More than a thousand people gathered in Brussels in the last week of April to talk about philanthropy – striking evidence of a pent-up demand for conversation and learning about the role of philanthropy today. The convenor of the sold-out gathering BePhilanthropy was itself a major philanthropic player, the King Baudouin Foundation, Belgium’s most significant foundation. The Brussels conference was the largest of several in person gatherings planned by the Foundation in 2023 to convene philanthropy not only in Belgium but also in other parts of Europe. The meeting brought together a diverse group of European foundation leaders, donors, advisors, researchers, intermediaries and a few nonprofit leaders and fundraisers.
Much has changed in the world since March 2020 when this conference, then optimistically titled The Spring of Philanthropy, was first scheduled. Pandemic, war, inflation and social unrest have darkened the mood in Europe. The climate crisis and global migration are putting great pressures on European societies. As the conference program noted, “today’s challenges are complex and require creative approaches”. Perhaps sensing the need to energize a philanthropic sector in need of encouragement, the organizers structured their program around four exhortations to philanthropy: Be…Responsible, Enabled, Innovative, and Engaged.
European philanthropy itself is in strong shape, despite the effects of the pandemic. According to the Global Philanthropy Environment Index 2022 from the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, Western and Northern Europe continue to score very highly in global measures of philanthropy. The policy context and the socio-cultural environment generally support philanthropy. Philea, the European network of foundations and donor associations, confirms this in its own report on the Philanthropy Environment in Europe, from December 2022.
The conference opening speeches of Belgian leaders, including Queen Mathilde and the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, reaffirmed the importance of a strong civil society and the value of philanthropy in supporting that society. The President of the National Bank of Belgium (the central bank) who also serves as the Chair of the King Baudouin Foundation, spoke eloquently about the advantages and opportunities for philanthropy to work with policy makers in creating dialogues, contributing diverse voices to policy debate, and supporting a just economic transition. Canadian philanthropy, I believe, would be only too pleased to have its unique role similarly recognized by key national policy leaders.
That said, there were plenty of speakers to point out the challenges that European philanthropy must overcome. For example, there are regulatory obstacles. While there is a common market for goods and services in Europe, there isn’t one for philanthropy. This makes cross-border funding and operations more difficult and costly. Philea advocates in its European Philanthropy Manifesto for a EU philanthropy common market, to allow donors and foundations to operate across borders. The European Commission (EC) is now consulting on a possible European Statute for associations and nonprofit organizations. An EC representative at the conference spoke about the importance of sharing with philanthropy a joint purpose around transforming and decarbonizing the continental economy in a just and sustainable way. The EC also recently presented a proposal for a Defence of Democracy which “will include measures to foster an enabling civic space and promote inclusive and effective engagement by public authorities with civil society and citizens in order to bolster resilience from within”. If the EC is beginning to recognize the need to develop new forms of engagement with philanthropy, this will open important possibilities.
Another set of challenges for European philanthropy focus on accountability and the need to build trust. Delphine Moralis, the Chief Executive of Philea, pointed out at the conference that the crisis of trust in philanthropy is present in Europe as well as in Anglo-Saxon countries. This will require an agile and determined response by philanthropy. The flexible and collaborative approaches to working with community that were forced on philanthropy by the pandemic will need to continue. European philanthropy must use lenses of social justice and equity in designing their funding and work more closely with communities to build their resilience and foster social solidarity. Citing a philanthropic accountability model that combines transparency with performance and democratic accountability, Ludwig Forrest, Head of Philanthropy at the KBF, spoke of the need to share knowledge, engage beneficiaries and also maintain accountability to donors who trust public foundations such as KBF for philanthropic advice and expertise.
The conference identified key issues for the future of philanthropy that we share across the Atlantic: cross-sectoral collaboration; corporate partnerships and social investment; global giving; localisation; the formalization of philanthropic infrastructure, including advice and advocacy; and the digital revolution in philanthropic giving. My sense was that some important topics did not get enough airtime (in contrast to many current philanthropic dialogues in North America): power, privilege and the importance of decolonializing and diversifying philanthropy. The perspectives shared were notably those of funders and donors, less so those of charities and community partners. But there were twelve separate discussions during this very full conference day and these views may have been expressed in sessions I did not attend. The KBF will continue generously to share the content of the day through recordings of every discussion, so we will have a chance to find out.
