Philanthropy and Leadership in the Time of Crisis
Tags: Philanthropy, Development, Trump, Charity, Justice

For much of 2020, we have been in the season of suffering, centered around the crisis of the coronavirus and its multitude of effects nationally and globally. We are all grappling with our own version of what Michelle Obama called “some form of low-grade depression.” The Covid19 pandemic has exposed the crisis around effective leadership, a critical need now more than ever, for leaders who are intimately involved with the systemic change to step forward. Unless such leaders are in positions of power, philanthropy will continue to perpetuate inequality.

Darren Walker, President of the Ford Foundation, argues that the philanthropic sector has fallen short of leading on moral leadership. “We need leaders who are motivated by values and incentives and outcomes that transcend those offered by the systems which, by design or neglect, have widened inequality to an untenable degree.” But this failure has its root causes on old questions long ignored which now have an urgency for a response or solution: is it possible to balance philanthropic freedom with the desire to ensure charitable activity is rationally organized? what impact does our perception of the nature of an epidemic have on philanthropic responses? do crises help to redress power imbalances or exacerbate them?

The role philanthropy ultimately plays in crises and how that relates to issues of power and inequality is often complex, and it can be both a tool for maintaining and protecting existing social dynamics and hierarchies, including a means to break down societal divisions and establish new norms.

According to Rhodri Davies of Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) in an article written for HistPhil titled “Philanthropy In a Time of Crisis: Lessons From European History”, pandemics, like the one we are all dealing with, often play an important role in determining an appropriate philanthropic response. Davies states that in the 16th and 17th centuries, the plague was not thought to be a medical problem but a religious one. It was seen, according to Paul Slack, as “a divine scourge, a retribution for the sins of mankind: sometimes for sins in general, more often for the specific misdeeds of the time or place of an epidemic.” Davies further states that “religious rituals to appease God directly, as well as charitable efforts to demonstrate that the afflicted populace had seen the error of their ways and were willing to atone for their sins, were of far greater importance to most at the time than the provision of medical assistance to the sick.”

The political earthquake of the Trump administration has left a lasting impression on the philanthropic sector, especially in how it has lost the battle against inequality. The sector has reacted to the Trump administration by being more defensive on social issues, ramping up funding through donor-advised-funds and intermediaries that leave no fingerprints, doubling down on the politics of intersectionality by forging alliances between groups that may not have partnered before, and showing that the sector can be nimble by utilizing rapid response grantmaking for social movements.

How then can the sector adequately respond, especially in times of crisis?

1. There is an urgency now to shift towards putting equity at the base of all philanthropic work. This relies on identifying the lessons to be learned from this pandemic in order to become a key actor in prevention strategies, including participating in the transformation of our current economic paradigm. Past philanthropic responses have often been to embrace overly diffuse, often localized strategies that yield few larger system gains.

2. The sector should incorporate the spirit of solidarity, erasing a them vs. us mentality that has deepened divisions within the sector. The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, in a September 2020 statement spoke out against the “million” deaths caused by a lack of solidarity, stating that countries’ individual responses will not be enough to solve the current global pandemic.

3. We need to embrace the new term of preventative philanthropy in addressing some of these divides while going beyond the charitable and reactive dimensions — when visionary and committed political decision-makers step forward to bring about necessary transformation, shifts in the current economic paradigm can begin to take place. As Darren Walker of the Ford Foundation notes “We must constantly renew our steadfast commitment. We must see the task of justice through to completion, knowing that for our most vexing problems, the reward of our work may come for the next generation or the one after that.”

4. The biggest lesson from this current pandemic is that the sector needs to begin to immediately plan for the next one. Some pandemics are predictable, and the sad reality is that this pandemic was completely predictable and easily preventable. We now know that there are gaps in how we collectively respond to disasters and that though pandemics affect everyone, their effects are felt differently depending on the social group in question. Ensuring and working towards more inclusive, sustainable, and resilient societies is one way to prepare for the next pandemic.