Myths of Philanthropy #1: Legacy, with Lisa Cowan and Dimple Abichandani

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 first episode proper in a series that we are running on the myths of philanthropy. And in this episode I'm joined by Chiara Cataneo from Elemental who helped to pull together and curate this series. And we're joined by Lisa Cowen and Dimple Abachandani. So Lisa is currently the director of the Haven Fund in New York City, which is a fund that helps to get money to community groups on the ground that are dealing with issues, particularly around immigration and the policies that are being enacted by the current administration in the U.S. she was previously the vice president of the Robert Sterling Clark foundation for nearly a decade. She's a founding member of the Trust Based Philanthropy Project and has written widely on philanthropy. And Dimple Abachandani is a philanthropy advisor and somebody who's been in the world of philanthropy and nonprofits for a long time. She most recently has been the author of a book, new era of 10 practices to transform wealth into a More Just and Sustainable Future, which is a really interesting book which I thoroughly recommend reading. I'll put links in the show notes. There's places where you can find that she's worked widely, as I say, in the nonprofit and philanthropy sector. She was executive director of the General Service foundation for a long time. She was the founding director of the Rise Together Fund, which is and she's previously led the Centre for Social justice at UC Berkeley. I think that's probably supposed to be Berkeley. I sounded very British, didn't I? UC Berkeley School of Law. So yeah, it was great to be joined by Lisa and Dimple. And the theme that we're discussing, as you'll hear in a moment, is the idea of legacy and to some extent what legacy means and what that means in terms of particularly the kind of time scales that we do philanthropy over. But we also talked much more broadly about the the idea of the role of philanthropy, what it means to take a reparative approach to philanthropy and lots of other things. Since you may have already listened to the introductory episode with Mandy Van de Ven and Chiara Cataneo that kind of accompanies the series. I won't spend ages telling you what to expect in this conversation. We'll go straight into it in a moment and then I will be back at the end for the usual bit of housekeeping. So let's get on with it. And here's the conversation with Lisa and Dimple.

0:38

Okay, great. Well, I'm here with Dimple, the Beach Andani, Lisa Cowan, and Chiara Cataneo. Hello to all of you.

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Hello.

3:18

Hi.

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Hi.

3:20

Well, I think we're all at various different times of the day, and it's certainly evening here as we record this. And I think it's not. I think it's probably morning for at least some of you. So thanks very much for, for joining me from every time zone that you're in. And so again, this is another one of the episodes in the Myths of Philanthropy series that I'm working with Chiara and Mandy on, where I know you guys have kind of written a bit essays about some of the myths of philanthropy that you've been addressing that we're going to talk about today. And we're talking particularly about legacy today. And maybe the best starting point, Chiara, again, if you are happy to kind of say a little bit about what the actual what the myths that we're kind of addressing today are and kind of frame everything for us.

3:20

Yeah. Thank you, Rodri. So through the series, we wanted to really highlight some of the deep narratives that are shaping the design and the practice of philanthropy. And we've asked contributors both to shed light on these narratives and also to shed light on what is their experience and what are the ways forward and how to address the faulty logics that these narratives have consequences on. So we're really turning an eye on philanthropy, whereas usually the gaze is to the outside narratives that philanthropy is contributing to address. So some of the narratives that we addressed were scarcity, manufacturer scarcity, individualism, presumed expertise, risk aversion. And today we're very glad to address the issue, the narrative around legacy and time. And the core question that we will be exploring is what becomes possible when we reconsider the legacy that brought us here and the one that we want to leave. So this is the framing, the overall framing for this conversation.

4:01

Great.

5:13

Thanks very much. And yeah, to kick off, I guess, one of the things that comes across in both of your essays that you wrote, but particularly maybe is the focus of yours, simple, is about the idea that philanthropy can't be about just sort of taking money from places that it has done harm and then doing good by giving a little bit of it away. Actually, we need to think of philanthropy much more as something that is reparative and actually has to be done in a way that kind of addresses those harms at a much more fundamental level, maybe you could say a bit about the way in which you think we need to reimagine philanthropy.

