The Global
Landscape ofPhilanthropy

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

About WINGS

About WINGSWorldwide initiatives for Grantmaker Support(WINGS) is a network of about 100 philanthropy
associations and support organizations in 40
countries around the world whose purpose is tostrengthen, promote and provide leadership on thedevelopment of philanthropy and social investment.
Supervision: Benjamin Bellegy
Coordination: Muriel Asseraf
Publication Author: Andrew Milner
Editing: Caroline Hartnell
Design: Heather KnightPublished in January 2018 byWorldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support (WINGS).

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Contents

Contents

2

Sources and acknowledgements

3

Foreword

4

One-minute version

4

Five-minute version

6

1. Introduction

7

The meaning of philanthropy

8

External challenges faced by philanthropy

10

2. Individual giving

11

Giving by ordinary individuals

13

New forms of giving

15

Giving by high net worth individuals (HNWIs)

16

Remittances and diaspora giving

18

3. Institutional giving

19

Foundations – a growing sector

21

What causes do foundations support?

23

Grantmaking or operating?

24

Strategic philanthropy

24

Risk: appetite or aversion?

26

Future roles of foundations

26

Future trends

27

Perceptions of institutional philanthropy

28

4. Community philanthropy

29

Community foundations the world over29

Roles of community philanthropy

30

How donors in the global north can reach38

6. Collaboration

39

Collaboration among foundations

40

Collaboration between philanthropy
and government

42

The Sustainable Development Goals

46

7. Philanthropy, governmentand civil society

47

Ambivalent attitudes on the part of government

49

Government control through regulation and thelack of it

50

The future of civil society

52

Tax exemptions and incentives

54

8. Infrastructure organisations

55

Uneven distribution of philanthropy
infrastructure

60

Roles of philanthropy infrastructureorganisations

61

What could infrastructure organisations do better?

60

Is the business model viable?

62

9. Some ways forward

63

Helping civil society organisations to survive

64

Conflict and migration

64

Digital technology

65

Needed: an overarching role for philanthropy
globally

recipients in the global south

66

References

32

5. Beyond grants: different usesof philanthropic money

67

Annex A

68

Annex B

33

Venture philanthropy

33

Impact investing

34

Socially responsible investing (SRI)35

The growth of social enterprise/social business

37

The blurring of boundaries

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Sources and acknowledgements

Sources andacknowledgements
The research for thisreport is based on threemain sources:• Twenty interviews with either
practitioners or close observers of
the philanthropy scene in different
parts of the world. These are quoted
directly throughout the text.
• Themed workshops held at events in
Johannesburg, Mexico City
and Amman.
• Desk research into publishedreports, articles and websites
bearing on the general themes.

The source that the report draws
on most heavily is the interviews,
because of the insights and immediacy
they offer. The selection of themes
has been guided partly by what theinterviewees said. The information
thus gained is mainly qualitative. As
a result, the meat of the report lies inthe discussion of developments rather
than the presentation of facts.
While there was a basic template forthe interviews, they varied dependingon the expertise of the person
interviewed.
The ideas and arguments of theinterviewees range widely. To restrict
them to neat geographical or thematic
packages would have lessened theirvalue. In an era where problems
appear increasingly interrelated
and increasingly complex, slicing up
information into themes seems anarbitrary exercise.
For the sake of structure, however,
the material has been organised into
broad themes, but there are manyloose ends. In a sense, this reflects
the state of global philanthropy.
While some developments can be
fairly readily summarised, there
are many trends – the progress of
online giving, the future of impact
investing, the effects of digital data,
to name only three – whose evolution
in general, let alone in detail, is
impossible to predict for even themost sapient observer.

02

Thanks are principally due
to three sets of people:• The interviewees (listed in Annex A)
who generously contributed theirtime and their wisdom.
• The working group who designed
and oversaw the research, andhelped shaped the final product:
Benjamin Bellegy, Pamela Ribeiro
and Muriel Asseraf, (WINGS);
Larry McGill and Lauren Bradford(Foundation Center, USA); and Barry
Knight (CENTRIS, UK).
Also, thanks to Julia Catani who
set up the interviews and generallysmoothed the process.
• Finally, and too many to mention by
name, the participants in the three
regional workshops (listed in Annex
B) that fed into this report. Even
where the views expressed by them
are not directly attributed, they haveinformed many of the ideas thatfeature in it.

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

The one-minute version

Foreword

Giving voice to the diversityof philanthropy practices,
recognizing and identifying
the trends and cultural
aspects that affect giving indifferent parts of the globe,
highlighting the challenges
that still stand in the way of
a more efficient and moresustainable philanthropy, andoffering ways to build a moreinterconnected and more
coherent field – are amongsome of WINGS’ strategic
objectives, and they are
embodied in this report.

Based on more than 20 interviews
with some of philanthropy’s foremost
actors and thinkers and on threeworkshops with professionals andpractitioners from civil society
networks, foundations, infrastructureorganizations or research centers, thereport builds and expands on the work
previously done on the WINGS Global
Institutional Philanthropy Report 2010,
and presents a qualitative view of the
field, based on the following 7 aspects:• Individual giving;• Institutional giving;• Community philanthropy;• Beyond grants: different uses ofphilanthropic money;• Collaboration;• Philanthropy government andcivil society;In the midst of growing challenges– some external and some internal,some manageable and some out of
our control – the report also gives
some indication of how to move
forward, showing specifically how
technology can become a strengthand an asset for non-profits, howcivil society organizations ought toprotect themselves against shrinking
civic space, how infrastructureorganizations can and must rethinktheir scope and responsibilities, andhow philanthropy in general needs totackle the question of inequality andwealth distribution.
We are very grateful to all of those
who have contributed to the makingof this report. It is our hope that it
will help foster a new way of thinking
about philanthropy’s role and purpose,
one in which WINGS plays and willcontinue to play a leading role.

• Infrastructure organizations.

Maria Chertok
CAF Russia
WINGS Board Chair

Barbara Ibrahim
American Univeristy in Cairo
Chair of WINGS ProgrammeCommittee

03

Benjamin Bellegy
WINGS Executive Director

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

The one-minute version

THE ONE-MINUTE VERSIONThe current report is an effort to put diversity back at the heart ofphilanthropy by drawing a comprehensive and provocative picture ofcurrent trends and challenges the world over – from individual forms ofgiving to community philanthropy and structured, institutional giving. It
also raises some of the questions and issues most critical and central tothe development of philanthropy – from the impact of new technology andshrinking civic space to power dynamics within philanthropy practice andconcepts, and the evolving role and form of philanthropy infrastructure. Last
but not least, the report demonstrates that the predominant North Americanand European models – often used as a reference point, to be opposed,
customised or assimilated by others – are in fact just one part of the picture.
Through the voices of some of its wisest and most prominent advocates,
the field of philanthropy emerges from the pages of this report in all its
complexity and multi-faceted reality.

THE FIVE-MINUTE VERSION
Individual giving
Almost everywhere, giving isincreasing, both by the wealthy andby people of more modest means.
Individual giving is greater thaninstitutional giving in terms of amountgiven almost everywhere, thoughmuch of it is unseen.
Most giving by ordinary individuals
remains traditional in form and indestination, with religious giving
remaining strong in many countries,
even more secular ones. Giving toorganisations is often constrainedby mistrust.
New methods of giving opened up bytechnological advance – online giving,
giving by SMS and crowdfunding –are growing in importance but they
are still of limited significance inmost places. Although online giving
is often a spontaneous response to acatastrophic event, it has potential tocreate solidarity and mutual support.
Giving by the very wealthy isincreasingly influenced by theyounger generation, who are more
inclined to explore non-traditional
ways of giving. Giving by the wealthy
could be spurred on if donors talked
more about their giving, but media
and public hostility in some places
discourages them from doing so.

Institutional giving
The number of foundations isgenerally increasing, especially inEurope and in some countries of the
global south. Two key reasons for thisare growing wealth and government
encouragement of philanthropy
to help supplement their budgets.
At the same time, there is a trend forthe wealthy to give without setting
up a traditional foundation.
Though in theory the position offoundations enables them to take04

risks, in practice most foundations
are conservative, giving to ‘safe’
areas such as education, healthcare
and social services. Relatively few
are willing to support advocacy
or social justice issues. Corporate
giving is often more risk-averse
than private foundation giving.
It tends to be based on what is
expected of companies rather thanwhat is needed. Generally speaking,foundations are more risk-averse
than they say they are.
Though grantmaking is slowly gaining
ground, it accounts for a relatively
small proportion of foundations,
except in the English-speaking world.
Strategic philanthropy is also on therise, bringing with it an increased
emphasis on measuring impact, whichsome view as potentially harmful.
Four key roles for foundations –innovation, filling gaps, supporting
civil society and acting for the longterm – all depend to some degree onfoundations’ willingness to take risks.

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

The five-minute version

Community philanthropy
Community foundations are foundalmost everywhere, though they
have adapted to local requirements
and circumstances. They are very
unevenly distributed. They areplaying a wide variety of roles, fromcreating community to offering donor
services. There is also a great dealof community-based philanthropy
happening informally.

Beyond grants: different usesof philanthropic money
Foundations are increasingly exploring
new ways of using their assets, inthe form of venture philanthropy,
impact investing and socially
responsible investing, and/or byusing non-monetary assets such as
expertise, reputation and convening
power. These trends should not
be exaggerated. Impact investing,for example, though clearly on thehorizons of many institutions, is still
not widely practised. Alongside thiswe see the growth of social enterprise/social business, which
is viewed as highly significant inmany countries.
There is an increasing blurring of
the line between the for-profit andnon-profit sectors. Increasingly, a
hallmark of organisations working
for social good is hybridity, withorganisations with different legal
forms adopting a variety of meansof working. Consequently, notionsof what constitutes ‘philanthropy’and ‘philanthropists’ are broadening.
Potentially this could bring more
capital to bear on the solution ofincreasingly complex problems.

Collaboration
Collaboration, both within the
sector and between philanthropy
and other sectors, is increasingly
accepted in principle as a way
for philanthropy to maximise its
impact. Despite this, it is not yet
widespread. Restraining factors
include the cherishing of foundation
independence, the investment of timeneeded for success, and lack of staff
resources at philanthropic institutions.
Collaboration between government
and philanthropy tends to be limited
by suspicion of motives and lack ofcomprehension on both sides about
what the other can offer.
The notion of collaboration
is explicitly contained in the
Sustainable Development Goals,
but intention rather than activity
tends to characterise philanthropy’s
response so far. While the SDGs
offer a template to organisations
seeking to align their work with alarger development agenda, many
funders remain ambivalent. In
some cases, they are waiting fora clear lead on a national strategy
towards the SDGs, either from thegovernment or from a representative
body from their own sector.

Philanthropy, governmentand civil society
While governments are keen
to encourage civil society andphilanthropy when they are doing
work they approve of, they are
increasingly taking steps to curtailNGO activities in more politicallysensitive areas, either by formal
restriction or by informal harassment.
This affects philanthropy as it limits
the ways in which it can support
those NGOs that are subject toofficial disapproval.
NGOs are coming under increasingpressure in other ways, too. Failure
to replace lost international funding
with local sources; being out ofstep with new philanthropy; direct
implementation of programmes by
operating foundations; and social
business competing for attention andsupport – these are just some of thefactors contributing to this.
 ost countries have some form ofM
tax exemption for donors, recipientorganisations or both. While it is
widely believed that tax incentives are
not a primary motive for individual
donors, they may encourage people
to give more.

05

Infrastructure organisations
Philanthropy infrastructureorganisations are very unevenly
distributed, with 80% of the funding
for infrastructure concentrated in
North America. Infrastructure isfrequently lacking in countries withemerging philanthropy sectors, where
it is most needed.
Key roles for infrastructureorganisations range from
representation and advocacy toresearch and collection of data,
sharing of best practice, and training
and convening. They can also
introduce new ideas to the sector,
raise difficult questions, and foster
collaboration. In representing thesector they face a difficult balance,
having to present, rather than set,
the agenda. The lack of reliable dataon the sector is widely seen as a
big problem.
 here is a real issue as to whetherTthe ‘business model’ that many
infrastructure organisations adopt –provision of technical or information
services in exchange for an annual
membership fee – is going to be
viable for much longer, especiallyas members’ expectations grow.
The basic challenge for infrastructureorganisations is to demonstrate theirvalue to the sector.

1
Introduction
This chapter looks at the term
‘philanthropy’, which has different
meanings and different connotations
in different parts of the world.
It tends to reflect ‘western’ ideas,
often at odds with local traditionsof giving. It also looks at someof the external challenges facing
philanthropy and philanthropy
infrastructure organisations – andindeed the human race as a whole.

06

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Introduction

THE MEANING OF
PHILANTHROPY
Most of the terminology ofphilanthropy is imported from
Anglo-Saxon traditions irrespectiveof whether it fits local circumstancesor not. There is an ambivalence inthe term philanthropy itself evenin places where it appears to bewell understood. Where it involves
translating a word or a concept, thisambivalence is more pronounced.
Beyond how it translates in different
countries, literally and figuratively,
it’s possible that the overtones of
the term philanthropy will change
considerably even in the global
north and that the change will be a
generational one. Writing in Allianceearlier this year, Hilary Pearsonof Philanthropic Foundations ofCanada and Jean-Marc Fontanof the University of Quebec inMontreal assert that ‘philanthropy is
no longer only about benevolence.
It’s about having impact on thecomplex problems that face the next
generation.’

For Grupo de Institutos, Fundações
e Empresas (GIFE) in Brazil, it is‘the voluntary transfer of private
funding in a planned, monitored
and systematic way for social,environmental and cultural projectsof public interest.' For Grupo deFundaciones y Empresas (GDFE)in Argentina it is ‘the responsible,
proactive and strategic use ofprivate resources in which the
expected return is the well-being of
the community and development
over the long-term.' In Mexico
people do use the term philanthropy
and emphasise its emotional andmoral aspect: ‘It is the expressionof a generous impulse.’
Outside the sector itself, the term
philanthropy has little currency
in China, thinks Yanni Peng of
Narada Foundation. The charity law
promulgated in 2016 uses what isliterally translated as charity, butthere’s another Chinese term in usethat means public good.

In the Arab region, while giving is
generally practised, and large-scale
giving from an endowment, throughthe waqf idea, is widely known, theterm philanthropy is used mainly bypeople who are exposed to the West,says Atallah Kuttab of SAANED for
Philanthropy Advisory in the Arab
Region.
Philanthropy in Turkey is mainly
understood as charity and generally
has traditional and religious
connotations, says Basak Ersen.
According to a recent study by theThird Sector Foundation of Turkey(TUSEV),2 most Turks see it as someform of assistance to individuals: 40%
see it as ‘helping the poor and those inneed’ and 28.5% describe it as ‘helping
others, doing good.' Interestingly,
while many regard particular actions
as philanthropic – giving scholarships,building schools, etc – they don’t see‘education’ generally as a category ofphilanthropic activity. This is changing
but, as elsewhere, a more ‘western’understanding of the term is mainly
limited to philanthropy professionals.

How widely is it used?
‘The term philanthropy is mostly
associated with charity, and in general
it has a negative sense,’ says Andre
Degenszajn of Instituto Ibirapitanga,former Secretary General of the Grupode Institutos, Fundaçoes e Empresas(GIFE). This is partly because ofpast corruption scandals involving
philanthropic institutions as a resultof which the term philanthropy hascome to signify in the public mind
‘a mix of poor efficiency and lack oftrust. In general, it’s not a term people
identify with.’ As a result, the term
private social investment is generally
preferred. He notes another reason forthis preference: philanthropy has beenclosely associated in Brazil with thecorporate sector, and ‘the language ofinvestment and return is closer to themindset of those institutions.'
It’s interesting to note that in a reportacross a number of Latin Americancountries,1 participants from Brazil
and Argentina use the term privatesocial investment and stress its
transactional character.

Philanthropy is
no longer about
benevolence.
It’s about having
impact on thecomplex problems
that face thenext generation”
07

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Introduction‘Philanthropy’ and local
traditions of giving in Africa
Halima Mahomed, independent
philanthropy consultant, notes thatin South Africa use of the word
philanthropy is mostly confined toprofessionals. Even when it is used,
it has connotations of paternalism,so ‘we’ve been trying to change thisterminology and saying to people:
if you’re going to use the term
philanthropy, you need to be specificabout what you’re talking about. It’s
not just rich institutions giving to poor
people; it happens every day among
ordinary people and they just don’t
call it that.’ People call it charity, theycall it help, ‘they use giving and theyalso use indigenous terms like ubuntu
or the terms for specific practices likestokvels.3 They use what they know
and is familiar.’
One participant in the Johannesburg
workshop echoes this: there is still a
gap between what institutional donors
refer to as philanthropy and local
traditions of giving and other forms of
support. This gap, though it has long
been acknowledged, has yet to be
successfully bridged. Observers talkof the importance of traditional forms,
but accounting for them, finding
ways to stimulate them and bringing
them into the canon of philanthropy
has seldom been successfully done,
despite the seminal work of Susan
Wilkinson-Maposa and others on‘horizontal philanthropy.'
Mahomed sees ‘space for innovation
in individual giving but we have tothink about how we support it without
destroying it. There are tensions
created by this charity vs philanthropy
debate. It comes from the global
north, where charity is bad andphilanthropy is good, and that’s not adichotomy that’s helpful. Progressive
institutions are beginning to talkabout how to think about people’s
lives holistically. Gender violence,
patriarchy, the economy and thelabour system all intersect with eachother and you can’t deal with one inisolation. Also, what’s happening topeople right here and now cannot be
discounted in favour of looking only at
the long term.’ It’s a debate, she feels,that is not being heard enough.

In fact, the use of the term
philanthropy often marks a borderline
between rational, emotionallydisinterested, professional notionsof giving and a more spontaneous,compassionate response to those inneed which might be expressed either
by gifts of money or by other formsof generosity.

Philanthropy and power
Jenny Hodgson of the Global Fundfor Community Foundations calls it ‘acritical question for this report and for
WINGS. The word “philanthropy” is so
divisive. It has so many connotationsof power, inequality and privilege.’
The mistrust formal philanthropy
tends to feel for civil society is often
mutual because ‘the people who aresetting up foundations are comingfrom exactly those institutions thatare causing the problems. So while
we’re talking about philanthropy being
private resources for public good,voluntary giving, empathy, etc, weneed to ask for what?’
So do progressive funders ‘claim’ theword as ‘something of the people’,or do they pursue an inconclusive
search for a more satisfactory term?
In Africa, she says, ‘there’s a narrative
which goes: “people have always
given, there’s no continent in the worldthat understands giving and solidarity
among people more, it’s in our DNA,etc”, yet when it translates into how
conferences are organised, who getsto speak, it’s all people who’ve mademoney out of business, it’s nothing
to do with that narrative at all. These
things needn’t be irreconcilable butat the moment they sit at two ends ofthe spectrum so the narrative supports
one thing, but the practice and thepower dynamics another.’

08

EXTERNAL CHALLENGES
FACING PHILANTHROPY
Interviewees for this research wereasked what they see as the big
external challenges that philanthropy
and philanthropy infrastructureorganisations will have to respondto in the immediate and near future.
This section is based on their answers.
These are challenges that face all ofus, depending on what part of theworld we live in. As Carol Mack of the
Association of Charitable Foundations
notes, the challenges for philanthropy
are the challenges facing society.

Climate change
and inequality
The two most obvious and mostcritical challenges are global andwere mentioned by all interviewees:
climate change and rising inequality.
The ramifications of both of these
problems are tremendous and they
have a close bearing on many of themore localised problems identified
by interviewees.

Conflict and migration
Conflict and migration present a major
challenge for philanthropy. ‘We havemore refugees now than at any timesince World War Two,’ notes Barry
Gaberman of Oxfam America. He
suggests that one of the touchstones
both for conflict resolution andinternal displacement and for how
philanthropy responds to thesethings is Colombia. ‘This situation andothers like it will bring to the fore allthat we’ve learned about truth andreconciliation commissions.’
Atallah Kuttab agrees on theimportance of the refugee question,
but underlying it in the Arab region,
what’s often at stake is the very
survival of countries themselves.
‘The whole region is fragmenting. We
are losing the cementing agenciesof communities. The Gulf region,
which one thought of as the moststable Arab countries, saw instability
erupting with Saudi Arabia waging a
war in Yemen and lately Bahrain, Saudi
Arabia and United Arab Emirates’
conflict with Qatar.’

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Introduction

Gerry Salole of the European
Foundation Center sees migration
as a pan-European challenge. ‘How
do you get people to recognise that
migration isn’t going to stop?
How do you make it easier for
people to get integrated? Unless
we can occupy the space of debate
around that, we’re going to havelots of trouble.’
Hilary Pearson notes the challengeof reconciliation with Canada’s
indigenous communities. They
form a fast-growing segment of
the population, social problems are
disproportionately concentrated
there, and it’s a critical time, witha recent truth and reconciliationcommission and a fairly recently
elected government committed
to reconciliation.

Unemployment
Thanks to the advance of deeplearning and other forms of artificial
intelligence, jobs currently done byhighly trained white-collar workers
can be automated. Vulnerability
to automation – or to offshoring– is already having an impact onjobs, and is likely to increase in the
future. In Spain, unemployment
is a big issue, says Rosa Gallegoof Asociacion Espanola deFundaciones, ‘which is very much
linked with inequality.' There is a
big coalition of foundations, public
institutions and others exploring
ways of getting particularly
disadvantaged people into the job
market and to find out how existingmechanisms for getting people
into employment fail and how
philanthropy can help to addressthat. She sees room for Asociación
Española de Fundaciónes (AEF)‘to reach out and bring otherstakeholders to the table, but we are
not there yet.'

Radicalism and intolerance
Unemployment plays into themain issue Laurence Lien of Lien
Foundation and Asia Philanthropy
Circle sees in South East Asia:
radicalism and, in particular, thespread of conservative formsof religion which are breeding
intolerance. ‘Violent extremism is one
element of this. The more there isradicalism, the more likely you are tohave violent extremism and a numberof Asia Philanthropy Circle members
are really concerned about this.’
Philanthropy’s response should beto ‘go upstream and make sure there
is no deprivation in communities’,
he says, since a sense of deprivation
fuels radicalism. ‘If you feel you
should be at a certain level andyou are way below that, you start
becoming angry. The education
system is a major contributor. It is
not producing graduates who arejob-ready. Youth unemployment
is huge in many countries aroundus, in some cases close to 20%,much greater than the generalunemployment rate. If young people
are hungry and out of work, that’s arecipe for disaster for the future.’

Austerity, devolution
and Brexit
Austerity, devolution, Brexit andthe technological revolution aresome of the biggest trends Carol
Mack observes in the UK, whichfoundations will inevitably be called
on to respond to. ‘Within the UK
there are four territories with distinct
administrations, and within Englandthere is increased devolution of
spending and political power, sothat’s challenging for foundations– if you want to influence policy,
where do you go to do that?’
Such developments can also offer
opportunities, she notes, perhaps
through a more local approach. ‘It
can be easier to influence change
through a place-based approach,’she says, ‘but that can be quite hard
for a UK-wide funder to get theirhead around.’Secondary education anda population bulge
The biggest challenge for Pakistan isdemography, followed by secondary
education. The country has what
Shazia Amjad of Pakistan Center for
Philanthropy calls ‘a huge population
bulge between the ages of 18 and35.' The danger is that this willproduce greater inequality. Given
limited state capacity, philanthropy
has a role to play in meeting thischallenge.
Another specifically Pakistanichallenge is secondary education,says Narmeen Adeel. The
government is focusing its efforts on
primary education, so philanthropy
could usefully contribute tosecondary education. The models
of cross-sector partnership in
education in Punjab might provide
a valuable starting point here.

09

2
Individual
givingIndividual giving is increasing almost
everywhere in the world. This chapter
starts by looking at giving by individualsof modest means, and at new formsof giving such as online giving andcrowdfunding through which muchfuture giving is likely to be channelled.
It then goes on to look at giving by
high net worth individuals and finally atremittances and diaspora giving.

10

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Individual giving

Individual giving, both by the very
wealthy and by people of moremodest means, is an increasingly
significant part of philanthropy
the world over. There are several
reasons for this. The first and mostobvious is its size. Individual giving
is almost everywhere greater thaninstitutional giving in terms ofamounts given (China being one of
the few exceptions to this rule) thoughmuch of it is unrecorded. Second,as other sources of funds for NGOs
come under pressure, individual giving
is seen as a potential alternativemeans of support. Third, new, more
direct forms of communication andof giving mean that individuals canquickly support, or even create, anissue and thus have more direct
influence on policy and development
questions. Fourth, a more holistic
view of philanthropy is beginningto gain ground, where giving isseen not just instrumentally, as themaking available of resources, but asa way of building trust and a senseof common purpose among groups
and communities. At least two of theinterviewees for this research mention
the importance of investigating andencouraging traditional forms ofgiving as a way to stimulate this.

The challenge
is how you
move individual
giving towards
sustainable
development
rather thanhandouts”

GIVING BY ORDINARYINDIVIDUALSThe habit of giving is well establishedin most places. By and large, itremains traditional in form and isoften religiously based. One of themain problems with considering thistype of giving is that estimates are sooften a ‘best guess’ – if that. ‘Religious
giving,’ says Halima Mahomed,
speaking of South Africa, ‘is a very
big motivator and that doesn’t getmeasured at all. It’s not declared on
tax forms, but it’s huge. At the sametime, many people will give directly– to someone who is poor, someone
in the community who needs help.
Knowledge about all this is a big gap.’

Religious giving‘We have strong religious giving
traditions across all major religions.
Probably even the poorest Indianputs some money in the temple
box and meets their annual zakat
requirement, and so on,’ says Ingrid
Srinath of Ashoka University. It
accounts for the majority of giving in
the Arab region, says Atallah Kuttab.
‘The challenge,’ he says, ‘is how you
move that giving towards sustainable
development rather than handouts.
Right now the bulk is handouts.’
Even in the secular countries ofwestern Europe, religious giving
still takes a big share of individual
philanthropy. In the Netherlands, forexample, giving to religion accounts
for 40% of individual giving.4 In
Canada, Hilary Pearson reckons, some
‘50 per cent is going to churches,mosques and other religious bodies.'
But she offers a reminder that religious
giving is too wholesale a category formuch precision. ‘Ultimately that money
could be going through the churches
to social services, to poverty relief, tointernational development. All that’s
telling you is that religious institutions
are still very appealing intermediaries
for individual philanthropists.’
Halima Mahomed also notes theunsatisfactory nature of the label.
A humanitarian organisation inSouth Africa might be set up by a

11

Muslim, and while ‘people might
give to it from a religious motive, it
is not a religious institution. There’s
a national zakat fund centre. Many
Muslims give their yearly zakat to thecentre, which then distributes it.’Which causes aremost popular?
The evidence, anecdotal or otherwise,
suggests that certain causes
predominate nearly everywhere.
According to CAF UK, medical
research was the most popular
destination of individual donationsin the UK in 2016. Similarly in the
Netherlands, health, medical researchand support for hospitals mobilise
the largest number of donors –though religious giving accounts
for the largest amount, as alreadynoted. Apart from religious giving,says Srinath, ‘relief-type giving andgiving for public works would be
the traditional forms and these areprobably still the dominant forms ofindividual giving for India as a whole.’
Interestingly, a few European
countries depart from this type. In
Germany and Belgium, for example,
international and humanitarian aid
was the priority in 2013, accounting
for 74% of total German donations
and 61% of Belgian donations.5

Giving to organisations
or individuals
There are two competing tendencies
at work here. While in many places
there is a marked reluctance to giveto organisations, there is also an
acknowledgement in some countriesof the need to support them. So,
for instance, says Narmeen Adeel ofthe Pakistan Centre for Philanthropy(PCP), while most of Pakistan’s
giving tends to be individual toindividual, both organisations anddonors see the need to incentivise
giving to organisations. ‘We will
see organisations trying to tap
into resources that are traditionallyallocated to individuals so you haveorganisations making a conscious
effort to get zakat money, for example.

