At the end of their first gathering of members since 2019, I had the chance to sit down with International Education Funders Groups Director Laura Savage, as well as outgoing Director of Programmes Jo Kelcey.

We had the chance to catch up about the theme of the conference, why IEFG picked systems change to dig into, and what they want their members to take away from Edinburgh.

Elika Roohi: Why pick systems change as the topic for this year’s conference? What do you want your members to understand about systems change?

Jo Kelcey, Director of Programmes

Jo Kelcey: I think it’s a sort of zeitgeist – and if I’m being a little sceptical, a bit of a buzzword. It’s important that we as a network challenge those buzzwords. It’s very easy to receive proposals or put out calls for proposals that include this language without necessarily interrogating what it means, and so I think we really wanted to probe a little bit and prod away at some of these questions that don’t get asked.

Laura Savage: The three things that we said at the start of this conference were taking a systems mindset, turning that into systems practice, and then a network. A systems mindset means questioning our assumptions about linearity, scale, predictability, our own incentives – and thinking more about the bigger picture, what others are doing, stepping in each other’s shoes. Then from there reflecting on how that might turn into systems practice. And the third thing is the network which includes systems which are all about people and relationships.

Do you think that the last few days have helped attendees come to a consensus about systems change, what that means for their work, and what they want to do with it?

LS: No, but also I hope not. I hope not, because there should not be a consensus. Systems change isn’t something that we should all have a common definition of. I hope that everyone goes away and reflects on what a systems mindset and systems practice means to them, and what the word system means to them and their organisation.

JK: Yes, I think one of the things we wanted to convey is that there isn’t a single definition, and there is no single way of doing this. Perhaps actually some people will leave more confused, but I think that might be okay. Hopefully, what we’ve conveyed is that it’s a way of thinking, it’s a way of working, and it’s also about your ecosystem – who surrounds you and who you use to inform your decisions, strategic direction, and how you work.

As a network, IEFG has no vision of a perfect education system. We have no topic within education that we prioritise. We respond to the interests and identified needs of our members, but also sometimes to the questions they aren’t asking that we think are on the table within the wider education world.

It’s been a very practical conference, with a lot of space for exchange and learning among the participants. What are some of the insights you’ve seen or heard so far?

LS: I think we went from sets of conversations at the start of day one on what is systems change to conversations now by day three where it is less about: ‘what is this monolithic thing and how do we achieve it’, to introspection and reflection on some of the concepts I was talking about with relation to the mindset and the practice – you know interrogating our own assumptions; thinking about the incentives of others; questioning whether when we talk about a system we only mean government or national; questioning the very role of philanthropy in various different ways in systems change; and I think recognising that we are all part of many systems at any time.

Something that I’ve heard come up a few times over the last few days is the role of technological advancements. A lot of people have been talking about ChatGPT, and in a session I was in yesterday, someone was saying, ‘oh the programme officers at our foundation are worried that AI will take over our jobs’, and somebody else was saying that when they were in a situation where they got 900 grant applications, somebody suggested to them to use AI to sort through them.

How is IEFG working with its members to think about harnessing the power of this advancement in a way that’s positive?

Laura Savage, Executive Director

LS: AI has fundamentally changed all of our lives and work already, right? And we don’t want to dive deep – we are not the appropriate forum to get into the pros and cons of that. But we need to recognise it. For our members that matters in two ways: one is grant craft, and as you said, the role of AI in proposal submission, assessment, and the questions around jobs. So far, we haven’t had a huge discussion on this – Alliance have come out with some really interesting stuff and Rockefeller have also been publishing on this topic. So we are trying to point to other thinking on this topic right now.

We want to make sure that we’re staying engaged with others who are working on this subject because there are massive implications for education systems on AI. After the ASUGSV conference a few weeks ago, we had Bill Gates come out and say: AI is going to teach kids to read within 18 months. Learning crisis solved, right? And we know that there are already fairly large-scale pilots happening to support teachers to use ChatGPT for teacher professional development in contexts where not all teachers can necessarily read, let alone have smartphones. So there are very real educational implications.

Philanthropy for our network and in this space is part of a series of overlapping communities.

We are planning to hold and curate sessions later this year for our members about what the risks and implications of AI are, and what can we do about it. And there are a lot of our members that are thinking seriously about this already.

This is a very globally diverse group of members attending your conference and contributing to IEFG. How do you see the conversation about systems change differing across the world from your vantage point at IEFG?

JK: This is always the challenge when we put together these events – what’s so rich about our network is its diversity, and at the same time horses for courses, right? You try to design an event and there are so many different perspectives on that. In some ways we do capture a lot of the diversity that exists across philanthropy in terms of the size of funders and how they operate – we’ve got philanthropists that are really into trust-based philanthropy, others that are very much driven by metrics. I think that conversation is almost different with each funder, which is why we try to design the sessions to be reflective of their different perspectives.

Education receives such a large slice of the philanthropic funding pie. How would you describe IEFG’s mission for education philanthropy within the context of overall giving to education?

LS: It’s a big question. So, IEFG connects around 100 organisations that fund education. And we don’t know the scale of education funding out there. Obviously, philanthropic data is incredibly difficult to be sure about, so we don’t actually know how many other hundreds or thousands maybe of funders are outside IEFG.

As a network, IEFG has no vision of a perfect education system. We have no topic within education that we prioritise. We respond to the interests and identified needs of our members, but also sometimes to the questions they aren’t asking that we think are on the table within the wider education world. So strategically, we hope that the network is somewhere members come to make connections with people they don’t already know, to be challenged critically in a constructive way. And even with the theme of this conference, I don’t have an ambition that everyone goes away and adopts the systems mindset or practice. But we want to make sure that we are giving members enough to think about with regard to education and grant craft, that nexus of education, and philanthropy knowledge. And indeed then perhaps in the future to sort of impact on the what of what they’re doing.

Something I always like to ask at conferences is: what is your message to this group of attendees?

JK: I want them to kind of take a step back and stop – it’s so easy to get caught in the work and the day-to-day and the sort of linearity of the process. I think the message was sort of implicitly one of stop, take a breath, reflect on what you’re doing, how you’re doing, and think about whether there’s a cause and a way to do things differently. Right?

Everyone here has different objectives and different focuses, but I think also we want them to think of themselves as a community. Philanthropy for our network and in this space is part of a series of overlapping communities. Working in the countries a lot of our funders do, they are also part of their aid system, whether they know it or not. I think just to be aware of who else is out there and to think about how you relate to them, how you complement them, whether you do adjacent work to them, all of those questions.

ER: Jo, you’re leaving IEFG soon. Do you have any reflections to share about your time with the organisation?

JK: I came into this space having worked with funders before, but not with philanthropy. It’s been an interesting few years, if you can say that. It’s been really fascinating for me. Philanthropy has grown so much in this particular education funding space, and I think in general over the last 10 years. Not always in terms of the size of funding, but certainly in terms of influence, so it’s been really a big privilege to work with a group of people that has a lot of influence, and I think that’s something I’ll carry forward in terms of how I think about the education space and who’ involved. There’s a really great willingness within philanthropy to listen and think about doing things differently.

Elika Roohi is Digital Editor at Alliance.