I came away feeling that European and Canadian philanthropy have much in common. Giving is a universal human activity….and as one conference speaker said, “philanthropy gives purpose to life”. To be purposefully philanthropic, to be boldly engaged, as this conference reminded us, we need courage and an openness to listening and learning from each other.
We are living in urgent times. Needs and uncertainties multiply in the context of energy and food insecurity, inflation, war, and attacks on democracy. The expectations and pressures on funders understandably continue to grow in the face of this urgency. The question of the value of the endowed foundation model must be posed again. When the world is on fire, should long-life foundations reconsider their time span and focus on the present?
One of the advantages of an endowed foundation is that it can make an independent decision about the temporal nature of its work. And this is a question it should ask itself repeatedly. In 1966, McGeorge Bundy, the president of the Ford Foundation, said that “a foundation should regularly ask itself if it could do more good dead than alive.” He concluded then on behalf of Ford that “we find that there is no present reason to believe that the world will have less need of a large foundation in 1980 than in 1967; the forces we help to counterbalance are not likely to be smaller – the need for an independent agency not likely to be less.”
Bundy was not wrong. The Ford Foundation continues to this day to contribute in significant ways to the struggle for social justice under its leader Darren Walker. But it doesn’t mean that the question should not be raised or the answer not tested.
Nor is the question unique to Canadian and American philanthropy. It is being posed on both sides of the Atlantic. At the Philanthropic Foundations Canada Conference on October 4 in Montreal, I will be speaking in a session on the legitimacy and temporal challenges of foundations in Canada and in Europe with my colleague Michael Alberg-Seberich of Wider Sense a philanthropy consultancy in Berlin. In Europe, philanthropy is being challenged by the consequences of war, with its pressures on migration and energy supply compounded by inflation. We in Canada face similar pressures from inflation. The increasing costs of climate emergency are also creating enormous negative impact, which falls disproportionately on those most in need. Both in Canada and in Europe there are increasing worries about the strength of democratic institutions. The rise of social media, the narrowing or polarization of public opinion, the lack of trust in leaders and institutions, the decrease in volunteering and civic engagement are all contributing factors to the weakening of democracy. We are seeing low turnout in our elections. Europe is facing shifts to the right and to extremist political views.
The urgency of the present is clear. Foundations must respond, in ways that support their social legitimacy. How should foundations change in reaction to these pressures and what can, or must they do to help our societies adapt? What is the role of foundations today in supporting democracy and civic engagement? Should foundations engage more directly in activism and what might that mean for foundation public accountability? Should they simply spend down? Are we facing a call for radical change in the long-life philanthropic model?
There are no easy answers. But one question that foundation leaders could ask themselves now is whether to think differently about risk. Michael and I have both had long conversations with foundation leaders over the last year. Risk came up frequently. There are many risks for foundation leaders to manage: financial, administrative, legal, regulatory, and reputational. Foundations arguably focus too much on risk particularly when considering impact investing, or unconditional funding, or more participatory and trust-based grantmaking strategies. In the public eye, many foundations are seen as too risk-averse, and this limits their responsiveness. How can foundation leaders think more creatively about risk in turbulent times and avoid retreating into what is safer? Should we think of risk as being something for foundations to embrace as fundamental to the unique value they bring to society? So many important questions. Our conversation at the PFC Conference promises to be a lively one. More to come.
January, as always, is a time for forecasting by philanthropy observers and “opiners”. But during this never-ending pandemic period, as I read and listen to blogs and podcasts about the year ahead, I notice that no-one is being definitive about their forecasts. Uncertainty is greater than ever. People don’t want to make predictions. They would rather express hopes or, more gloomily, voice fears.
I think that hope is a better starting point. This is shared by Phil Buchanan of the Centre for Effective Philanthropy who posted his first 2022 blog with five hopes for philanthropy and nonprofits. Phil points out that there has been more change over the last two years in how US foundation leaders approach their work than in the previous two decades combined. As he says, “for all the suffering and loss it brought — and continues to bring — the pandemic has shown that deep change, even at institutions often derided as insulated and slow to evolve, is possible when it’s necessary.” In my view, this is also true in Canada, in all sectors.
In early January 2021, I wrote about a new agenda for philanthropy and for what I called the “social good sector”. As I reread my words from twelve months ago, I realize that I was voicing my hope that funders and nonprofits would ask and answer challenging questions that might set them on a new path post-pandemic. Questions such as:
These are all questions about doing things differently…and, I hope, better. I acknowledged then that thinking about these questions is tough and answering them through action is even tougher. But I believe that at least some of them are taken seriously, demonstrated by the conversations at various nonprofit conferences and webinars that took place through 2021, and the funding practice changes that have not been rolled back or discarded. These questions are just as important as we head into a new year, with the pandemic still over our heads.