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Individual giving

And organisations are becoming
conscious that there is the possibilityof small regular donations rather
than looking for large donations.’
Andre Degenszajn notes ‘agrowing sense that people should
be connecting to organisations
that they trust whose work they
believe in.' As Brazil’s economy
has grown, international funding
has been diminishing as donors
turn their attention elsewhere (acommon phenomenon in emerging
economies). ‘The pattern of support
from government has also changed,
and grantmaking is at a lower level
than we would like to see fromphilanthropic institutions, so people
are starting to realise that in the longrun individual donations could bea reliable and sustainable source offunding.’ One or two organisations
have been successful in raisingfunds from individuals, but there are
obstacles. First, it requires a lot of
investment and the infrastructureand experience to make it work.
Second, Brazilians are reluctant togive to Brazilian NGOs. For bothof these reasons, the successfulorganisations have been wellresourced international organisations.
Strikingly, the biggest recipientgroup of individual giving in Turkey
is street beggars. In TUSEV’s 2016
study,6 88% said they prefer to give
direct to those in need. Basak Ersen
thinks that part of the reason for thisis that people like to see immediate
results. Only 12% said they preferto give through an organization.

Why do people
mistrust NGOs?
Often the reluctance to support
NGOs is based on mistrust. Ersen
believes that mistrust underlies all
aspects of the relationship between
philanthropy, government, civilsociety and the public. The TUSEV
study notes a general lack of trust in
Turkish society. Only 1 in 10 said they
trust people outside their family or
immediate neighbourhood. Despite
that, people will give to institutions,but only to those they are sure of.

Ingrid Srinath notes that while thereis ‘a class of urban, westernised,educated people who give toorganisations’, such giving has beenslow to take off and it depends verymuch on the organisation. ‘Levelsof trust in NGOs have fallen sharply.
Depending on who you are talking
to, they are seen as either ineffective
or ineffective and corrupt or, at thehighest level, ineffective, corrupt andanti-national.’ While Singapore is an
exception in East Asia, because it’sa well regulated market, ‘there are
big issues in many other countries’,
says Laurence Lien. ‘Because there
is very little trust about where thefunds go, a lot of grassroots NGOs
find it very difficult to fundraise frompeople who don’t know them.’
It may be more a matter of people
trusting some organisations andnot others. ‘This issue of trust andorganisations comes up a lot,’says Halima Mahomed. ‘But what
do you mean by an organisation?
Isn’t a religious institution a formof organisation? People give tothings that they know, formal orinformal, and that has to do withtrust.’ For her, it’s more trust insome organisations rather thanmistrust of others that makes
people selective in their giving. It
may be that local and informal ismore attractive than formal andmore remote, either physically orin outlook. A CAF Southern Africa
study7 carried out in Gauteng
province, South Africa, found that
84% of survey respondents who giveto organisations give to informalgroups and only 16% to formal NGOs.

Other reasons for the
reluctance to support NGOs
Mistrust of their integrity is not the
only reason for reluctance to give toNGOs. Carolina Suarez of Associacionde Fundaciones Empresariales
believes that ‘NGOs need to be more
professional, more lean. Sometimes
they are amazingly bureaucracatic,
which makes their overhead high. If I
ask my members why they don’t workwith NGOs, the answer is that they
don’t want to spend a lot of money
covering their administrative costs.
12

Whatever the cause,
reluctance on the partof individuals to give toorganisations is one of
the reasons why NGOs,
especially those working
in more contentious fields,
are beginning to feelthe pinch"
Sometimes it’s also the case thatworking through NGOs makes thecompany anonymous and companies
often want to use projects for marketing
and want to see their name involved.’
While Brazilian civil society played acritical role in establishing democracyin the country in the 1990s, it was often
unseen, believes Ana Valeria Araujo
of the Brazil Human Rights Fund, so
the public remains unaware of theimportance of NGOs. Nor have NGOs
helped their own case in this respect,since they have not been forthcomingin publicising their activities.
Atallah Kuttab notes that NGOs in the
Arab region have become vulnerable
because they have been intent on
pleasing their funders rather than theirbeneficiaries; as a consequence, theirconstituents have no affinity with them.
NGOs in Egypt, he says, are being
subject to increasingly punitive laws,
but ‘we do not see people taking to
the streets to defend them because
in many instances people don’t see
them as part of the fabric, they see
them as contractors or subcontractorsof foundations or governments.'
Whatever the cause, reluctance on
the part of individuals to give toorganisations is one of the reasons
why NGOs, especially those working in
more contentious fields, are beginningto feel the pinch in many places.
We will expand on this discussionin chapter 7 on ‘Philanthropy,
government and civil society.'

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Individual giving

NEW FORMS OF GIVINGIn Hilary Pearson’s view, new formsof giving – online, crowdfunding,
via text message – mean that ‘thephilanthropy model is going to be
upended. We don’t know how it’sgoing to shake out but it’s definitely
being upended.’ But these newforms of giving are developing
slowly, so it may be a while before
philanthropy is upended.

Online giving
Estimates of online giving vary, as
does the degree to which it hasdeveloped in different countries,
but the general view in most placesis that while it is a coming trend,
it has not yet arrived. It’s growing
quickly in Turkey, notes BasakErsen, ‘because the technology isimproving and younger people tend
to use it more and more efficiently.
Probably in five years’ time online
giving will have doubled or even
tripled, but at the moment it isprobably just a small proportion ofgiving overall.’ In fact, according
to TUSEV’s research, only 1.9% ofTurks make use of online giving and7.5% of mobile giving, while thefigure for crowdfunding is 1.3%.8
Halima Mahomed feels thatcircumstances will be as importantas technology in influencing
people’s behaviour. ‘People aregoing to give to what they know
and to the need they can see aroundthem.’ If you live in a rural area, it’smore likely you’ll give direct to aperson or a community group. It’s
in some urban areas that online
giving is increasing, even if ‘it’s still
nascent.' In Kenya, she adds, ‘mobile
giving has taken off because thetechnology platforms are mucheasier. We’re starting to see someof that now – like SMS messages
to donate to a particular cause.’
While direct giving remains thepreferred form in Pakistan, Shazia
Amjad notes that ‘every organisation
is looking to online giving now andone of the things we are working on
is developing an online giving portal

to bring together organisations
on one platform.' Larger, moreadministratively sophisticatedorganisations are already blazing
a trail. The Citizens Foundation,for example, ‘has found that its
online donations have multiplied
exponentially in the last few years
because they have invested in theway they fundraise online.' In themeantime, there are a number of
obstacles to be overcome: one
is custom – ‘people aren’t used
to donating online.' In addition,
she points out, ‘not everyone hasaccess to online banking or they’re
not comfortable with using it.'This may be especially true in rural
areas of developing countries.

the most important stimuli to thismovement. In September 2015,
TenCent initiated a giving day, andthe same event the following year
raised CNY100 million (USD15.2m)
within three days, over CNY6 million(USD911,000) of which came in
the form of online donations.

In some parts of the world, online
giving has developed further. In
Singapore, Laurence Lien sees itmaking rapid headway. The Giving.
sg site was already raising SGD2
million (around USD1.484,000m)
a year in 2008 before the National
Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre
took it over when Lien became
its CEO. That figure has now
grown to around SGD20 million(USD14.840,000m). In the US, theLilly Family School of Philanthropy’s
Philanthropy Outlook, 2017-18
notes that ‘giving to institutionsof higher education and private
schools has been particularly strong,
especially via online methods.'

Crowdfunding

Twenty per cent of all giving in India
will be online within two years and
50% within 10 years, predicts a survey
undertaken in 2015 by CAF India andEthica.9 Ingrid Srinath notes that online
giving and retail giving generally
continue to grow in India, simply
because people are more prosperous
and there is more awareness of giving.
While, exceptionally, individual giving
probably accounts for the smallest
share of giving in China, the amounts
have increased dramatically over thelast two or three years because ofinternet giving, says Yanni Peng. The
Alibaba Foundation and WeChat,the social media mobile application
developed by TenCent, used by over
900 million people, have been

13

Barry Gaberman says that Oxfam
America, on whose board he sits,
finds that its individual donations
are increasingly made online.
Moreover, ‘it’s a whole cast of
new people, demographically ayounger cohort. I will never give
online. My children, I suppose, give
partially online. My grandchildren
will probably only give online.’

Crowdfunding for social causes is in asimilar situation to online giving more
widely. Andre Degenszajn believes
that in terms of the amounts raised,
crowdfunding platforms are ‘not sosignificant’, but, he says, ‘they arestarting to play a very importantrole because they have suddenly
made people see they could raisemoney for causes from individuals
and that wasn’t an option before.’
In the Arab region, crowdfundingis limited though there is a lot ofinterest in it, believes Atallah Kuttab.
The principal obstacle is that ‘setting
up platforms to collect money isvery difficult.' He describes helping
to set up a crowdfunding platformto help refugees in the region.
‘Lebanon was the only place we
could do it because JustGiving in
London will deal only in Lebanon.’

Giving via text
messaging/SMS
According to a 2017 CAF Russia
report, the most popular meansof giving for Russians was by text
message (40% said they had givenin this way in the previous year),while online giving was some way
down the list of preferred methods.

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Individual giving

Online giving and crowdfunding
have democratised giving.
Its convenience opens up the
possibility that people might donate
and feel that their responsibility
is discharged without having any
real engagement with the issue”
Advantages anddisadvantages of
online giving
There is a view that online giving andcrowdfunding have democratised
giving. This view was expressedat the Johannesburg workshop
and Danny Sriskandarajah
also notes this possibility.
However, while its potential is
prodigious, enthusiasm shouldbe tempered with caution.
Halima Mahomed feels its very
convenience opens up the possibility
that people might donate andfeel that their responsibility isdischarged without having any
real engagement with the issue.
Online giving, particularly
crowdfunding, is often the expressionof a spontaneous outburst ofcompassion or pity rather than athought-out intervention. It’s popularin Singapore, says Laurence Lien,
when there’s a catastrophic event,particularly where an individual isinvolved. It tends to favour ‘those
who make it to the media with pitiful
stories. There haven’t been significant
amounts of money raised throughcrowdfunding for other things.’

Barry Gaberman raises the issue offunding overhead, which is unlikely to
be funded by online giving, especially
crowdfunding. He sees it as ‘an ethicalproposition. You cannot allow thecapacity of an institution that drew you
there in the first place to support its
programmes to be diminished by yoursupport because you won’t deal withoverhead. You have to pay the freight.’
Hilary Pearson also mentions thedanger that core funding will decline
because of the squeeze on the likes ofUnited Way, ‘which are intermediaryinstitutions that give money to small
charities. I’m sure that’s a trend
that’s also being seen in the US andperhaps in parts of Europe,’ she adds.
‘Because people are now giving
digitally not through intermediaries
but via phone or the internet,
organisations like United Way thatwere very important in providing
core costs for small charities are
no longer able to do that.’

The dimension of solidarity
Both Danny Sriskandarajah and BasakErsen draw attention to something
very significant in new forms of giving:that they are not just a matter of

14adding more money to the corpusof philanthropy. ‘When we talkabout online giving, crowdfunding,etc, we’re talking about something
different. It’s not about High Net
Worth Individuals (HNWIs) or wellendowed foundations, it’s about
people supporting each other andthat being manifested in some sortof financial transaction.’ The change
is potentially a radical one. In someways, it may not mark the introductionof a completely new basis for giving,
but rather the reintroduction of amuch older idea of solidarity andmutual aid given technological wings.
In Turkey, while there is ‘a growing
understanding of the importance ofgiving more, especially in the younger
generation’, says Ersen, the mistrustprevalent in Turkish society meansthat this manifests itself in a particularway: ‘young people don’t like togather together in traditional forms,
in associations, foundations, even inpolitical parties. They’re more likely
to get together in events like charity
runs and I think this is a new way of
coming together.’ He sees this form ofloose association as ‘a new politics inTurkey and it’s very strongly growing.
If you can’t do things legally and you
don’t like to be illegal, you have tofind other ways of doing things.’

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Individual giving

GIVING BY HIGH NET
WORTH INDIVIDUALS(HNWIs)HNWIs play a significant part inindividual giving, though often
they will establish a foundation
to institutionalise their giving. In
Pakistan, for example, large donors‘have set a benchmark for healthcare
services’, says Shazia Amjad. The
Business School at Lahore Universityof Management Sciences, Habib
University and the Indus Hospital were
all funded by HNWIs. Often othersources of money follow, but the initial
pot comes from weathly individuals.
Statistics are not plentiful, but good
indications are offered by reports suchas the Coutts Million Dollar Donor
Report, the BNP Paribas Individual
Philanthropy Index and the Major
Giving Index, compiled by Wealth-X.
The 2015 Coutts report records 2,197
donations of a million dollars (orequivalent in local currency) or moreacross the three regions it covers,
the UK, the USA and the Middle East,
worth a total of USD56 billion. Eightyfive per cent of this amount, says thereport, was contributed by individuals.
The BNP Paribas Individual
Philanthropy Index for 2016 samples
donors with over USD5 million in
investable assets. Not surprisingly,
the Index, worked out across four
dimensions including current andprojected giving and innovation,puts the US ahead on all dimensions
and overall, followed by Europe,
Asia and the Middle East.
Broadly in keeping with other forms ofgiving, the trend for HNWI and Ultra
High Net Worth Individuals (UHNWI)
giving is an upward one, following a
dip around the time of the recession,from 2008 to 2011. The Major Giving
Index forecasts a growth in the
major donor population (those whohave donated USD1 million to goodcauses in their lifetime) from 18,500
in 2015 to 27,000 by 2020, and also
foresees that they will give more.
Fifty-seven per cent of these major
donors are based in the Americas.

In line with individual giving generally,
the top causes listed by the Major
Giving Index are education andhealth. BNP Paribas gives health as
the top cause in three of the four
regions studied (US, Europe and the
Middle East), with wealthy Asian
donors preferring the environment.

Influence of thenext generation
These indexes signpost other likely
developments, especially the influenceof the next generation. Millennials
are producing a change in the givingof the very wealthy, ‘ushering in newmodels that combine traditionalfoundations with profit-making
endeavours and social enterprises.'10
A BNP Paribas report on nextgeneration philanthropists11 similarly
notes an increasing interest among
millennials in forms of financing otherthan grants such as ‘equity investments
and loans, often directed at social
enterprises.' The Jacobs Foundation,
under the leadership of its 36-yearold chair, ‘has invested CHF2.5 million(around USD2.5m) in impact financeand plans to increase this to up to
CHF6 million (USD6m) by 2020.'
A token of this change of emphasis,
if not of direction, is the willingnessof wealthy young people tobranch out from existing family
philanthropic traditions. The BNPParibas study cites the example ofLeyth Zniber, the founder of Impact
Lab in Morocco, who decided not
to follow his mother’s philanthropic
example, believing rather that ‘withintelligent business you can actually
solve deep societal problems.'12

Public and media attitudes
to giving by HNWIs
The giving of HNWIs is well regardedin Pakistan – as far as it is visible.
They are what Shazia Amjad calls‘leader-donors’ and have initiated anumber of significant organisations inboth health and education. However,Narmeen Adeel of the Pakistan Center
for Philanthropy notes that HNWIs
don’t have much of a media presence
because they don’t like to talk aboutor quantify what they give, so they willtalk about the institutions they support
but not the amounts they have put in.
Individual philanthropy in the Arabregion is a little more visible thaninstitutional philanthropy, but not
much: ‘When someone important isgiving money it gets media coverage,
but it could be much greater because
in spite of legal questions and theclosing environment, there’s plenty ofgood experiences out there to write
about. We have a shortage of writers.’
UK research on why rich people
give shows a degree of cynicism in
the UK media about their motives.
Carol Mack contrasts this with themuch more favourable view of large
donations in the US, although it’s
possible that the cynical tone of themedia does not accurately reflect
the views of the public. What isclear is that the media calling into
question their motives makes it
difficult to urge philanthropists tobe more public about what theygive and to act as role models.

New forms of giving meanthat the philanthropy model
is going to be upended”
15

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Individual giving

In Spain, too, big donations are often
met with cynicism. Earlier this year,
Amancio Ortega, the owner of Zara
and ranked fourth on the Forbes
Rich List, announced his intention of
donating EUR400 million (USD476m)
to the public health system to buy
equipment for diagnosing andtreating cancer. ‘You can’t imagine
the level of criticism that this hasreceived,’ says Rosa Gallego. ‘First,
people think that the public healthsystem should be funded by publicmoney and not depend on privatemoney; second, that rich people
should pay more tax instead of
paying low taxes and giving money
away.’ This point – that more private
wealth should go to public purposes
through tax and that the state should
be responsible for welfare provision– finds wide acceptance beyond
Spain and is also a factor in the
reluctance of people to give to NGOs.
In China, feels Yanni Peng, the media
are generally favourable, but they
are quick to criticise when there is ascandal, which has coloured public
views of philanthropy and raisedquestions over its transparency.
The desire to increase transparency
was one of the motives behind thesetting up of the China Foundation
Center, which has created theFoundations Transparency Index.

Private giversof all kinds, inplaces where
giving has
traditionallybeen moreparochial, are
beginning tohave wider
horizons"

Need for HNWIs to talkabout philanthropy
Krystian Seibert of Philanthropy
Australia notes that one of themost effective tools for increasinglarger-scale philanthropy is ‘when
philanthropists talk about it and say
why they do it.' While this is happening
to a limited extent, substantial donors
can be shy of publicity because public
attitudes to large donations can becontradictory. While philanthropists inAustralia are generally well regarded
and rank high on honours lists, there
are signs that an undercurrent ofsuspicion may be emerging. He talksof a USD400 million pledge made byAndrew and Nicola Forrest in mid-2017.
While news coverage was generally
positive, there was also some criticism,with one columnist arguing thatphilanthropy is inherently undemocratic
and that the Forrests should bepaying more tax. For these reasons,he believes that it’s important to havean ongoing discussion about the roleof philanthropy in society, how it uses
its position and power, and how it canmaintain its ‘social licence to operate.'
In India, Ingrid Srinath still notes ‘some
discomfort with talking publicly about
giving. Mr Tata and Mr Premji are almost
invisible.’ To a degree, setting up afoundation interposes an organisationalshield between the donor and the money
donated, which helps to deflect publicattention, and she notes ‘a great deal of
reluctance to talk about sums of money
and so on.' On the other hand, she feels
this is changing, helped in part by greaterpublicity for philanthropy in the shape ofawards by magazines like Forbes and theEconomic Times. Azim Premji recently
became the first Indian philanthropist
to be awarded the Carnegie Medal for
Philanthropy. Srinath also notes thatthe resentment or cynicism that often
accompanies large donations elsewhereis generally absent in India. The new
wealth, she feels, is too recent to be seen
as anything but an unmitigated good.
In China, says Yanni Peng, ‘the feelingthat philanthropy should be done
without drawing attention to it ischanging.' The likes of Jack Ma are
happy to talk about their philanthropic
work in order to raise public awarenessof philanthropy’s function.
16

REMITTANCES AND
DIASPORA GIVING
Remittances are hard to assess withany precision, but estimates suggest
they are very significant, particularly
as they are considered apart fromestimates of philanthropic giving.
According to the Hudson Institute’s
2016 Index of Global Philanthropy
and Remittances,13 remittancesfrom donor countries to developing
countries in 2014 totalled USD224
billion (compared with USD147
billion in official developmentaid). It’s a figure that has climbed
fairly steadily, bar the odd hiccup,since the turn of the millennium.
Two interesting points to note here.
According to World Bank data14 on
remittances, the flow of south-south
remittances (34% of the total) was
not far short of that of north-south
flows (38%). Second, and back to
the Hudson Index, though muchless than the flow of remittances,
there are significant amounts ofprivate philanthropy from non-DAC
countries (those that aren’t part of
the OECD’s Development AssistanceCommittee and, by implication, notconsidered major donor countries)
to developing countries. Institutional
and individual philanthropists in Brazil
gave USD34 million to developing
countries in 2014. In India, the figure
was USD249 million, in Indonesia
USD129 million and in Turkey USD267
million. Taken together, these findings
suggest that private givers of all
kinds, in places where giving has
traditionally been more parochial, are
beginning to have wider horizons.

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Individual giving

It’s important tohave an ongoing
discussion about therole of philanthropy
in society, how it
uses its position andpower, and how it canmaintain its ‘social
licence to operate’”17

3
Institutional
philanthropy
This chapter focuses on foundations:
their growing numbers, especially inEurope and some countries of the global
south; the largely conservative causes
they support; the gradual spread ofgrantmaking and strategic philanthropy.
It also discusses foundations’ muchtouted appetite for risk; sometimes
negative perceptions of institutional
philanthropy; and the future role offoundations and future trends.

18

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Institutional philanthropy

The lack of clear legal definitions canmake it hard to see the size of thephilanthropic sector. Philanthropic
institutions in South Africa, forexample, ‘can be registered astrusts, as Section 21 companies or
as CSOs and they are all governedby different laws.' So, although
the sector seems to be growing,that growth can be hard to chartbecause ‘much of the evidence isanecdotal’, says Halima Mahomed.
In the Arab region, a foundation might
be an NGO or an association. This is
not simply a matter of confusion. In asense, it has a philosophical basis andreflects how people see institutional
philanthropy and its role. The
distinction, very broadly, is between
whether philanthropy sees itself aspart of civil society or separate fromit. Barry Gaberman calls organised
philanthropy ‘a slice of the non-profit
sector.' He admits that some tend to
think of it as ‘a sector unto itself andnot connected to broader civil society,but I have always felt there was acertain self-aggrandisement in that.' It
may be that the ambiguity involved in
nomenclature is partly created by anambivalence in philanthropy’s attitude
to power.

In India, it’skind of thenorm now if
you are an
IT billionaire
to have afoundation”

FOUNDATIONS –A GROWING SECTOR
Foundations in Europe
and the USDAFNE (Donors and Foundations
Networks in Europe) estimates a totalof 129,000 foundations in Europe,
many of which are relatively young.
Half of Swiss foundations are less than
20 years old. Between 2001 and 2014,
the number of French foundations
more than doubled.15 More than 70% ofGermany’s foundations were founded
after reunification in 1990. In Spain,
more than 69% of foundations areunder 18 years old. In Italy, the numberof foundations grew by 133% between
1995 and 2005.
Italy is an interesting case. The
creation of the banking foundations
by privatising savings banks in 1990
produced a number of very large
foundations. They account for only 2%of Italian foundations but hold about
half of the country’s philanthropic
assets and about 10% of those of thewhole of Europe. This has caused ahuge imbalance in Italy. Most of thesavings banks were in the north of
Italy and their foundations continue
to operate mainly in their own locality.
This means these local areas are theoverwhelming beneficiaries of theirphilanthropy, while the rest of thecountry is excluded.
In the US, by contrast, the size ofthe foundation sector remains fairly
steady. The Foundation Center
website records 86,000-87,000 plus
with slight fluctuations between
2012 and 2014, though foundation
giving is increasing slightly.

Foundations in the
global south
In many countries of the global south,
the foundation sector has grownin the first two decades of the newmillennium, though the rate ofincrease is uneven.

19

CHINA In China, the sector has
grown very fast since the Regulation
on Administration of Foundationsin 2004. Prior to this, most of
China’s foundations were public
and essentially government run, but
subsequently private foundations havebeen the fastest-growing segment
and some 60-65% are now private,estimates Yanni Peng. The distinction
between public and private continues,
however, and until 2016 only public
foundations were legally allowed toraise funds from the public. In 2016 a
new regulation stipulated that every
charity operating for two years andmeeting certain criteria can apply fora licence to fundraise. This will put
pressure on the public foundations,since successful NGOs will no longer
need to work through them, but will beable to appeal directly to the public.
INDIA In India, while the Tata Trusts
have ‘been around for over 100 years’,
the new money ‘that came out of the
IT sector has started to find this moreorganised, foundation-type form’, says
Ingrid Srinath. ‘It’s kind of the norm
now if you are an IT billionaire to havea foundation.’
RUSSIA You are more likely to meeta fundraising foundation in Russia
than an endowed foundation on the
Anglo-Saxon model, says Oksana
Oracheva of the Potanin Foundation.
While most people still give direct tothe cause or to the end beneficiary,
there is a growing trend towards
giving to fundraising foundations andto other institutions, a trend which theformal philanthropy sector is trying
to promote. In terms of money, thetwo biggest foundations in Russia are
fundraising foundations, both of themworking in children’s health. While
there are private foundations and they
are playing a significant part (not least
the Potanin Foundation itself) they are
few at the moment.
SINGAPORE Though the foundation
sector is growing, it tends to be aless significant player in Singapore,says Laurence Lien, because there
are no tax advantages to setting up afoundation in a country which alreadyhas a very low level of taxation.

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Institutional philanthropy‘People just give directly,’ he says,‘it’s a lot simpler, it doesn’t lock you
in. That’s still the dominant form as
opposed to using an intermediary.’
The main reason for setting up afoundation in Singapore, he believes,is to create a legacy, a sense ofcontinuity in the beliefs and attitudes
of a family or group.
PAKISTAN Here again, the conceptof a foundation is not clear-cut and it
is mainly associated with corporate
foundations – though, says Shazia
Amjad, a few private foundations haverecently been set up by high net worth
individuals or families. There are twolarge social funds, which essentially act
as public foundations. One has been
involved in poverty alleviation – ‘which
could mean working in education,
sanitation, whatever’; it has received
a huge amount of funding fromgovernment and acts as an intermediaryorganisation, working through local
CSOs. There are also a number ofprovincial funds, like the community
development fund in Sindh, which isfunded by the provincial government
and makes grants to small and mediumsized NGOs working in Sindh.