5:14

Yeah. Well, first, thank you for having me on. I. I recently put out this book, A New Era of Philanthropy. And my. The core question I was looking at is kind of, what is a philanthropy for these times we live in? And in some ways, the surprise of that book for me was that to figure out what is the philanthropy we need now and going forward, I really had to look back at how did we come to be here? And something that I think you've written about this, a lot of us have written about this, going back to this kind of core text of the gospel of wealth, Something that really stands out and was very clear is that modern philanthropy, the kind of purpose at the heart of it, was really to kind of justify the accumulation of, unheard of at that time, amounts of wealth. Right. So, you know, Carnegie saying to his readers, I know this system where a few of us have all the resources and most of you are struggling. I know it's hard, but trust me, we have a great idea. We're going to do this thing called philanthropy. We're going to take care of you. So that, you know, that idea kind of lives in our institutions today, and it lives in a whole set of practices. You know, we are kind of in the US in the philanthropic sector. We have gone through a year where the nonprofit sector and really civil society has been in absolute and total crisis. I mean, we have had rapid contraction. I don't know a single nonprofit that has not had to lay people off. And yet the sector has. Has continued, for the most part, the philanthropic sector to operate with these norms of prioritizing perpetuity and prioritizing its own preservation over that of the sector, the field, our communities. And so as we think about legacy, I think one of the calls, both of the article that you're talking about and of the book is that we really come back to our purpose and that we move away from a purpose that says, our purpose just is to exist, we must be around forever. Our purpose is perpetuity. Or like Carnegie, our purpose is to kind of hide or mask or gild over the harms that we are causing. Right. Those purposes don't serve anybody today other than those with the most power. Instead, we need to really think of our purpose as being moving towards a future where everyone's flourishing and using these resources that we are stewards of or that we are in some way in relationship with using these resources. To build that future. So that's, to me, the we can think of it as repair. I think you talk about it as a reparative thing. I really think of it as a sort of reimagining a new. What is this infrastructure of philanthropy like that really, the purpose that it was built for feels really irrelevant right now. It feels like a fax machine,

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but

9:33

it's still the need for resources couldn't be more relevant. Right. And so I think many of us who are practitioners in philanthropy today, like the work of right now, is how do we take this old infrastructure with its outdated purposes and practices and build it anew to meet this moment?

9:34

Yeah, absolutely. And, Lisa, I'd love to come to you because I'd be really interested in your thoughts on what Dimple's been saying. But also, I mean, particularly, we've mentioned already there, the question of sort of timescales and the idea that institutions need to exist not just over the long term, but in perpetuity, particularly around foundations. I know that's something that you wrote about and kind of, why is that such a problematic idea and kind of, how can we move past that?

9:57

Well, I mean, I would say one of the lessons that I really learned from Dimple over the years is that we have sort of let the money be driving us, okay? We have 5% of this body here to dole out, rather than sort of letting our mission lead us and say, what is the thing we want to do and what are the resources we need to do that? So those are two very different propositions. And if we are really aligned on mission, then I think that speaks to how much we spend, which then speaks to how long are we around for. So that's sort of like one significant part of it. Then the other thing is, like, we're all out there operating our own little bespoke institutions without sort of consideration for what anyone else is doing in a way that we would never fund organizations that were operating the way we do. And so, you know, as we, again, like, when we come back to our mission, when we come back to what's the change we're trying to affect, I think if we can do that in coordination not just with our grant partners, but with the other funders, I think that gives us a lot more data on how much we should be spending and what's the time period. And if you can do all of that, sort of having released this, like, preconceived notion that we are here, that our job as a foundation board, staff, whatever, Is to spend 5% in perpetuity. You have such a limited scope of what you can do.

10:22

You mentioned there about sort of being the job people in foundations, and I guess this touches as well on something I wanted to ask Dimple, which is with a lot of these conversations about sort of the ways in which philanthropy needs to be transformed. It often strikes me that the roles as we understand them within philanthropy, particularly sort of institutionally and how we judge success and what makes you good at working in a foundation or running a foundation, don't really match up with what we're trying to do. So do we need to kind of understand the purpose of those of us who work in philanthropy in a totally different way?

11:47

Yes.

