This is a more personal post than usual. It’s about Canadian foundation philanthropy, as may of my posts are. But it is also sharing some of my personal reflections as I look forward to the publication at the end of November of my book From Charity To Change: Inside The World of Canadian Foundations.
Why did I write a book about Canadian foundations? It’s something that I have thought about for fifteen years, although the writing took only two. Over those fifteen years, I have seen a lot of change in the foundation world. Some of it was driven by outside events. Some of it built on the connections and inspirations provided by the growth of personal and digital networks. Some of it has come through internal change as foundations have learned from their own experiences. There has been enough change to make an interesting story that I thought worth telling.
This book is based on stories of individual foundations. But it is also a story about a story itself. One of the reasons I felt compelled to write was that I had been working on telling a good story about the role of foundations for many years. Of course, I should say immediately that generalized narratives about foundations founder quickly on the diversity of foundation behaviours and actions. It’s difficult and inaccurate to say that all foundations play a specific and similar role beyond that of provider of capital for social good.
But in the absence of details or data, stories are built around assumptions. Narratives are built around what can be seen, such as foundation grants. Or about what is not seen, such as how foundations make decisions or what their motives are. There is a public interest in what foundations do and why because there is a public investment in them, through tax subsidies offered to donors. But there is also a default to suspicion in the absence of information, or in the presence of wealth for public benefit without public input on its distribution. In the worst Interpretation, foundations are institutions used by wealthy people to impose their own priorities or to subvert public priorities around social change, while maintaining their own privilege.
I had a motive to develop a more positive story about the role of foundation philanthropy. As the leader of Philanthropic Foundations Canada, it was my job to craft it. I was also more than curious about the unique role that foundations could play in our society. Over the years, I worked on various stories about the roles of foundations, ranging from social investor to strategic risk-taker, to social R&D funder, to convenor and catalyst of change and to community partner. What I understood as I learned more about the realities of foundation philanthropy was that no one description was going to fit. Foundations themselves were changing their missions and roles.
This is what I wanted to capture in a book. I chose to write about foundations in Canada who are generally independent and run by autonomous boards, whether connected through family or not. In talking about foundation philanthropy, I did not focus on public foundations which fundraise for their institutions or communities, although many do extraordinary work. I also chose to write about foundations whose work has evolved over a period of 20 years or more, because this provides a track record of change. And I chose to write about foundations who already understand the importance of communicating what they do and how and why. So, my twenty-plus foundation stories are not representative of all foundations or even of a majority. But they are stories that I hope provide a richness of detail which will nuance the prevailing narrative on foundations. I hope to dispel the mystery, to show that foundations are run by serious people who have humility about their roles and curiosity about their communities, who are willing to change course and to learn from their actions, who are committed to working and sharing with others.
It could be said that I chose only the most positive stories. But I am not uncritical in the book. I am well aware that foundations in Canada are being reproached, as they are in the United States and elsewhere, for not moving quickly, for not responding to the needs of the present, in a world of rapid climate change and increasing inequality. Foundations, just like other organizations, must focus more on equity and inclusion. And they need to be more transparent. That means sharing data more proactively, not only because the regulators ask for it. To show themselves accountable, foundations need to explain what change, what social impact, they seek and how they are going about it. The foundation leaders who I interviewed know this. And many others who I haven’t included directly in the book but to whom I have spoken know it too. Younger generations of families on boards, new leaders of recently-created foundations and donors who have emerged in the last decade are responding to the world of 2022 with creative strategies for deploying capital for public good. A book written five years from now may well include them.
What I wanted to show in this book was that while foundations may vary in their missions and roles, there are common characteristics shared by those who have grown in their social impact over the years:
These are what make the stories in this book relevant beyond Canada. Yes, this is an insider account about Canadian foundations. But it is informed by, and I believe, important to the work of foundations in the United States, the United Kingdom, and other parts of the world. Foundations in all these places are doing the work that I describe in Canada: strengthening communities, building fields, advancing public policy, confronting climate change. What I hope is that by giving some depth to the story of what these foundations do, I also have shown why foundations matter and why we should care. I am as curious and eager as ever to find out what happens next.
Do discussions about “data” make your eyes glaze? Why is it important for you to pay attention and why now?