Corporate foundations
Corporate giving tends to be thestrongest force in institutional
giving in Latin America, wheremost foundations are corporate
foundations, and also in Russia
where corporations are still the major
players in philanthropy, especiallywhen it comes to supporting both
fundraising foundations and NGOs.
Their budgets, reckons Oksana
Oracheva, will be higher than thoseof private foundations. She sees
both growing involvement andgrowing sophistication among
Russian businesses, ‘not only in thecommunities where they have businessinterests but also beyond. At a recent
conference there was a discussion
on why business needs NGOs andhow good it is for business to invest
in the NGO sector in different ways,
providing grants, moving from giving
direct help to funding through them,and using foundation methods likegrant competitions.’

Corporate giving
is also the fastest
growing sector
in Turkey, where
the economy
has grown
significantly"
Corporate giving is also the fastest
growing sector in Turkey, where theeconomy has grown significantly.
Most of it, notes Basak Ersen, isin the form of CSR activities and‘most big companies now have
CSR programmes.'
The potential role of corporate giving
has been significantly enhanced inIndia as a result of the 2013 Companies
Act, which makes it mandatory forcompanies over a certain size to invest
a minimum of 2 per cent of their net
profits in activities undertaken as CSR(though such has been the growth ofphilanthropy overall in India that therelative share of corporate contributions
to philanthropy has fallen to 15 per centfrom 30 per cent in 201116).
Rosa Gallego sees a development in therelationship of the corporate and nonprofit sector in Spain and a change of
attitude on the part of corporate donors
which is likely, in turn, to force a reviewof the relationship from the non-profit
side: ‘the reality is that corporates are
big funders of NGOs. But they have got
to the point, following the crisis, thatthey are not ready to just give money
away so they are saying, “we need avalue proposition from you”.’
It should be noted that in many
places (Turkey, South East Asia, theMiddle East and large parts of Latin
America), corporate foundations
are not clearly differentiated fromother types of foundation.

20

Both businesses and foundations stilltend to be family owned or closely
associated with the founding family,
and the interests of the foundation are
not seen as separate from those of thecompany. ‘Many of the richest people
in Turkey have foundations under theirown name, but often their companies
are involved,’ says Basak Ersen.
Foundations of this kind often shy
away from political risk, since it might
jeopardise their business, especiallywhere government contracts are an
important element of that business.

What is driving the growthin the foundation sector?
In the global south, the main stimulus
seems to have been the increase inindividual and corporate wealth. In
Europe, it may be partly demographic,
too: families get smaller and people
are more inclined to give a portionof their wealth to causes they areinterested in, which combines withincreased public sensitivity tosocial and ecological problems. It
is also partly due to governments’
encouragement of philanthropy as
their own means of paying for welfare
provision shrinks.
In Europe the growth of philanthropy
has often been stimulated by
reducing the amount of capitalrequired to establish a foundation anddecreasing the use of endowments.
This has produced a crop of smaller
foundations. One of the most obvious
characteristics of the foundation
sector in Spain is the smallnessof most of its constituents. ‘Our
membership fee is EUR600 (USD714),’says Rosa Gallego of Asociación
Española de Fundaciónes, ‘but evenso there are many organisations who
can’t afford to be members. We havemembers who have a EUR6,000(USD7,140) a year budget.’ More than
80% of Polish foundations in 2103 hadno endowment.
While reducing the amount of capitalrequired to establish a foundation
has been a spur to growth, it may
also have made foundations more
vulnerable to economic shocks.

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In Spain, foundations with a budgetof less than EUR30,000 (USD35,700)
were seriously affected by the financial
crisis and their role in the sector wasconsiderably reduced between 2008
and 2012.
Financial resilience apart, the merits ofa large population of small foundations
are debatable. Danny Sriskandarajah
notes that New Zealand has ‘400
odd foundations for a country with 4
million people and for me that’s toomany. If you are a CSO, it’s a huge ask
to survey 400 websites and fill in 400
different types of form.’
It should be noted, though, thatit’s quite common for a country’s
foundation sector to be dominatedby a few larger ones, with a ‘long tail’of smaller organisations. In the US,
the top 50 (out of 86,000-87,000plus) foundations were responsible fornearly a third of overall US foundation
giving in 2014.

Not only are
the numbersof foundationsin the global
south increasing,but they are
beginning tohave larger
ambitions (...)
and global
aspirations"

WHAT CAUSES DO
FOUNDATIONS SUPPORT?
‘Education is the largest category,’says Hilary Pearson, followed by healthand social services. These same causes
occur again and again, sometimes
with the order slightly rearranged –under the guise of health, educationand ‘human services’, as it is called in
the US. ‘All the statistics we have saythat most funding goes to the safest
areas – education, children, healthcare– not human rights, for example,’ says
Oksana Oracheva. Basak Ersen notes
the focus on providing scholarships inTurkey. Among the exceptions is the
Netherlands, with religion, international
aid and health as the principal
recipients of foundation funds.
Most Asian philanthropy is still very
traditional, feels Laurence Lien, partly
because outside Singapore there isa lot of what he calls ‘low-hanging
fruit’, obvious things to do that arepolitically uncontentious. The Lien
Family Foundation is one of the few
that engage in advocacy or attempt to
influence policy (in the areas of earlychildhood education and elderly andend-of-life care).
It’s worth noting that some of thesecategories are vague. Are ‘education’
donors giving to build a new schoolor institution? To improve the qualityof teaching? To endow a scholarship?
Such detailed knowledge is seldom
available, as Pearson points out: ‘Afoundation could have given a grant toa university which might ultimately be
for a project with Canada’s indigenous
communities, but it’s gone through theuniversity because most indigenous
communities don’t have registeredcharitable entities.’
Not only are the numbers offoundations in the global south
increasing, says Jenny Hodgson, butthey are beginning to have larger
ambitions. She points to the Potanin
Foundation’s new global strategy
and Azim Premji’s Carnegie Medal as
indices of this kind of change. ‘The
assumption previously,’ she says, ‘wasthat it was a thing of the global north.

21

Now you’re starting to see Russian
and Chinese foundations with global
aspirations.’ Part of the Potanin strategy,
she observes, is not simply to reproduce
the same kind of foundation which has
characterised the global north, but to bea ‘different kind of animal.'

Are foundations supporting
advocacy and social justiceissues?
US foundations are more likely tointervene in public policy than is thecase in most other countries. The
Gates Foundation, a prime example,
remains exceptional on account of
its massive assets and expenditure.
The foundation has been active in US
education reform since 1999 when
it set about funding smaller schools,
and it then moved on to improving
the quality of teaching and curriculum
reform. The results have been mixed,
causing the foundation CEO, Susan
Desmond-Hellman, to acknowledge
recently that ‘the Gates Foundation
doesn’t have all the answers.'
Not only that, such interventions
have also received criticism in thatthey potentially give unaccountableprivate money undue influence overpublic matters. An editorial in theLos Angeles Times complains that‘public officials shouldn’t be allowing
them to set the policy agenda forthe nation’s public schools.'17 Thisis a longstanding and widespreaddebate, but probably nowhere more
contentious than in the US.
While there’s no official restriction
on what institutional philanthropy
can support in South Africa, there
are probably more internationalfoundations supporting social justiceissues than local ones, thinks Halima
Mahomed. There’s ‘a concerted effort
to get local foundations to think about
the broader social justice issues. It’s asmall and slow process. Independent
foundations can more easily take risks
on human rights issues.’
Funders can sometimes support
contentious issues by approachingthem from another angle.

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A foundation in Brazil, for instance,
doesn’t focus on gender discussions
but on generating resources
for women.

What is the increased
corporate philanthropy
supporting?
In India, Ingrid Srinath feels, the
new legislation has ‘pushed backphilanthropy into less evolved
avenues.' There is undoubtedly moremoney in the sector, but ‘there is alist of themes that the government
thinks are good things to fund and,corporates being corporates, they
stay within the narrowest definition of
those things.' In addition, the reporting
structure disincentivises long-termwork ‘so it’s very much programmemoney, 12-month cycles, direct service
delivery, in the company’s area of
operations or around the factory or
plant, and staying completely awayfrom anything that is long-term, that is
advocacy, that is rights-based, that is
strategic in terms of going where theneed is.'Some of the same issues apply
in South Africa. While the Black
Economic Empowerment (BEE)
legislation has stimulated giving
in South Africa, there is some selfinterest at work. The BEE points
companies get give them credibility
to bid for contracts under the BEE
system. While data is lacking, Halima
Mahomed is fairly sure that the BEE
legislation has ‘diluted the power ofgiving because it tends to follow thepoints, rather than what is required.
There’s a lot of box-ticking going on
without any real impact happening.’
She notes that ‘questions about how
giving can be more systemic andstrategic’ need to be asked all acrossthe foundation spectrum, not just of
corporate givers.
In Singapore, ‘it’s become the normthat you need to be seen to be agood corporate citizen,’ says Laurence
Lien. Again, one of the problems isthat it’s more a question of doing
what’s expected than what’s needed.
Another is that the approach of many
companies is not well thought-out.

GRANTMAKING
OR OPERATING?

In Singapore it’s
become the normthat you need to be
seen to be a good
corporate citizen”
It should be about ‘using yourassets, your strengths. What’s
the point in getting highly paid
investment bankers to paint walls
when you could hire a whole army
to do it and make a better job.’
In the Arab region, feels Atallah
Kuttab, ‘CSR is still PR and we arestill one step forward, two steps
backward. I was very optimistic in
2012-13 that we were getting moreof what we call social investment,social businesses, but money isdriving it rather than values.’
So, while corporate giving is likely to
become more and more important as
an element of global philanthropy, it
has limitations. Apart from the factthat it is apt to follow trends rather
than needs, it is reluctant to fund areas
which might bring it into conflict withthe authorities and its tendency tooperate its own programmes meansthat it contributes nothing to creating
a civil society ecosystem.
In fact, corporate giving may actually
weaken NGOs’ watchdog role. If
that’s increasingly where the bigmoney is, NGOs will hesitate tobe critical of business. This viewis endorsed by Amitabh Behar of
the National Foundation for India.
Writing in Alliance in September
2016, he notes an explosion in thephilanthropy sector and also the roleof the Companies Act in increasing
resources from CSR. But, he adds:‘Almost none of the resources invested
in this way reach the elements ofcivil society that are working forhuman rights, accountability of thestate or life with dignity for all, or
campaigning to empower excluded
and marginalized communities.’18

22

In the US, in 2014, only 3,687 of a totalof 86,726 foundations were operating
foundations.19 Outside the Englishspeaking world, however, foundations
that make grants are still in theminority. Basak Ersen estimates that’99 per cent of Turkish foundations
are operational.' The most often cited
reason for this is mistrust of NGOs,
but there are others, too. ‘First, it’s notin our tradition, we like to do things
by ourselves,’ says Basak Ersen, ‘andthe history of civil society in Turkey
is not very old.’ That said, he believes
that ‘in ten years’ time we’ll see moregrantmaking programmes, even one or
two true grantmaking foundations.'
Grantmakers are few and far between,in Spain, too, says Rosa Gallego. ‘For
one thing, foundations run their own
programmes; for another, the vast
majority of foundations in Spain would
be considered charities elsewhere.
They are organisations that raise funds
and operate programmes.’
Very few Chinese foundations
currently make grants to other nonprofit organisations: 43.5 per centprovide some grants to grassroots
organisations, but only 9 per cent aresolely grantmaking foundations.20 In
Colombia, too, the norm is the operating
foundation, and this is also the case in
the Philippines and in Indonesia.
Ingrid Srinath notes a move towards
operating, rather than grantmaking,among new foundations in India.
Much of the new philanthropy in Indiaand in many emerging economies
is derived from the proceeds ofsuccessful IT ventures, she notes,
and – among institutions at least –this has produced a technocraticstyle of philanthropy. This means animpatience with existing approaches
and an emphasis on market-based
approaches, measurable achievements
and innovation – as Srinath puts it in a
recent CIVICUS report,21 an emphasison ‘technology-driven solutions overmore complex political approaches,a distaste for which marks many
emerging philanthropists.'

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At the 2017 AVPN Conference,
Shuichi Ohno of the Sasakawa Peace
Foundation spoke of grantmaking as
creating dependency among NGOs.

Grantmaking on the rise
There are signs that grantmaking is
beginning to grow elsewhere, even if
only to a very limited extent, as donors
realise the importance of grants,
both in encouraging a resilient andcapable civil society and in providing– sometimes – a more effective
way of addressing a need. Jenny
Hodgson believes that we will see
more southern foundations engage in
grantmaking because of a handful ofleading organisations in China, Russia
and other places who are showing that
grantmaking is an effective strategy –‘it’s not just giving away power, it’s thebest way to get work done.'
In Brazil, for example, the operating
foundation is the norm but the ideaof grantmaking is slowly gaining
ground. Notable here is the work of
the Philanthropy Network for Social
Justice, which comprises a numberof institutions that make grants.
Singapore is, as so often, an exception
among its neighbours: its foundations
tend to be grantmakers.
Up to now, says Hodgson, ‘it’s as if the
grantmaking bit has been missed out.
People have gone from implementing tomuch more market-driven investmentstyle approaches. I think grantmaking
needs to be re-embraced because it’s
about resources being able to land inplaces where they can do things.’
She also thinks that this will entail aredefinition of ‘what capacity looks likefor civil society. Capacity used to mean
your ability to receive a grant from theFord Foundation or fulfil the terms of a
DfID audit.’ She sees it moving more in
the direction of capacity to be relevant, tobe locally supported and able to receiveand disburse resources both externallyand locally. ‘Receiving money from asouthern foundation rather than a USAID
type entity means that civil society isalso going to have to look and think
differently and have a much richer blendof constituents than were there before.’

STRATEGIC PHILANTHROPY

There are signs
that grantmaking
is beginning togrow elsewhere, as
donors realise theimportance of grants,
both in encouraging
a resilient andcapable civil society
and in providing —sometimes — a more
effective way ofaddressing a need”
Why the popularity of theoperating model?
There are a number of reasons forpreferring the operating model. First,
NGOs are seen as either incapableor untrustworthy. Second, corporate
donors in particular often prefer to
conduct programmes in-house. Third,
there is an increasing number ofliving donors with an entrepreneurial
background who often want to do
things themselves rather than let
intermediaries do it for them.
Laurence Lien notes an important
drawback to this approach. ‘Byrunning your own programmes, you
are in effect condemning NGOs todeath. You have to grow the capacityof these NGOs to take on the work.
Just imagine the situation where every
foundation has its own education
programme for primary schools, alldesigning their own curriculum – that’ssuch a waste. So a more developed
ecosystem would mean stronger NGOs
and intermediaries to help strengthen
them, philanthropists thinking about
strategic grantmaking, coming
together to grow promising charities,
NGOs, and to develop capacitybuilding organisations.’

23

This is not a new idea, but it is gaining
ground both as a label and as apractice. In Australia, Krystian Seibert
remarks, ‘there’s certainly a focus
on strategic philanthropy, setting
objectives and then working in a
structured and focused way to achieve
them in partnership with others.
However, there are still foundations
that operate using a more traditional
approach based around benevolence.’
Participants in the Johannesburg
workshop noted that giving is moretargeted and the work of the sector ismore ‘organised, systematised, visible
and measurable.' This is partly driven
by desire for greater efficiency in useof resources, partly by increasing
demands for transparency.

The pressure to show results
But the pressure to show results –the pressure to demonstrate ‘more
precision in an imprecise art’, as Gerry
Salole puts it – can have its drawbacks.
‘Sometimes,’ he says, ‘it means they
begin to count stuff that doesn’t
matter and demonstration of impact
can trump long-term strategic work.
It’s an unfortunate trend because it
forces foundations to be much moretransactional. There’s a very easy
critique that implies that traditional
philanthropy is less strategic, lessthoughtful, doesn’t evaluate, but I’ve
never met a foundation that opens
the window and throws money out. It
doesn’t exist.’
Unfortunately, he goes on, the resultsmania means that ‘quieter work, work
you can’t talk about, that involves
some risk and therefore some failure,
is now being overtaken by shorterterm work where you can show results
but the results are predictable up
front.' He sees this as one of the mostmarked tensions in the European
foundation sector. ‘People who’vebeen in the game for a while are
frustrated that they can’t do longerterm work any more, that they’re being
asked to show results too quickly.’

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Quieter work, work you
can’t talk about, thatinvolves some risk andtherefore some failure,
is now being overtakenby shorter-term workwhere you can show
results but the results are
predictable up front”
It’s a trend that’s becoming more
pronounced in South Africa too, says
Halima Mahomed, in part – though notentirely – because of the requirementsof the Black Economic Empowerment(BEE) program, which prompt localorganisations to fund things withmeasurement criteria in order to score
BEE points. ‘You hear CSOs, and evenphilanthropic institutions that get
funding from elsewhere, say the work
they do can’t be measured this way,
but in order to get funding they haveto try and fit the square peg in theround hole without thinking about theharder stuff that is much more difficult
to measure. But that’s where weshould be putting our funding.’
The remedy? Part of it lies with thoseinternational funders who are funding
local philanthropy and saying ‘wetrust you to use the money, we trust
you to decide what you think themeasurement criteria should be.'RISK:APPETITE OR AVERSION?
The Mexico City workshop identified
four forms of risk for foundations,political, financial and reputational,
and risk of failure. The principal twofor our interview respondents werepolitical and financial.
‘Each sector has a set of attributes
that define its comparativeadvantage,’ argues Barry Gaberman.
One of philanthropy’s much-touted
advantages is that ‘it doesn’t haveto deal with risk in the same way the
public and for-profit sectors haveto, so it can take risks and it can fail.
The classic case was contraceptive
development,’ he says. ‘When you
moved out of basic research toapplied research, the government in24

the US wouldn’t even touch it, norwould the for-profit sector becauseof the liability issue, and it was thephilanthropy sector that developed
the pills and the inter-uterine devices.’
However, as he goes on, ‘the fly inthe water with all of this is that, forthe most part, philanthropy tends
to be risk-averse, it tends to notwant to take on politically sensitive
things, it tends to want to follow
the fads. To me that’s a real missed
opportunity.’ The consensus at the
Mexico City workshop was that,generally speaking, foundations
are more risk-averse than they
say they are. One way to mitigate
risk is to use an intermediary,
which means you are donating
through another organization.

Risk-taking in the
global south ...
Atallah Kuttab saw a ‘small window’of risk-taking in 2012 in the Arabregion. ‘Local philanthropists anddiaspora were venturing into andinvesting in areas like Libya, helping
write the constitution, engaging
local organizations to discuss their
aspirations for a new constitution, etc– which was indeed very risky activity
for local philanthropists making theirfirst foray into philanthropy.’ But thewindow soon closed with the waningof the Arab Spring. The reason is fearthat this will affect their business.
‘In 2012, people thought being close
to the government might influence
their business negatively – mostprivate donors in the region havebusiness interests. Now it’s back to
the point that it’s secure to be on thegovernment side. The big foundations
and big private donors are seen as
extensions of the ruling family or a richfamily and they are in bed with thegovernment rather than playing the roleof venturing into new areas, pushing thegovernment to do things differently.’
Likewise, the willingness ofinstitutional philanthropy to takepolitical risk in India is ‘negligible’,observes Ingrid Srinath, with one
or two honourable exceptions.
The reasons are similar to thosealready cited.

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Institutional philanthropy‘This government in particular has
shown itself willing to be extremely
vindictive, so any dissent will attract areally harsh response – whether in theform of a tax inquiry or legal action.
Essentially they will make your life
difficult if you cross them.’ Second,as elsewhere, much of the newphilanthropy is from people who arestill in business and the risks to theirbusinesses are considerable. Anotherreason, she feels, is that there is nocollective voice, ‘no means to say or
do the right thing without attracting
too much individual retribution.'
Srinath notes, however, a greater recent
willingness to take financial risk, ‘placing
what in the West would be called
big bets, and also a willingness to try
anything in pursuit of an overall goal
like, say, malnutrition.' She notes thecase of the institution she works for, therecently established Ashoka University.
Ninety philanthropists ‘gave upwards
of INR100 million (around USD1.6m)
each to fund a not-for-profit liberal arts
university, without any track-record or
certainty it would succeed.'
In China, private foundations areslightly more willing to take risks thanpublic foundations, whose money
comes from the public. As a result
they face stricter public scrutiny, while
private foundations are answerable
only to their board. Even so, domestic
foundations are very cautious about
funding rights-based or environmental
activity and such funding has typicallycome from foreign donors. This
caution has been increased since thegovernment cracked down on NGOs
working on workers’ rights in 2015.
Carolina Suarez would like Colombian
foundations to be more willing totake risks but they are linked tocorporations. She adds: ‘The Chair of
the board of the foundation should
understand that their role is not to be
CEO or officer of the corporation, it’scompletely different. They should put
on their philanthropy hat and say that
if we want to achieve social change,
we need to take risks, to innovate
more; we need to think all the time
what we are doing.’... and in Europe and the US
Spanish foundations don’t on thewhole get involved in politicalissues, says Rosa Gallego, though
there are exceptions. ‘One of theareas in which foundations are very
active,’ she says, ‘is in disability,
where there are some foundations
that are politically outspoken.
But it’s more a case of defending therights of individuals than defending
civil society.’ However, she foresees thepossibility that Spanish institutional
philanthropy may need to become
more politically active if it is to remain
relevant. ‘An interesting thing about
Spain is that local participation has
really emerged since the crisis. There
are a lot of local groups working inmany cities and I wonder if this is the
beginning of a change in the way weparticipate in society and how weorganise ourselves. This may meanthat at some point people will beready to give more money, or they will
be asking organisations to stand up
more for certain things.’

Local participationin Spain has really
emerged since thecrisis. There are a
lot of local groups
working in many
cities and I wonder if
this is the beginningof a change in theway we participate insociety and how weorganise ourselves”
How important is it forfoundations to take risks?

In Turkey, Basak Ersen notes, social
attitudes can dissuade foundations
from grasping what is seen as aparticularly thorny issue: ‘they don’t
like to confront society.'

If you aren’t taking risks, are you
addressing real needs, wondered one
participant in the Mexico City workshop.
The issues we face require innovationand innovation involves risk. While
there is some innovation in the way
people are funding, there is not muchin what they are funding. However,both Atallah Kuttab and Shazia Amjad
note, funding services in preference torights-based campaigning is not always
to do with avoidance of risk. While mostphilanthropic money in Pakistan goesto the traditional areas of educationand healthcare, Amjad feels that thisis because they are often seen as thegreatest need. ‘They happen to besafe but I don’t think that’s the leading
reason why they’re supported.’

As a foundation, you
should maximise theability to be patient,
the ability to partner,
the ability to focus
and follow a strategy”

In the last analysis, foundations
are individuals and have their own
characters, argues Hilary Pearson.
‘Most foundations,’ she says, ‘are notever going to be risk takers, just as
most people aren’t going to be risktakers.’ What’s more important forthem, she feels, is their ability to makeuse of their other attributes: ‘youshould as a foundation maximise theadvantages of the ability to be patient,
the ability to partner, the ability tofocus and follow a strategy.’

Greater media scrutiny in the UK has
been an issue. Foundations are ledby trustees ‘who, on the whole, areindividuals doing this on a voluntarybasis’, notes Carol Mack, ‘and I haveheard some foundations cite thepressure that was put on their trustees
as something that limits the amountof risk they are willing to take when it
becomes very intrusive.’

25

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FUTURE ROLES OF
FOUNDATIONSFour key roles emerged from what
respondents had to say about therole of institutional philanthropy, all ofwhich, to a greater or lesser degree,depend on foundations’ willingness totake risks.

Innovation
One key role is – or should be –innovation. ‘Our role is to innovate,’says Carolina Suarez, ‘to create pilots
and have an independent voice.’
Clearly there are limits to what
philanthropy can do. ‘A lot of thethings that need doing in a country
with a very difficult geography are
infrastructural projects like roads.
Philanthropy can’t do that, it’s a job forthe state.’‘You can’t depend on government
to be a key innovator,’ says Laurence
Lien. ‘We have one of the mosteffective governments in the world,but governments are bureaucratic,
they don’t take risks, period, andthey don’t want to fail at anything
because failure represents politicalloss.’ So far, however, in his view,philanthropy has been too riskaverse to take up the challenge.

to progressive private philanthropy,’
argues Danny Sriskandarajah.
‘Institutional philanthropy’s main
purpose,’ he believes, ‘is to support adiverse and resilient civil society bothfor itself and in order to serve those
who are most marginalised in society.’
Diversity is crucial because we’reseeing the development of large
NGOs that are ‘hardly accountable’and ill equipped to speak for themost marginalised, and resilience
because ‘independent civil society
is increasingly under threat from theencroachment of both governments
and those same large operating
charities.' For Barry Gaberman,
the main argument is that civilsociety is important in its own rightbecause it ‘provides another layer of
institutions that safeguard against
authoritarianism.'Acting for the long term
Finally, foundations have a role inacting for the long term. ‘Of course,
there are some issues on which it’snecessary to act urgently,’ admits
Carol Mack. ‘In addition, foundations
are thinking creatively about the way
they can use their longer time horizon
to best effect.’ Gerry Salole notes that
European foundations are increasingly
supplying intellectual capital.

Filling gaps
A second role for foundations is tofill gaps in provision, not just for thesake of ensuring some provision but
also to put a spotlight on those issues,‘mobilising people to see that there is
an issue. In a sense, that’s advocacy
really because the government
responds to people, since popularpressure might translate into votes.’

Supporting civil society
A third role is supporting civil society.
This opens up a more philosophicalquestion – do you support the civilsociety sector because of the services
it provides or because it is a crucial
element in a pluralist society? The
one does not contradict the other,of course, and both are important.
‘Civil society is both means and end

Institutional
philanthropy’s
main purpose is tosupport a diverse
and resilient civilsociety both foritself and in order toserve those who aremost marginalised
in society”
26

FUTURE TRENDS
The Chan Zuckerberg
direction
While the foundation model is still avigorous one, some respondents feelits appeal may lessen in the future.
‘I think there is some threat, which
I can’t quantify, that the foundation
vehicle is just not going to be as
appealing to the next generation as
it was to the grandparents or eventhe baby boomer parents,’ thinks
Hilary Pearson. Danny Sriskandarajahsays something very similar. He
points to the example of the Chan
Zuckerberg Initiative, set up by the
Facebook founder and his wife in 2015as a limited liability company, andnotes that the kinds of organisation
established by Zuckerberg and his
peers ‘may well not be part of theworld we know and what does thatmean for the world we know?’
He goes on: ‘Many of those who’ve
made money recently have been
disrupters of traditional institutions.
They’ve emerged at a time when trustin long-term institutions is dissipating
anyway, so why create one? There aresome very interesting ways in which
you can create change and you might
not see endowed foundations as themost effective one.’
Carol Mack also notes this trend in the
UK: ‘We’re seeing people choosing tofund through non-charitable vehicles –companies that decide to fund directly
out of their CSR budget or the Mark
Zuckerberg type donor, deciding togive as private individuals and not
set up a foundation. I don’t think thenumbers are big enough to call it atrend but it’s something that’s been
current for at least a decade.’

