Hilary Pennington of the Ford Foundation talks international development and turning the tables
Hilary Pennington, executive vice president of the Ford Foundation. Photo credit: Simon Leuthi
There is growing consensus that the system of international development is broken. But how to fix it is less certain. A report by the UK’s H & S Davidson Trust calls for local communities to have a more equal voices in decision-making, more unrestricted funding and more collaboration and partnership from INGOs. How can foundations help accelerate the change? Charles Keidan caught up with philanthropy leader and executive vice-president of the Ford Foundation, Hilary Pennington.
Charles Keidan: The world is facing many grave challenges. What do you see as the most urgent for philanthropy to address?
Hilary Pennington: There are massive problems; climate, conflict, the economy are chief among them. Our international systems for dealing collaboratively with any problem that crosses a border is out of date and needs to be rethought. The opportunity for philanthropy which can work in partnership with the three pillars: government, the private sector and civil society is to reimagine the international system and to convene space and enable for more voices, particularly those from the Global South, to have input.
How is the Ford Foundation responding to those challenges?
It needs to be multi-year, it needs to be general support. That puts the grantee in the driver’s seat.
Take climate change. We work on natural resources and climate change from a very particular lens, which is that we centre the communities that by and large sit over the world’s natural resources without land rights – Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, and people in the global South. It is very easy for the global North to tokenise and stereotype those communities as traditional, lacking in expertise that would help solve these problems that are conceived in technical terms. We feel the opposite. What we do is to bring their voices to negotiating tables and the public space in a way where they have dignity and power. Some of the grants we’ve given that I really love are providing Indigenous, African, and Afro-descendant communities drone technologies so that they can actually see who is encroaching upon protected lands or forests. We are also supporting their organizations as they develop their own territorial funds which would help them receive finance directly. We have to break the stereotypes and get them at the table.
What approaches are you pursuing to get them to those tables?
You saw Indigenous leaders on the primary stages at the last few climate COP meetings where big commitments were made to help countries in the Global South respond to climate change and also to support Indigenous Peoples’ and Local Communities’ roles in managing and protecting forests. Our work and others helped make that possible and we are continuing that work into the next year as COP 30 moves to Brazil. We are also directing resources to and amplifying the leadership of Afro-descendant communities in Brazil, Colombia, and beyond.
One of the things we have had to figure out is how to give money to organisations that do not want to formally become a 501(c)3 charity. What we’ve also done is to invest in getting them first-rate strategic communications, that is helping them write op-eds and get on panels.
The one area that I find astonishing that philanthropy does not work sufficiently on and is so afraid of is the issue of migration. Migration is going to be one of the biggest destabilising forces in our world, and its causes are climate, economic need, and conflict. It’s disappointing to me that philanthropy isn’t doing more. We are not nation states and because of this, we have an ability to be truly innovative. I think Bloomberg has done great work with its network of mayors around the world and OSF has been creative in their approach as well.
What has been your approach?
We’re working on that in the Americas – how to change the tendency to criminalise people who cross borders and create and sustain public safety narratives that are free from discrimination. while at the same time protecting security. The other issue that we work on related to conflict is polarisation. We have partnered with the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT) on a global initiative on polarisation because we see the weaponizing of issues like immigration or climate or gender justice as tools used to distract and divide people. So, we’ve been working with IFIT to try to identify and link together those who are working across the world on this issue of polarisation because we feel like that’s urgent.
When funders work on complex issues and give organisations one-year project-based grants, those organisations never become strong and don’t have the resources to sustain the work
On conflict, you’ve identified the two challenges of migration and polarisation. These are difficult issues for philanthropy. How do you assess the risk involved? The risk to your reputation, the risk of becoming politically excluded from certain places if you go too far?
We can already see narratives to discredit philanthropy, in general, circulating worldwide. When we were setting up our international programme areas in 2018, migration was one of the issues that we considered as an area of focus. The main reason we didn’t choose it as a primary focus area was because of our core competencies. As a foundation, you have to be humble about what you know and where you can make a difference and we did not feel that we had enough in-depth knowledge to be able to be meaningful contributors in that sector.
What do you do when you’re a direct target of political attacks?
First, you get really clear on your values so that you will not be defensive when you are challenged. We stand unequivocally for human dignity and reducing inequality and we are not ashamed of what we do that helps move the world in that direction. The second thing is that we try hard to play by the rules. You have to understand and respect the rules that govern your ability to operate in any place that you are. That requires us to be intentional about our language and disciplined about seeking partnerships and building diverse coalitions around the issues that we care about. All of that requires energy and commitment and changes in practices. So, we’re in the middle of that work. It’s taking up much more of all of our time collectively, as a sector.
The Reforming International Development Initiative has identified four pathways to better funding practice. They include a need to change the role of INGOs from donor-led to more attentive to local circumstances and be more responsive to beneficiaries rather than the demands of head offices. Could you talk about how you’re implementing those approaches. How have you tackled that at the Ford Foundation?