For 2022, I want to put out two hopes, two fears and one wild guess. Perhaps these could be provocations for discussion at board and management tables along with the still important questions that I suggested for 2021.
Hopes
Fears
A Wild Guess
A talk given to a panel discussion on the future of North American philanthropy hosted by Alliance Magazine on July 14, 2021. Here is a summary and recording of the panel discussion
We Canadians live in a small country that sits next to a very large, influential and noisy one. Inevitably our trajectory has been influenced by what goes on to the south of us.
This is true when it comes to the history of organized philanthropy, especially in English-speaking Canada. Cross-border personal and business connections shaped the creation of private charitable trusts in Canada at much the same time as they were created in the States. One of our early 20th century Prime Ministers, Mackenzie King, worked at the Rockefeller Foundation for some years. And the Winnipeg Foundation, our first community foundation, was created in 1921 on the model of the Cleveland Foundation created in 1914. So, we have been practicing philanthropy, using the same basic models, for over a century. But being a smaller country with a population stretched pretty thin over huge territory it has taken us longer to knit ourselves together. While the Canadian Centre for Philanthropy, now Imagine Canada, was created in the mid-1980s, other philanthropic networks focused on grantmaking foundations in Canada are not even 30 years old.
This might suggest that Canadian philanthropy compares with the United States in age but not maturity. I disagree. We have caught up quickly in terms of our thinking and practice as a field. And where I believe we excel in comparison to the United States is in our relative success at collaboration, a particular advantage when it comes to tackling the complex wicked problems that require collective action, such as dealing with climate change.
In general, Canadians are centrists and pragmatists. Without the extremes of ideological and values polarization that we see in the United States, foundations across the country can work together without having to declare a side. Yes, we are more willing than Americans perhaps to cede the lead to government, even allowing for some regional difference on this from West to East. This is in part due to the activism of the public sector. From the 1960s on we have had a progressive tilt to our federal politics which has brought us to a place where public education, public health and social security supports give the majority of our population a safety net that simply isn’t there in the United States.
And yet…. in the last 25 years, we have seen the constraints on government, which are both fiscal and human. We don’t expect government today to be the source of social innovation. And in the last 20 years I have seen a leap forward in Canadian philanthropy itself around collaborative initiatives - to generate ideas, to experiment and pilot test, and finally to begin to advocate for policy changes that we see as important to our future.
On the issues of 2021 and beyond – inequality, systemic racism, climate emergency – I think that Canadian philanthropy has much to offer inside and outside our borders. We live in a country which has a lot of expertise in extracting and burning carbon. And we have an enormous environmental space at risk, in land, water and air. Together, Canadian philanthropists are working on making space for policy development, generating ideas around carbon pricing, developing marine and forest conservation and driving collaboration in our urban centres to get to net zero. We live in a pluralist society of immigrants. Most of our large urban centres have welcomed and integrated large numbers of immigrants and refugees from East and South Asia, from the Middle East and from Africa over the last 25 years. This means that philanthropy has plenty of opportunity to work collaboratively and at scale on social inclusion. As settlers, we share the land with the many Indigenous peoples who are the original inhabitants. This means an opportunity for philanthropy to step up collectively to the work of relationship building and reconciliation.
Are we doing it as well as we could? No. Canadian philanthropy has weaknesses – our pragmatism can lead to too much caution, our modesty can become lack of aspiration. Organized philanthropy itself is not diverse and that means that there are important voices and perspectives aren’t included. Many foundations in Canada can be justifiably critiqued for opaqueness and elitism. And we can be too polite. This shows up in our relative reluctance historically to step up in public to advocate and organize for social change.
Yet events of the last year, and the consequences of the pandemic, are changing this, I think, in Canada as in the US. I have seen more foundations come together to speak publicly on the inequalities revealed so clearly by the pandemic. It showed us the gaps in health and childcare coverage, in support for racialized and vulnerable populations, in mental health services.
These gaps are now pushing funders to become bolder in making collective statements on the need and urgency for policy change. And in making collective commitments to change the work of philanthropy itself. Many Canadian foundations signed a pledge during the pandemic to free their grants from restrictions, to grant for longer periods and to make themselves more transparent and accessible. Funders are trying to listen better and to figure out how they can be better partners with community leaders. I am optimistic that we will pursue this path. As a small but connected country I think we can and will share more widely some of what really works in Canadian philanthropy for ourselves and beyond our borders.