The growth ofmega foundations
On the other hand, Barry
Gaberman predicts an increasein the number of megafoundations (the two possibilities– alternatives to foundations
and more large foundations –are not mutually exclusive).

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Institutional philanthropy

There are currently four megafoundations, he says – those withassets of USD20 billion or more:
Gates, IKEA, Wellcome and La
Caixa. ‘In many ways those megafoundations are very different because
they can almost be like states. Gates isthe biggest private donor to WHO.’He foresees that, in the next decadeor so, ‘that number of four willprobably double.'

Philanthropication
through privatisation
Another trend remarked by Barry
Gaberman is what Lester Salamon
calls ‘philanthropication throughprivatisation.' Philanthropiccation
through privatisation can be defined
as a transaction in which essentiallypublic or quasi-public assets aretransformed in whole or in part intocharitable endowments under thecontrol of meaningfully autonomouscharitable instutions. This is morewidespread than once thought. Apartfrom well-known instances like thehealthcare conversion foundationsin the US and the savings bankconversions in Italy, Salamon and his
researchers have devised a wider
categorisation which includes ‘debt
swaps capturing money from corrupt
activities and so on.'They’ve identified over 500 examples
around the world of philanthropication
through privatisation and some ofthem, like La Caixa in Spain, ‘are quite
significant. The importance of this forme,’ he says, ‘is that resources are
scarce and this is a potentially
important new source of revenue
coming into the private philanthropy
field.’PERCEPTIONS OF
INSTITUTIONAL
PHILANTHROPY
Philanthropy by individuals – giving
time, goods or money for others’
benefit – is generally well regarded andwidely practised. When consideredin its institutional approach, which
implied a structured approach togiving, the picture often changes. ‘We
did a benchmark study in 2016,’ says
Hilary Pearson, ‘to ask influentials, notjust ordinary Canadians, what do you
know about organised philanthropy,
what do you know about foundations?
And the answer is zero. You ask themto name a foundation and they can’t.
They really have no sense of the workof the philanthropy sector, or why itmatters.’ She feels that, unlike in the
US (often a benchmark for foundation
sectors around the world), Canadianfoundations are scarcely visible. There
are no mega-foundations; there has
been no major intervention in public
policy by a Canadian foundation, likethe work of the Gates Foundationon the US education system. But she
feels this will change: ‘we have to beready for that and we have to havea story about why the foundation
sector matters, why the work isimportant, how the sector is credible
and legitimate. We have a lot of work
to do on that. That’s why data andresearch are important so we can tell
the stories through the numbers as wellas through the stories themselves.’
Krystian Seibert, too, feels that the
average person in Australia ‘will
have little idea about institutional
philanthropy, apart from the factthat they go to a hospital or a gallery
and they see a wing named after
someone or perhaps hear a story on
the news now and then about a big
donation. Often, when I say I work inphilanthropy, I get a bit of a blank stare.’Atallah Kuttab notes that theorganisation he founded in 2006, Arab
Foundations Forum, ‘has the largest
pool of foundations in its membership,
but we haven’t carried our weight.
Probably if you walked down the street,
nobody has even heard of it.’Even where people have heard offoundations, their view of them is
not necessarily favourable. While the
Spanish media ‘ignores us more thanit treats us badly’, says Rosa Gallego,
it’s often the bad news – corruption
scandals and so on – that draw media
attention. AEF ran an opinion poll
recently on the public perception offoundations which suggested that‘the closer people feel a foundation
is to a corporation, the worse theperception.' Likewise in Colombia,
institutional philanthropy is either
27

We did a benchmark
study in 2016 to ask
influentials, not justordinary Canadians,
what do you know aboutorganised philanthropy,
what do you know
about foundations?
And the answer is zero"
unknown or viewed with suspicion,
except in the areas where its
immediate effects are felt. ‘If you ask
in Bogota, for example,’ says Carolina
Suarez, ’all people are likely to think
about foundations is that they werecreated for tax purposes.’
One of the challenges Gerry Salolesees for institutional philanthropy is
the unrealistic expectations placedon it ‘by government, the public andjournalists – that foundations, in what’s
known as the dwindling of the welfare
state, are somehow going to be able
to pick up the slack. Foundations
have essentially what I consider to be“swimming pool” money in comparison
to the resources of governments,
which is “sea” money if you like. They
have these very finite resources which
they can use in a very skilful and cleverway and hopefully they can leverageother resources but on their own they
have peanuts.’ He notes ‘a tendency
to think of the sector as ATMs that
don’t have a plan of their own, have noexpertise, and are waiting for the next
great idea to fund.'This is a perception that government
often shares. The consequent focus
on grantmaking, he says, ‘has createdthis myth that the main purposeof a foundation is the money it
dispenses, and in fact we’ve done
something to create these unrealistic
expectations. I think this challenge
is an important one because itgets overlooked very easily.’4Community
philanthropy
This chapter focuses on community
foundations and more informal
community-based philanthropy,
and the wide variety of roles
that community philanthropyorganisations are playing, fromcreating community to offering
donor services.

28

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Community philanthropy

Community foundations are theprevalent form of institutionalisedcommunity philanthropy, though they
have adapted to local requirements
and circumstances. Community
Foundations are grantmaking publiccharities dedicated to improving
the lives of people in a defined local
geographic area. They are very unevenly
distributed, thriving in some countries
and not others. There is also a great
deal of community-based philanthropy
happening informally. Halima Mahomed
points out a ‘lot of traditional
practices, religious, communal andindividual, throughout southern Africa,that continue even if their forms
change.' Increasingly community
foundations that are not sufficiently
in touch with their communities run
the risk of becoming irrelevant.

COMMUNITY FOUNDATIONS
THE WORLD OVERThe Global Fund for Community
Foundation’s Community Foundation
Atlas reports 1,864 ‘place-based
foundations.' Most of them are small,the majority having fewer than five
paid employees. While they occur
nearly everywhere, they are very
unevenly distributed. At the extremes,
there are over 1,000 in the US and only
11 in Latin America. Although they beara common name, in practice they haveoften adapted to local circumstancesacross a range of activities – fromacting as a conduit for local giving toproviding a focus for the expression ofcommunity concerns and community
action. Needless to say, this split is not
absolute and many see themselves as
doing both.
Community foundations haveprospered in unlikely places – takethe 70 or so community foundations
in Russia in what has been a fairly
inhospitable political climate. In Russia,
there are community foundations inrelatively big cities, like Penza andTolyatti, which are probably the best
established and act as role models
for the others, but the majority are insmaller cities and rural areas, notes
Oksana Oracheva, where there is no
big corporate donor and they haveoften forged their own distinct identity
as a focus for community activity.

Though the community foundation
sector in Canada is well developed,
it doesn’t see itself as a growth
sector, says Hilary Pearson. Generally
successful at fundraising, she believes
that even community foundations
won’t be immune to the sorts ofpressures that UNITED WAY (a nonprofit that raises and invest funds
to improve lives in its community)
are coming under as more people
give directly. The value of giving
through a community foundation is its
knowledge of the community but she
feels they ‘are going to have to work
awfully hard to demonstrate that.'
In other countries community
foundations are doing less well.
There are relatively few in Australia
because the legal framework makes
no provision for them. Turkey has only
one community foundation, which
was established by TUSEV. While
Basak Ersen feels there is ‘huge scopefor community foundations, we’ve
not had any kind of success with it
because it’s a new model. There’s the
mistrust of institutions and people
don’t understand the importance ofcommunity work. Most of all, people
don’t feel able to give money to an
institution they don’t know anddon’t understand.’In Spain, what has hampered
the growth of community
philanthropy, feels Rosa Gallego,
is the prevailing view that the
public sector is responsible for
welfare: ‘we have to overcome that
before community foundations
can flourish in this country.’

ROLES OF COMMUNITYPHILANTHROPY
Creating community‘The current political climate –populism, migration, which are reallyabout communities and the extent
to which they are working – brings
the question of what community
foundations do to the fore,’ says
Jenny Hodgson. ‘Those issues aregoing to force greater creativity.’ The
other side of that is that ‘if you’re acommunity foundation and you’re not
in touch with your community you’llcease to be valid.' She foresees thatthe focus of community philanthropyorganisations’ work will need to movefrom providing grants or services
to creating or recreating a senseof community solidarity and trust– a key word in the Global Fund forCommunity Foundations’ More than
the Poor Cousin? report.22
Many community foundations
already do this. Canadian community
foundations, for example, pioneered
the Vital Signs method. Drawing on
dialogue with local communities, thisuses a number of indices to measure
the health of those communities.
As well as identifying concerns, theinitiative also helps to strengthen
local relationships. Begun in 2005,
the technique is now widely usedthroughout Canada and beyond.23

The current political climate –populism, migration, which are reallyabout communities and the extent
to which they are working – brings
the question of what community
foundations do to the fore”
29

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Community philanthropy

Bringing local agency andlocal resources to bear on
community issues
Hodgson feels that the maindevelopment in community
philanthropy, and the direction in which
it needs to keep moving, is ‘towards akind of multi-constituent civil society,putting an emphasis on local resources
and local agency as equally important
if not more so than external money.'
She believes this is happening, that
community philanthropy organisations‘are starting to be not just money-raisers
but also bridge-builders, trust-builders.'
She sees the real question in theseterms: which are the institutions thatare meeting people and organisations
where they are and seeing themin a linked up way? ‘It shouldn’t
start with money, it should startwith people, what they have andwhat they want to do, and what
would make this happen. This reallybrings us back to grantmaking as
an effective way to demonstrate
the power of philanthropy.’

Bringing together
institutional andindividual philanthropy
Community philanthropy is also
an area where different forms ofphilanthropy, the institutional andthe individual, intersect to potentially
exciting effect. Hodgson offers theexample of the Kenya Community
Development Foundation (KCDF).
‘You can see in its institutional design
how it is bringing together thosedifferent actors because its fundingbase is made up of external and local
donors. The local donors include
people with considerable wealth
who don’t necessarily want to set up
a foundation; middle-class people
giving to various kinds of funds; andcommunities that have created theirown funds and invested them in the
KCDF endowment.’ This approachis part of exploring how small
foundations can ‘disburse significant
resources in a way that is effective andreaches the people you want to reachrather than just dumping a single grant
on a successful NGO.'

Offering donor services
such as DAFs
An advantage of community
foundations over other intermediaries,
in Hilary Pearson’s view, is that they
promote donor advised funds (DAFs),
which give donors a greater senseof permanence concerning their
donation. The Community Foundationof Singapore, in fact, acts chiefly asa repository for DAFs (it now holds
over 100, says Laurence Lien, and is
growing at the rate of 10-12 new funds
per year). It acts as both funding pooland source of advice for significant
givers who want to give but don’tknow how. ‘We are trying to see how
we can make it more democratic, more
self-help and community-driven.’

Community
philanthropyorganisations arestarting to be
not just moneyraisers but also
bridge-builders,trust-builders”
HOW DONORS IN THE
GLOBAL NORTH CAN
REACH RECIPIENTS IN
THE GLOBAL SOUTH
Devolving power to‘fundermediaries’
One way of doing this is to workthrough intermediaries in the
global south. ‘We need to induce
donors based in the global northto relinquish power and to devolve
the responsibility for funding
to institutions that are closer totheir constituents,’ says Danny
Sriskandarajah.
30

He refers to these as‘fundermediaries’, funding
intermediaries that exist explicitly tochannel donor funds more directly,
and ideally more democratically,to the end recipient: ‘I think a hugepriority over the next few years will
be to build these next-generation“fundermediaries”. We need to think
through how we build effective
philanthropic institutions closer to theissues or the geographies we wantto fund in, ideally with participatoryor other forms of grantmaking
that challenge the typical power
relationships in the donor world.’

Global north community
foundations withinternational funds
Barry Gaberman notes that anincreasing number of US community
foundations now have international
funds. At over USD8 billion in
assets, the Silicon Valley Community
Foundation (SVCF) is often in the top
10 of international giving of all US
foundations (it was second behind
the Gates Foundation in 2014).
This is part of ‘an incremental
increase in the US in the amount ofphilanthropic dollars that goes tointernational activity.' More significant
still, in his view, there has been ‘anincrease in the amount of moneythat goes directly to in-country
institutions as opposed to developed
country intermediaries.' Findings
from a joint Foundation CenterCouncil on Foundations study24
published earlier last year bear out
this impression. Between 2011 and2014, says the study, grants awarded
by large community foundations forinternational programmes more thandoubled, from USD103 million in 2011
to USD223 million in 2014.
‘Another reason I think that’s
important is that it indicates arethinking about community in manyof these institutions,’ says Gaberman.
‘It’s defined not just in a place-based
way but also in terms of communities
of interest and that’s certainly thehallmark of the way SVCF looks at it.’

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Community philanthropy

Community philanthropy
shouldn’t start withmoney, it should startwith people, what they
have and what theywant to do, and what
would make this happen.
This really brings usback to grantmaking
as an effective way todemonstrate the powerof philanthropy”

31

5
Beyond grants:
different usesof philanthropicmoney
The different financial means
philanthropic organisations are
increasingly using to achieve their ends
are the focus of this chapter. These
include venture philanthropy, impact
investing and socially responsible
investment. It also looks at the growthof social enterprise/social business,
which is seen as highly significant inmany countries. Finally, it discusses theimplications of the increasing ‘blurringof lines’ between the non-profit andfor-profit sectors.
32

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Beyond Grants: different uses of philanthropic money

Using philanthropic money in different
ways is becoming an increasingly
important part of the funding
landscape around the world. This is
not just a matter of money, but of a
growing realisation that traditional
funding organisations may have more
to contribute than grants. Increasingly,
a hallmark of organisations working
for social good is hybridity – the‘blurring of lines’ – with organisations
with different legal forms adopting avariety of means of working.
Unfortunately, talking about these new
approaches can be difficult becauseof a lack of clarity about terminology.
‘Terms like impact philanthropy,
programme-related investments,
mission-related investing, venturephilanthropy, social enterprise, etc,
tend to be used interchangeably,’says Barry Gaberman. One resultof this lack of clarity is that all thedifferent approaches can be tarredwith the same indiscriminately
sceptical brush. Thus, in South Africa:‘There are some who are scepticalstill and who say “why are we mixing
business and philanthropy?”’However,
Gaberman points to Lester Salamon’s
Leverage for Good as an importantfirst attempt ‘to come up with aterminology that’s consistent.'25

Increasingly,
a hallmark oforganisations
working together
for social good
is hybridity withorganisations withdifferent legal
forms adopting avariety of meansof working”

While it is more youthful in termsof institutional philanthropy than its
counterparts in Europe and the USA,
Asia is probably the most dynamic
region when it comes to developing
what AVPN terms ‘social investment’,or all the varied uses of capital,
including grants, to produce social
good. The 2016 AVPN survey of 111 ofits members reported USD2.17 billionof financial capital ‘deployed across all
sectors and markets.'

VENTURE PHILANTHROPY
The venture philanthropy approachis characterised by three corepractices, according to the website of
the European Venture Philanthropy
Association (EVPA): tailored financing,organisational support, and impact
measurement and management.
The willingness of the founders of
EVPA and its sister organisation the
Asia Venture Philanthropy Network(AVPN) to take an inclusive rather
than a dismissive approach to existing
ways of doing philanthropy (seeing
venture philanthropy as one approach
among many, not insisting thatthey have the only answer) has no
doubt helped venture philanthropy
to prosper. In any case its corepractices are not a million miles fromthe practices of most foundations.
Most venture philanthropy does
involve making grants rather thanusing foundation assets, as well as
offering non-financial support.
Since its establishment in 2004,
EVPA has grown rapidly. It now has
210 members. Despite some initialambivalence from more traditional
European grantmakers, it has become
an accepted part of the landscape, tothe point where a venture philanthropy
approach has been adopted by anumber of existing foundations. With 385
members, the rise of AVPN, founded in
2010, has been more rapid still.
Perhaps the most common criticism
of the venture philanthropy approachis that it treats NGOs instrumentally– that is, it supports civil society
organisations to perform a particularfunction rather than supporting

33

civil society as a good in itself. Its
proponents would argue that venturephilanthropy’s emphasis is precisely
on building organisations rather
than supporting projects – though
the specific functions of thoseorganisations remain central.

IMPACT INVESTING
Impact investing can be defined broadly
as the use of assets other than grantfunding to produce social and financial
returns. This definition could also be
applied to the term ‘socially responsible
investing’ (SRI), which is the subjectof the next section. According to Net
Impact,26 ‘the key differences between
the two lie in the strategies used toaccomplish positive outcomes as wellas financial return expectations.' SRI
refers to the practice of integrating
environmental, social and governance(ESG) factors within investment
analysis to avoid investing in companies
that have negative impacts on theenvironment and/or society. ‘Impact
investing ... goes further by making
investments in organizations, companies
and/or funds whose core mission is togenerate social and/or environmental
impact alongside financial return.’
Impact investing is moving forward,
but it’s definitely an idea that is waiting
to reach maturity. Hilary Pearson feelsthat it is happening, but ‘I can’t tell youthat it’s happening in a significant way
among foundations yet. We’re working
on it as an association and we have aproject under way with our colleagues
at Community Foundations of Canada
to produce an online guide to impact
investing, trying to answer some of thebasic questions that foundations ask.’
There’s strong interest in impact
investing in Australia, notes Krystian
Seibert, ‘and many of our members
are looking to undertake it. It’s a smallpart of their portfolio, but some of thesmaller ones have got the objective to
be fully invested in impact investments
and a lot of our members are doingsmall proportions of their corpus.’
He feels it’s getting to the stage whereif a foundation doesn’t do it, people
ask why.

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Beyond Grants: different uses of philanthropic money

Carol Mack uses the term social
investment, which she defines as‘lending money to an organisation ata below market rate. You will expect
to have some or all of that money
come back to the foundation and you
will also expect some social return.’
There has been ‘quite a lot of action in
the UK’, she feels. ‘ACF [Associationof Charitable Foundations] found
GBP50 million [around USD67m]
worth of committed investment when
we researched this a few years ago
and a surprisingly large number oftrusts and foundations that have madesocial investments.’ She also notesthat social investments might not bemade in preference to grants but as away of sparing a grants budget. ‘Somefoundations think that grants are sucha precious currency now that if you
can get something off the ground by
making a social investment rather thana grant, then you should do that.’
Danny Sriskandarajah feels that
impact investing is happening, but
not necessarily through foundations.
‘There are a lot of people who share
the goals of private philanthropy or
traditional philanthropy,’ he says, ‘butthey are not necessarily doing impact
investing through the traditional routeof creating a private foundation.’

Potential of impact investing
Two significant developments in2017 were the launch by Japan’s
Sasakawa Peace Foundation of an
impact investment fund to the tuneof USD100 million, which will focus
on gender issues; and the Ford
Foundation’s announcement that it
will devote USD1 billion (a twelfth of
its endowment) to impact investingover the next ten years. The Narada
Foundation in China gave two soft
loans to social enterprises in 2015
and 2016. The US-based Heron
Foundation’s commitment to devote
all of its assets to impact investments
is well known. Apart from being
significant in themselves, suchhigh-profile commitments are likely
to open the tap further.

Why the slow progress?
Nonetheless, impact investingremains a minority pursuit in mostplaces at the moment. Foundations
are mostly dipping a toe in thewater rather than diving in, partly
through caution and partly becauseof the lack of what are seen as
good investment opportunities.
Krystian Seibert notes more supply
of investment funds than demand
for them in Australia. Laurence
Lien says much the same thing.
Caution isn’t the only reason. Impact
investing is more a topic of debate atconferences in Russia than a practice,
thinks Oksana Oracheva, principally
because most Russian foundations andNGOs are not endowed and so don’t
have investable assets. The same ismore or less true in China, Spain andSingapore, where most foundations
don’t have significant assets toinvest. While the law requires Chinese
foundations to be endowed, says
Yanni Peng, the level is currently set
fairly low. If you set up a foundation atregional or provincial level, you only
need CNY2 million (USD306,000);
at national level you need CNY50
million (USD7.6m). However, thesituation may change at the endof this year when the level ofendowments will be raised to CNY8
million (USD1.2m) and CNY100 million(USD15.2m) respectively.

A further obstacle to Chinese
foundations’ using their assets forinvesting with a social purpose is thatthe regulatory environment does notencourage it. Foundations must makeinvestments to protect their assets,says Peng, so boards are usually
unwilling to make risky investments.
However, she says, there are ways towork around this. A foundation can set
up an impact investing company, forinstance, and have the company makethe investments.

SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE
INVESTING (SRI)
Gerry Salole believes the vast
majority of members of the European
Foundation Centre (EFC) are atleast doing negative screening –‘not funding weapons, not funding
tobacco, or what have you – and there
is now a transition from negative
screening to positive screening andthere’s even a group that is beginningto play with full engagement with thecompanies they invest in rather than
withdrawing from companies doing
things they don’t like.’ Foundations,
he believes, ‘are moving along thespectrum.’ European foundations
have evolved differently from thosein the UK or US, he argues (the Bosch
Foundation, for instance, is the ownerof the Bosch multinational company,
not the other way round) and ‘the ideathat you would use your total assets
is not so foreign and is beginning tohave some serious traction.'

There are a lot of people who share
the goals of private philanthropy
or traditional philanthropy but they
are not necessarily doing impact
investing through the traditional routeof creating a private foundation”
34

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Beyond Grants: different uses of philanthropic money

The divest-invest movement isclearly significant in any discussionof SRI. While there is continuing
and fairly involved debate about
whether it is better to disinvest
or to try to influence companies
with questionable practices byengaging with them, the numbersof foundations choosing to disinvest
is growing. According to theDivestInvest Philanthropy website,
155 foundations, family offices andcharities have signed the DivestInvest Philanthropy pledge todivest from fossil fuels and reinvest
in ‘climate solutions and the newenergy economy.'27

The numbersof foundations
choosing todisinvest is
growing... 155
foundations,family offices andcharities havepledged to divest
from fossil fuels
and reinvest in‘climate solutions
and the newenergy economy’"
Potential of SRI
There’s some sense that what is atrickle at the moment might easily
turn into a flood. Hilary Pearson
thinks ‘the key change will be whenmajor institutional investors startto get in the game. If the pensions
funds and banks move into this moreheavily, that’s going to change themarket and we’re just beginning to
see that happening.’ In September
2015, the Japanese Government
Pension Investment Fund, the world’s
largest pension fund, with a pool of
USD240 billion, became a signatoryof the United Nations Principles
for Responsible Investment and ismaking ESG-related decisions invarious investments.
Endorsing Pearson’s view, a recent
article in the Financial Times quotes
Rory Sullivan, the head of standards
and sustainable investment at FTSE
Russell, as saying that ‘a trend towards
large capital allocations into thesestrategies by the world’s leading funds
indicates a qualitative shift. “Whenwe write the history of this, we willsee 2017 as the year in which [ESG
investing] reached a tipping point,”
says Mr Sullivan.’28

Why the slow progress?
This may be optimistic. As Matthias
Fiedler, chair of ethical investments
at Edge Funders, puts it, manyfoundations see their capital as avehicle to generate returns rather
than as ‘a lever for change’, andsimple conservatism on the part oftrustees and investment managers is
another factor.29 Many foundations
are anxious that ESG investments
might not produce the level of returnthat traditional ones do, and they lackexperience in assessing the prospectsof an ESG investment.
A report in 2016 by Commonfund
and the Council on Foundations into
foundation investments in the US
suggests progress might be slow. It
found that out of 123 private and 80
community foundations surveyed,
only 15 private foundations and 8
community foundations ‘sought toinclude investments ranking highon ESG criteria.' When it came toscreening out investments inconsistent
with the institution’s mission, therespective figures were 14 and 17.
Only 25 private foundations and 20
community foundations allocateda portion of their endowments toinvestments that further their mission.

35

THE GROWTH OF
SOCIAL ENTERPRISE/
SOCIAL BUSINESS
Another significant index of changing
practices in the use of capital for social
benefit is the development of social
enterprises, which are often supported
through impact investing as well as
grants – though there are definitionaldifficulties here too. The workshop
at the WINGS Forum in Mexico Cityin February 2017, for example, spent
more time discussing what social
business is than it did discussing its
merits or demerits, before arriving at
a working definition of a cause-driven
business which puts all the dividends
back into the enterprise.
However you define them, it’s clear
they are a growing presence in many
areas. While the social enterprise sector
is fairly new in most countries studied
in the AVPN report on the landscapeof social investment in Asia, thestudy gives a figure of 2 million social
enterprises in India, 51,000 in Japanand 60,000 in the Philippines – though
Laurence Lien doesn’t feel the sector is
growing significantly in East and South
East Asia. The governments of Hong
Kong, Singapore, South Korea and thePhilippines are moving to stimulate thedevelopment of the social economy
either by easing regulations for thesector or by facilitating investment
in it or by providing seed capital forstart-up social enterprises. Hong Kong
has a USD64 million Social Innovationand Entrepreneurship Fund for thispurpose, and in South Korea, government, corporations and civil society
have a collaborative fund to stimulatesocial enterprises.
‘Certainly the social enterprisespace is buzzing in India,’ says Ingrid
Srinath. ‘There are dozens of newsocial enterprises every month.’ The
FASES report estimates some 20,000
social enterprises in Australia.30 The
figure for the UK is around 70,000,
according to 2015 figures, while
a new study by Social Enterprise
Scotland finds 5,600 Scottish social
enterprises, a number that has increased
by 400 in 2016.

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Beyond Grants: different uses of philanthropic money

Atallah Kuttab feels there are plentyof examples in the Arab region – even
if that’s not what they are called
there. In Saudi Arabia, for instance,‘it’s amazing how much what I would
call social business there is but it’s
not framed in that way. Markets being
built, housing for young couples frompoor neighbourhoods – this is all doneby endowment.’
One downside of social enterprise,
identified in the Mexico City workshop,is that it tackles only the consequencesof problems rather than their causes.
Another point raised in the workshop
was that it is drawing away funding fromareas such as advocacy and humanrights that aren’t so amenable to thesocial business approach. It’s debatable,
though, how serious an issue this is.
Those who fund social enterprises areprobably unlikely to fund rights work inany case.

