your work in the future.

57:32

Thank you so much.

58:01

Thank you. Thank you.

58:02

Okay, great. Well, my thanks again to Elise and Tess Morelner for coming on the podcast. I really enjoyed that conversation. It was really fascinating and wide ranging and I hope you enjoyed it too. I'll put links in the show notes to places where you can find more information. The essays particularly that both Elise and Tesmerelna were involved in writing for the Myths of Philanthropy series, but also other things that you might be interested in. As ever, if you're interested in this kind of stuff, do check out the website@why philanthropymatters.com Lots of long form essays that I've written and a few guest essays, shorter form guides to all kinds of ideas and themes within philanthropy, all the back episodes of this podcast and much, much more. So there's plenty there to keep you occupied. If you've got ideas for people I could talk to on the podcast, themes we could cover or series that we could run in future, do drop me a line. You can find my contact details at the website and always really appreciate that. If you like the podcast, please leave us a nice review. Wherever you get your podcasts from, help bump us up the algorithms or give an in person review recommendation. If you know somebody that you think would enjoy this podcast, do just tell them. I think word of mouth goes a long way towards kind of helping to spread the word. Other than that, just remains to say. Thanks ever so much for listening and I'll see you next time. Bye.

58:13