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In this episode of the Philanthropisms podcast we talk to Róisín Wood, CEO of the Community Foundation Northern Ireland (CFNI), about the landscape for philanthropy and civil society in Northern Ireland. Including:

• How and why was CFNI originally formed, and what is the organisation’s focus today?
• What is the history and current context for civil society in NI?
• What is the overall makeup of the NI civil society sector, in terms of formalised vs informal orgs, large vs small, different cause areas etc.?
• What is the history and current context for giving in NI? E.g. how much HNWI giving is there? How much mass market giving? What role does corporate philanthropy play? What role do foundations play?
• What is the attitude of the NI government towards civil society in general? What is the attitude towards philanthropy?
• Northern Ireland has a well-document history of challenges with political and religious polarisation - what role have civil society organisations and philanthropy played in trying to overcome this?
• At a time of increasing polarisation elsewhere, does the NI experience have things to teach CSOs and funders elsewhere about how to address these issues effectively?
• Are there ongoing challenges with polarisation in NI? Are these continuations of long-standing issues, or are there new fault lines emerging?
• Does working further upstream demand a willingness to blur the boundaries between philanthropy and politics? How much of a barrier is this?
• How can philanthropic funders bring people together across divides to have meaningful conversations, work together and find common cause?
• What is the USP of Community Foundations within the wider ecosystem of philanthropy?
• Can the successes of place-based initiatives inform activities or policymaking at a regional or national level? How can organisations based in one place ensure they ‘influence upwards’?
• Is “place” more complex than it is sometimes presented? I.e. at what geographic level do we feel a sense of belonging or identity?
• Is there potential for cultivating philanthropy from a Northern Irish Diaspora? What might this look like?

Related Links:

• CFNI’s website
• CFNI Strategy 2023-26
• Philanthropisms podcast conversations with Michaela Giurgiu on Eastern European Philanthropy and Community Foundations, Anelise Hanson Shrout on the history of philanthropy and the Great Famine, Farai Chideya on philanthropy’s role in building a multiracial pluralistic democracy, and Natasha Friend & Maria Ahmed on participatory place-based philanthropy.
• WPM article “Why isn’t all philanthropy trust-based philanthropy?”
• Republic of Ireland’s National Philanthropy Policy, launched by govt in 2023

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In this episode we take a look at the recent announcement by Bill Gates that he now plans to give away 99% of his wealth and spend down his foundation over the next 20 years. Including:

• Should we be excited about this news?
• Why has the announcement been made now? Should it be seen in part as a response to the Trump administration?
• Do the sums stack up? Can we square what has been said so far about the total amounts that will be given away with the projected annual spending rates?
• Is the Gates Foundation going to look beyond grantmaking in order to spend out? i.e. by transferring its endowment to other orgs, or by using endowment assets to make impact investments?
• Is this more evidence that norms around perpetuity in foundation philanthropy are shifting?
• Will it be necessary to shift away from “strategic” philanthropy in order to give money away at the required rate?
• Will Gates’s decision prompt other wealthy people to commit to giving more money more quickly?
• Gates has framed his goals in terms of “solving” a number of major societal problems, but does this set unrealistic expectations of what philanthropy can achieve?
• Is there a risk that the increased pace of Gates' giving could exacerbate concerns about the distorting effect that his philanthropy can have in some of the countries where the foundation operates?
• Why did a norm of perpetuity for foundations become established in the first place?
• What are some of the key criticisms that have been levelled at perpetual endowments?