Potential of social enterprise
Kuttab feels that social enterprisehas great potential in the Arabregion. It bridges, ‘one, very highsocial need; second, linkage to theprivate sector because that’s wherejobs are; and, third, government’s
not clamping down on it so you
can do lots of good things there
and divert lots of money without
being disruptive, in fact solvingvery important social problems.’
His emphasis, in talking about social
enterprise, is more on its ability tocreate jobs than it would be in many
countries. ‘It has its problems because
at the moment lots of money is being
spent on training rather than onplacement and you will very quickly
reach saturation if that happens.
It needs lots of dynamism and the
involvement of the private sector indoing their share and agreeing toemploy trainees.’ Crucially, he sees
it as a potentially useful platform forcollaboration between philanthropy,
the private sector and academia.
‘SAANED continues to engage
businesses to create more social
business and more social value inregular business. If you want to have
any impact in society, that’s where
things are.’Why the slow progress?
One reason for the slow growth ofsocial enterprise in East and South
East Asia, according to Laurence Lien,is ‘because many don’t survive.' Thismay be a more common problem
than proponents care to admit. It’sa relatively new sector, and mostsocial enterprises are young, while
the supporting infrastructure has notalways been worked out. In addition,
reconciling the social and economic
demands of social enterprises isdifficult. As Lien points out, ‘having asingle bottom line is difficult enough.
When you have a double bottom line itjust topples you over.’In Canada, too, social enterprises
face an uphill struggle. The main
obstacle, according to a 2013 report,31
is absence of a distinct legal structure.
Would-be Canadian social enterprises
can choose to be either charities
or businesses. If they choose to becharities, they aren’t allowed to makeany profits; if they choose to becompanies, there are no tax credits
and it’s difficult to access capital.

The latter, in fact, is a key obstacle tosocial enterprises at various stages of
their development in many places.
In the Arab region, though ‘people talkabout them, still we are not seeing
the money flow into them’, says
Atallah Kuttab. One of the reasons
why not is that ‘people forget thatsocial investment entails risk andthere might not be profits right away
and one needs to be in for the long
haul, patient. Maybe we are not up
front about the profit side. When we
say impact investing, people hear theinvesting, but impact happens at a
price, which might be lower profit.’
The Mexico City workshop noteda critical role for infrastructureorganisations in bringing traditional
philanthropy and social business
together to see what they cantake from each other. Some social
businesses, one participant reminded
the group, are just as sceptical
about traditional philanthropy asphilanthropy is about social business.

Many social enterprises
don't survive.
Having a single bottom
line is difficult enough.
When you have adouble bottom line itjust topples over"36

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Beyond Grants: different uses of philanthropic money

THE BLURRING OF
BOUNDARIES
These developments are part of ablurring of the boundaries between
sectors. Both Carol Mack and Atallah
Kuttab emphasise the importanceof this trend. ‘I believe this is theway to go in the future, says Kuttab.
‘We are looking at a very small pie
which is philanthropy and there is avery big pie out there which is thewhole GDP, which could be moved
into a more friendly way of investingmoney for social and economic
equity.’ An increasing number ofbusinesses have social purposes
and might be in a for-profit vehicle,
notes Carol Mack. In recognitionof this trend towards the blurringof boundaries, ACF has redefinedits definition of what constitutes a
grantmaking foundation to include
those that make social investments.
Ingrid Srinath talks of ‘a wholecontinuum – social enterprise, social
business, there’s for-profit stuff
that has some social goal, there’s
not-for-profit stuff that has a morebusinesslike character.' AVPN, too, is
working on what it calls the continuumof capital, where there is no clear
distinction between for-profit andnon-profit activities.
There are a number of contributory
factors to this development:•

The growing number ofentrepreneurs who are turningphilanthropist and theiradaptation of business practices –which is what they know best –to their new activity.

•

The relative underdevelopmentof professional foundations inemerging economies, which has
made investment, rather than
grantmaking, seem a better option
for producing social good.

•

A desire for effectiveness. The
founders of EVPA, for example,
were largely motivated by thedesire to make their giving more
effective. Businesslike standardsof assessment of NGOs’ work
seem to many to help achieve this.

•The realization that many-faceted
problems will need more thanjust the experience and resourcesthat philanthropy can draw on.
At the 2017 AVPN Conference,
Shuichi Ohno of the Sasakawa
Peace Foundation remarked that
we live in a low-interest world andtraditional foundation investments
are producing smaller returns at
a time when more resources areneeded. Atallah Kuttab, too, notes
the need to bring as much capital– what he calls the ‘very big
pie’ – to bear on the solution ofproblems that seem increasingly
large and intractable.

For Gerry Salole, it’s not just about thephilanthropy sector acquiring a bigger
range of tools and allies. Institutional
philanthropy has more to contributeto the creation of good societies thansimply money. He, too, notes a blurringof boundaries within the sector andthe development of hybrid forms. ‘We
are seeing a trend for more conveners,
more people recognising that they
are not just grantmakers. They are
investors, they are partners; theircapacity to fund independent thinking
is being used more. Van Leer, forexample, is becoming more of a thinktank than a grantmaking institution.’
He also feels the blurring brings withit ‘less of an obsession about theprivate nature of the money, so you
begin to see foundations created by
the privatisation of public resourcesor, something even more exciting,governments turning money over
to a foundation saying, “you cando this better than we can”.' Thisis a trend he sees happening inEurope ‘and in very sensitive areas.
Integration of migrants is a very
interesting area, so is radicalisation.’Moving away from an obsession withmoney, he feels, allows foundations
to play to their other strengths.

37

Institutional
philanthropy
has more tocontribute to thecreation of goodsocieties thansimply money"

6
Collaboration
This chapter focuses oncollaboration, both within thephilanthropic sector and between
sectors, and the many different
reasons why it is difficult. It
also looks at the Sustainable
Development Goals, which explicitly
encourage collaboration, thoughinstances are still few.

38

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Collaboration

Collaboration, both among
philanthropic institutions and withother sectors, is increasingly touted asa way for philanthropy to maximise its
impact, making the best use of limited
resources and bringing together
the respective skills of the different
sectors in an effective way.
However, interviewees for this study
had much more to say about why
collaboration is difficult than about
existing collaborations. Restraining
factors include cherishing offoundation independence, theinvestment of time needed forsuccess, and lack of staff resources
at philanthropic institutions. BasakErsen is unequivocal. There is little
collaboration among foundations in
Turkey and with the government, noneat all. Foundations are no exception
to the general rule of mistrust that hesees at the root of most activities in
Turkey. ‘People don’t trust foundations,foundations don’t trust people, andfoundations don’t trust each other.’

COLLABORATION AMONGFOUNDATIONSIn Colombia, Asociación deFundaciónes Empresariales (AFE) has
been making progress, despite thetendency of corporate foundations,in particular, to act alone. They havelaunched a joint project, Learning toWork Together (a significant title).
It’s a common project whose focus iswater, says Carolina Suarez, though it
will have wider implications in terms ofeducation, income generation projects,
etc. The point of the project is thatthe foundations have understood that‘they cannot fund only in their own
regions or where they have interests.'
Though there is an independent
operator, the funding foundations willcontinue to be involved through an
executive committee and an assemblywith representatives of the 17
participating foundations. The projectseeks to foster a consolidated visionof a region, and this will be the driving
force of the participating foundations’commitment to the project.

Collaboration is increasingly
touted as a way forphilanthropy to maximise
its impact, making the bestuse of limited resources
and bringing together
the respective skills of
the different sectors
in an efficient way"
39

‘Such a unified regional vision
is critical if the initiative is to be
replicated in the future,’ says Suarez.
‘We understood the importance ofthe leverage of working together, andthe positive effect of AFE foundations
working with the same purpose ofadvancing the quality of life in the
project’s chosen communities.’
While some collaboration is happening
in South Africa – ‘there is someissue-based collaboration, there is an
educational collaborative, there aresome infrastructure organisations thatare trying to support collaboration,
there are efforts between internationalfoundations based in South Africa andlocal foundations’ – it isn’t happening
enough, says Halima Mahomed. She
cites leadership as the key factor increating and sustaining collaborations.
‘When you find like-minded individuals
whose thinking is aligned on the same
sorts of goals, collaboration is easier.’
In the UK, ACF has got 14-15 issuebased, member-led networks on
topics like criminal justice, children
and young people, and asylum-seekers
and refugees. ACF has been putting
in a modest amount of resources tonurture those networks, says Carol
Mack, and it has paid dividends,
she believes. ‘Off the back of that,we’ve started to ask ourselves what
would happen if we took a morecross-sectoral approach, so at the
moment we are scoping the potential
for foundations to work together toaddress poverty.’ The important thingwith collaboration, she feels, is to go‘where the momentum is and where
the interests are.'
For Barry Gaberman, the key questionis whether there is genuine partnershipor not. Not everything that looks like acollaboration really is one, he believes.
‘When a group of foundations fundan activity, they talk about it as if
they are collaborating, when really it’s
joint funding. You have partnershipwhen you have the institutions thatare going to provide resources in theroom along with the organisations
that are going to be carrying out thework.’ He notes the difficulties entailed
by such partnerships – the inherent
parochialism of foundations, theWINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Collaboration

Millennials, who may be either
setting up foundations or taking
over their direction, tend to be
more disposed to collaborate"unequal power relationships, whichmean that ‘people have to give up alittle bit of their sovereignty’ – but hebelieves things are changing and there
are more real collaborations.
Collaboration can be a way to offset
risk because it makes individual
donors less visible. On the other hand,
one interviewee felt that collaboration
can increase the risk in somecircumstances, since you can’t control
the other partners’ actions.

Why is collaboration
so difficult?
In Danny Sriskandarajah’s experience,‘private philanthropy organisations
have the least incentive to collaborate
and in most of the examples I’ve
seen are the worst at it when they
do try.’ They are almost designed
not to collaborate, he argues. They
have been set up to be independent.
Carolina Suarez also notes that the
habit of unaccountable independence
makes foundations little disposed
to collaborate. Moreover, if they arecorporate foundations, as AFE’s
members are, they imbibe the spiritof competition from their parent
companies, she believes.
Gerry Salole, too, sees a tension
between a ‘well-understood’ needfor collaboration and the difficultyof making it work. ‘The DNA andthe music foundations play is aboutautonomy. They are very proud of
their ability to move fast, to have theirown decision-making processes, to beexperts in their own particular field.

All of that means you can be superconfident in your own way of working
and less confident in someone
else’s, so relinquishing power andcollaborating is a challenge. It
is happening but it’s a perennial
problem. It can’t be taken for granted,
you need to be very open andtransparent.’ Part of the job of the EFC
is ‘to encourage more collaboration,
but you have to recognise that there
is a problem here, a genuine tension,then you can work around it. You can’t
pretend that it’s easy or that it doesn’t
exist or doesn’t matter.’

COLLABORATION BETWEENPHILANTHROPY AND
GOVERNMENTOne notable example of crosssector collaboration is the VibrantCommunities initiative, hosted by
the Tamarack Institute, which has
been around for the last decade andnow operates in 13 Canadian cities,
bringing business, philanthropy andgovernment together at municipal
level on poverty reduction strategies.
Its local focus may offer a clue thatcollaboration can be easier on asmaller, municipal scale.

In Canada, says Hilary Pearson, few
foundations are well staffed andpeople don’t necessarily have the skills
to manage collaboration. ‘It’s not oneof those things you just do – to be
successful at collaboration you haveto be very mindful and trained.’ Inaddition, family foundations tend to
be run by a group that is essentiallyclosed and it can be difficult to bringin new ideas.

Another good example is the work of
the Cripplegate Foundation in London,
noted by Carol Mack. The Cripplegate
Foundation exists to address need in aparticular part of London and has now
pledged to ‘take an active role in local
partnerships which tackle poverty andinequality.'32 ‘They saw that the needwas much greater than they could
cope with so they fundraised in theirarea and they’ve been very successful
in bringing in other foundations andcompanies that have an interestin that area, local government andresidents, too. It’s a great example
of a place-based collaboration that’s
cross-sector.’ She also offers examples
on a national scale. There is the ‘I Will’
campaign, funded by the Big Lottery
Fund, the Cabinet Office and a numberof foundations. The Living Wage
Campaign is both national and crosssectoral. If the issue is national in scaleand sufficiently specific, you can get
collaboration, she believes.

She also feels there is a tendency
among some foundation foundersof an older school to feel that theirphilanthropy is private. This may bechanging, though. Millennials, who
may be either setting up foundations
or taking over their direction, tend
to be more disposed to collaborate.
If you’ve joined Philanthropic
Foundations of Canada (PFC), shepoints out, ‘you’re already motivatedto look at collaboration.' Moreover,‘in the last five years we’ve seen thedevelopment of a lot of funder affinity
groups’, which wasn’t the case before.

In India Ingrid Srinath sees two ways inwhich collaboration between the two
sectors is beginning to happen, though
there are drawbacks in both cases.
‘One is government encouraging
philanthropy to direct its attention tothings that should be government’s
responsibility’ (a trend that seems tobe almost universal). There’s also what
she calls the ‘rather naive utopian
belief by philanthropists and NGOs
that “we will develop a model thengovernment will help us take it toscale”. Some of it gains traction, but
most of it is just wishful thinking.’

40

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Collaboration

A lot of foundation activities in Russia
are approved by local, regional orfederal government, but for themost part government has no direct
involvement. Occasionally, there ismore direct involvement when officials
actually participate in activities
initiated by NGOs. The problem isthat continuing dialogue depends on
individuals within the government
agencies in question rather thanbeing a matter of policy. The majorityof government officials are either
neutral or not interested. What
drives dialogue, she believes, is thegovernment’s need for money.
In Spain, though the spur was initiallymoney, cooperation seems moregenuine. ‘Since the crisis, when publicfunds have become so scarce,’ says
Rosa Gallego, ‘the public sector
has approached foundations to say“how can we cooperate?” That’s
happened in science, for instance, withfoundations that support research.’
This has resulted in a joint national
working group. Here, it’s not a questionof dipping into foundations’ pockets
because not many of that group offoundations have money, she says.
While relations between philanthropy
and government in Pakistan areambivalent, there are NGOs that work
well with government. In Punjab, forexample, where state schools are
failing, the state government has
asked a number of NGOs to take overtheir running. Several businesses arealso supporting this initiative, says
Shazia Amjad. Moreover, ‘some of thisis funded by government, but not all,so philanthropy money is topping it
off. This has been going for a little
over a year and it’s turned out to bequite successful.’
How successful collaboration isdepends partly on the thematicarea. Relationships between thegovernment and civil society tend tobe better in classically ‘safe’ areas likeeducation and health.
Partnership between philanthropy
and the government is very rare in
Singapore, says Laurence Lien. But
there is more potential elsewhere in
East Asia.

Money is not an issue in Singapore,he says. The government feels it has
both the money and the solutions.
‘It’s different in the countries aroundus. They do want philanthropy to befinancially involved because they arereally in deficit and, on top of that,they struggle to be effective’ becauseof lack of capacity and corruption.
Here, he feels, there is more promisingmaterial for real collaboration.
‘Philanthropists are often people whohave run successful businesses andthey can use the same skill-set to run
philanthropic programmes.’
At the moment, in Turkey,
collaboration with the government is
not even an issue. ‘You can’t talk aboutcollaboration with the government,’
says Basak Ersen. ‘It’s just getting
worse and worse. On the contrary,
they are becoming enemies. It’s a oneway street at the moment. Everythingcomes from the government and you
have to accept it or ignore it. There’s
no real communication.’

What is hinderingcollaboration between
philanthropy andgovernment?
While there is often a willingness
to be on good terms, even to makecommon cause, there is a certain
wariness on both sides and, at times,
a tendency to put self-interest before
the interests of the partner. A common
complaint from the philanthropy sideis that government sees philanthropy
as a convenient pocket that it can
put its hand into to supplement the
public purse. While it’s a truism to
say that foundation money is tiny
beside government budgets, the fact
remains that philanthropy is seen in
many government circles as a kind of
emergency reserve. ‘In terms of intergovernment activities,’ says Danny
Sriskandarajah, ‘we are clearly at thestage where, because government
money to support international
activity is drying up, foundations arepart of the rescue strategy, a pot ofmoney that government can dip into.’
It’s partly a question of motivation: isthere a good reason to collaborate?

41

Whether foundations see any incentive
to collaborate depends on how they
see their role, says Sriskandarajah.
If they see their role as simply to
disburse charitable giving, ‘they’reunlikely to have sophisticated orrobust relationships with any othersectors. But if they’re there to
make some sort of greater change
including policy, they’re going to haveto navigate how they interact withvarious stakeholders.’
Since independence in 1965, Laurence
Lien feels that the Singaporean
government doesn’t see much rolefor philanthropy. There is a traditionof strong, paternal government
and this has tended to ‘crowd out
individual action’ in the form ofphilanthropy. In the early days,
government nationalised the schools,
much of public housing and muchof healthcare. That’s changing, hefeels, as social issues have become
more complex and government itself
struggles with them. Still, they tend
not to look to the non-profit sector
for solutions, though he feels they’dbe very happy for philanthropy toparticipate in any projects they’ve
already designed provided they don’t‘meddle with policy.'
There is a strong contract model In
Singapore, he says, where service
provision is outsourced to NGOs,
but again the government regulates
it very closely, ‘setting the funding
parameters and controlling theinterventions.' To the extent that
the Singaporean government does
want to encourage philanthropy, it’s
for symbolic rather than practicalreasons – ‘not so much for innovation,
because government still feels it’s got
most of the solutions, but for the sakeof fostering a more inclusive society
where the haves are seen to be givingback to the have-nots.’
Lack of mutual understanding is also a
problem. While Krystian Seibert sees
‘great examples of collaboration’ inAustralia and a ‘growing appetite on
both sides to do more’, he also sees anumber of challenges: ‘where do you
start, how do you agree on outcomes
and what are the respective roles?’WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Collaboration

Beneath all this, he feels that the twosides don’t really understand eachother as well as they might. Part of thisis experience. ‘In the US,’ he says, ‘a lotof senior foundation executives havegovernment backgrounds, and there ismore movement between the sectors,
but in Australia that’s not the case.’
In order to try to foster greater mutual
understanding and, through it, genuine
collaboration, Philanthropy Australia
holds an annual Philanthropy Meet
Parliament Summit ‘so our members
can go to Canberra and speak topoliticians and, more importantly
often, to officials who do the work.
We’ve talked about an exchange
programme for government officials togo and spend time in a foundation, sothey’d learn what a foundation does.
As they move around government
circles and become more senior, they’dtake that experience with them.’

Is there genuine partnership?
There are cases where so-called
collaboration between philanthropy andgovernment really means government
seeking support for a course ofaction it has already determined. In
2016, continues Seibert, an Australian
government department issued aprospectus to philanthropy and thecommunity about projects they’dvetted in a particular policy area,
inviting support for the projects fromphilanthropy, business, etc. ‘I’d besurprised if anyone is interested in it.’
The projects were already set up; ineffect, what ‘partners’ were being invited
to do was to help pay for them. As henotes, ‘many philanthropic funders arerightly sensitive about picking up thetab, filling gaps in government service
provision, etc, but they’re very keen on
collaboration, leverage.’
Halima Mahomed offers a similar
example from South Africa. ‘In
2016, the government started thisresearch to look at how it could
tap into philanthropy. It was very
limited because it was looking at
how philanthropy could contributetowards its development goals rather
than asking how do we support andenable philanthropy for a broader
development agenda?’

She notes that some foundations
are happy to work within thatcircumscribed area, but that boils
down to how the foundation sees
its role. ‘Does it see itself as anintermediary that will enable the state
to do its work or does it see itself asan agent of change? We have all thedifferent shades between.’ Both thisand the Australian example bring us
back to Barry Gaberman’s point about
genuine partnership. The crux of thematter seems to be how collaboration
is interpreted by both sides.
AFE Colombia views statephilanthropy collaboration as morethan just being a contractor but‘at the moment, that’s how mostfoundations understand working withthe government’, says Caroline Suarez.
This seems unlikely to change with
the introduction of a projected newlaw which will require foundations
working on government projects tocontribute 30 per cent of the project’s
costs. While the new arrangements
will involve joint funding, there isno suggestion that they will entail
collaboration in the sense of joint
design and responsibility.

Collaboration
across sectors isseen as crucial
to the success of
the Sustainable
Development Goals"
Gerry Salole. ‘There are institutions
saying, “we can finally see somewhere
we can play a role that has impact andrelevance”, while others are saying,“I’m doing what I do. I don’t really see
how this fits in”, and then there areothers who are excited by the idea of
this set of challenges but bemused by
the number and extent of the Goals.’

Foundation engagementwith the SDGs ...

He notes that there are EFC members
involved in both the US-based
SDG Philanthropy Platform, led by
the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP), Rockefeller
Philanthropy Advisors and theFoundation Center, and in the OECDbased Network of Foundations
Working for Development (NetFWD).
Both are providing support toinstitutional philanthropy organisations
looking for ways to engage with
the SDGs. The SDG Philanthropy
Platform is active in Colombia, Ghana,Indonesia, Kenya, Zambia and Brazil.
NetFWD, set up by OECD in 2012as a ‘global network of foundationscommitted to optimising the impactof philanthropy for development’, was
not specifically designed as a responseto the SDGs, but it was active inlobbying for philanthropy’s inclusionin the process of devising the Goals
and now serves as a focal point forfoundations keen to work on them.

How are foundations responding to
the SDGs in the rest of the world? Arethey working piecemeal, concertinga strategy or scratching their heads?
As far as European foundations areconcerned, ‘all of the above’, feels

In Italy, Assifero, one of two
foundation umbrella organisations, isactively promoting the SDGs. In Spain,on the other hand, lack of activity on
the SDGs is ‘a failure of foundations sofar’, believes Rosa Gallego.

THE SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT GOALSCollaboration across sectors isseen as crucial to the success of
the Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs). What is exciting about them,thinks Barry Gaberman, is that, unlikewith their predecessors, the Millennium
Development Goals, ‘there was a real
attempt to include the for-profit andnon-profit sectors in the discourse,which was reasonably successful.’ Henotes the SDG philanthropy Platform
as a genuine attempt to connect US
philanthropy with the SDGs.

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WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Collaboration

There are exceptions, like La Caixa(which tends to be exceptional inmost respects), but ‘AEF is not reallypromoting it and so we are not reallygetting the sense of how our members
are working with them.'
A good example of a collaborative
effort in pursuit of the goals thatinvolves European foundations isthe ‘With and For Girls’ Collective,
initiated by the Stars Foundation, withpartners including Mama Cash, Plan
UK International and the Global Fundfor Children.
Colombia has a particular interestin the SDGs, says Suarez, since they
offer a way to galvanise the country’s
development following the conclusionof peace. ‘We are the local partner of
the SDG Philanthropy Platform,’ shesays. ‘For us it’s a must to involve theSDGs in our work because it’s a way
for us to get foundations, and society
as a whole, to think beyond the peace
process and to look at the big pictureof real development.’ A focal point forthis is SDG 16 on peace, justice andstrong institutions, and it is where
the Goals coincide with Colombia’s
National Development Plan, whose
three central planks are peace,equality and education. As a reportby AFE Colombia earlier last year
points out,33 peace is more than justthe end of armed conflict. Translating
an end to violence into an inclusiveand democratic society obedient to
the rule of law will require the pursuitand fulfilment of many of the Goals’
numerous targets.

The Sustainable
Development
Goals are a
way for us tolook at the big
picture of realdevelopment"

AFE has launched a map of its
members’ projects (more than 1,500of them) and ‘you can filter themaccording to the SDGs and theirtargets, so you can see which ones
they are working on’, says Suarez. At
the time of this research, AFE wasplanning a joint seminar with theInter-American Development Bank in
September to look at how Colombian
foundations could incorporate theSDGs into their work.

... and intentions to engage
with them
In many places, though, intention
rather than activity characterises
philanthropy’s response to the SDGs.
In a recent survey of grantmakers
from the Arab region, over 90%
said they wanted to take part in theSDGs, though only 37% have taken
this further than internal discussions(and mostly ‘taking it further’means discussions with others,
rather than initiatives). Naturally,
there are exceptions. The King
Khalid Foundation in Saudi Arabia
has conducted an assessment of
its programmes in relation to the
SDGs and is devising a strategy andallocating more resources in pursuit of
the Goals.
The government of Pakistan has
recently set up an SDG unit to consult
with the relevant stakeholders on
how different partners, including
philanthropy, can contribute tomeeting the Goals. But, says Shazia
Amjad, ‘I don’t think there is any
clarity within the government on
the kinds of philanthropic funds
that exist and how they can beharnessed.’ She notes anotherdifficulty: ‘Most CSOs and foundations,with a few exceptions, don’t knowwhat the SDGs are.’ Still, there isdialogue and she is hopeful that acommon strategy might emerge.

Struggling to connect the
global with the local
One problem is that localorganisations, both public andphilanthropic, are struggling toreconcile their own priorities with the43language and categories in which theSDGs are formulated. ‘Very little of thelanguage of the SDGs is used at all in
Singapore,’ says Laurence Lien. ‘It’salmost as if it’s irrelevant to us.’According to Hilary Pearson, while
the infrastructure bodies in Canada– PFC and Community Foundationsof Canada among them – have beentalking about the SDGs, they have notyet ‘succeeded in mobilising a lot ofprivate philanthropic action aroundthe SDGs per se. This is partly because
we haven’t been able to make theconnection between them and thework that foundations are doing locally.
Foundations might say, “we have someprojects that are about eliminating
poverty locally but I don’t know how toconnect them to some broad impact
statement by Canada.” So that’s themissing piece, that’s what we’re working
on now.’ (At the time of collecting thedata for this report, a meeting wasabout to be held in Ottawa, convenedby the Canadian government andattended by a number of philanthropy
umbrella groups, with a view to making
these connections. Hilary Pearson is
hopeful that by the end of this year
‘we’ll have some tools that can help
our members understand what theframework means and how to connect itto what they do.')According to the Arab region
workshop, with the exception of
Morocco, there is little government
buy-in to the SDG framework.
Consequently, local NGOs do notnecessarily feel any strong obligation
to connect their work to the Goals
either. All in all, workshop participants
felt that the SDGs may not be thebest framework for effecting real andlasting change at local level.
Another problem is that the Goals
are explicitly intended to be universal
in application, but that’s not always
how they’re being interpreted. ‘We’ve
had discussions about what the SDGs
mean in a UK setting,’ says Carol Mack,‘but I don’t hear our own government
talking about the SDGs in a UK setting,
only in an international setting, and I
think how the government approaches
things sets the framework forengagement in the country.’

