Philanthropy is grappling with the role it must play in responding to what is called the polycrisis – climate and environmental crises, entrenched economic inequalities, and social injustices. The material role that philanthropy can play – the provision of resources, the creation of legislation, etc. – is obviously limited, but does it have a leadership role to play?

There are broadly three aspects to leadership in philanthropy: one is leadership within individual philanthropic organisations; the second is leadership within the sector; and the third – the most ambitious – is leadership in society, setting examples of creative responses to problems and patterning behaviour. For all these three, it is vital that philanthropic leaders are provided with space and support to reflect on the ways in which they can rise to these challenges.

Moderated by Andrew Milner, Features Editor of Alliance magazine, the speakers included:

• Sufina Ahmad – Director, John Ellerman Foundation
• Georg von Schnürbein – Founder, Center for Philanthropy Studies, University of Basel
• Renata Minerbo – Trustee, Be The Earth Foundation

A few highlights from the event

Georg: In my article [in the March 2024 issue of Alliance], I make 3 suggestions as to how we bridge the gap between staying aligned with your purpose, and at the same time responding to new developments:

1 – Managing scarcity by being generous. Generally foundations are seen as very wealthy, but on the other hand usually this money is never enough to solve the problems they were created for. One of the paradoxes of grantmaking foundations; they are created out of affluence, but as soon as the money is in the foundation it is the subject of scarcity.

Foundations used to be quite restrictive. Today, the idea is more to say ‘why don’t we give the money as core funding to organisations so that they can develop their skills and attract other funds, or new knowledge?’ By this, you can move forward and support the organisations through more than just by being very restrictive.

2 – Increased transparency to reduce workload. If foundations are more open and transparent in the way they are collaborating with other organisations, they reduce workload on both sides. For grantseeking organisations it’s often very difficult to find the right foundation, and the more they can gain information in advance, the less work there is on both sides to find the right partners.

3 – Leadership is not about the leaders. Leadership in a foundation is not about leading your own organisation, because the impact that you want to create is outside of the area of influence of your foundation; you have to focus on other aspects and other needs of leadership, especially towards your core constituents.

Renata: What I, and other people, call feminine leadership, can also be called emergent strategy; a more intuitive, systemic, non-linear way of thinking and operating that also embraces the emotions or the intuitions that comes through one’s experience – rather than only the quantitative, linear, controlled way of operating that we call a ‘masculine’ way of leading.

At Be The Earth Foundation, we are very much a learn-by-doing organisation, almost calling ourselves a ‘lab’ instead of a foundation because we love experimenting with new things and making pilots of models, relationships and formats that we think could catalyse change and actually change how we operate. ..I think coming from a background of being on the frontline, in the community in Brazil and not having a huge academic background in philanthropy on how to be and how to do things – that actually helped us start from a bottom-up way of facing things.

Sufina:

This has been a brainchild of mine, because I have felt that the way we talk about leadership in philanthropy tends to focus on individual, high net worth donors primarily, so perhaps Bill Gates or Mackenzie Scott. I’m not saying we shouldn’t think about these leaders in philanthropy, but for so many of us who are in titled or untitled leadership positions across the philanthropic sector and there is a need to think about how we support each other to be the best versions of ourselves and to support our organisations to fulfil our ambitions when it comes to people, society and the natural world.

…Unless we really do consider philanthropic leadership more closely, then I think the critiques that we face – being the plaything of the privileged, wealthy and elite; or derived from ill-gotten gains; or misused ways of sanitising public profiles – sometimes we are criticised for directing our funds to unworthy causes, or in ways that don’t challenge underlying systemic root causes of issues. I think that unless we really think about philanthropic leadership in more depth, we can only really begin to understand how it has been possible for philanthropy – including philanthropic institutions that we hear from in the issue – to make actual, lasting change in politics, society, the economy, and the environment for individuals and communities globally.

You can watch the full video here:

Amy McGoldrick is the Head of Marketing, Advertising and Events at Alliance