12:19

Yeah, yeah, absolutely we do. And I think, you know, what's interesting is I think that people working in philanthropy are aware of that. You know, I've had the privilege over the last few years of being invited in to talk to so many boards, to talk to so many trustees. In some cases, you know, I've talked to board boardrooms where every single trustee is there because of their blood connection to the initial holder of wealth. Right. And one of the things I talk about in my book is that in a contemporary rooted in today definition of effective governance, we have to have proximity to the work. And so I've been in these rooms where I am talking to people who, you know, by definition in my book, I'm saying there's something in your model that has to evolve. And instead of meeting resistance, what I have been struck by is almost every time trustees have said to me, it's always felt like something's not quite right about the model, about the role, about the way we envision this work. So what I've come to see, and then I've also seen, you know, after these conversations, I'll hear back. Sometimes it's a week later, sometimes it's two months later, I'll hear back. Here are the things we are evolving. You know, we're moving towards a mission aligned spending policy. We're adding community members to our board. And so what that has taught me is that in this sector where we have so much power that people still need permission, they still need permission to change. Even when we see that these roles, these kind of old purposes are very ill fitting for today, people feel like, and I'm sure Lisa has experienced this too, that, you know, the trustee who thinks that wait for me to do my job, I have to go against the staff and say, nope, we can't spend more. We have to hold on for 200 years from now or whatever. Right. So people's own sense of what it means to, for example, be a steward. I think these are things that are so ripe for reinvention and reimagining. So, you know, we're here talking about legacy. You know, legacy is not, do you exist in the future? Legacy should really be in the future. What exists that your resources contributed to? Right. What did you. What did you today help build in the future that isn't your own reputation, your own name on a building? You know, but that's something that ensures that more people are flourishing. Yeah, these are all things that I think are ripe for reinvention.

12:20

I. I think that there's this like, sort of just like small structural piece that if a board primarily thinks of itself as fiscal sponsor, to just open the aperture of what that means that it's not just about where your money is and where it's going, but it's also about where did it come from. That part of your job is to really understand the history of your money and connect that to the present and future.

15:25

And I'm really interested in this because I think that idea, because historically there's sort of this idea that the left hand and the right hand are totally separate and you can make the money in one way and then actually sort of move to a different building and start thinking about giving it away. And I don't think that logic works anymore. But in practice, what does it look like? Because, I mean, I've over the last few years sort of talked to lots of institutions, some of whom kind of acknowledge that, but basically think it's enough to acknowledge it. And then obviously there are others who go on a spectrum through to, well, you know, let's name this as a problem, but we'll do something fairly nominal about it through to those who fundamentally rethink what they're going to do and sort of seek to make kind of repair harms that they've identified have been done through the process of wealth creation. How do you see this playing out at the moment in the sector when people do acknowledge that need to understand where money's come from?

15:46

Well, maybe I'll just start by saying when I first started working at a private foundation, I started in sort of any initial conversation I had with a prospective grantee or current grantee talking about where the money came from, and I didn't tell it. I don't think I told the right version of the story. I told this sort of like, lascivious, funny story about the family's history but even just which, and I think it really should, you know, what I sort of came to understand is that it's not about the individual so much. It's about the systems that they were working in a more relevant, if less funny story. But even just doing that sort of like subpar version of it up front. So many people said to me, we have never had a foundation talk about where their money came from. Like, that has just not been a part of the conversation. And by doing that, part of what I was trying to do is just say, hey, this is not my money. I'm not doing you a favor here. Like my job, which is like pretty easy compared to your job, is figuring out how to give, how to distribute this money, but it's not mine. I'm not doing you a favor. You know, this is my 9 to 5, as that is your 9 to 5. So, so that even just that much of talking about where it comes from I think is useful. And then, you know, and then I think there's like a pretty wide range of, of how you do it. But, but I think always talking about the systems that, that allowed you to amass that wealth. And to the extent that you're able to talk about like, you know, for a living donor or for your investments now, like, what's it doing now? Like, let's, you know, if what is happening is that we're funding private prisons in the market and we are funding, you know, abolition over here, you know, I don't know what. Exposing that is a very confusing message. And it's also true.

16:39

So I have mixed feelings on this one, I'm going to say. So I do think it's so important that we not perpetuate certain stories about and you know, foundations almost as a habit or as a, I mean every foundation has a website where they tell some story about what a great human being the wealth creator was. Right. But I have to say, right, like in this moment right now, I, I so deeply want funders to, to turn their gaze externally. Right. So, so my impulse, like this whole, you know, look back and, and you know, figure out where the wealth came from or talk about it. Like, I just feel like the risk of that is that it's more like internal churning.

18:23

It's a three year like listening tour where you suspend grant making. Yeah.

