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Lucy Bernholz of Stanford is one of the thinkers I admire most in the world of philanthropy. Hers is an articulate and original voice. It helps me put into context the changes and arguments going on in the world of philanthropy, civil society and digital technology. Every year for the last thirteen, she has written what she calls a “blueprint”, an “annual industry forecast for how we use private resources for public benefit in the digital age”. In her 2022 blueprint, she has written a particularly clear-eyed commentary on what she calls a point of discontinuity that we have come to.

A year ago, Bernholz and I both picked up on an image used by the writer Arundhati Roy. She spoke of the pandemic period as a portal that we will walk through from the past to the future, and that in doing so we must decide what to bring and what to leave behind. We have not yet stepped through that portal. As I said in a January 2021 blog, much of what happened in 2020 in response to the pandemic did not go outside the boundaries of past assumptions and practice…we held the assumption that we would return to the ordinary, that there was a “normal” state that we would return to. Arguably, much the same could be said of 2021. Foundations gave more, more flexibly, more urgently. But they did not fundamentally change their roles as funders. Nor did charities and nonprofits change their roles as fundseekers and recipients.

Bernholz now talks about a discontinuity or, as she says, a point defined in physics as an interruption in the normal structure of a thing. She believes that the discontinuities accumulating in our environment, not only from the pandemic but even more importantly from the human-induced changes to the planet’s ecosystem, mean that “it’s not merely a matter of passing through a portal—we need to “leap” through the moment, making major shifts.”

How do we make this leap? It’s difficult to see beyond the moment, to avoid simply reacting to what is in front of us, to re-examine all our assumptions. The urgency of need in the pandemic makes it even more challenging to take a wider or longer view. Bernholz doesn’t have a guidebook for us. She does tell us that given the discontinuities we face, “we each need to make deep shifts in our individual lives and even bigger shifts in our political imaginations if we are to learn how to adapt to a climatically unstable planet and create new ways for humans to thrive”.

Generously, Bernholz shares links in her blueprint to examples of imaginative shifting in philanthropy. One is a report from a Design Justice workshop for the MacArthur Foundation, which explored how design justice methods can be applied to grantmaking in order to challenge rather than reproduce structural inequalities in philanthropy. The philanthropy world of 2022 as imagined and reproduced in a graphic from the workshop is a hugely different one than that of today. Among other things it imagines that a century from now there is no need for foundations. As Bernholz urges, let’s look at this closely to prompt a shift in our imaginations.

Another example is the work of Cassie Robinson, a grantmaker based in the United Kingdom who is imagining and sharing the shifts in practice that a funder could or should make to be able to leap to a future where everyone can thrive. Robinson has shared in a blog post a framework for thinking about the past or present of grantmaking practice and a possible future that might be very different, in which funders are field -builders for long-term change.. In another post, Robinson has described the skills that she believes should be important to grantmakers now, and this list is quite different to the skills we have sought in the past. Robinson names design, foresight, narrative, pattern recognition, synthesis and sense making, among other skills.  Using systemic design, continuous learning through inquiry, prioritising narrative, and field building, resourcing infrastructure, making use of all the assets that a foundation might have…this is a different picture of the roles of most philanthropists today. But a shift towards these roles, and acquiring the skills to get there, is required to make the leap to a more just and sustainable future. It may take some time. I do see Canadian foundations beginning to shift their thinking and to plan for the organizational structures and people skills they need to break away from old roles and unexamined assumptions. Urgency is probably what is needed most now.

I am made more hopeful, in the dark start to what may still be a difficult year, by Bernholz’s thoughtful conclusion:

“All of us can use this time to collectively pursue visions that seemed impossible not long ago. That is what Arundhati Roy meant when she described the pandemic as a portal back in 2020. It is a threshold, a moment of choice. What we take through with us matters—whether that be a deepened commitment to the health of our neighbors, the joy we’ve found in creating mutual supports for our children and elders, the pride we can take in successful collective action, or the hope of new ideas. These are the greatest potential powers of civil society and philanthropy.”