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Collaboration

How relevant are the SDGs
to philanthropy?
‘My sense,’ says Halima Mahomed, ‘isthat with progressive philanthropy
institutions the position is: “these are
the issues we want to look at. If there’salignment with the SDGs, great.”’ For
smaller organisations that don’t havea progressive agenda already or don’t
have much capacity, she feels theymight provide a useful template, ‘but I
don’t see a lot of it happening.'
Danny Sriskandarajah sees the
SDG Philanthropy Platform as ‘agood attempt to provide the data
infrastructure for foundations tomonitor their expenditure against
the SDGs.' On the other hand, ‘myworry is that we’ll see a lot of tickbox approaches and not enoughof the transformation in terms ofcollaboration we might need tomake a significant change.’ In his
view, ‘probably the biggest single
thing foundations can do to make asignificant impact on the SDGs and on
sustainable development generally is
to change their investment practices,not make some marginal change intheir grantmaking.’
Many of Philanthropy Australia’s
members have heard of the SDGs,
says Krystian Seibert, ‘though they
haven’t necessarily figured out theirrelevance to philanthropy. There’s
an educative role for infrastructureorganisations in this regard and it’ssomething Philanthropy Australia
is looking at for 2017.’ However, hegoes on: ‘the cynical part of me says
they’re a bunch of targets that arenever going to be measured properlyor governments will just choose which
ones they measure to suit themselves.
This highlights the important role ofcivil society in holding government
accountable for working towards andmeeting the targets.’
Jenny Hodgson is also ambivalent.
‘If all the SDGs mean is that private
foundations in Zambia, say, startgiving to the UN, that’s not an
acceptable outcome.’ And it’s notjust a question of money, but ofreinforcing existing power dynamics:‘often local foundations that don’t
trust civil society feel that giving to
the UN is the way to do it – I thinkthat’s deeply problematic. It avoids
the whole question about how wemake societies more just, more
effective, more equitable.’ Unless you
can use the Goals to advance somefundamental questions like equality
and power, she thinks they look like ‘anice exercise where everyone showsthey’re doing a great job and thennothing really changes.' She notes‘a big conversation’ in Kenya at the
moment about the SDGs, but ‘it always
looks to me like the same actors notdealing with the same fundamental
issues. The framework doesn’tnecessarily facilitate systems change
thinking because it has been createdby the ultimate system.’
Atallah Kuttab sums up the twocontradictory currents in the thinking
of institutional philanthropy. On the
one hand, everyone sees the needfor integrated development: ‘you
can’t do education, health, and so on
alone. The links are very importantand different players need to beworking together.’ On the other side
is cynicism. Foundations believe that
the UN and national governments areafter philanthropic money, and are notinterested in genuine partnership.

‘This happened with the MDGs – “wewill take your money, we know better.”’Moreover, the closing space for civilsociety in the Arab region means
that, effectively, cooperation would
mean the government’s working
with ‘a sector that is criminalised.'
Kuttab believes that ‘unless there
is a loosening up of laws, it’s justempty talk. The SDGs will be justa fundraising tool; foundations
and NGOs will be saying they arealigned with the SDGs so they
can capture some of the moneythat might be spent throughthe SDGs, no more no less.’
Basak Ersen knows of few
organisations that are working on
the SDGs in Turkey. Nor is Oksana
Oracheva aware of any foundations
working on them in Russia. She feels
that, in Potanin’s case, ‘they’re not very
close to what we do, maybe because
its different rhetoric.' In order forthem to make more sense, they need
to be integrated in a broader agenda,‘but I don’t see that yet.' Yanni Pengsays the general view of institutional
philanthropy in China is that theSDGs are ‘more the international
community’s agenda.' There is nonational platform. At the Narada
Foundation, ‘we haven’t positioned
ourselves around the SDGs.'

What we need is effective
multi-stakeholder
involvement, and aplatform for dialogue,
collaboration andmutual accountability"
44

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Collaboration

A coordinatednational strategy?
Australian foundations are looking at
how they can ‘align their outcomes
more broadly and the SDGs provide
a good way of doing that as part ofa national and international agenda’,says Krystian Seibert. The Australianexample notwithstanding, it will beobvious from what has gone before
that coordinated national strategies
are few and far between, even within
the philanthropy sector.
‘What we need is effective multistakeholder involvement, and aplatform for dialogue, collaborationand mutual accountability,’ says
Danny Sriskandarajah, ‘but I don’t seethat happening. It’s hard to get small
collaborations and alignments off theground, so it would be just too big tohave a coordinated national strategy.’
Ingrid Srinath sees ‘no platform
for concerted strategy or formalcooperation so far. VANI, India’snational NGO platform, has been
trying to frame things in terms of theSDGs but I’m not sure whether they’ve
made any headway. I’m not hearing
a lot from the government either, so I
suspect it’s mostly UN agencies thatare SDG-oriented.’ She is doubtful,in any case, about the platform idea,
which she feels would be likely todegenerate into a talking shop.

The SDGs will be justa fundraising tool:
foundations and NGOs
will be saying they arealigned with the SDGs sothey can capture someof the money that might
be spent through theSDGs, no more no less"

The SDGs will be the biggest featureof the international development
landscape between now and 2030
and it’s inevitable that institutional
philanthropy will have somerelationship with them. The form
that relationship takes will vary fromplace to place. It’s likely that, at aminimum, foundations will map what
they are doing on to the appropriate
goals. Whether they become any
more wholehearted about them will
depend on whether and who takes
the initiative, locally or nationally, andwhether national governments and the
UN can allay the scepticism that exists
in many quarters. For the moment,
for many philanthropic institutions,
the words ‘international development
agenda’ are almost meaningless.

45

7Philanthropy,
government andcivil society
While government often encourages
philanthropy and NGOs when they
are doing work it approves of, it canalso be hostile where it sees its own
interests at issue. This chapter focuseson governments’ often ambivalentrelationship with civil society andphilanthropy. It also looks at somemore positive developments for NGOs,
and at tax exemptions and incentives
for donors and recipients.
46

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Philanthropy, government and civil society

The broad outlines of the relationshipbetween philanthropy and civil society
are clear enough. Philanthropy operates
largely through civil society. As Barry
Gaberman puts it, ‘philanthropy forthe most part does its work throughthe operating organisations of civilsociety. There is a direct line that runs
from the work of CSOs to philanthropic
institutions and through them tophilanthropic support organisations.’
Relations with government are more
complex. Writing in WINGS' 2017 "A
New Global Picture of Organizations
Serving Philanthropy" report, Adam
Pickering of CAF notes the paradoxicalsituation that while many governments
are keen to encourage philanthropy
with one hand, they are preventing
them from funding where they like on
the other.
So on the one hand government
tolerates, even encourages, civil society
insofar as it is doing work it approvesof – and that includes foundations as
funders of civil society. On the other
hand, when CSOs espouse issues
that call in question the government’s
position or policies, that favour iswithdrawn, and often replaced byhostility. In an increasing number ofcases, this is translated into punitive
legislation. Gaberman’s fear, shared bymany, is that while those CSOs thatwork on what he terms ‘the safe side –social services, health, education, thearts’ will prosper, the threats to civilsociety are going to make those on ‘theedgy side – social justice, human rights,
community organising, independent
policy analysis, incredibly importantorganisations – harder and harder forphilanthropy to fund.'

The threats to civilsociety are going to
make those on 'theedgy side' harder forphilanthropy to fund.

AMBIVALENT ATTITUDES ON
THE PART OF GOVERNMENT
Government support for civilsociety and philanthropy ...
There is an increasing tendency forgovernments to contract NGOs todeliver a particular service. This isa well-established practice in, forexample, the UK and Australia, and it
is just beginning in Russia. For many
Russian NGOs, says Oksana Oracheva,
it’s the way to have a sustainable
future. She sees many areas whereexperienced NGOs can achieve muchbetter results than the government,
for example in palliative care or thecare of orphans. New and improved
legislation has been introduced
as a result of a push by NGOs andphilanthropic institutions interested
in promoting those areas (though,parenthetically, she notes that the law
regulating philanthropy, dating from1996, needs to be updated).
Chinese NGOs have an increasedrole in service delivery, notes Yanni
Peng, again in similar areas – elderly
care, services for the disabled andeducation. The Indian government is‘very encouraging of philanthropy aslong as it conforms to their definitionof where it should go’, says Ingrid
Srinath. There is more ‘carrot thanstick’ involved, she notes, and there
are no formal restrictions on where
you can fund.
Government is often the paymasterof civil society through grantfunding, too. Carol Mack notes thatin 2016, ‘for the first time in a longtime’, at GBP2.7 billion (USD3.5bn),
foundation grantmaking is now
comparable to government grants
made to charities, while government
funding for the Australian charitablesector was five times the amountgiven by philanthropy.
Doug Rutzen of the International
Center for Not-for-profit Law (ICNL)
mentions a number of countries where
the situation for NGOs is improving.
Argentina has launched a joint
government-civil society initiative toadvance legislation, while in Morocco47

new laws allow citizens to submit
motions and petitions, for the firsttime enabling them to bring theirconcerns directly to the government
and legislature.
In some countries improvement isa matter of restrictive laws being
defeated rather than more positive
ones put in place. ‘Kyrgyzstan had aforeign agents’ bill that went throughtwo readings in parliament before
it got rejected in 2016,’ he notes. In
Kenya in 2015, there were moves tocap international funding at 15 percent of an organisation’s budget,which would have left tens of millions
of Kenyans without access to primary
healthcare. ‘Parliament defeated thatbill. In El Salvador, Honduras, Nigeria
and other countries restrictive laws
have been defeated partly because of
the engagement of civil society.’... and government hostility
Undoubtedly the biggest threat
to civil society, particularly thoseparts of it that are engaged incampaigning and advocacy for rights,
is the phenomenon referred to as theshrinking space.
The Indian government uses theForeign Contributions (Registration)
Act (FCRA) as a means of policing
the NGO sector, says Srinath. Its use
is ‘entirely political’, she says. It’svery difficult to get funding fromdomestic sources if, as an NGO,
you are involved in one of Barry
Gaberman’s ‘edgy’ issues; this means,in practice, you are dependent on
external funding. Here’s where the
FCRA comes in. ‘You have to havea licence to receive foreign funding,which is valid for five years,’ says
Srinath. ‘You have to have a separatebank account in which foreignmonies are banked. Every transaction
on that account has to be reported
within 48 hours and there are very
onerous reporting requirements.
They can freeze the account so you
can’t make any transactions at allor you have to seek approval before
a transaction can be completed.
Finally, you can just be delicensed.
It’s completely arbitrary.’

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Philanthropy, government and civil society

She goes on: ‘In the 40-odd years ofthat law’s existence I can’t recall asingle case where an NGO has beenfound to have either laundered moneyor funded terror or anything else thatthe law purports to prevent. Every
single case has been where an NGO
has challenged the government in
one way or another and has had theirlicence to receive money withdrawn
or curtailed as a consequence.’
Similarly, Rohini Mohan, writing in
the New York Times in January 2017,
cites the use of the act to cut off
financial supply to a Delhi advocacy
group, the Lawyers’ Collective, which
provides legal assistance to women,
non-union workers, activists and othermarginalised groups because, alleges
Mohan, it had represented critics ofprime minister Modi’s policies.

According to one source, the Ministryof Public Security published a list of
government organisations that will
be in charge of supervising foreign
NGOs, ‘but the list does not include
supervisory units for NGOs operating
in sensitive areas such as legal reformand rights issues. The result could bea situation where a majority of foreign
NPOs remain in a legal limbo.’

In Russia, alongside government
support for service delivery by NGOs,
the Foreign Agent Law requires NGOs
that receive foreign donations andengage in ‘political activity’ to registerand declare themselves as foreign
agents. This shows ‘there’s not enoughtrust from the government side inNGOs’, says Oracheva. One result of
the law is that the definition of politicalactivity has been broadened, creating
uncertainty about what it is. Naturally,
this leads to an even greater degreeof caution. ‘With foreign funding,there’s always a risk,’ she concludes.
The Dynasty Foundation, for instance,
which has subsequently closed, fell
foul of the Foreign Agent Law. One of
their grantees was a liberal think-tank
and Dynasty was financed by moneythat was kept abroad, so it was easy to
put pressure on the foundation.

A number of societiesthat you would haveseen as participatory
are exhibiting threatsagainst the enabling
environment"

While the Chinese government likes
the service provision role that NGOs
are increasingly playing, it’s not
so keen when they get involved in
advocacy – to the point, says Yanni
Peng, where the local government will
restrict the entry of environmental
NGOs into areas where there isenvironmental degradation. There
are worries that the Overseas NGO
Law, which came into force at the
beginning of last year, will be used todiscriminate against NGOs working inpolitically sensitive areas.

‘Rights-based and grassroots
organisations working for social change
in Colombia are having a hard time,
because funding is drying up and they
are probably not now getting sizeable
donations,’ says Carolina Suarez.

The more authoritarian thegovernment, the more severe andmanifold legislation to curtail civilsociety activities is likely to be.
Doug Rutzen speaks of ‘waves of
constraint over the last 12-13 years.'
But, as Gaberman warns, ‘a numberof societies that you would have seen
as participatory, including the US, areexhibiting threats against the enabling
environment.’ ICNL records ’98 laws
restricting freedom of association
or assembly around the world …
proposed or passed since 2012.'
In the UK, too, feels Carol Mack, theenvironment for philanthropy ‘has got
more contested. It’s increasingly unclear
what charities – and foundations arecharities in the UK – can and can’t say
in the run-up to an election.’ The trust
issue plays a significant part here,
she feels. The breakdown of trust in
institutions extends to the charity
sector, and ‘it is no longer assumed

48

that because you are a charity you areautomatically a good thing.' (Only halfof respondents to a CAF study said they
trusted charities.)
Implementation, not legislation, isthe problem facing foundations in a
number of countries. ‘In principle,’ says
Basak Ersen, ‘if you set up a Turkish
foundation for a lawful purpose,
you are free to do what you like.’ A2008 foundation law, which TUSEV
helped to draw up, is along the linesof those regulating the sector in mostof western Europe. ‘But in practicethere are exceptions. It’s always
hard to fund human rights work forexample.’ Organisations can receive
foreign funding, but it’s very difficult
for them to operate if they try to do
so in defiance of government’s wishes
and matters are aggravated by thepresent state of emergency whichmeans ‘you can’t do even things which
are legal, which are your right. We
don’t have freedom of expression or
association now, which are the basis ofcivil society. We can’t see the future.
Things might get worse.’

Reasons forgovernment hostility
While the introduction of legislation
restricting civil society andphilanthropy is widespread, themotives for legislation are notalways the same. Aside from thedesire to stifle opposition, Doug
Rutzen points to several factors thathe sees as powering the current
wave of constraint: ‘There is agroup of countries that think thatthe governments themselves needto play a much stronger role incoordinating international assistance.
For these countries, it’s much more
about that agenda than it is about
restricting dissent.’ A participant at
the Johannesburg workshop also
saw this as a strong motive andfelt that philanthropy is likely tobe regulated in most countries infuture in order to integrate it into
national development agendas.
A second motive, Rutzen believes, iswhat he calls ‘misplaced concepts ofaccountability and transparency.'

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Philanthropy, government and civil society

The banks andministries aremonitoring theprocesses thatare ensuring theclosing of the civilsociety space"In the US, he notes ‘a grassroots
initiative to expand or ramp up theenforcement of the US Foreign
Agent’s Registration Act37 byprogressive groups that are trying
to hold the Trump administrationaccountable – but in the name oftransparency they’re going to end up,
I believe, unintentionally restricting
civil society.’ Finally, he notes ‘theagendas around counter-terrorism,
issues of sovereignty’ and the naturaltendency of governments to want toconsolidate power.
In the Arab region, thinks Atallah
Kuttab, there are two motives for
restrictive legislation. ‘The direct one
is the political Islamic movement.
The indirect one is that people haveshifted their demands since 2011. Now,
security is paramount, so nobody istalking about freedom, integrity, etc.
People are accepting tightening down
for better security and governments
are using that.’
Gerry Salole doesn’t think the‘shrinkage in wriggle room’ is caused
solely by anxieties over funding forterrorism or political discomfort withcivil society. He also sees a legitimacy
question raised over the use (rather
than the provenance) of philanthropic
money. ‘I think there’s a critical voice
being raised that’s questioning thelegitimacy of private resources being
deployed in particular ways. And
there’s also a genuine seeking foraccountability about where money
goes and how decisions are made.’

GOVERNMENT CONTROL
THROUGH REGULATION
AND THE LACK OF IT
Governments can also control civilsociety, and philanthropy, throughbureaucracy and regulations, which
may or may not be primarily intended
to be restrictive. Sometimes a lack ofregulation can itself be a problem.
As the Hudson Institute Index38
points out, ‘philanthropic freedom
has been impeded by the increasing
prevalence of foreign exchange
regulations and capital controls.’
It describes Venezuela’s foreignexchange regulations as ‘nothing shortof a disaster’, adding: ‘such policies
are more pronounced in Venezuela,
Argentina, Bolivia, and Brazil, but are
by no means limited to South America.
China, Egypt, Georgia, India, Myanmar,
Pakistan, Russia, and South Africa
all have currency control systems
affecting philanthropic activity intheir countries.’

Burdensome bureaucracy
In the Arab region, government
control over philanthropy is exercisedby ‘a mix of disapproval and formal
restriction’, says Atallah Kuttab.
While funding for services like healthand education is encouraged, ‘youneed approvals for grants, and if
someone creates a problem, you’ll bein trouble.' Sheer bureaucracy can be
an effective way of stifling support tocauses that governments in the region
don’t approve of. ‘I closed my NGO
in Jordan at the end of 2016,’ says
Kuttab, ‘because I couldn’t channel
anything through it. Permissions were
stuck in the ministry. They didn’t say
no, but they didn’t say yes.’ At thesame time, it’s becoming impossible
to get grant money from outside
the region. The banks, promptedby government, ‘have become very
strict over the last six months. Other
countries in the region are worse.
Jordan is the softest. So the banks
and ministries are monitoring theprocesses that are ensuring theclosing of the civil society space.’

49

Banks play a part in India too, says
Ingrid Srinath; it's possible to appeal
against the arbitrary operation of
restrictive laws. If you have deep
enough pockets, you can take thegovernment to court. Greenpeace
did so and won, but still they havebeen unable to function effectively
because the government has madeuse of all the weapons at its disposal
to make their work impossible:‘banks don’t want to do businesswith you, service providers don’t
want to do business with you, youremployees can’t get bank accounts.
It’s a concerted way of harassingyou.’
In Colombia, the civil society sector
is subject to the scrutiny of several
government departments, which iseven more burdensome for NGOs thanfor foundations. Both are subject tothe same legislation, but foundations
have lawyers and accountants,
whereas NGOs often don’t, says
Carolina Suarez, ‘so how are they
going to manage the bureaucracy
involved?’ Nor is giving particularly
encouraged. You need government
permission to be able to receive
donations. If this is forthcoming, yourdonors qualify for a tax exemption. If
you don’t get that permission, they
don’t qualify.
There are no restrictions on domestic
donations in Pakistan, but there isa draft law under consideration toregulate cross-border philanthropy
more closely. Currently, the StateBank of Pakistan has its own
regulations for money coming
in and out of Pakistan and thoseregulations are now being mademore stringent, says Shazia Amjad.

A lack of regulation
Even where government attitudes
to philanthropy are in theory
positive, legislation is often in needof overhaul to suit it to the times.
From one perspective, says Hilary
Pearson, the legal environment in
Canada is very favourable becauseof a very generous system of tax
incentives. However, it is also ‘sadly
in need of modernisation.'

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Philanthropy, government and civil society

She cites the examples of Australia
and New Zealand, which have ‘at least
tried to take the regulator out of the
tax agency and make it independent,
and broadened the definition ofcharity’, but that has not happened in
Canada. ‘When it came into office twoyears ago, the current government
promised publicly it would look at
the legislative framework with a view
to modernising it, but there’s a lotof resistance.’ One reason why it isdragging its feet on the question,
she says, is a worry about opening
up charitable legislation to advocacy
organisations: ‘there are wholequestions about the role of charities asadvocates for policy change – there’s
a reluctance, an inertia in the system
around that.’

Are the restrictions onphilanthropy deliberate?
Rosa Gallego believes the
detrimental effects on philanthropy
can result largely from shortsightedness on the part ofgovernment. So while, in generalterms, the Spanish governmentis in favour of philanthropy, ‘thesupervising authority makes
everyone’s lives absolute hell.
I don’t think it’s intentional. I
don’t think government realizes
that by putting these obstacles
in foundations’ way, they are
actually undermining their work.’
While acknowledging thatgovernments have a legitimate
interest in controlling currency flows
in and out of the country, the Hudson
Institute Index suggests that the
restrictions on philanthropy imposedby such regulations may be tosome extent deliberate. ‘In Pakistan,
Russia, Turkey, and Malaysia, there
is growing evidence to suggest thatthe damage to philanthropic activity
is not entirely unintentional. In eachof these countries, legislation passed
ostensibly to combat IFFs [illicit
financial flows] has been used tolimit the autonomy of philanthropic
actors, investigate and surveil groups
critical of the government, and impede
organizations attempting to accessforeign funds.’

THE FUTURE OF
CIVIL SOCIETY

Government
hostility – and the‘shrinking space’for civil society – is
not the only reason
why pursuit of theiraims, even survival,
is becoming
more difficult forNGOs. Many of thesources of fundingthat they havetraditionally looked
to are drying up"
However, Shazia Amjad sees nothingsinister in Pakistan’s proposed
new regulations for cross-borderphilanthropy: it is simply in compliancewith international anti-moneylaundering agreements, to which
Pakistan is a signatory. Hitherto, shesays, most Pakistani NGOs were free
to do what they wanted. ‘Now thatthe government, under internationalpressure, is beginning to put regulations
in place, people say that the enabling
environment is being reduced, but evenfor regulating traffic, there are traffic
lights. What would happen if there wereno traffic lights? In a sense, CSOs are
now being traffic-lighted.’
She also points to Pakistan’s
geographical position. ‘Considering
the kind of buffer state that Pakistan
has become, considering that wehave a sensitive border on both sides,
considering our geopolitical situation,
the amount of money that has flowed
into Pakistan, and the amount ofterrorist attacks there have been, there
is a need to see such money flows
regulated and curbed.’

50

Pressures on NGOs
Government hostility – and the‘shrinking space’ for civil society – is
not the only reason why pursuit of
their aims, even survival, is becoming
more difficult for NGOs. Many of thesources of funding that they havetraditionally looked to are drying up.
Government funding is becoming
scarcer as fiscal constraints bite. In
some emerging economies, whereNGOs (especially those dealing with
politically sensitive issues) havetraditionally relied on funding frominternational sources, this has beendwindling steadily over the past 20
years or so as funders have moved on
to countries perceived to be in greaterneed of support.
The lost international funding has
seldom been successfully replaced
from local sources. Partly this isbecause many NGOs have no rootsin the local community and thecommunity remains ignorant of what
they do; partly it’s because of mistrust;and partly it’s because NGOs are seen
as being able to attract external funds
rather than requiring local money. As
Atallah Kuttab notes: ‘in a meetingof Africans and Arab philanthropiststhat I moderated, they said it plainly:
they don’t give money to local NGOs
because they are supposed to bringmoney from outside.’
There are other reasons why NGOs
are feeling the pinch. They are oftenout of step with new philanthropy,
believes Jenny Hodgson, ‘so there’s avery narrow overlap where NGOs are
doing something that new foundations
necessarily want to support and ahuge gap between new foundations
and organisations working on rights
and justice.’
Direct implementation of programmesby operating foundations; social
business competing for attention
and support; the rise of new, more
informal means of social activism; thewillingness of millennials and younger
people to donate to a much wider range

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Philanthropy, government and civil societyof entities (for example Kickstarter,
B-corps) – all these are calling into
question the rationale of NGOs, to thepoint that Atallah Kuttab sees them as
being ‘in real trouble as a subset of oursector.' Almost all of these pressures
are being felt more acutely by thoseengaged in issues that are consideredpolitically sensitive.

Social movements
It would be easy to exaggerate thepressures on NGOs: there are also
more positive trends likely to affecttheir future trajectory. The possibilityof creating social movements rapidly
through social media occupied a gooddeal of attention at the 2017 WINGS
Forum in Mexico City, with participants
wondering about the implications of asituation where the impetus for change
is more likely to be found in a fluid
movement than a formal organisation.
‘I think most foundations can connect
with social movements,’ says Gerry
Salole. ‘A “let’s see what people want”
kind of approach goes back to very
core charitable work, and to someextent what Jenny Hodgson is doingwith the Global Fund for Community
Foundations is rekindling some of that.’

Local ownership andlocal governance‘If you can make the case that local
ownership and local governance trump
outsiders making decisions on behalfof people,’ he goes on, ‘whether they
are called community foundations or
not, this is probably the most powerfulintermediary we could be helping todevelop. In the end you’re basicallyvalidating the idea that people know
best. So what something is calledshouldn’t matter, whether it’s beenformally registered or not shouldn’t
matter, resources should be able to go
to people.’He also points to this as another area
where the shrinking space is having
a harmful effect. ‘In this context, theanti-terrorism legislation is going to
make life more difficult. You can’t be
as informal as you’d like in a situation
where you have to know who you’regiving your money to and you have tovindicate what they do with it.’
Jenny Hodgson acknowledges that‘there are existential questions for civilsociety’, but sees the possibility ofgood coming from the solutions. She‘very much believes in the importanceof institutions because when you sit
down at the table with the big players,
who is the link? Even if you have a big,successful crowdfunding campaign,
if you don’t exist as anything else,
establishment players see no need toengage with you further.’
What are needed, she says, areorganisations that operate in a lesstransactional way than the classic
pattern of seeking grants, generally
from outside, and applying them to a
problem. If you start to raise money
locally, she argues, you’re going tohave to start thinking about building
constituencies for your work. Thatmight be money, ‘but it might justmean people caring whether you
get closed down or not.' She sees
this as an ‘inevitable part of thechanging funding environment and theshrinking space, which will force thisevolution into something that is more
responsive, more flexible and moreorganic.' She believes the real needis to build ‘strong organisations that
can advance tricky issues and have aconstituency for that work.'
Danny Sriskandarajah’s ideaof ‘fundermediaries’ – funding
intermediaries that exist explicitly
to channel donor funds more
directly to the end recipient –touches on similar ideas.

Funding for diversity will be important,
he believes, and donors will need towork out how to support different
types of organisation. ‘If all of yourprogressive eggs are in one basket andsuddenly the regulatory environmentchanges, you’re stuck.' Where trust
for NGOs is low, we need to ‘work
out how to support those progressive
causes through different institutions.'

Thriving without an
enabling environment
In Sub-Saharan Africa, the Hudson
Institute Index cites ‘the newnessof structured philanthropy’ as areason for the absence of conducive
legislation. ‘Consequently, there
are fewer indigenous grantmaking
institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa
than in other regions, and theadministrative infrastructure forphilanthropy remains underdeveloped.’ 39
This underdevelopment may not be
too much of a problem, however.
While South Africa ranks relatively low
on the Index of Philanthropic Freedom,
Halima Mahomed notes that ‘we havea vibrant civil society and we haveprogressive social justice foundations
that fund progressive CSOs who thentake the government to court andhave won. The best-known case wasthe anti-retrovirals campaign which
took the government to court to force
them to provide ARVs.’ Occasionally,
she says, you find government officials
murmuring about foreign-funded
NGOs coming with an agenda, butgovernment does nothing in terms ofpolicy to curb them.