19:20

And, and that, you know, it's a listening tour with that ultimately at the end doesn't ensure what I want to see, which is that I want all of us almost not to skip that storytelling because I think it is important. But I want us to all actually come together under a new story right now which says that this model of warehousing private resources, most of which were probably gained at the expense of communities that, you know, that where people were harmed and so on. But this system of warehousing these private resources for a public purpose, but where the decision making about what is good for the public is private, like that that system holds. Doesn't hold our values today. You know, and I. The reason I think that's important is that in some ways it allows people. I mean, there's. In my time in philanthropy, one of the things I've learned is that every like, wealthy person and wealthy family thinks they're the exception. Everyone thinks that, like, oh yeah, like those people did something terrible. But like, we are philanthropists because we're good people and we've, you know, that's who our family is. And so I think that that kind of way of thinking keeps people from seeing the broader system that they are a part of. Right. So I just feel like the place that I want people to come to right now. And I think this is especially important because of this great wealth transfer moment that we're in, you know, So I just feel like I don't want, like, yet, you know, yet another generation of philanthropists to come in, you know, using kind of this vehicle as like another way to kind of tell a story about how exceptional their families are. It's like every family is exceptional, you know, whether you have wealth or not. And the opportunity is for people to come in and realize these resources can be a vehicle and an opening to solidarity. It really can. That it can be a way that you can reach out across class, across race, in recognition of how we're interdependent as opposed to being lost in the exceptional details of your own story.

19:25

And on that thing about the sort of wealth transfer and the development of an emergence of a kind of new generation of philanthropists, I mean, I'm always wary that there's a kind of danger of overstating the all next gen philanthropists are X, Y or Z. And they're not. They're obviously very diverse. That being said, I mean, I know through my work I have been struck that there definitely feels like there is a kind of qualitative difference, at least in the starting point, that a lot of these philanthropists are coming to it with, which is they kind of. They are acknowledging that wider context around how wealth is created. And they're also, I think, more willing to engage with systemic critiques without seeing them necessarily as a kind of personal attack. I mean, is that your experience, both of you, you know, when you've engaged with next gen philanthropists, do you think there is kind of, you know, we should be hopeful that there is a natural shift towards thinking about philanthropy in this way, or is that, is there a danger of complacency in doing that?

22:09

I mean, I would just say that I worry that the people who I talk to are only the people who will talk to me. A lot of people who I don't hear their stories.

23:07

Yeah, yeah, there is a danger of sort of furiously agreeing with each other, isn't there?

23:16

But, yeah, I will say I've seen both. I've seen, so I have seen a generation of like I've seen in this new generation a clearer sense that they're going to be alive in the future that we are moving towards. You know, so I do think that things like the climate crisis have a way of, of, you know, implicating most people, regardless. I mean, unless you're, you know, the five people who are going to fly to Mars or something, like, it's otherwise everybody else, you know, even people with resources see it coming and know that it's going to be their future too. And I think that is actually very different than previous generations of philanthropists who felt like that, regardless the outcome of their giving, that they were fine. So I think that's a really important difference. But the thing that I've also seen up close is that our core narratives, and I mean, this is why I have such deep appreciation for Chiara and for Mandy and the work that they've been doing around narrative change. Even this young generation that understands intimately the challenges that we are globally facing today, the stories that they're getting, the narratives that they're getting about philanthropy as a, as a tool for change, those tend to still be the old stories. And so that's why I think, you know, yeah, I, I, so I think we can't overest, we can't assume that an understanding of the urgency of now translates into an understanding of, of philanthropy as a transformational tool.

23:20

And it's, it's also, I mean, maybe this is the same as what you're saying, but it's kind of a stuffy structure, right? It's like all these very polite people in their nice offices in suits, supposedly. And that doesn't feel very contemporary or exciting.

25:18

So, I mean, that was, for me, that was a big motivation in writing this book. Right. Was that when I thought about the resources that we anticipate are going to come into the sector. And then I thought about like, you know, what young person sees themselves in this way and what a narrow set of kind of options we're giving people. I really felt inspired to try to offer a vision of what it can be like to engage in philanthropy. Not to build philanthropy, like to actually, you know, many of us, I think, say that kind of when we really look forward and imagine a future where there's widespread flourishing, that we don't really see a need for philanthropy. Right. That this, this won't be kind of how we take care of public good. But I feel like what we've. What we have not spent as much time talking about and really nurturing is like, what are the practices and stories that get us from here to there? That's what I'm really curious about. And that's what I attempted to try to put into a new era of philanthropy. That what is this new era that moves us past philanthropy and that actually moves us into deeper relationship with each other?