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

How can philanthropy confront the harsh syndemic we face today? Yes, I wrote syndemic, not pandemic. The Lancet, one of the world’s leading medical journals, describes a syndemic as “characterised by biological and social interactions between conditions and states, interactions that increase a person's susceptibility to harm or worsen their health outcomes.” In other words, being poor, hungry, homeless, and/or suffering from a condition such as heart disease, obesity or diabetes, makes your experience of a virus such as COVID-19 much worse. So, if you tackle the conditions affecting vulnerable populations, you lessen the impact of the virus enormously. As noted by The Lancet, “the economic crisis that is advancing towards us will not be solved by a drug or a vaccine… Approaching COVID-19 as a syndemic will invite a larger vision, one encompassing education, employment, housing, food, and environment.”

What does philanthropy have to do with this? A good deal. Foundations, as I have often argued, can be key players in systemic change. Philanthropy can work upstream to change the systems that create social and economic conditions for ill health. The de Beaumont Foundation, a US private foundation that focuses on the social determinants of health, noted in a 2019 blog that “increasing health care costs and worsening life expectancy are the results of a frayed social safety net, economic and housing instability, racism and other forms of discrimination, educational disparities, inadequate nutrition, and risks within the physical environment. These factors affect our health long before the health care system ever gets involved.” 

De Beaumont Foundation uses the metaphor of the stream as a way to think about how to intervene on health issues. It’s a metaphor that applies to other social challenges as well. Downstream are the medical interventions that treat illness. Midstream are the social interventions such as social workers and community health workers who work on connecting individuals to various supports (housing, child care, skills training, food security etc). Upstream are the interventions that change conditions in communities, including public policies, government actions and community-level collaboration. The upstream interventions over the long term will certainly improve the health and social consequences far downstream.

If we think about what we are experiencing today as a syndemic, what does this imply for how foundations rethink their strategies?  Many Canadian foundations were using a mix of strategies before the arrival of COVID-19. The majority probably focus downstream on responding to urgent community needs for food, shelter, medical treatment, skills training, and supports for families and youth. The immediate consequences of the virus have been a sharpening of these needs and a corresponding increase in demand for philanthropic support. Depression, anxiety, loneliness are probably more urgent mental health needs than ever, for example. Does this mean that all resources should be allocated to downstream work?

I think there is a case to be made for swimming upstream. The syndemic perspective underlines the importance of not abandoning efforts at systemic change. And there are many strategies, usually employed in a portfolio, that Canadian foundations can employ to pursue change. In 2018, FSG, the US-based consultants who work on social impact strategies, issued a useful guide that listed nine strategies for foundations wanting to work upstream:

In practice, foundations use a mix of strategies, including supporting community programs, generating knowledge (sometimes to inform policy), catalyzing collaboration, and building capacity. More foundations are practicing the convening of communities of interest and of peers and considering collective funding tools.

Since the beginning of the crisis, we have seen many Canadian foundations deploying these strategies and working upstream: 

These are all remarkable examples of foundations swimming upstream to address the inevitable changes to systems that we need to cope with and to prevent the worst consequences of a future syndemic. Let’s face it, it’s on the horizon if we think about climate change, let alone another virus.

The pandemic is a clarifying moment for philanthropy. A spotlight is shining harshly on the familiar endowed foundation model. It is being aimed even more pointedly at the form of endowed philanthropy known as the donor-advised fund or DAF.  The point is sharp: in this time of crisis like no other, when charities and communities need resources more than ever, can there be any justification for foundations and DAFs not to spend much more and much faster? Donors have received a tax advantage for their decision to give away some wealth to a foundation or DAF. So, isn’t this the time to put much more of that money into the hands of those who need it, and to do so unconditionally?  Indeed, is this not the time when foundations and DAFs should spend themselves down entirely?

The needs created by the pandemic intersect with the longer-standing needs of less advantaged, more marginalized organizations led by people of colour and Indigenous peoples which have generally received less from foundations and DAFs. This has sharpened the critique of “traditional” endowments. Edgar Villanueva, criticizing DAFs in particular, puts it bluntly: “ Part of philanthropy’s mandate in this critical moment is to interrogate the ways in which our old structures uphold white supremacy…As traditionally structured, DAFs operate under the assumption that the presumably white, wealthy donor knows what’s best.”

Some voices today in the United States, and in other countries including Canada and the United Kingdom where the endowed private foundation or fund is a well-established philanthropic structure, are calling on these funds to substantially increase their giving. This has been the principle behind the collective statements issued by philanthropy-serving organizations and funders in Canada, the United States and the UK.  Some donors to DAFs are calling personally on other donors to give more. An example is the HalfMyDAF campaign, calling on DAF donors to step up significantly.

