Don’t just state your values – live them. Romy Krämer of the Guerrilla Foundation and Kavita Ramdas, independent philanthropy adviser and founder of KNR Sisters Consulting who also has long experience of institutional philanthropy, discuss their views on transforming philanthropy with guest editors, Erin Ganju and Michael Alberg-Seberich.

Erin Ganju: To start, could you share a bit about your own backgrounds?

Kavita Ramdas: I began my career in philanthropy with the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation, then I led the Global Fund for Women, which was a very different experience. I think all of us who work in philanthropy should first have to raise money. And then I ran the Ford Foundation office in New Delhi before I came back to the US and worked with another women’s rights organisation, Madre, and then, the Open Society Foundation. Most recently, I was CEO and president of a family foundation, from late 2021 to early 2022.

Romy Krämer: Before I started setting up the Guerrilla Foundation with the funder, Antonis Schwartz in 2016, I’d experienced philanthropy only from the perspective of a grant seeker. This gave me a healthy criticism of institutional philanthropy and the ability to not be restricted by ‘how it should be’ when building the Guerrilla Foundation as a funder for European grassroots social justice movements.