25:36

I would like to ask a question about to this point of the structure and the infrastructure. So in this reconceptualizing philanthropy as not, you know, as charity, not as giving, what do you think are the. And the reluctance, the two points, the reluctance of philanthropy to fund infrastructure and the reluctance of philanthropy to look. Look at the narratives that, you know, to look within and look at the narratives that are affecting philanthropy. What would you say? Like, what are your reflections around what are the infrastructures needed to support these narratives? These new. Emerging. Some emerging. Some are, you know, already there, but sort of niche at the moment. So what would be the infrastructure needed to support this. These narratives to be prevalent and predominant in philanthropy?

27:02

Dimple, you got.

28:06

You know, I love your question because in. In the second part of the Gospel of Wealth, Carnegie actually sets out his top seven list of places for funding. And he doesn't label it this way, but. But really most of what he's talk. What he's talking about, you know, he talk building of parks and swimming pools, concert halls, churches, but just the buildings. You know, if you kind of look at it from today, most of what he's talking about is building the infrastructure of his time. Right? But it was like all built infrastructure. It was like buildings, you know. And you know, I think today your question is exactly the right one. Like today we need to build new infrastructures. But I would argue, and I say this in my book, that the infrastructures that we need include things like relational infrastructure. Right? So I've you know, for many years, funded narrative change. And what I've seen is that to fund narrative change is not to fund a story or a set of talking points. You actually have to fund the relational infrastructure that allows for that story to be disseminated to come to life. And so what are the relational infrastructures, the networks? I belong to Solidaire Network. I'm on the board of Solidaire, and we are a network of donor organizers. And what I have seen in almost 10 years of being in that network is the ways that resources move because we are in relationship with one another, because we are moving together. So I think something that we have to understand to build this new era of philanthropy is how to invest in relational infrastructure, to invest in people. Right. Like, I don't think what we need today are more buildings, but I think what we need are investments in the people who are doing this precious and hard work of building a more just future.

28:10

Yeah, absolutely. I don't know, Lisa, if you've got thoughts on that as well from your experience.

30:31

Well, I mean, one thing about it, and I think the reason why I sort of step back when the question is asked, is that it's very nuanced. Right. It's not like funding after school programs. It's hard to understand, it's hard to do. And it's hard to measure the amount of donor education you need to do in order to even begin to ask is really significant. I think about the traditional program officer role and how it has been sort of one of like, measurement, oversight, etc. And as we are hopefully moving into more of a role of like, support, allyship, fundraising, you know, like, like really helping those organizations move and sort of like keeping them in line, then I think that the understanding of the need for this kind of infrastructure and narrative change becomes more tangible to the people who work in foundations. And then hopefully that helps with. With building it. So, you know, it's a. It's like an iterative process. But. But I do. Yeah. I just think that, again, the way sort of funders and their grant partners are in relationship is. Is hopefully starting to change. Not just the people who will agree to talk to me, but anyone who cares about sort of what the end goal of the work is. I think we have to move into partnership.

30:36

And one thing I was really interested to ask on one of the other conversations we've had as part of this series, we were talking specifically about sort of individualism and how the idea of individualism in different ways could kind of really deeply influence the way in which we do philanthropy. And it feels relevant here, I guess, in that we're talking about the model. Certainly that Carnegie, if he didn't establish it, he very much kind of cemented it is the one where, you know, the individual philanthropic lone hero arrives with their resources and kind of brilliant ideas, and then that sort of solves all of the problems. But we've sort of institutionalized that in the form of foundations. Again, you know, it's kind of this individual organization will come in with its resources and work in isolation and somehow solve very complex kind of entrenched problems. You know, this whole kind of pervasive idea of individualism is that part of what we need to move away from and find ways of sort of thinking and understanding the work that we do much more collectively and kind of getting away from that sort of strong adherence to individual institutions and organizations.

32:09

You know, my friend Loris Rodriguez, who's the head of the David Rockefeller Fund, said something to me recently that I cannot stop thinking about, and she was talking about funder Sudoku that, like, as we are funding in our line, it's really important to know what is happening in your box and what is happening horizontally as well as vertically. And I just think it's. It's so apt and it's so often overlooked. And when we start thinking about, like, are you going to last forever? Are you going to spend down? What are you going to do for your partners as you go? You need to know who else is in those rows that's helping you get that work done. So, you know, there's no. And also there's no external force that's going to. That's going to mandate that we work together. So I think we have to believe it and then we have to talk about it a lot. And then we have to have a conference where we, like, deliver a funny panel on it. And then we need to have a comic of it. And then whatever

33:12

this is, this is so important. I love that conception of the Sudoku.