Relevant links

• AP article featuring comment from Rhodri, “Bill Gates pledges his remaining fortune to the Gates Foundation, which will close in 20 years”
• Michael Kavate’s piece in Inside Philanthropy, “Gates Sets An End Date: 2045. But Do We Really Know How Much He’ll Spend?”
• New York Times interview, “The $200 Billion Gamble: Bill Gates’s Plan to Wind Down His Foundation”
• WPM article series “What’s the Point of Philanthropic Foundations?” Part 1, part 2 and part 3.
• WPM Guide to short-term vs long-term approaches in philanthropy
• Ben Soskis’s paper on “The History of the Giving While Living” ethic
• Philanthropisms podcast episodes on the ‘history of foundations’ and ‘philanthropy, gratitude and recognition’
• Philanthropisms podcast interview with Maribel Morey

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In this episode we talk to Allison Fine (President of Every.org and nonprofit tech expert) about the impact of AI on philanthropy, and how it can be used to make fundraising more relational at scale. Including:

• Is everyday giving in decline? If so, what are the key drivers?
• Are there particular declines among certain demographics or age groups?
• Has this led to an over-reliance on a small group of donors giving larger amounts? What are the practical and ethical issues with this?
• Has fundraising become too transactional? If so, why?
• Has a paradigm of transactional fundraising led many nonprofits to measure the wrong things, and therefore misjudge “success”?
• How do donors feel about transactional fundraising?
• What is the ‘leaky bucket problem’?
• Has an over-reliance on transactional methods of fundraising played any part in damaging or eroding public trust in nonprofits?
• Has a lack of opportunities for genuine connection and participation as a result of nonprofits becoming too transactional led donors to look elsewhere? (E.g. to online social movements, or individual crowdfunding requests?)
• What impact does transactional fundraising have on fundraisers themselves? (Do they actually want to use these methods?)
• What are the key components of a relational approach to fundraising? (E.g. personalisation of approach, tailored reporting etc).
• What have traditionally been seen as the barriers to making this work at scale?
• How can AI tools help?
• How do nonprofit leaders ensure that AI tools are adopted in the right way? (i.e. in ways that add value to human work, or free up human time, rather than just replacing it)?
• What new opportunities and challenges does the growth of online giving via digital platforms bring?
• What is the current market for cryptocurrency donations?

Related Links:

• Every.org
• Every.org's "Relational Fundraising Playbook"
• Allison's pieces for Chronicle of Philanthropy: "How to Treat Every Donor Like They Matter — and Keep Them" and "Relentless Fundraising Is Eroding Trust in Nonprofits. Here’s How to Fix Things".
• Excerpt from The Smart Nonprofit in SSIR (2022)
• WPM guide to philanthropy and AI,
• Philanthropisms podcast episodes with Milos Maricic & Giuseppe Ugazio, Lisa Greer and J. Bob Alotta.
• Philanthropisms podcast deep dives on philanthropy and AI and the platformisation of giving.

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In this episode we discuss risk, success and failure in the context of international development and philanthropy, with Sarah Jeffrey (Vitol Foundation), Victoria Tayler (Risk Pool Fund) and Lonnie Hackett (Healthy Learners). Including

• What is the Risk Pool Fund and how does it work?
• What are the key market failures or needs it is designed to address?
• Are grantees often unwilling to highlight “failures” to their funders, for fear of losing future support?
• Are funders less likely to be objective in evaluating challenges faced by grantees when their own money is directly affected?
• Is a drive to keep “overheads” low part of the challenge?
• Can the collectivisation of risk through pooling offer reassurance to funders?
• How do you distinguish between foreseeable and unforeseeable problems?
• What role does RPF’s External Review Panel play?
• Does the experience of organisations on the ground give them a different perspective on risk?
• Is scaling the goal? Would replication be more appropriate? Or is the aim to highlight a market failure and thereby change funder behaviour?
• Has the RPF had an impact on the perception of risk among the funders involved in it?
• Are the insights from the fund being used to inform any preventative work designed to reduce the risks of certain kinds of failures occurring?
• What impact are we seeing so far from the dismantling of USAID, and what should we expect to see longer term?

Related Links:

• Risk Pool Fund
• Healthy Learners
• Risk Pool Fund model analysis report
• RPF paper, "Charting the divide: When funders perceptions of risk collide with on-the-ground realities"
• WPM article on "Philanthropy at a time of chaos"
• Philanthropisms interviews with Ewan Kirk, Sadaf Shallwani and Martha Lackritz-Peltier.