The real need is to build strongorganizations that can advancetricky issues and have aconstituency for that work"
51

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Philanthropy, government and civil society

TAX EXEMPTIONSAND INCENTIVES
Most countries have some form oftax exemption for donors, recipientorganisations or both.

Tax and foundations
In Turkey, for example, foundations
are exempt from corporate tax andthere are tax incentives for individuals
giving money to registered publicbenefit organisations. Foundation
endowments are also tax-exempt(while foundations are required tohave endowments, they are often verysmall) and if you give or bequeath
money to a foundation, there is noinheritance tax liability.
Ingrid Srinath feels there areno significant tax incentives
for philanthropists in India. The
threshold for the 50% write-downof contributions is low. There arelimited tax incentives in Russia too.
They apply to individuals, but not tocorporations or institutions. Yanni
Peng notes that Chinese foundations
have to pay income tax of 25 per centon profits from investments.
Singapore has a very favourable
regime if you are donating tostate-sanctioned programmes ororganisations. If you give a dollar,
SGD2.50 is taken off your taxable
income. But the attitude underlying
this regime is fairly parochial, says
Laurence Lien. If you work in an areathat benefits predominantly foreigners
or people outside Singapore, you
won’t get the permit necessary forthis deduction. Similarly, if you do
public fundraising, most of the funds
you raise must be spent in Singapore.
‘“Charity begins at home, Singapore
is a small country, what difference
can we make to overseas causes?”That’s the sort of argument,’ he says.
Though there are few restrictions, henotes increasing amounts of reporting
because of anti-money laundering andanti-terrorist measures.
In Spain, as mentioned earlier, the tax
incentive for donations of less than
EUR150 (USD176) has been increased.

‘Foundations don’t have to pay
company tax on their profits; they
don’t have to pay tax on donations.
Apart from a huge VAT issue, the tax
treatment of foundations is good,’ says
Rosa Gallego. But she draws attention
to a continuing issue for Spanish
philanthropy. ‘When a foundation
gives grants but does not operate its
own programmes, the tax authority
questions whether it is eligible for tax
incentives, but if a grantmaker is not
eligible, who is? This is an issue that isstill being debated.’ Apart from being
an example of a kind of bureaucratic
arthritis that can unwittingly disablephilanthropy, it has an obvious chilling
effect on grantmaking.
While there are tax incentives for giving
in some countries of the Arab region,
they are so complicated that few people
pursue them. ‘It’s a nightmare,’ says
Atallah Kuttab, ‘so the people I know
who give, they give without tax breaks.’
However, the question doesn’t arise in
the Gulf, ‘where the bulk of the moneyis’, since there are no taxes.
In other places, tax incentives areused to direct the flow of generosity.
‘If you give to pseudo-governmentorganisations, NGOs or foundations,then it’s safe to ask for a tax rebate.
But if it’s an NGO that’s doing workoutside the remit of government, thendon’t bother. The bureaucracy entailed
is heavy.’

Tax for NGOs
Tax is an issue for recipient institutions
as well as donors. While in theory
Chinese NGOs can obtain an exemption
from paying tax on donations, theyoften can’t in practice, says Yanni Peng.
The position is complicated: ‘We don’t
need to pay tax on the whole year’sbalance of donations provided that the
average salary of our organisation isless than twice the local average salary.’This, she says, is restrictive in anotherdirection, since it means ‘we can’t offer
a higher salary to attract good people.'
In India, says Srinath, if you’re registeredas a charitable trust or a society or
not-for-profit company, your income istax-exempt, but you must spend any
donations in the year you raise them.

52

Do tax incentives
stimulate giving?
It’s debatable, in any case, what role
tax incentives play in encouraging
giving. Much of the research donesuggests that it’s not a primary motive
for individual donors. According to
Oksana Oracheva, most individual
donors in Russia don’t claim tax relief.
There are studies in the US, says Barry
Gaberman, which argue that if you
don’t exempt charitable donations
from taxation, ‘you’re going to see asignificant decline in charitable giving.
I’m not sure that’s true. If you figurethat over 40% of charitable giving
goes to religious activity, I don’t see
the tax code being the prime mover.’A report by CAF40 suggests that tax
incentives are a significant but notdecisive factor in increasing giving.
It found that in countries with tax
incentives 33% of people had givenin the previous month, comparedwith 21% in countries without them.
However, it concedes that ‘the legal
environment in which civil society
operates, the range of causes which
are incentivised, administrative
barriers to giving and the ability oforganisations to fundraise publicly
are likely to be more important inmotivating giving than tax incentives.'
However, while tax incentives are notthe only reason people give, they
may encourage people to give more.
Ashish Dhawan, chair of India’s Central
Square Foundation and co-founderof Ashoka University, believes that
opening the gate can only encouragegivers to enter.41 The Observatoirede la Fondation de France argues
that, in Europe at least, tax incentives
might influence the size of gifts even
if they aren’t a determining factor inwhether to give or not. In France andthe UK, says their report,42 ‘countries
with more generous tax breaks thanelsewhere, the proportion of the donor
population is only average, while
average donation amounts are thehighest in Europe.’

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Philanthropy, government and civil society

It's debatable, in any
case, what role tax
incentives play inencouraging giving.
Much of the researchdone suggests that it's
not a primary motive
for individual donors"

53

8
Infrastructureorganisations
Infrastructure is very unevenly
distributed, with 80% of thefunding for it concentrated in North
America. This chapter focuses on
the infrastructure organisations
that support the philanthropy
sector. It looks at the range of roles
infrastructure organisations playand some areas where they could
do better. Finally, it discusses thechallenge of demonstrating their value
to the sector and the viability of their‘business model.'54

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Infrastrucuture organisations

Last year, WINGS produced a studyof philanthropy infrastructureorganisations, which gives as detailed
a picture as possible of the state ofaffairs globally. For the purposesof this report, the salient findings
from that research are that 80%of the funding for infrastructure isconcentrated in North America andthat infrastructure is weakest where
it is most needed.
The organisations that make up
philanthropy infrastructure covera wide field. Barry Gaberman
provides us with a handy distinction,
separating them into ‘membershiporganisations, like the Council on
Foundations, the EFC and the 70 or
80 national associations’ and what hecalls ‘second-aspect’ organisations
which specialise in particular areas‘like endowment building, board
development, fundraising, etc.' Mostly,
this report will deal with the firstcategory, though the implications forthe more specialist organisations inwhat follows will be apparent.

The infrastructureorganisations in
Africa are mostly
regional and their
thematic reachis limited, whichmeans there are
significant gaps
in the intelligenceand information
the sector candraw on"UNEVEN DISTRIBUTION
OF PHILANTHROPYINFRASTRUCTURE
Density of infrastructurein the US and Europe
One potential problem arisingfrom the density of infrastructureorganisations in North America andEurope is duplication. ‘We’re beginningto see too much duplication, says
Gerry Salole. ‘You have broader
churches further afield, then when you
come closer to Europe and the US,
you probably have more specialised
infrastructure, often competing inthe same terrain and perhaps a bit
too militant about their specificapproach to particular problems.’ The
continual pressure on infrastructureorganisations to generate income andto show results produces ‘a degreeof marketing and selling’ which he is‘very uncomfortable’ with.
Barry Gaberman has an explanation
for this duplication. Based on his
experience, he says, ‘for the US atleast, every funder funding some bitof philanthropy infrastructure hada favourite of their own, so if you
were talking about how to eliminate
redundancy, it was a loser.’ He also hasa suggestion for dealing with it. ‘Weshould define for the US – but I think
it would be true of any country – whatis the core inner circle of infrastructureorganisations we need to support. In
the second, outer circle, funders cango ahead and fund the ones they likeand let them meet the market test. Ifthey provide value, they’ll continue
to exist; if not, they won’t. But let’s atleast try to establish what that core is.’Scarcity of infrastructurein the global south
If in some places there is too much
infrastructure, in others there is too
little – particularly in the global south.
The infrastructure organisations in
Africa are mostly regional and their
thematic reach is limited, which means
there are significant gaps in theintelligence and information the
sector can draw on.

55

The Africa Philanthropy Network,
the African Philanthropy Forumand the East Africa Association of
Grantmakers are all regional in scope.
There might be a desire among certain
organisations to set up nationalgroups, ‘but they can’t get enoughsupport or resources, so they joina regional network.' Partly this isbecause those international funders
who do fund infrastructure tend to
fund either global institutions or thosein their own backyard. A lot of local
funders are either unaware of existing
infrastructure organisations or don’t
see the need for them. Infrastructureorganisations, believes Halima
Mahomed, ‘need to go to where
philanthropists are and stop expecting
philanthropists to come to them.'
In the Arab region, feels Atallah
Kuttab, there is a need for ‘groupingsin the Gulf, especially a network offoundations and/or social investors’,
to supplement the three main regional
infrastructure bodies – the Gerhart
Center, the Arab Foundations Forumand SAANED.
Both Jenny Hodgson and Ingrid
Srinath point to the lack of a national
network organisation as a significant
deficiency in the Indian philanthropy
scene. In fact, Srinath identifies theabsence of infrastructure organisationsas probably the sector’s biggest
challenge. Dasra has some of thefunctions of a philanthropy support
body ‘but without being a sectoral
representative.' Dasra is important, but‘we need a dozen Dasras.' Bridgespan,
CAF India and the Centre for the
Advancement of Philanthropy all
have some infrastructural role, but,she emphasises, ‘they are all verysmall relative to the need.' The lackof infrastructure is ‘something thesector is already paying a significant
price for and will pay a higher pricefor down the line if it’s not remedied –everything from the complete absenceof data to the complete absence ofnorms to the complete absence of any
kind of collective platform.'
In Singapore, what was formerly the
representative body has effectively
been co-opted into the public sector,
says Laurence Lien.

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Infrastrucuture organisations‘The representative body used to be
the National Council of Social Services
before it was nationalized. Now it’spart of government so there is norepresentative body.’
With the exception of the China
Foundation Center, infrastructure
in China is in relatively short supply
and ‘quite basic’, says Yanni Peng.
In addition to lack of data, there isalso a pressing transparency issue,
highlighted earlier in this report. The
China Foundation Center is helping
in both of these areas, both throughcollection of data (Narada Foundation
is supporting the Center to create
a database of NGOs in China) andthrough its Foundation Transparency
Index (clearly, better data is importantto this, too). There is also a big gap in
advocacy and lobbying. ‘Maybe fewer
than five organisations are lobbying
for change in policy towards thesector and the law,’ says Peng. Human
resources are also at a premium. There
are two organisations headhunting forthe sector and encouraging businesspeople to work in it, but she also seesa need for a broker to bring together
business and the philanthropy sector
and to facilitate collaboration.

ROLES OF PHILANTHROPYINFRASTRUCTURE
ORGANISATIONS
Philanthropy support organisations
carry out a very wide range of roles.
Nearly everyone mentions researchand collection of data, sharing ofbest practice, and training andconvening, but there are many more.
Philanthropy Australia conceives
its mission very broadly as working
towards ‘a more giving Australia’ by‘serving the philanthropic community
to achieve more and better
philanthropy’, says Krystian Seibert.
This is partly because the Australianphilanthropy sector is so diverse.
Because of that, ‘we don’t go for any
particular segment and say “they’rethe ones we’ll look after most”.’

Representing the sector
To what extent can networkorganisations represent the sector,
especially given that there will notnecessarily be agreement among
members on any given issue?

Oksana Oracheva feels that
‘infrastructure organisations need torepresent the sector, not individualorganisations. And they need toexpress the common agenda – notcreate, but express it. Infrastructureorganisations can’t create the agenda,
they can combine the elements of theagenda then present it.’Carol Mack argues that ACF’s
members ‘don’t have to be united for
us to speak for them. What you want
to do as a membership organisation,
and what is valuable to policy-makers,
is to make sure the spectrum of
opinion is heard. Our members areunited about their independence andthe value of having an independent
sector, so that means we are going to
be more than usually scrupulous about
what they think on an issue before
presuming to speak for them.’
For the future, she would like to see‘a set of principles about what goodfoundation practice looks like that thesector is united around and committed
to implementing in its work. That’s
what we plan to do as part of ourstrategy over the next five years.
We also want to influence the policy
environment; we want to be certainthat foundations are valued.’‘If you are an honest broker,’ says
Gerry Salole, ‘you represent thediversity, you remind people that
there isn’t just one type of player. So
you have to understand the diversity
and you have to play back what thatdiversity is.’WE need a bodyto promotephilanthropy
generally, andespeciallyamong HNWIs"

Rosa Gallego notes the role networkorganisations play in creating acommon identity for foundations.
AEF has brought ‘different types offoundations together around the ideaof being a sector. Even if they arecompletely different individually, there
is one place in which the uniquenessof having the form of foundation iscelebrated and there is a common
identity.’ Similarly, ACF’s greatest
achievement, feels Carol Mack, is‘helping the foundation community
see itself as a sector, and providing aplatform where foundations can cometogether, take common action andshare best practice.'

56

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Infrastrucuture organisations

There is often a lack of understanding
among other sectors about whatrole philanthropy can play. Laurence
Lien talks about infrastructureorganisations representing the sector
to the government – and this canhappen even when the sector doesn’twant to engage with the government,says Doug Rutzen. ‘There are a lotof cases where the sector doesn’twant to have a profile,’ he says,‘perhaps because it doesn’t wantto engage with the government, ormaybe it feels it doesn’t have muchcredibility with the government.
Infrastructure organisations cansometimes bring these different
types of organisation together andact as the voice of the sector.’
Infrastructure organisations canalso play a diagnostic role, says
Rutzen, ‘figuring out what the key
challenges for philanthropy are in aparticular country and where there isa reasonable possibility of change. I
think infrastructure organisations arewell placed to address that because
it’s not usually in the mandate of any
particular group.’
Underdeveloped philanthropy
infrastructure in a country or regionmeans the sector will lack a collective
voice and a coherent picture of itself.
In Latin America, says Carolina Suarez,‘there are lots of bits and pieces, but
often even at national level, there is alack of coherence.'

Advocacy, external ...
Most interviewees see advocacy
as part of their role. The priority
for AFE in Colombia is moving thesector towards ‘the achievementof sustainable development’,says Carolina Suarez. ‘Our focus
is on connecting, advocacy andcommunications so we will workwith our members to promote
conversations with government,with partners and with international
cooperation to achieve social change.’
Hilary Pearson also speaks of ‘a lot of
advocacy. I’m very involved in public
policy work and being a voice for the
Canadian foundation sector with ourfederal government and trying bothto increase the flexibility of regulationand to defend against regulation thatmakes things worse rather than better.’
Better legislation is a focus for manyorganisations. ‘We campaign onbehalf of the sector, though we don’t
represent it, for better legislation,a better fiscal regime, etc,’ says
Basak Ersen. He sees Turkey’s 2008
Foundation Law as one of TUSEV’s
biggest successes. ‘In those days,
we were more successful because
there was space for us and there
was demand coming from thepublic sector.’ SAANED worked on
developing a model Arab Philanthropy
Law in 2013. The idea was that it
contains the general elements thatpractitioners and philanthropists in
the region wish to see but it would becustomized in each country. Though
little has been achieved so far – as
Atallah Kuttab points out, mattershave actually become worse – thecreation of such a model at least
gives the philanthropy sector anagreed position if and when better
times come.
Infrastructure organisations can also
play a role in linking the local and theglobal, says Rutzen. Sometimes it
helps to get global support for a groupor an issue in a particular country.
Often local groups, particularly outside
the capital, ‘don’t have access to say
the UN Special Rapporteur – fromwhat we hear their involvement canoften be helpful because the UN
has leverage in that country – or tophilanthropy in another country,
and they can play a role in making
those connections.’
He notes that the capacity of
infrastructure organisations to dothese things is not always governedby resources. ‘It depends on the
country. There are some where
the infrastructure organisations dohave the capacity even with slenderresources. Then there are cases where
adequately staffed organisations just
don’t have the capacity. Maybe they
don’t want to do it or don’t know
how to do it, but I think there is arole for them to step up in some ofthose countries.’

57

Infrastructureorganisations
can also play adiagnostic role, says
Rutzen, ‘figuring
out what the key
challenges forphilanthropy are ina particular country
and where there
is a reasonable
possibilityof change"... and internal
Advocacy has an internal as wellas an external dimension – what
Krystian Seibert calls ‘lobbying in,as well as lobbying out.' Internal
advocacy means ‘working with
our members to try and shift them
towards best practice.' Laurence Lientalks of encouraging more strategic
philanthropy and more grantmaking.
A number of participants at the
Mexico City workshop pointed outthat network organisations should be
prepared to challenge their members
to improve their work and, to an
extent, to lobby them to take different
approaches. Advocacy can be a twoway process – having your positions
shaped by member input andfeedback and also seeking to influence
the views of members.
Lack of accountability andtransparency, in the face of growing
demands for them, is a big issue
for foundations. In Spain, says Rosa
Gallego, ‘there is a lot of talk abouttransparency and a real need forsome foundations to say what it isWINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Infrastrucuture organisations

they do.’ One of the things AEF hasdone is to ‘go through the websitesof all our members to see whether
they publish accounts regularly andrecommend it as best practice. Our
by-laws actually stipulate this, but
we don’t have any way to enforce
it. We’ve provided them withguidelines on codes of practice.’

Introducing new ideas andconfronting difficult issues‘We try to introduce new models to
Turkey,’ says Ersen. ‘This is importantbecause Turkish institutions don’t
have very close relations with peers
in other countries. So for example
we are working on a grantmaking
database to gather information on all
the grantmaking institutions. We werealso the first organisation to promote
community philanthropy and weorganised giving circles.’Sometimes an infrastructureorganisation can enable institutional
philanthropy to confront the questions
it would prefer to avoid. After Krystian
Seibert joined Philanthropy Australia,
its first conference (2014) ‘was allabout how good philanthropy is.
In 2016, there was this willingness
to be introspective and at the next
conference we’re not going to beafraid of addressing the elephantsin the room like the non-democratic
nature of philanthropy. If we hadn’t
been there, that wouldn’t have
happened.’ For him, the organisation’s
biggest achievement is ‘making
members feel comfortable with being
self-critical and open-minded in aconstructive way and providing themwith the content to do that.'
Gerry Salole also recognises mediationof differing viewpoints as a criticalpart of developing the foundation
sector’s thinking and practice: ‘what
you have to realise is that foundations
learn from themselves and their peers,and your job is to put them together
with peers who disagree with them sothey can influence each other. They
need to hear alternative views. And
you have to keep things civil enoughso that people stay in the room and I
think this is something we at the EFC
do pretty well.’‘We can mediate because weare independent,’ says Carolina
Suarez. ‘AFE has no commercial or
territorial interests, and no links to
any corporation’ so, for instance, thefoundations involved in the Learning
to Work Together programme ‘arelooking on us as the backbone
organisation, maintaining thephilosophy of the programme.'

Creating anddisseminating knowledge
Ensuring the sector has theinformation and knowledge it needs is
widely seen as a role for infrastructureorganisations. ‘We can aggregate theknowledge our members generate,’says Krystian Seibert, ‘which theywouldn’t necessarily have the time todo themselves. They’ve all got theirday jobs. So we organise events,
focus on thought leadership anddisseminate knowledge. Infrastructureorganisations have to be the focal
point for that.’
Philanthropy support organisations
can also commission researchthemselves to try to fill gaps, though
their capacity is limited. TUSEV in
Turkey, PCP in Pakistan, and GIFE andIDIS in Brazil have all done this.
In addition, there is a new crop of
academic institutions with a focus
on either teaching or research inphilanthropy, which will help bothto offset the data deficiency and toboost the research capacity of thesector. Two of these are in places
where infrastructure is thin on the
ground: the Centre for Social Impact
and Philanthropy at Ashoka University
in India and the Chair in African
Philanthropy at Wits University,
South Africa.

Fostering collaboration
Infrastructure organisations canplay an important role in fosteringcollaboration. They are ‘the analysts,
they can understand what’s goingon and help to surface things
which haven’t been surfaced’, says
Gerry Salole. ‘You can find ways of
convening meetings, and you have tobe very skilled at making collaboration
happen.’ You also have to be very
careful about claiming these things.
‘If infrastructure organisations aregood they work in the background,’he says. ‘You have to be a very quiet
midwife in some ways. People know
if you’ve done something well or not,you don’t have to talk about it.’ Thismay be true, but achievements areeasily overlooked. This could go some
way to explain why infrastructureorganisations often lose out when it
comes to resources.
The convening of affinity groups by
network organisations (and/or helping
to support them, as ACF does in theUK) also offers a way to encourage
habits of joint working. Hilary Pearson
is one who feels her organisation‘could do a lot more to support thedevelopment of affinity groups andlink them with each other. For the next
five years, I can see us playing a muchstronger role in developing that.’Specifically in terms of collaboration
between the public and philanthropy
sectors, the annual Philanthropy Meets
Parliament Summit convened byPhilanthropy Australia and Foundations
on the Hill in the US are significant
efforts to create greater understanding
between the two sectors – though
the latter is more an opportunity forfoundations to represent their interests
to legislators than a more general
exploration of issues of mutual concern.

Sometimes an infrastructureorganization can enable institutional
philanthropy to confront thequestions it would prefer to avoid"58

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Infrastrucuture organisations

WHAT COULD
INFRASTRUCTURE
ORGANISATIONSDO BETTER?
Collecting good data on
the sector‘Reliable data is definitely a missing
piece,’ says Oksana Oracheva.
The absence of data – the lack of
information about, and analysis of, thephilanthropic sector – was stressed bymany interviewees, even in countries
with relatively well developed
infrastructure. Hilary Pearson
would like ‘much more Canadian
infrastructure that helps foundations
understand their own effectivenessand how to become more so’ andmore investment in research.
In India, infrastructure is generally
lacking and data is the greatest
gap. The nearest approach to its
collection is Bain & Co’s annual India
Philanthropy Report ‘and that’s the
only quantitative estimate’, says Ingrid
Srinath. ‘The Centre for Social Impact
and Philanthropy is preparing data
but it will take us a while to get it out.’
Shazia Amjad sees capturing moredata on Pakistan’s philanthropy sector
as a big priority in the coming years.
Often where there is data, it’s notcollected in a way that the sector
finds useful. There is a lot of data in
Singapore, but, says Laurence Lien,
it’s collected by the government
and the government largely doesn’tshare it. Such data as is accessible,
like that collected by the Charity
Commission, ‘is very macro. They’ll
give you the state of the charity
sector, the total amount of giving,broken down by subsectors,
but it’s all aggregated data.’
Philanthropy Australia is launching a‘Foundation Maps Australia’ project,in partnership with the Foundation
Center in the US, to address the data
issue. ‘We have reasonable data on
the size of the sector,’ says Krystian
Seibert, ‘but we don’t have micro-level
data.’ He also notes that ‘it would begreat to have some sort of ongoing
public campaign in Australia to

Reliable data isdefinitely a missing
piece. The absenceof data – the lack of
information about,and analysis of, thephilanthropic sector– was stressed bymany interviewees,
even in countries
with relatively
well developed
infrastructure"encourage philanthropy at all levels– but this will require considerable
investment if it is to be done properly
and have an impact, and this support
will have to come from a group offoundations, although there is acompelling case for co-investment
from government.’‘We don’t have an overall statistical
picture of how the third sector
is funded,’ says Rosa Gallego.
‘Foundations’ annual accounts –showing who foundations are, howmuch money they have, what areas
they work in – should be madepublic by the supervising authorities,’
she says, ‘but they don’t have theresources to do it.’‘With almost any aspect of giving,’says Halima Mahomed, ‘we know bits
and pieces of bits and pieces.’ Someelements of philanthropy have theirown infrastructure organisation, butthey have a partial view, restricted
to their particular field of endeavour.
‘Nobody has an overall view. And
that’s in South Africa where theinfrastructure is much more developed
than in the rest of southern Africa.’
59

A similar ‘bits and pieces’ state of affairs
applies in Russia. There’s an annual
report by the Russian Donors’ Forum,
but, feels Oksana Oracheva, ‘some ofthe data would be questionable.' Thereis some research by CAF Russia ‘but inlimited areas.' There’s also research on
civil society from the Higher School of
Economics’ which, while it is statistically
based and robust, is not specifically
about philanthropy.
‘The pieces of infrastructure are
there in the Arab region,’ says Atallah
Kuttab, ‘but data is not there so we
don’t know what we are talking about,
we are guessing.’ Among other things,
the sector needs ‘more self-definition.
We should not only document theinstitutions of philanthropy along
western lines, we should go in withfresh thinking and see how money
is given, how it’s used and how it
reaches the end users.’ When it comesto social investment, he says, many arepractising it but they don’t know theyare ‘so those rich experiences are notcollected. They are doing cutting-edge
work with gut feeling rather than fromprecept, but that makes them morevaluable and what they are doingneeds to be captured and replicated.’

Supporting individual andindigenous philanthropy
More than one interviewee spoke ofthe need to promote philanthropy
generally, rather than just institutional
philanthropy. ‘We need a body topromote philanthropy generally
and especially among HNWIs,’ said
Rosa Gallego.
Halima Mahomed wants infrastructureorganisations to do more to
support individual and indigenous
philanthropy. ‘We keep saying thatthe narrative has been imposed andthat there are all of these traditions in
Africa and that they really symbolise
what philanthropy is here, but the
infrastructure organisations are for themost part supporting the institutionaland not the individual.’ The reason ispartly financial: ‘it’s much easier toget funding for conferences where
institutions will come or to support
philanthropic institutions to learn how
to do something differently.’

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Infrastrucuture organisations

This might just as easily involve
rediscovering older forms of giving
and giving them new life as creating
new ones. In the Arab region, Atallah
Kuttab and his organization, SAANED,
is trying to highlight indigenous
practices of giving and adapt them tocurrent circumstances. One example isan endowment-style practice known
as AlQard AlHasan (giving moneyor property to be used for specificperiods of time and then given backto the giver at the end of the specified
period). Another is donation of one
third of one’s wealth as a legacy(strictly speaking, Kuttab explains,
Islam does not countenance bequests,
but setting aside one third of one’s
wealth for social good is permissible).

Supporting CSOS
Helping to develop the capacity of
the non-profit sector is another role
infrastructure organisations might
usefully play, thinks Laurence Lien.
Shazia Amjad sees a need for support
to fledgling CSOs who ‘don’t needmoney, but do need organisational
support and capacity building’ –though PCP is not necessarily wellplaced to supply it. Now that crossborder financing is less forthcoming,
looking into how CSOs can generate
funds to become sustainable isanother possible role for PCP.