34:07

But.

34:13

But just going back to your point earlier about the role of program officer, I think that the smartest, most effective program officers, the work that they're doing is this work of understanding what is this ecosystem we belong to. How else can you understand where to most impactfully deploy your resources? Then as we're talking about myths, part of yes to your question about do we need to move away from individualism? And we need to really understand how that myth plays out in the sector. So where I hear that myth all the time is trustees saying even if we spent more right now, even if we spent everything, we have dimple, you have to admit, we're just a drop in the bucket. And I literally write about that in my book. And I had this experience of being hosted by a very, very large social justice philanthropy. And I was like, about to go out on stage to share, you know, thoughts from my book. And the person who was introducing me, we were talking about how their institution was responding to this moment. And he literally said this. He literally said, you know, we're not very good at rapid response. We have a hard time moving quickly. But even if we could do more, you have to admit that it would just be a drop in the bucket, that there is something about that story that goes beyond individualism to really actually, you know, taking away any responsibility for action. And what I have, sort of my response to that story and what I've been saying to people is, you aren't just a drop in the bucket, but like, you are a drop in. That is part of a bigger wave. Not to take away that your central concern might be your own institution, but even why do we see ourselves in buckets? We need to see ourselves as part of something bigger. That's the piece that when we are in our own institutions, oftentimes the only way that we understand the wave that we are a part of is through our relationships. Lisa is somebody who, when I was at General Service foundation, we would often meet and compare notes. And I learned so much from the work that she and her colleague Phil and others were doing, funding leadership development, which to me is an example of that relational infrastructure. When we funded leadership, I never felt like we were alone or that our funding was just a drop. Like, I understood that our funding was part of the same wave as Lisa's funding and as so many of our

34:13

other colleagues, you know, I have this. Sorry, I just have this knee jerk reaction when I hear someone talk about a drop in the bucket. I always go to this Rebecca Solnick quote, which is, the fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything, and everything we can save is worth saving. I just. I just sort of think the drop in the bucket argument is irrelevant. I mean, I obviously get the overwhelm. We all get the overwhelm. But.

37:19

And I think that's exactly. I was just thinking as you were talking to this, I mean, in the Solnet reference, I think is exactly the right one in that, you know, at the end of, it's the institutional version of that individual problem that we all feel, which is a Lot of these challenges out there, climate and all sorts of other things are so massive that it's very easy to feel defeated and think, well, what possible difference could I make as an individual? But then as soon as you actually join up with a group of other people who feel similarly, you get the sense that, oh, actually, that's the only thing that can ever make a difference. And I suppose it's kind of, how do you make sure you get the equivalent for foundations of them finding all of the other people who sort of similarly care about things? One of the other things I really wanted to ask. We've kind of talked, as we're thinking about how philanthropy could change to be more reparative or to kind of have a kind of more radically redistributive function, or however we want to frame it. We talked a bit about how philanthropy as it currently stands might need to change in things like rethinking the timescales that we do it over. But I also wondered whether, actually, just thinking about philanthropy as it currently is, too limiting, full stop in that, do we need to look beyond philanthropy and sort of expand our understanding of the toolbox that's available and sort of blur the lines between philanthropy and things like political activity? Actually, is it unhelpful that we draw firm dividing lines around these and that if we've got the fundamental goal in mind, actually we should be more agnostic about the tools that we're using and that if the way that we framed philanthropy gets in the way of that, maybe we need to change the way we frame philanthropy.