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In this episode we discuss participatory grantmaking with Natasha Friend, Director of Camden Giving, and Maria Ahmed, a participant in Camden Giving's own participatory grantmaking work. Including:

• How did Camden Giving’s experiments with participatory grantmaking first come about?
• How does it work in practice?
• What has been the primary driver for keeping going?
• What have been the main insights from grantmaking meetings?
• Do the citizen grantmakers have full autonomy over grant decisions, or do they make recommendations that are then considered and implemented by foundation staff?
• How do you manage disagreements or differences of opinion?
• Are there any constraints on the causes/organisation types that the citizen panels can recommend?
• Are all the grants made in the form of unrestricted gifts? If so, over what time period? What is the average size of grant?
• Does Camden Giving provide advice or data to help guide decision-making? If so, how do participants make use of this?
• Do participatory approaches work particularly well for place-based giving schemes, due to the nature of the donor base?
• Could these approaches work for all funders?
• Should ALL grantmaking be participatory?
• What sort of infrastructure is needed to enable more funders to adopt participatory approaches?
• What kind of challenges might there be for traditional grantmakers when it comes to bringing communities and people with lived experience into decision making processes? How do you overcome these challenges?
• How should you measure the impact of participatory grantmaking? Is it this just about the impact on grantees, or does it need to take into account the impact on participants in the process?
• Does participatory grant making work best in places that already have a high degree of civic engagement, or can it be a tool for building civic engagement?
• Does Camden Giving’s participatory approach act as a motivating factor for any of the donors to the organisation?

Related links

• Camden Giving
• Research on "Building London’s Participation Infrastructure"
• Participatory Grantmaking global community
• Centre for Evidence and Impact report on "Participatory Grantmaking - Building the evidence"
• WPM article "Why isn't all philanthropy trust-based philanthropy?"
• Natasha's guest article for WPM "Fears for Tears – Why Are We So Afraid to Allow Emotion Into Philanthropy?"
• Philanthropisms podcast interviews with Mandy van Deven & Chiara Cattaneo; Fozia Irfan and David Clarke.

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In the ninth edition of our podcast partnership with the European Research Network on Philanthropy (ERNOP), we talk to more academics whose work is featured in the latest batch of short, practitioner-focused ERNOP Research Notes.

In this episode we hear from:

• Mark Ørberg (Department of Business Humanities and Law, Copenhagen Business School), about his research on Enterprise Foundations
• Michele Fugiel Garnter (Carleton University, Ottawa; and formerly University of St Andrews) about her work on the experiences of foundation professionals
• Oonagh Breen (Sutherland Law School, University College Dublin) about her work on regulatory reviews of charity law

Further Resources:

• Mark's paper "Enterprise Foundations and Faithful Agency as Drivers of Sustainable Long-Termism in Philanthropy", and the ERNOP research note based on it (by Hannah Surmatz from Philea).
• Michele's paper, "The Changing Nature of Foundation Work: Advancing the Field by Understanding the Foundation Professional Experience" (with Tobias Jung and Alina Baluch) and the ERNOP research note based on it (by Maliha Hasan from University of Toronto).
• Oonagh's paper "Regulatory Reviews: Revolutionary Re-imagining of Charity Law or Simply Restatements of Convenience?" and the ERNOP research note based on it (by Ana Carolina Barros Pinheiro Carrenho from Lisbon University)

If you would like to contribute to making academic work accessible and more relevant for people working in, with or for philanthropy, then why not consider becoming an ERNOP practitioner expert and help translate academic work on philanthropy into research notes in close collaboration with the authors of the original work.
https://ernop.eu/information-for-practitioner-experts/