Evidently, there are those who believe that a response that is left up to individual donors is not sufficient. In their view it would be in the public interest for governments to impose a higher mandated payout. An American example of this is the Emergency Charity Stimulus campaign  which is calling on Congress to mandate a temporary increase in the disbursement quota or payout from 5% to 10% and its extension to individual DAFs (which do not have individualized requirements either in the US or Canada). John Hallward joined the debate in Canada with the recent argument that government should increase annual foundation disbursement quotas (from current 3.5% of invested assets) so that foundations can help cover the increasing financial needs of charities due to the pandemic.

Some go so far as to suggest that the whole model is wrong in this time and place. The idea that the public should provide incentives to the wealthy to set aside money in perpetuity for philanthropic purposes with no requirements to disburse beyond 3.5% or 5% per year seems particularly wrong at a time of enormous need. Interestingly, the idea that foundations should endure indefinitely has not always been the standard model or belief. In a valuable commentary on the history of the idea of perpetuity, Benjamin Soskis, a philanthropy historian, points out that until well into the second half of the 20th century, foundation donors and boards had “fluid attitudes toward foundation life span and spending rates that had not congealed into philanthropy-wide norms.” In his view, it was in fact largely an attempt by government (Congress) in the Tax Reform Act of 1969 to impose a lifetime limit on foundations that “rallied foundation allies — both around federal spending requirements, seen as an alternative to lifetime limits, and also around a defense of the right to perpetuity, which became a stand-in for the defense of foundation independence more generally….Congress had meant the payout requirement to serve as a substitute for a foundation lifetime limit by instituting a condition on continued life based on a minimum responsibility to the current moment; but it ultimately became more commonly regarded as a guarantor of perpetuity.”

This American lead established the example for Canadian regulators who began to regulate foundations through minimum disbursement quotas in the 1980s. There has never been an expectation that foundations should be forced to spend down. Arguably, the expectations among provincial regulators and accountants that charities should behave prudently in stewarding their funds has suggested to foundation and charity boards that they invest with a long-term and low risk conservationist perspective. Government regulation does not always have the consequences that one would expect.

But today we face a financial crisis for the charitable sector of a magnitude that none of us have ever experienced before. As Soskis rightly says, “this is no time to rely on settled practice, on defaults, on unexamined institutional traditions. Even if foundations stop short of taking (former Ford Foundation President) McGeorge Bundy’s advice to “regularly ask [themselves if they] could do more good dead than alive,” they should fully recognize that, at this moment, grappling with the temporal dimensions of philanthropy is a matter of life and death.” I agree with those who maintain that this is the time for extraordinary giving. I think it must remain an individual decision based on philanthropic mission whether to spend down or remain focused on the longer term with reserves of capital to support work that will take many years (climate change adaptation and mitigation would be an example). But in 2020/2021, and maybe longer, granting MUCH more than the minimum disbursement if a foundation, and definitely more if you advise a DAF, is a MUST. Phil Buchanan of the Center for Effective Philanthropy put it best in a recent blog : “Now is the time for leadership. None of us will look back at this time and wish we did less.”

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.

I participated this week in an important discussion facilitated by Tides Canada and Future of Good on the need for foundation philanthropy in Canada to step up its giving in response to the COVID emergency. The spark for this discussion was a call to action by Give5, a new movement dedicated to encouraging foundations to give 5% of their assets this year to meet urgent needs.

I agree with this call to action. It’s a way to signal the fundamentally new and prolonged crisis that we are all experiencing, and the enormity of the need that has been created by the necessary shutdown. If there was ever a time to do more public good now is the time to do it, regardless of whether your mission statement does or does not include support for the neediest and most disadvantaged.

This being said, philanthropy is facing, as has been noted by philanthropic leaders, a “major reckoning with philanthropic obligation to the present and to the future.” What must we do today and what are we obliged to consider for the future?

In the present, we can begin by considering the capital that is at the disposal of foundations.

Foundations are not just granting instruments. They are deployers of social capital, which can take the form of money but also can be represented through knowledge, brains and networks

How best to deploy that capital for today’s emergency? Give5 is promoting the opportunity to make more money available by spending down more assets. It’s focusing on one part of the capital, money (arguably the most visible part) and one aspect, quantity. The target of 5% focuses our attention on an easily measurable standard. It’s a demanding commitment especially as assets diminish in value. Yet it is powerful as a quantifiable token of willingness to step up.