37:43

I think we need to change the way we frame philanthropy, but I think we need to change it sort of expand more than just the money, the capital. Right. So I think funders do it. They just don't do a good enough job using all of their own kind of humanity in furtherance of the work. And so, yes, maybe we need to do more political giving and. But I. I feel like when I think about my own experience of transformative giving, there's always a. There's always a relationship in the mix. There's always. When I was in a. When I was, you know, when I was in roles where I was actually moving money, the thing that made for grant making that was meaningful was always just a feeling of care, you know, and. And this sense that, you know, so often the people that I was moving resources to, they would be. They would be honest with me about something that they said they weren't honest with other funders about. And some of that was because they Might have been people I'd known for 20 years or people that, you know, I came up with with, like, not just as a funder, but as someone in, you know, who was doing similar movement work. But, but the point I guess is just that I was never like moving money based on a proposal or something that was written. And, and you know, what I notice is that the bigger the, the pot of resources that an institution has, like, as you kind of go from say like medium small to medium sized family foundations to these, these, you know, huge large foundations, what gets put into place is all this protocol and practice that is actually about taking the human out of it. And I think that's part of why, I mean, I've admit I've not gone deep into it, but I feel like I see all over LinkedIn all this stuff now about how you can use AI to do your philanthropy or like, you know, and so I think what we forget is what we're doing is so much more than just moving capital. Right.

39:21

That what we're.

41:45

Yeah. And this made me think of something that Lisa mentioned in her essay about, you know, the. Assume the assumption that rich people know best and so that there is a presumed expertise of rich people to also know what is the, the best future for all of us and, and what the commons should be, should be, should look like, and what is the structure that our society fundamentally should have. And so I was wondering if you wanted to share reflection on, on that, on the, you know, the myth of individualism and the myth of the, the rich individual being able to shape the future and then the design of philanthropy having to sort of just go in the direction of that future. And how on the other side, as Dimple was saying, we can have a philanthropy that incorporates multiple visions of the future and a collaborative way forward towards that future.

41:46

I mean, one of the things I always say is that if I had been a true radical, I would have been a tax lawyer. You know, I think that if, and I, I have the next sentence, I'm going to say I have no idea how you would actually do it. But I like, what if we just put all of philanthropy into tax reform? What if people paid their proper taxes? What would. And we had a government that properly cared for its citizenry in the United States. Like, what would be left that philanthropy would need to take on? I would much rather have that conversation, you know, because I think we are just like faced with all these false choices now. Is it R D money? Is it visioning the future? Is it feeding kids? You know, nobody's feeding kids, so how do you, how do you overlook that? So that's one experiment I would love to run. You know, another thing I think about a lot, and this isn't exactly an answer, but like while I'm in, you know, make believe land is, I sometimes think that it would be the best possible grant making to just transfer a foundation to transfer its endowment to its grant partners. Right. Because they would then be forever set and you could take the, the money we're skimming off the top to pay foundation staff and offices and, and our fancy lunches and whatever. You know, I, I just. So is that a different form of philanthropy? I think that there are sort of more, a lot more exciting experiments we could make than sort of assigning our arbitrary pots of money to the problem we particularly care about.

42:58

I love everything you just said, Lisa. And I want to build on it to say that we don't have a just and functioning tax system in the US and we've actually very much been going in the wrong direction on that front. But we absolutely funders today can deploy resources towards building power in communities. Who can then advocate for that? Right. So it's not where we, it's not, we're not there yet. And yet I think philanthropy can be and must be one of the tools that we use to get to a place where we don't have these false choices. And I'll just share, you know, I had the opportunity to share my book for an audience of Australian funders in Sydney. And during the question answer session, my favorite question was someone stood up and said, in a context where you have a fair and high functioning tax system and it ensures that everyone in the society has a base level of being able to live, they have health care, they have housing. In that context, then how do you think about the role of private philanthropy? And I just had no words. I was like, must be nice. And so, I mean, I came up with an answer. But really what I took from that question was the inspiration for us, those of us who are working in philanthropy, to keep moving towards that as the North Star, right. To never think that these resources can replace a just tax system. And frankly, in the US that was really tough this past year, right. As we all faced, you know, just the, and we're still facing like the, the complete collapse of safety net, the defunding of really all the bare systems of care that we had in place, I think a lot of funders wondered like, oh, are we supposed to step in? And there's not like A right or wrong answer. But I think the thing we can't forget is, is that the highest value thing we can do is to fund in ways that move us towards that fair tax system.

44:34

And I wonder, Chiara, to your question about, like, sort of rich people and their expertise, if that changes that positionality a little bit. You know, if you're not asking me for food, but for research to drive a better car that we'll all drive, I've lost the example here, but I think you're, you know, I think if we're not talking about covering bare necessities, there can be a different relationship between. And if we're more honest about the fact that, that my foundation's money, you know, in this moment, that my foundation's money came from sort of starving the tax system, then how grateful do you need to be?