The world does need INGOs, they play a very important role. But they also receive a disproportionate amount of resource and attention. As the localisation trend begins to root, INGOs are adapting in some ways that are very constructive. That’s all good, but a lot of these still under-resourced, locally-based organisations perceive that as a kind of shape shifting, a way of changing so that, still, INGOs are in a better position to continue receiving a large proportion of money. Ford has INGOs in our portfolio. We respect and admire them. But we’ve really decided that we’re going to skew towards small, local and regionally-based non-profits, NGOs, and our regional office structure. Having ten offices outside the United States is an asset in doing that, because we have people who are from those places leading those offices and we feel we can improve the broader ecosystem by finding and funding much smaller organisations. Using some of our Building Institutions and Networks (BUILD) initiative resources and strategies we’re trying to equip them to get better and stronger and ready to receive more capital from others.
Another barrier that’s been identified is the need for increased collaboration and partnerships. What are your thoughts on that?
I’m all for that and one of the forms that it takes is collaborative funds which really have grown a lot, especially in the United States. What does it look like to do that in the global South? Philanthropy is evolving in many countries but it is often still more around the individual family or wealth holder, so they’re not always interested in investing in infrastructure or joining collaboratives, yet collaboratives are a good way to approach those kinds of people because often they like to associate with and learn from more established philanthropies. Ford, in Darren’s [Walker] and my time here, has helped to create a number of collaborative funds. Analysis shows that for every $1 we have invested in collaboratives has leveraged three dollars from others towards the issues and organisations that we are focused on.
Another of the issues identified was the need for a more equal voice for local communities in decision making. How are you trying to ensure that happens?
One way it can happen is by the default practices of these collaborative funds. Take the Black Feminist Fund for example. It’s got a participatory decision-making model where grantee organisations rotate in and out of decision-making. Their default is that they give five- or seven-year grants to every organisation that they fund. So basically, they’re saying to traditional funders, ‘if you put your money with us, these are the values by which we will invest that money.’ Having funding organisations on boards who have that in their DNA is a great example. There are some interesting models emerging at scale like the Shift the Power movement and Giving Tuesday. Really resourcing community foundations in the global South and giving them the kinds of endowments that would allow them to do their work is another great way. So, it’s partly about finding and including the small, locally-based organisations in governance structures and funding, but it’s also these other ways that we can do so much better.
Unrestricted and longer-term funding has become a hallmark of the Ford Foundation of recent years. What has that meant in the context of this work?
When funders work on complex issues and give organisations one-year project-based grants, those organisations never become strong and don’t have the resources to sustain the work that would help them be more effective for the long run. It’s really necessary to change the funding model. It needs to be multi-year, it needs to be general support. That puts the grantee in the driver’s seat. Instead of the grantee twisting itself to fit into the funder’s strategy, the funder is asking who are you? What are you doing? What are you trying to accomplish? And how can our resources help you accomplish that? That doesn’t mean you don’t still have accountability for impact, it doesn’t mean you don’t have metrics but it does mean they are more aligned with the change we seek to accomplish and the capacity we’re trying to build.
What do you think needs to happen in philanthropy to accelerate some of the changes we are seeing international development? Or are there any changes that haven’t happened that need to happen?
We are hosting 50 meetings for UNGA next week and most of them are trying to turn the tables in the ways that we talked about earlier. We’ve got young people from climate justice organisations leading a meeting here to draw in donors who might not listen and might not otherwise know about that kind of work. So, we’re really using those 50 events to turn the tables and foreground different voices. There is a really important group on localisation led by the Hilton and Packard Foundations, which we are participating in and it will meet during UNGA, and then there is still the challenge of the UN itself evolving itself alongside that.
It’s a time of very constructive ferment, and that’s where innovation comes from. I don’t think there’s yet consensus or unstoppable momentum towards the kinds of ideas that the H & S Davidson Trust is trying to lift up through this research, but it is enormously different than when I came to the Ford Foundation 11 years ago. The whole conversation and energy is moving to a different place. That makes me hopeful.
Charles Keidan is executive editor at Alliance magazine
Comments (3)
This was a great read. I am a small nonprofit organization and I mean literally nonprofit. I have never won a grant because majority of funders as mentioned make you comply to their processes and procedures and most require that you have capitol which I clearly do not have . My thoughts play over and over in my head screaming " I am a nonprofit, I don't have any money- let alone capitol!"Sometimes I wonder if I am the only nonprofit who pays into my passion by my own working wages. I also must hustle to solicit donations when wanting to host events. I do this because I simply want to help people and it seems like grantors make it so difficult to do that. To think that there might actually be a change with this is hopeful. It would be nice to have an audience listen to your dream and just see what and how they can make your dreams come true with becoming the change you want to see because I too have a dream.
I wonder why Mrs. Pennington separates philanthropy into another sector. Isn´t philanthropy part of the Civil Society sector? Or is she referring to Civil Society as what we call in the south "based organizations" (organisaciones de base)? I have for many years wondered if Funders see themselves as part of the ecosystem of Civil Society and play a hugely important role as Ecosystem Shapers (because of the inherent power they have) that, because they see themselves as another sector, do not understand their role in the whole Civil Society ecosystem.
It is good you are educating people about your organization's position to us especially those of us in the third world counties. We in third counties are far behind the climate change mitigation or adaptation programmes not only because we lack the finances. but we also need the education, technology and capacity building in terms of skills. I am an Agriculturist and environmental activist working on climate change mitigation in rural communities My website was closed in 2017 by there was no money to maintain it