The answer is that, as the last two years have shown us, we need good data more and we need it urgently. We are surrounded by a sea of data. In the digital age, we can collect it, connect it and share it more easily than ever before. Charities and philanthropic foundations can track not only who their clients and grantees are but how they interact and the outcomes of these interactions.
Why is it important to look more closely now? Because we need good quality and shareable data to tell us more about who is doing what and what is NOT happening. The combined crises of rising inequality, systemic discrimination and the unequal health impacts of the pandemic tell us that we need data to throw light on the gaps and blind spots in our society. What is clear is that while we have all kinds of data at organizational level, we still don’t have a data ecosystem across the charitable sector that allows us to share and integrate data, and to give us all the chance to find these needs and funding opportunities faster in our society. On an individual basis, funders ask grantees for reports and data on the “problems” that charities are trying to solve. They ask for evidence on both performance and impact. Government funders do too. And charities themselves ask for data from each other. Certain rules govern these interactions. Some, such as the privacy rules governing the sharing of personal information, are set at a systemic level by governments. Others may be set by the organizations themselves. For example, foundations may choose, or not, to share data about the work they do and the impact they are having. But they don’t make these decisions in a vacuum. Increasingly, the system-wide norm within which funders and others operate is one in which data should be shared – think of social media platforms and the incentive they create to share information.
So, what do we need to share data better and faster? A February 2018 report from the now defunct Ontario think tank Mowat NFP, Collaborating for Greater Impact: Building an Integrated Data Ecosystem gave us a roadmap. The authors argue for recognizing the value of building an integrated data system with transparent but standard rules for sharing and integrating data, ways of linking data across organizations and a new norm around open and collaborative data-sharing. Mowat diagnosed the challenges in getting there, starting with a general lack of data literacy and capacity among charities (including foundations) who have little time or expertise for data collection and sharing. Resource-poor charities also have understandable worries about the costs of investing in data tools. And many are suspicious about risks to privacy or about how data could be misused.
For these reasons, Mowat argued for the creation of a “data charter” for the charitable sector that establishes a code of practice and protocols for data sharing. Mowat also suggests that governments and philanthropic funders provide support for capacity-building and even act as backbones or sponsors of datasets and of data centres or labs. This case is made in a persuasive recent CBC opinion piece by Marina Glogovac, the CEO of CanadaHelps, the digital fundraising platform: “The sector cannot be successful if it continues to be starved of the resources needed to modernize, work more efficiently, and operate effectively in the digital era. We must better enable them through government support and funding, but also challenge charities themselves to take on the hard work of becoming data-driven digital organizations. To make this critical transformation, charities need access to high-quality resources and training programs”. The federal government is prepared to finance small business adoption of digital technologies (see the 2021 budget commitment of $1.4 billion to small businesses to provide training and advisory services for digital adoption and its $2.6 billion to the Business Development Bank to help small and medium-sized businesses finance technology adoption). As Marina Glogovac rightly says, this commitment should absolutely apply to charities as well.
What else can we ask government to do? We can ask for better regulatory frameworks for data collection and sharing. Mowat pointed out in 2018 that “there have been very few signals that the federal and provincial governments are interested in modernizing, or aligning, the current legislative/regulatory framework for data collection and sharing in the charitable sector. One of the largest gaps in Canada is legislation that permits system-level linked data, drawing upon both government administrative data and data collected by charitable organizations and service providers in the community.” The Mowat paper recommended a “charitable data policy framework which would provide a strategic, integrated perspective on the data issues facing charities”, including challenges navigating the legislative and regulatory environment and barriers accessing government administrative data.
Nothing has changed since February 2018 when Mowat’s paper was released (other than Mowat itself going out of existence due to lack of funding). In April 2021, the Advisory Committee on the Charitable Sector noted in its second report that “while there is considerable available data, there is a lack of coordination, integration, and comparability of data to support policy and program design, targeted research, and public awareness of the economic and programmatic impacts of the sector.” It recommended the co-creation between the sector and the federal government of a national data strategy.
How do we get there? Marina suggests it’s time for us to have a federal Minister for Charities and a Development Bank of our own. The Advisory Committee suggests that we need a “home in government” to provide a place for comprehensive policy development (including on data). In a post-pandemic world, fuelled by smart and shared data, the evidence for a new policy framework for the charitable sector that includes data seems more and more compelling.