47:16

To me, I think one of the most interesting developments of the last few years has been the emergence of philanthropists who kind of acknowledge precisely that and see it as necessary alongside the philanthropy they're still doing, to spend part of the part, or in some cases, almost all of their time campaigning on taxation, precisely because they're saying there's no way that philanthropy can ever meet the requirements of justice. We need to get to a point where we have a fair level of taxation and redistribution first and then work out what we do with philanthropy after that. And as you say, I think, you know, it's. It's a thought experiment at the moment, and it probably will be for quite some time, but it's an important one because I think it gives real insights into that question of what we see the role of, the desirable role of philanthropy as being. I'm aware that we're coming up on the hour, and I don't want to keep anybody too long, so I was just going to wrap up by. I mean, I sort of occasionally hate these questions, but I thought I would ask one this time. Just. Just what for each of you? Kind of what you. What's the sort of one thing that you would ideally like to see happen in philanthropy over the coming years that would sort of give you hope that we're moving in the right direction?

47:54

You know,

49:02

we are taping this podcast in a moment of real crisis in the United States. And I mean, our. Our democracy is on the line, and the defenders of it are both the people, as we see in sort of the streets of Minneapolis. But behind the people, there's also really critical organizational infrastructure. It strikes me as just so wrong that in this moment, those people who are putting everything on the line trying to save our democracy, are having to also write funding proposals or reach out or lay off staff members because they don't have the resources they need. And so in the short term, what I long for is for everyone who's actually fighting for our democracy to be fully resourced immediately without having to jump through who groups, for them to not only have the capacity that they need in the moment, but to actually have the space to increase their capacity in this time of crisis. That was my wish all of last year, and we didn't get there. But I hold out some hope that as the stakes become kind of undeniable, that funders will see that. And this is one of those moments where the ask is to do your part. If each of us really does our part, then we can be that wave. You know, we stop being those drops.

49:04

Yeah, absolutely. At least, I don't know with your thoughts on what you would.

50:43

You would like to see.

50:46

Yeah, I mean, it's hard to. Hard to narrow it to one, nor do I disagree, obviously. But, you know, when I started working at a foundation, I used to say, like, oh, I went to the other side of the desk, and I think what I would wish is for us to, like, just all get on the same, like, for. For philanthropy to come out from behind that desk. You know, we have. Have no muscles for. For threat or fear. We've never been threatened before. And with just the amount of threat that philanthropy has been in under the last year, I don't think we've really come out swinging. So what I hope is that now we have, like, experienced that we are seeing heroes in the street. We are, you know, understanding the threat we're under, as Dimple said, and that we can, like, get it together and really get information with. With the people on the front lines. And that means. That means more money. That means, like, funding to the need, not funding to the limit of the endowment or the limit of the payout. And I don't know, just like, you know, so many of us do the job like the person who came before us, and I think if we could. I think if we could actually fund, like, what the moment demands of us instead.

50:47

Yeah, absolutely. I think. I mean, great thoughts on which to end. Just remains to say thanks ever so much to all of you. Thanks, Lisa. Thanks, Dimple, and thanks, Chiara for joining me. It's been really fascinating conversation. I wish you all the best in all of your work in the future, and I hope some of the optimism that we've talked about there at the end ends up being justified.

52:02

Thank you so much.

52:22

This is a treat. This was great. Thank you.

52:23

Great. Well, my thanks again to Lisa and to Dimple for coming on the podcast.

52:35

It was really great to have a

52:40

chance to talk to both of them. It was really fascinating conversation. I hope you all enjoyed it. I'll put links in the show notes to places where you can find out more. You can read the original essays that Dimple and Lisa both contributed to the Myths of Philanthropy series. Also where you can find about Dimple's book and other things Lisa's written. If you're interested more broadly in issues around philanthropy and civil society, do obviously check out the website at why philanthropy matters.com you can find lots of articles, long reads, shorter sort of guides to issues in philanthropy, all the back episodes of this podcast, and much, much more. If you like the podcast, do leave us a nice review wherever you get your podcasts. And please do give a recommendation if you think there's anyone else that might also enj it. And if you've got ideas for topics that I could cover in future, or people I could speak to, or even series just like this one that we could run in the future, do get in touch. You can find my contact details on the website. Other than that, just remains to say, thanks ever so much for listening and I will see you next time. Bye.

52:41