We don’t exist in a bubble in this world. We exist in a web.
This is how we need to think about our situation as a philanthropy sector, as a country, as a region and as human beings on our planet.
The inevitable push in this pandemic is towards closure, towards turning inward and locking down, into seeing the world as “us” and not “them”. It’s inevitable but it’s not irresistible. In fact, ignoring the world is the worst thing we can do to ourselves. Solidarity, connection, and mutual support are the way to get through this. It’s not an option, it’s a must to maintain our web, not to retreat into our bubble.
This was a central thread in the wide-ranging conversation which I moderated on April 30 for Philanthropic Foundations Canada. The topic was whether and how Canadian foundations can fund globally during the pandemic. But the very thoughtful discussion evolved into being about much more than global funding opportunities. We discussed our opportunity as a country to re-imagine and to rebuild not just our own communities but the global community. We have a chance to bring Canadian values and skills of humility, willingness to listen, to learn and to partner to the job of mending the gaps in the global web.
Dr Peter Singer, former CEO of Grand Challenges Canada and now a senior advisor at the World Health Organization, put it succinctly during the conversation: “This is the biggest global crisis in our lifetimes”. And it’s not just a health crisis, it’s an economic crisis. People will die of the virus. But they will also die from lack of health care for other illnesses. And they will die of poverty. Existing weaknesses and gaps in the global health web will be magnified: access to water and hygiene, food security, children’s health and education, discrimination and violence against women and girls. These gaps don’t just affect other people. The difficulty of fighting the virus in Nigeria or Bangladesh will mean that the virus continues to be a danger everywhere. Polio and smallpox were not just eradicated in North America. They had to be eradicated across the world.
Nic Moyer of the Canadian Council for International Cooperation addressed the need for a robust global health system. This is a role for Canadian philanthropy – to advocate for a strong multilateral system. The World Health Organization is one of a family of multilateral organizations that have grown over the years since the end of World War Two to remedy what was perceived as a lack of and a need for global collaboration. The work that the WHO does would have to be invented now if it didn’t exist – global data collection and sharing, global guidance, coordination of supplies and training of health workers and of course global research and development of therapeutics and vaccines against COVID 19.
Jennifer Brennan of the Mastercard Foundation spoke about how a globally-focused foundation thinks about this moment in global history. In her words, we must seize this moment to build the world we want. Mastercard Foundation has been working for almost two decades to support communities and particularly young people both in Africa and in Indigenous communities in Canada. In its pandemic response, the Foundation has focused on both the immediate and the longer term. It has created the COVID 19 Recovery and Resilience Program, which has two prongs: emergency support for health workers, young people and communities in Canada and in Africa, and support to build longer term resilience through access to digital solutions and financing for small businesses as well as e-learning. Mastercard is also continuing its support for the multilateral system of organizations in the UN family such as the Food and Agricultural Organization which is fighting the locust infestation in East Africa. The consistent goal is to build the resilience of all for the future (which includes the crisis caused by climate change).
Every foundation can have a strategic conversation about how to deal with this crisis from the lens of their own mission or purpose. Is your purpose to improve quality of lives, to address the causes of poverty, to relieve distress, to create vital knowledge, to support leaders, to create better policies? Whatever it is, this is your chance to think about responding to what this moment calls for: stepping up, engagement, advocacy, global connection. It’s not a time to close doors but to open them. We face huge transitions. How can we as funders help to make those transitions better? In the late 1940s and early 1950s, many of the multilateral organizations such as the WHO and the FAO that the world depends on were created with the imagination and leadership of Canadians. Canadian foundations were not as active then as they are today. As individuals and civil society organizations we have opportunities now to engage directly in maintaining our global web. And certainly, foundations have the resources. We can support the WHO COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund today (see below for details). But let’s also use our time now to think about transition, adaptation, resilience and creativity in the 2020s for our country and to advocate for an effective global system that helps us all avoid crises or cope more effectively with their consequences.
Canadian foundations can grant to the WHO COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund through the KBF Canada Foundation: This is the fastest and only way to contribute directly to global response efforts led by the World Health Organization (WHO). The Fund has raised more than $200m in six weeks and has already disbursed almost half for critical needs.