It would be
peanuts to any
single institution
to put its shareinto a pot for
supporting theinfrastructureorganisations"

IS THE BUSINESSMODEL VIABLE?
Membership organisations across theboard and across the world are having
a difficult time. The continual bugbearof infrastructure organisations is trying
to meet the demands made on themwith the limited resources at theirdisposal. As Krystian Seibert puts
it: how do you match expectations(‘We get asked to do a lot of thingsand it’s hard to say no’) with theresources you have? Most networkorganisations have few staff. They
are unable to offer more services
without asking for more resourcesfrom members, which, in turn,produces higher expectations fromthose members. ‘It’s a vicious circle.’‘We constantly have to make thecase to our members about why it’s
important to fund us,’ says Hilary
Pearson. Halima Mahomed speaks ofinfrastructure organisations havingto ‘scrounge for money to do what
they need to do. I almost feel like
we are setting up our infrastructureorganisations to fail. We constantly
talk about encouraging philanthropy
and we’re not putting our money
where our mouth is.’Barry Gaberman puts this inperspective: ‘the public sector and thefor-profit sector would never, ever thinkof de-funding the support organisations
for their sectors, yet when you cometo the non-profit sector, there is sucha grudging, niggling commitment
to funding the infrastructure that it’sembarrassing.’ The result is that ‘when
we get hit with an issue, we moan
about the fact that those support
organisations whose capacity we havenot maintained are not up to the taskof protecting the sector. You just can’t
have it both ways.’
If there’s a grudging willingness to
support infrastructure organisations,in general, he says, ‘there is a doubly
grudging willingness to support thosethat are umbrellas for infrastructureorganisations.’ WINGS and CIVICUS
survive on next to nothing and would
scarcely have survived at all if itweren’t for a few key institutions.

60‘WINGS needs more resources to get
more staff capacity and it needs tolearn how to use the capacity of theinstitutions that are its members.’
These points raise what someinterviewees see as a crucial question
for the future of infrastructureorganisations: is the ‘business model’many of them adopt – provision oftechnical or information services inexchange for an annual membershipfee – one that is going to be tenable
for much longer? If it isn’t, whatshould take its place? These points
were also raised by participants in
the Johannesburg workshop.
Carolina Suarez notes the
responsibility of members. Too often,
foundations are more concernedwith what they can get out of anorganisation rather than what theymight put in. ‘It’s important toremember that they can contribute to
us rather than us simply contributing
to them. They can share informationand experience with us.’Gaberman’s solution to the resource
question is a simple one: ‘If we said,“this is of value to us all in the sector
and it’s the responsibility of us all
to support it and we can come up
with a formula that’s sort of selftaxation”, it would be peanuts toany single institution to put its
share into a pot for supporting theinfrastructure organisations.’
For many, the very fact that they
continue to exist because they’vebeen able to demonstrate theirvalue is itself a big achievement.
‘Our biggest achievement is having
AFE as the forum for us to cometogether, and the trust we havecreated in doing so,’ says Carolina
Suarez. Hilary Pearson feels the testof PFC’s value is that its membershiphas grown every year since it was
founded 15 years ago. ‘We’ve createdvoice for this sector, we’ve created
a community among foundations,
we’ve shown them there are ways inwhich they can aspire to be better
and we’ve supported them in being
leaders – taking risk, having vision,
looking forward.’

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Infrastrucuture organisations

We’ve created voice
for this sector, we’vecreated a community
among foundations,
we’ve shown them
there are ways in which
they can aspire tobe better and we’ve
supported them inbeing leaders – taking
risk, having vision,
looking forward”

619
Some ways
forwardThis chapter does not pretend to be
a comprehensive look at the future.
Rather, it takes a few of the major issues
facing philanthropy that have arisenin this report and suggests some ways
philanthropic institutions, including
infrastructure organisations, might
address them. It also discusses the needfor philanthropy itself to develop an
overarching vision of its role in the world
and for infrastructure organisations,especially WINGS as a global body,to play a bigger role in holding
philanthropy to account.
62

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Some ways forward

HELPING CIVIL SOCIETY
ORGANISATIONSTO SURVIVE
Chapter 7 looks at the variouspressures on NGOs in many partsof the world that threaten theiroperation, even their survival. Whatcan philanthropy do to help?

Provide core funding
In the UK, says Carol Mack, thepressure on voluntary organisations
is forcing foundations to rethink
the kinds of support they offer. ‘It’s
become much more about how we
can help the organisations we reallycare about to survive. Let’s give themcore funding so that they can secure
their future and patch in other bitsof funding from other funders.’ Shealso notes the development of a
discussion about how funding ‘canbe made easier for the organisations
that funders want to support – making
processes simpler, publishing charters
for grantees in some cases.'

Increase resilience throughincome generation andfundraising training
The Mexico City workshop also
identified things that might help tocreate more resilient organisations.
An obvious way is to earn income,though this has its downside in
the risk of the organisation’s being
distracted from its main purpose.
Training in fundraising for NGOs
(and for local communities where no
NGO is involved) was also mooted.
A cost-effective way to do this isthrough e-learning courses which
can help mobilise communities bothto do their own fundraising and toadvocate for themselves. Another idea
along similar lines is a pooled fund,whereby two or more foundations
might set up a sustainability fundto encourage the developmentof resilience among NGOs.
Also noted was stress on theindividuals involved, not just on theorganisation. There is a good dealof burnout in the sector and a highturnover of personnel.

How do we support community
resilience in decades to come?
What are the institutions weneed to build now to protect
it and what is the role ofthe traditional philanthropy
sector in supporting that?"
One foundation is funding sabbaticals
to help deal with this problem.

Build more democratic formsof philanthropy
Danny Sriskandarajah points tothe possibility that crowdfunding
offers of building more democratic,
broader-based forms of philanthropy
for community support. Seen inthis way, he thinks the real question
both for philanthropy and forinfrastructure organisations is ‘how
do we support community resiliencein decades to come? What are
the institutions we need to build
now to protect it and what is therole of the traditional philanthropy
sector in supporting that?’
We have seen earlier his advocacyof the development of what he calls‘fundermediaries’ to channel donor
funds more directly to end recipients.
He argues that ‘groups like WINGS
could take the lead on this, convening
others such as AWDF and Mama Cash,groups with a solid track record ofworking close to communities.'

Convene forums to bring
together donors and NGOs
Sriskandarajah also suggests that
infrastructure groups might convene
peer groups from the global south
63

who see their role as having a politicaldimension. He believes there are‘too few opportunities for NGOs, theconsumers, so to speak, to have acollective and honest conversation
with the donor world. Rather thanphilanthropists going from Mexico to
Warsaw to wherever and talking tothemselves, we need opportunities
for them to talk to folk from thesector at the structural level, rather
than on a particular theme oroperational level.’ Because it would
involve a sector-level gathering,
this kind of convening would be
best done by an infrastructureorganisation, he suggests.

Stay involved where
funding is difficult
Participants at the Mexico City WINGS
Forum noted things funders could do
to stay involved where official funding
for NGOs would be impossible. These
include working through groups withno formal existence and educating
civil society groups on the termsof legislation, so they can be clear
about what is and what is not legal.
The Open Society Foundation, forexample, undertakes financial training
because, at a basic level, it means
government auditors can’t use theabsence of it as an excuse to shut anorganisation down.

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Some ways forward

Ensure compliance withexisting laws
Doug Rutzen sees a number of ways
philanthropy can help in mitigating
the effects of restrictive laws. ‘Ifyou look at almost any country,
there’s a web of laws that can catchcharities and NGOs and we don’t
want them to be so focused on thelaw that they can’t go about theirfundamental mission, so philanthropy
needs to provide assistance to allow
charities to continue operating.’
In authoritarian regimes, restrictions
can often rest on minor technicalpoints. There are examples where‘philanthropy and other donors have
stepped forward and helped create
an infrastructure so they can’t closegroups down because they don’t
have enough fire extinguishers –which is a real example. So you
can help with compliance. You canhelp with adaptation. Sometimes
the best thing to do is simply
not to operate as a non-profit, so
donors can think of ways they can
engage with social enterprises
and fund them in that capacity.’

Helping with protection
Rutzen also notes ‘a set of things thatcan be done for protection. It might bedigital security, it might be training inphysical security, it might be helping
move someone to a neighbouring
country for a cooling-off period.
So there’s a whole set of protective
strategies depending on
the circumstances.’

CONFLICT AND MIGRATION
Chapter 1 points to a number ofmajor challenges arising from conflict
and the resulting displacement ofpeoples. Barry Gaberman notes the
key role of the International Center
for Transitional Justice in conflictsituations. ‘It’s a very difficult area
to get into, there’s a lot of risk, but
it’s increasingly important.’ Given
challenges like this, funding andsustaining ‘that set of institutions
that holds the banner for humanrights and social justice’ becomesincreasingly important, he argues.
But Atallah Kuttab sees a limited
role for philanthropy in addressing

the ‘refugee question’ in the Arabregion. ‘Philanthropy can’t do anythingmuch because we haven’t positioned
ourselves for an effective role inour society.’
An immediate consequence will bethat ‘whatever money is there will go
into relief work. I expect more relief
needs will be coming up whether it’s
as a result of wars or refugees.’
What can foundations do to help
people to recognise the reality of
migration, and the fact that it’s notgoing to stop? ‘It’s not a funding job,’believes Gerry Salole. ‘Foundations
need to engage with people, talk tothem, set up places where people canhave safe conversations about this.
People need to feel they are being
listened to. One of the things thatcomes over starkly from what Trump
and Nigel Farage have taught us isthat people need to express theirviews and have somebody to listen tothem. If they don’t they become more
extreme – feeling like they’re losing
their culture, becoming strangers intheir own cities. All that needs to belistened to and handled.’

People need to feel they
are being listened to. If they
don’t they become more
extreme – feeling like they’relosing their culture, becoming
strangers in their own cities"
64

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Some ways forward

The effects that digitaltechnology might have on
the sector are incalculable atthe moment. What is clear
is that they will be profoundand they will intensify"
In the Canadian context, where thequestion of indigenous communities
looms larger, foundations might havea mediating role. As Hilary Pearson
points out, while the governmentis often ‘seen as an adversary byindigenous people, I don’t think
philanthropy is seen that way.'

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
Digital technology is alreadyaffecting many aspects of the way
the philanthropy sector operates.
Carol Mack sees a crucial role for
infrastructure organisations andfunders in helping the sector makethe transition to digital technology‘in a good way.' She describes thetechnological revolution as ‘a really
big game-changer’, particularly
digital technology. ‘It’s transformed
the high street, it’s transformed thecommercial sector, it will transformthe voluntary and community sector
and foundations, being the traditional
funders of innovation.’
As we have seen, digital technology
is already having a profound effecton individual giving as online giving
and crowdfunding platforms develop.
Also noted above, the possibility ofmanipulating large sets of data inincreasingly sophisticated ways is
being explored by the Foundation
Center in its Foundation Maps project,

NEEDED: AN OVERARCHING
ROLE FOR PHILANTHROPY
GLOBALLY

a concept which Philanthropy Australia
is importing and which is likely to
spread in one variant or another.

At a global level, ‘there needs to bemuch more of an abstract, value-based
proposition about what philanthropyis’, believes Jenny Hodgson. This is amatter of principle and also of policy:
as the idea of global philanthropy
starts to grow, ‘the pushback is going
to be global, too’, and questions about
its legitimacy, about the justification
for its intervention in policy-making,will become more prominent. The
growing number of collective giving
efforts and of mega foundations/donors is magnifying the global
debate about wealth inequality andthe source of philanthropic money. She
sees the need, therefore, for a global
platform ‘that can take a position
about what philanthropy is for.'

The Digital Civil Society Lab at
Stanford Center on Philanthropy
and Civil Society is in the process ofholding a series of workshops aroundthe world to examine the progress
and techniques of digital data andits implications for civil society.
This project will consider potential
infringements of rights in its use as
well as the possibilities offered for
civil society and philanthropy. Hilary
Pearson points out that the Canada
Revenue Agency has made available‘in machine-readable form a hugedataset on charities and foundations.'

Halima Mahomed feels that
infrastructure should play a muchbigger role, holding philanthropy
itself to account. As she sees it,
infrastructure organisations are
reluctant to confront the questionof power in philanthropy, but, if theywant to be taken seriously, they will
have to. ‘The people who set up
foundations are complicit in the power
relations that dominate society. If
you want to encourage philanthropy
to address inequalities, you have toaddress the notion of how they arecomplicit in existing relationships.’

There will be implications for the‘demand’ side of philanthropy, too. Solve
Education! in Asia is exploring ways tomake use of smartphones to develop
educational programmes to reachchildren who don’t go to school but
who do have a smartphone. Increasingly,
NGOs and funders will explore new
ways of working to capitalise ontechnological developments.

At the moment infrastructureorganisations are saying ‘we want tosupport philanthropy’, but ‘they’re
not asking whether the philanthropy
they want to support is productive or
counter-productive.'

The effects that digital technology
might have on the sector are
incalculable at the moment. Whatis clear is that they will be profoundand they will intensify, and they will
require the attention of philanthropy
practitioners, observers and students –and support organisations.

65

Underdevelopment of thephilanthropic infrastructure in acountry or region means the absenceof a forum in which to develop a
coherent view of philanthropy’s roleand purpose (big conversations aren’t
happening in a number of places
because of the lack of somewhere to
hold them, thinks Hodgson).

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

References

References
1

2

AFE, GDFE, Cemefi et al (2015) Private
Funds for Social Transformation:
Philanthropy and private social investment
in Latin America today.

17

TUSEV (September 2016) Individual Giving
and Philanthropy in Turkey: www.tusev.
org.tr/usrfiles/images/belgeler/Individual_
Giving_and_Philanthropy_in_Turkey.pdf

18

3

Clubs of 12 or more people which act asrotating credit unions or savings schemesin South Africa.

4

Observatoire de la Fondation de France,
Giving in Europe 2015:
www.fondationdefrance.org/sites/default/
files/atoms/files/philanthropy_
in_europe_2015.pdf

5Observatoire de la Fondation de France,
op cit.

6

TUSEV, op cit.

7

CAF Southern Africa (2015) ‘I believe I
can make a difference’: Individual Givingby ‘Ordinary People’ Living in Gauteng
Province, South Africa.

19‘Gates Foundation failures show
philanthropists shouldn’t be setting
America’s public school agenda’,
Los Angeles Times, 1 June 2016.
Amitabh Behar, ‘What role for philanthropy
in a democratic India?’ Alliance, September
2016: www.alliancemagazine.org/
feature/what-role-for-philanthropy-in-ademocratic-india
http://data.foundationcenter.org/#/foundations/operating/nationwide/total/
list/201420 ‘The Rise of Foundations: Hope forgrassroots civil society in China?’ 10 May
2017: www.chinoiresie.info/the-rise-offoundations-hope-for-grassroots-civilsociety-in-china
21

Ingrid Srinath (2017) ‘Will the new
Southern Philanthropy live up to its
potential for Transformational Change?’
State of Civil Society Report 2017,
CIVICUS.

8

TUSEV, op cit.

22 GFCF (2010) More than the Poor
Cousin? The Emergence of Community
Foundations as a New Development
Paradigm.

9

CAF India/Ethica (September 2015) Online
Giving in India: Insights to improve results.

23 http://communityfoundations.ca/
vitalsigns/community-vital-signs

10 Wealth-X (2016) Changing Philanthropy:
Trend shifts in ultra-wealthy giving.
11

BNP Paribas Individual Philanthropy
Report (2017) Passing the Torch:
Next-generation philanthropists.

12

Ibid.

13

www.hudson.org/research/13314-index-ofglobal-philanthropy-and-remittances-2016

14

15

16

World Bank (13 April 2015) Migration andRemittances: Recent developments andoutlook, Migration and Development Brief
No.24.
Statistics in this section are takenfrom Observatoire de la Fondationde France, Giving in Europe 2015:
www.fondationdefrance.org/sites/default/
files/atoms/files/philanthropy_
in_europe_2015.pdf
Bain & Co (2017) India Philanthropy
Report 2017.

24 Foundation Center/Council on
Foundations (2017) Local Communities
with Global Reach: International Giving
by US Community Foundations:www.cof.org/content/local-communitiesglobal-reach-international-giving-uscommunity-foundations
25 Lester Salamon (2014) Leverage for Good,
OUP.
26 www.netimpact.org/careers/what-is-thedifference-between-socially-responsibleinvesting-and-impact-investing
27 divestinvest.org/philanthropy/about
28 James Kynge, ‘The Ethical Investment
Boom’, Financial Times, 3 September 2017.
29 See Andrew Milner, ‘What happens to therest of it?’ Alliance, June 2017.
30 Social Traders, Finding Australia’s Social
Enterprise Sector, 2016.
31

University of Toronto (Spring 2013) Failure
in Social Enterprises.

66

32 Cripplegate Foundation, Strategic
Objectives and Priorities, 2016-18.
33 AFE (May 2017) Peace and Sustainable
Development in Colombia: The role ofphilanthropy in building a shared future.
34 Rohini Mohan, ‘Narendra Modi’s
Crackdown on Civil Society in India’, NewYork Times, 9 January 2017.
35 http://theconversation.com/a-new-lawin-china-is-threatening-the-work-ofinternational-ngos-70884
36 Hudson Institute, Center for Global
Prosperity, Hudson Institute Index ofPhilanthropic Freedom, 2015.
37 Curious to note that the progenitor of
Russia’s Foreign Agent Law and others inthe same vein may be the 1938 Foreign
Agent’s Registration (FAR) Act in the
US. The ‘foreign agent’ terminology was
picked up from the FAR Act a few years
ago by a lawyer in Venezuela and thegovernment of Venezuela subsequently
began referring to foreign-funded NGOs
as foreign agents. The term has since
gained wide currency through the law
in Russia and similar projected ones in
Israel, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine. Comingback to the US, there is, says Rutzen, a‘brewing controversy around the Trumpadministration’s engagement with
Russia, so now groups are looking at thisengagement in the light of the 1938 Act.
The Project on Government Oversight has
now launched an initiative asking citizens
to write to their members of Congress togive teeth to the Department of Justice toenforce the FAR Act.’
38 Hudson Institute, op cit.
39 Hudson Institute, op cit.
40 CAF (2016) Donation States: Aninternational comparison of the tax
treatment of donations.
41

See www.bridgespan.org/insights/library/
remarkable-givers/profiles/ashish-dhawanrejects-the-status-quo/tax-incentivesincrease-giving-india-ashish-dhawan

42 Observatoire de la Fondation de France,
op cit.
43 WINGS (2017) Infrastructure in Focus: A
new global picture of organisations serving
philanthropy.

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Annex A

Annex A

LIST OF INFORMANTS FOR THIS REPORT
We would like to express our gratitude to the following interviewees who provided much of the material for the document:

Andre Degenszaijn, Executive Director, Instituto Ibirapitanga, Brazil
Atallah Kuttab, Founder and Chairman, SAANED for Philanthropy Advisory in the Arab Region
Barry Gaberman, Chair Emeritus, WINGS and Former Vice-President, the Ford Foundation
Basak Ersen, Secretary General, Third Sector Foundation of Turkey (TUSEV)
Carol Mack, Chief Executive Officer, Association of Charitable Foundations (ACF), UK
Danny Sriskandarajah, Secretary General, CIVICUS
Douglas Rutzen, President and CEO, International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL)
Gerry Salole, Chief Executive Officer, European Foundation Centre (EFC)
Halima Mahomed, Independent philanthropy consultant, South Africa
Hilary Pearson, President, Philanthropic Foundations of Canada (PFC), Canada
Ingrid Srinath, Director, Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy, Ashoka University, India
Jenny Hodgson, Executive Director, Global Fund for Community Foundations
Krystian Seibert, Advocacy and Insight Manager, Philanthropy Australia
Laurence Lien, Founder, Lien Foundation and Executive Director, Asia Philanthropy Circle, Singapore
Maria Carolina Suarez Visbal, Executive Director, Asociación de Fundaciónes Empresariales (AFE), Colombia
Narmeen Adeel, Research Manager, Pakistan Centre for Philanthropy (PCP)
Oksana Oracheva, General Director, Vladimir Potanin Foundation, Russia
Rosa Gallego, Director of International Relations, Asociación Española de Fundaciónes (AEF), Spain
Shazia Amjad, Executive Director, Pakistan Centre for Philanthropy (PCP)
Yanni Peng, Secretary General, Narada Foundation, China

67

WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Annex B

Annex B
WORKSHOP ATTENDEESJOHANNESBURG WORKSHOP
Andres Thompson

Social justice & Philanthropy Network

BrazilAndrew Chunilall

Community Foundations of Canada

CanadaAnsis Berzins

Community Foundation Movement in Latvia

LatviaBeulah Fredericks

Southern African Community Grantmakers Leadership Forum

South Africa

Bill Lockington

Community Foundations Canada

CanadaBrian Toller

Community Foundations Canada

CanadaCarola Carazzone

ASSIFERO - Associazione Italiana delle Fondazioni ed Enti della filantropia Istituzionale

Italy

Christopher Worman

TechSoup

United States

Colleen du Toit

Charities Aid Foundation South Africa

South Africa

Dajana Berisha

Forum for Civic Initiatives

Albania

Dana DoanLin Center

VietnamDavid Jacobstein

DCHA/DRG Cross-Sectoral Programs Team

United States

Emmanuel Marfo

GADeF – Global Alliance for Development Foundation

Ghana

Florencia RoitsteinCentro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad: CEDES

Argentina

Hansa Goolab

Charities Aid Foundation South Africa

South Africa

Ian Bird

Community Foundations of Canada

CanadaJanet Topolsky

Aspen Institute Community Strategies Group

United States

Jason Franklin

Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy (GVSU)

United States

John Harvey

Independent Consultant

United States

Kathleen McCarthy

CUNY – The Center University of New York

United States

Kevin McCort

Vancouver Foundation

CanadaLara Kalwinski

Council on Foundations

United States

Monica Nkrumah

GADeF – Global Alliance for Development Foundation

Ghana

Natalie Ross

Council on Foundations

United States

Nick Deychakiwsky

The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation

United States

Olwethu Sizani

SGS Consulting

South Africa

Sahar Khajeali

Community Foundations Canada

CanadaSarah Tansey

Human Rights Funders Network

United States

Sean Lowrie

The Start Network

United Kingdom

Shannon L. Lawder

The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation

United States

Shaun Samuels

SGS Consulting

South Africa

ShaziaPakistan Centre for Philanthropy

Pakistan

Shekeshe Mokgosi

The Other Foundation

South Africa

Stewart Mtulisi Mantula

Community Foundation for Western Region of Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe

Titania Fernandez

Community Chest

South Africa

Vuyiswa Sidzumo

The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation

South Africa

Amanda Martin

Australian Environmental Grantmakers Network

Australia

Amy Taylor

CIVICUS World Alliance

United States

Ana Valeria Araujo

Social justice & Philanthropy Network

BrazilAndres Thompson

Social justice & Philanthropy Network

BrazilAngela Bishop

Community Foundation of Nova Scotia

CanadaAnke Paetsch

Association of German Foundations

Germany

Ansis Berzins

Community Foundation Movement in Latvia

LatviaArmando Casis

Asociación UNACEM

MexicoMEXICO WORKSHOP

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WINGS Global Philanthropy Report

Annex B

Artemisa Castro
Barbara Ibrahim
Bruce Thao

Fondo Accion Solidaria, AC
American University in Cairo
Minnesota Council on Foundations

MexicoEgypt
United States

Carol Brennan

Charities Aid Foundation

United States

Christian Tohmé

International Committee of the Red Cross

Switzerland

Christopher Worman

TechSoup

United StatesDavid Perez Rulfo

Corporativa de Fundaciones

MexicoEmmanuel Marfo

GADeF - Global Alliance for Development Foundation

Ghana

Esther Hughes

Global Dialogue

UK

Florencia RoitsteinCentro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad: CEDES

Argentina

Heather Grady

Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors

United States

Hideo Tone

The Toyota Foundation

Japan

Iara Rolnik

Grupo de Institutos, Fundações e Empresas - GIFE

BrazilIngrid Srinath

Ashoka University

India

Jacinth Morgan Collie

Jamaica Public Service Company Limited (JPS Foundation)

JamaicaJames Magowan

Spanish Association of Foundations

UK

Janet Mawiyoo

KCDF - Kenya Community Development Foundation

Kenya

Jason Franklin

Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy at Grand Valley State University

United States

JessieCharities Aid Foundation America

United States

John Harvey

Independent Consultant

United States

Joyce Teo

The Community Foundation of Singapore

Singapore

Lorenzo Davids

Community Chest of the Western CapeSouth Africa

Lourdes Sanz

CEMEFI- Centro Mexicano para la Filantropia

MexicoLuiza Souza

Institute for Climate and Society

BrazilMaggi Alexander

The Philanthropic Initiative

United States

Maree Sidey

Australian Communities Foundation

Australia

Marisa Ohashi

Grupo de Institutos, Fundações e Empresas - GIFE

BrazilMizmun Kusairi

GuideStar

United States

Natalie Ross

Council on Foundations

United States

Niamani Mutima

Africa Grantmakers' Affinity Group

United States

Nick Deychakiwsy

The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation

United States

Nolitha Tiba

African Philanthropy Network

South Africa

Oksana Oracheva

The Vladimir Potanin Foundation

RussiaPatricia Lobaccaro

BrazilFoundation

BrazilPaula Johnson

Harvard University

United States

Richard Marker

Wise Philanthropy Institute

United States

Sameera Mehra

Charities Aid Foundation

UK

Sandra Richardson

Community Foundations of Canada

CanadaSarah Afraz

Ashoka University

India

Sarah Tansey

Human Rights Funders Network

United States

Shazia Maqsood Amjad

Pakistan Centre for Philanthropy

Pakistan

Stigmata Tanga

The Foundation for Civil Society

Tanzania

Susan

KCDF - Kenya Community Development Foundation

Kenya

Tevfik BaÅŸak Ersen

TUSEV - Third Sector Foundation of Turkey

TurkeyTina Thiart

HGG NPO Sustainability Solutions PTY Ltd.

South Africa

Wendy Richardson

Global Fund for Community Foundations

Brussels

Barry Knight

CentrisUK

Atallah Kuttab

SAANED for Philanthropy Advisory

JordanGuesturd Haule

Foundation for Civil Society

Tanzania

Hannen Khatib

Arab Foundations Forum

JordanHelena Monteiro

WINGS

BrazilLarry McGill

Foundation Center

Unites States

Lauren Bradford

Foundation Center

Australia

Naila Farouky

Arab Foundations Forum

United States/Jordan

AMMAN WORKSHOP

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The opinions expressed in this report arethose of the authors and do not necessarilyreflect the views of any of these funders.

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