But what about quality? In other words, how effectively to spend that extra money? There are three important questions that foundations could ask themselves to ensure that quality matches quantity as they ramp up spending.

Targeting, timing and type.

Targeting: how can we best direct our extra dollars? To local collective funds that are able to distribute the funds where there are greatest gaps or needs? What about getting additional money to nonprofits that help other nonprofits, such as Imagine Canada or other sector-specific umbrella groups? What about supporting underfunded advocacy groups needed more than ever as the crisis exposes inequalities in our society? And what about funding global efforts to fight the pandemic through data, and development of therapies and vaccines?

Timing: do we spend this all at once? Spread it over time in this coming year?  Everyone is telling us this will be a marathon not a sprint. It’s not about throwing lots more money at the emergency today but perhaps about spreading it over time, in the way that only foundations with a longer-term view can do.

Type: what form should the extra money (and perhaps other forms of social capital) take? Should it be all grants? Unrestricted? Cash? General operating support? What about offering guarantees for credit?  What about seeding community reinvestment funds? Can we put more funds into convening activities, or sharing information?

These are not easy questions. But there was arguably never a better or more necessary time to be creative in deployment of capital.

Foundations are great counter-cyclical engines. We can’t afford not to think about what is needed in a world that is changing before our eyes. The present is truly present.

And yet…what about the future? Aren’t foundations built for keeping their eyes on the future, given their endowments and their long-term perspective?  In the context of this emergency, as Beth Breeze of the University of Kent put it recently in The Guardian, foundations must think about relief  for now and think about the future through funding research and rebuilding efforts.

It’s a false choice to think that foundations must either throw it all into the rescue today versus saving for the fight tomorrow. It’s not just about spending down today versus saving for the future. Big issues are still on the horizon. Climate change hasn’t disappeared. Disparities in the world aren’t going away. Investments are needed today in work that will bear fruit only in the future.

In the end this is a call on foundations to increase their spend this year, of all years, but not to neglect the funding that will lead to systemic changes in the future. The pandemic crisis has highlighted as never before the cracks and outright gaps in the systems of our society. Foundations can help provide social capital to support the work that will change systems for the better in the future.

I am the granddaughter of a historian and I grew up in a family that valued history for what it can tell us about our present and possibly our future. So, I am intrigued by what history might have to say about our responses to the current pandemic. More specifically, I am interested in what history might tell us about the implications for philanthropy and foundations as they struggle to make sense of today.   

As a Canadian historian, Prof. Mark Humphries of Wilfrid Laurier University, has noted, “what history teaches us is that in the moment, we don’t always get it right.” Ian Austen of the New York Times interviewed Prof Humphries for a reflective piece on the parallels between the so-called Spanish flu of 1918 (which actually originated in China) and the pandemic of 2020.  Dr Humphries wrote a 2012 book “The Last Plague: Spanish Influenza and the Politics of Public Health in Canada.”  In 1918, people had a hard time seeing clearly what the implications of the pandemic were for the societies that they lived in. This is true in 2020. None of us have crystal balls. However, it was quickly obvious in 1918 in Canada that in the absence of national data and standards of healthcare, the virus was hard to fight. Provincial responsibility for health care led to fragmented and localized governmental responses and a lack of information which individual philanthropy could do little to fix in the moment. Philanthropy limited itself to providing local relief. The 1918-1920 pandemic led directly to the creation in Canada of the federal Department of Health and the Dominion Bureau of Statistics. Over time, government built a stronger public health system, although it took another epidemic, the SARS crisis of 2003, to create the Public Health Agency of Canada. And we still have gaps in our data that limit effective response. Using hindsight, philanthropy could have focused more over the past century on advocacy for stronger public systems of data, care and prevention.

On a global scale, history tells us that pandemics can lead to huge civilizational changes. According to Parag Khanna and Karan Khemka, in an article on the possible implications of the COVID 19 pandemic for the world, “the 14th-century Black Death caused millions of deaths across Eurasia, splintered the largest territorial empire ever known (the Mongols), forced significant wage growth in Europe, and promoted wider maritime exploration that led to European colonialism.” History helps us see these changes, although we must have some great distance sometimes to see clearly. But even if we can’t begin to see yet all the ramifications of the COVID 19 pandemic over time and around the planet, we can see the vulnerabilities and inequalities in our own society which the virus exposes.