Or, if you or your organisation might be interested in supporting ERNOP's wider mission to advance philanthropy research and make it accessible to those working in, with, and for philanthropy, then why not consider joining as a member:
https://ernop.eu/member-portal/subscription-plan/

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In this episode we talk to Marina Jones, Executive Director of Development & Public Affairs at the English National Opera and project lead on the history of fundraising for the fundraising think tank Rogare. Including:

• Why is a historical perspective on fundraising valuable?
• Is fundraising a particularly hidden part of the history of charity/philanthropy? If so, why?
• Are there useful practical lessons modern fundraisers can learn from their historical counterparts about techniques and approaches that work?
• Are there relevant historical lessons about some of the potential ethical issues that arise from fundraising?
• Can we find useful historical precedents for some of the recurrent criticisms of fundraising?
• How have fundraisers harnessed new communications technologies throughout history (e.g. printing, radio, telegraph, TV)?
• What role has commemoration and recognition of donors played in the history of fundraising?
• How have celebrities been used for fundraising purposes throughout history
• How far back can we trace the idea of using commercial approaches to raise money for charity?
• What role did fundraising play in bringing women further into the public sphere?
• What can we learn from portrayals of philanthropy and fundraising in literature or popular culture?

Related links:

• Rogare's history of fundraising project
• Timelines of fundraising history: the classical world (1000BCE-475CE), The Middle Ages (476-1499), Modern era (1500-1899), 20th and 21st century
• Marina's blog
• Scott Cutlip's seminal 1965 book Fund Raising in the United States: Its role in America's Philanthropy (available to borrow on Internet Archive).
• WPM timeline of UK Philanthropy
• Rhod's 2016 book Public Good by Private Means: How philanthropy shapes Britain
• Philanthropisms interview with Ian MacQuillin from Rogare
• Philanthropisms episodes on philanthropy and music; gratitude and recognition; and tainted donations

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In this episode, we talk to Farai Chideya, journalist, writer, academic and lead author of a recent report from Bridgespan Group, "Philanthropy for a Multiracial Democracy: How Investing in Pluralism Can Open the Aperture for Democracy Funders". We discuss:

• Why is pluralism so important as an ideal, and what barriers/threats prevent it being realised?
• Why is it particularly important to emphasise multiracialism as an aspect of pluralism?
• What does it look like in practice to foster pluralism as a philanthropic funder?
• Does philanthropic pluralism naturally lead to a pluralistic society, or are there regressive philanthropic actors who want limit pluralism in society? Can we square these two things?
• Is there too much focus on elections when it comes to defining democracy-building philanthropy, at the expense of other elements of democracy?
• Why is a long-term perspective so important when it comes to funding democracy and pluralism?
• Why is collaboration so important?
• Why does it often pay to focus at a local level?
• How are funders harnessing storytelling and creative arts as tools for fostering pluralism?
• Might donors need to look beyond traditional nonprofit structures at times, and support work that is more overtly political? Does there need to be a clear distinction between this work and traditional philanthropy, or at the lines increasingly blurred?
• Can progressive funders take any lessons from the successes of conservative philanthropic funders in the US over the last 50 years, when it comes to the power of long-term, unrestricted funding for grassroots organisations as a means of shifting the parameters of political debate?
• Do concerns about an authoritarian crackdown on civil society during the2nd Trump administration mean that funders might have to put longer term ambitions of fostering pluralism on hold in order to address more immediate challenges, or is leaning into support pluralism part of an effective response?
• Has the idea of pluralism itself become more politicised, and is there a risk that this might make some funders more reluctant to fund this kind of work?

Related links:

• Bridgespan's report, "Philanthropy for a Multiracial Democracy: How Investing in Pluralism Can Open the Aperture for Democracy Funders"
• Upcoming webinar on the report (March 25th)
• Farai's podcast "Our Body Politic" (currently on pause, but past episodes available).
• Philanthropisms podcast interview with Daniel Stid
• Philanthropisms episode on pluralism
• WPM article on "Philanthropy at a time of chaos"