Rhodri Davies of the Charities Aid Foundation in the UK has written a thought-provoking recent article on the lessons of pandemics for philanthropy in British and European history. One key lesson is that government focuses more on its relationship with civil society. According to Davies, past epidemics of plague, cholera and other infectious diseases have led to state efforts to rationalize and centralize charitable relief for the suffering, just as they have led to efforts to build stronger public health systems. The plague years of the late 16th century led to parliamentary criteria for poverty relief (the first stages of a legal definition of charity in 1604 in England).

Plagues highlight inequality and lead (in some cases) to public policy changes that address these inequalities. Davies quotes an English historian, W.K. Jordan: “these frightful visitations of epidemic taught the nation much regarding its own resources and disciplined it in the understanding that the poverty bred by plague must be instantly relieved lest even more terrible social consequences should ensue. Indeed it is not too much to say that men had come to understand that poverty itself was a kind of plague, epidemic in the industrial society.” This is drawn from a history of philanthropy in England, 1480-1660.  But it is certainly applicable to today as well. While we have a welfare state that far surpasses that of Tudor England, we still have glaring gaps and inequalities. In many Indigenous communities for example, the gaps are there for all to see. Will this crisis lead to a renewed interest by government in how nonprofits and charities serve a purpose as agents against inequality? What might that mean for the web of rules and regulations that snare these organizations in outmoded ways of operation? Should we be thinking about what we want to change?

While governments cope now with what has been exposed by the crisis, what should philanthropy do? Philanthropy can be a tool for softening the worst impacts within the system as it is. Or/and it can be a tool for more fundamental change. As Davies notes, “philanthropy can be both a tool for maintaining and protecting existing social dynamics and hierarchies and also a means to break down societal divisions and establish new norms.” 

What can history tell us about how react to this pandemic, even in its early days? It seems to me that we draw at least these lessons:

What will history say about what happened in 2020? Perhaps philanthropy has a chance to shape what comes next.

I am learning some unexpected things as I look for news about the effects of the pandemic and lockdown. The bad news is all too easily found through print and other media. Watching CNN is a frightening experience right now.  But I am also finding much good news, especially through social media. Imagine this lockdown five or ten years ago without such media.  We would not be connected to a wider human community that is actively sharing and creating and thinking out loud through a world-wide network. I am learning information that I would simply not have known if I stuck to one or two traditional media sources. Even better, I am discovering creative responses through poetry and music. And I am coming across eloquent reflections on our shared condition that console and inspire me.

Social media pointed me to one of these eloquent reflections by Grant Oliphant, CEO of the Heinz Endowments, a private foundation in Pittsburgh. Oliphant is a thoughtful and articulate practitioner of philanthropy.  No surprise then that he has responded to this crisis with some important reflections on the situation that we find ourselves in and the meaning that we can take from it. In The Rescue We Seek, Oliphant summarizes five lessons that he believes this crisis is teaching us all:

In my opinion, Oliphant provides a valuable framework for foundation leaders thinking through and beyond this crisis. “It turns out,” he says, “that justice matters, and so do knowledge, government and nature; it turns out that only by embracing our shared future can we be confident of reaching it.”  

How could foundation leaders translate this statement into concrete action? Think about each of these ideas in turn. Justice, knowledge, government (or public leadership) and nature. And consider all of these from the perspective of collective action. We might ask ourselves the following questions.

Justice: what can we do as a foundation to address injustice in the face of this crisis? We have heard about philanthropy’s pledges of action and encouragement to change foundation practices so that we remove the barriers and reduce the power imbalances between funder and recipient.  Directing more unrestricted funds to the organizations in our communities that are working to support the worst-hit and most vulnerable should be high on almost every funder’s list.

Knowledge: how can we as a foundation contribute to the knowledge that humanity must have to cope with and overcome this global threat? Even if as a foundation you haven’t previously considered funding research, this is surely the time to seek out opportunities for supporting global collective effort to find therapies, apps to test and trace, vaccines, etc.

Public leadership: how can we as a foundation support the development of effective public leaders to help us through future crises? Leadership is more important than ever. As Nancy Koehn, Harvard historian and author of Forged In Crisis: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times, suggests, we need public leaders who offer” brutal honesty and credible hope”. Those leaders don’t emerge without mentoring and opportunities for growth. Young people are watching now. Koehn notes “This difficult, turbulent time will surely someday be seen, in part, as a fertile, living laboratory in which courageous leaders were made, not born.”

Nature: how can we as a foundation contribute to fixing the damage done to our natural environment? As Oliphant says, “you can view this virus as a plea for sanity from an angry planet, but I view it more as an expression of the obvious: the more we corrupt the air, water, biosystems and climate that give us life, the more vulnerable we become to illness and death.” If not now, then soon, every foundation will need to think about what it can do to build a healthier ecosystem. This is also about justice.

Collective action: how can we as a foundation contribute to the work/ideas/initiatives of others so that we can together be more effective to achieve more social and environmental justice, greater knowledge, better leadership? Everywhere, private foundations, community foundations and other funders are joining forces to respond to the emergency. Coming out of this crisis, every foundation should consider more participation in collective efforts to recover and rebuild.

Oliphant concludes: “We will triumph against this virus, but that isn’t the only test facing us…the deeper and more enduring test is whether we will use what we learn from this affliction to build a less fragile, fractured society.” This is an opportunity for us to expand our vision, and to grow as funders. Good news amid the bad.

Here are three resources to foster collective funding in this crisis (and there are many community-level collective funds in Canada as well):

COVID-19 Action Fund from CIFAR to mobilize the best thinkers across the world and provide the space needed to quickly address COVID-19 and understand future pandemic threats.

Covid -19 Response Fund, to support the World Health Organization in partnership with the United Nations Foundation and Swiss Philanthropy Foundation. Canadian donors can channel funds though the KBF Canada Foundation to the WHO.

Opportunities for Philanthropic Response to the COVID-19 Crisis. The Bridgespan Group provides perspectives on where funder resources can be productively and collectively channeled.

The COVID-19 emergency has faced private funders with an enormous opportunity for change. A week ago,  I wrote about how groups of private funders are coming together to create and commit to pledges for a more responsive relationship with their grantees and communities. Four funder associations in Canada have now come up with a strong collective pledge of action that sets out five guiding principles for foundation strategies during and after the emergency period.   

Canadian foundations are being urged to act quickly, flexibly and generously to meet the needs of their grantees and the community at large. This is consistent with the voices across the community sector that are appealing for a commitment from their funders to continue their grants, to lift any conditions on them and to put faith in their grantees to use the funds as necessary. Funders are also being asked to increase their overall funding and to direct it to the emergency as it grows.

The demand for funds will certainly exceed what any one funder can supply, even if foundations take more from their endowments as they are being urged to do. How do you know where to target your limited funds most effectively? It seems obvious but the best thing to do is to ask them. The always thoughtful Phil Buchanan of the Center for Effective Philanthropy in a series of three recent blogs has suggested that funders must reach out across their entire population of grantees, to quickly identify those in the most precarious positions — and then target their near-term resources to those organizations accordingly. CEP suggests a quick survey of grantees to ask them: how have your operations been disrupted? What do you need most from us?  What are you in danger of having to stop or abandon as the crisis continues? A proactive reach out to grantees (unless you have hundreds of them) should be a relatively simple thing to do.

But there is more to think about than maintaining support and communication with grantees, although that comes first. As I read through the commentaries that are coming fast now from observers of philanthropy, I notice how the crisis is sharpening the prevailing debate about the role of private philanthropy in society. Should foundations dedicate all their resources to address social injustice, to advocate for the least advantaged, to change underlying and systemic conditions? Or are they unable to do so because they are part of the very power structure that creates injustice? Does their commitment to the perpetual endowment model prevent them from acting effectively, with enough of their resources, on the here and now?  Some even within the foundation community are critical of the response to the crisis so far, suggesting that it reveals, as it does in so many ways, the inability of foundations to react effectively.

I don’t believe this is true. We have not yet seen what Canadian foundations can and will do. It is encouraging that the fourth and fifth principles of the joint funder association statement address head on the question of social justice. The statement suggests taking action for equity now in the emergency and in the long term.

In the now: “Support and amplify community-based organizations so that their needs are heard and met. This is particularly true for equity-seeking groups.”

In the longer-term: “Invest time and energy to notice, make visible and share with others new ways and norms of approaching our work that result in deep change and can be scaled up toward equity and justice in the months and years to come.”

Actions are the ways in which we make credible our words. So what to do?

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