Author: gkjohn

Philanthropy needs an overhaul, from narrow illusions of control to promoting empathy and agency.

We will likely remember 2020 for three things. The year the phrase ‘you are on mute’ went mainstream. The year we want to forget, and not view in hindsight. And the year of the pandemic that didn’t break us, but revealed how deeply we were already broken.

On April 23rd, 1910, Theodore Roosevelt delivered a speech titled “Citizenship in a Republic”. The portion that has been most widely quoted is this:

It’s not the critic who counts; it’s not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done the better. The credit belongs to those of us who are actually in the arena […] we strive valiantly and sometimes there’s the triumph of achievement but at the worst, we fail, but at least we fail while daring greatly.

Daring greatly. That is what Indian civil society was called to do this year. That is the moral obligation many felt and embraced.

Only samaaj has the legitimacy and capacity to reimagine solutions that work for all of us.

If the longevity of a society lies in its agility and resilience, in its capacity to stay true to its foundational values while evolving with the ever-changing nature of society, then 2020 showed us how samaaj—civil society organisations—continues to hold that flame and carry that message. Only samaaj has the legitimacy and capacity to reimagine solutions that work for all of us in ways that restore agency, redistribute power, re-craft egalitarian societies and renegotiate the social contract in contemporary times.

But demanding and driving such change is not a linear process. While the world today is much more interconnected and smaller in many ways, we continue to grapple with large and complex societal challenges. Many of these require systemic change—change that is collaborative, and that catalyses the spirit of innovation latent in our society. This requires reinforcing fundamental human values and encouraging new thinking.

As donors, we need to meet samaaj where they are

When we talk about systemic change, we don’t speak about what it will take from us. Not just from the leaders of movements and nonprofits, but also from us, the donors. We ask samaaj to dare greatly, but as funders, we must also recognise that supporting such change requires collaboration, risk, agency, and empathy. We need to learn to take bigger risks and to put more trust in social sector leaders.

Systemic approaches require making the ‘big’ bets collaboratively. They demand a new perspective towards philanthropy, one that fosters the agency of grantees and the communities they work with, and relinquishes illusions of control that tend to determine the contours of restricted, specific grants and hyper-reporting.

Societal change cannot occur overnight: As donors, we need to embrace unrestricted, organisational support grants, we need to commit to a higher quantum of capital, and we need to increase our risk appetite and patience to see change happen in the long run. To dare greatly is to trust in the people and the process and not misplace faith in the comfort of monthly reports. We need to meet samaaj where they are.

To dare greatly is to trust in the people and the process and not misplace faith in the comfort of monthly reports.

We all know many samaaj leaders who want to transform their work exponentially and reimagine the scale of their operations. We know they want to build movements of change and co-create, rather than deliver alone. How then, do we find ways for investors and other ecosystem partners to understand their pain, understand their needs and fears, and build support networks to enable daring greatly? Doing this as individual donors or funding organisations is difficult; but can we do it as a sector? We need wholehearted change and it will only come when we, as funders, choose courage over comfort.

Every failure offers an opportunity for everyone in the ecosystem to learn.

Yes, failure is inevitable. It is integral to innovation and it allows us to learn, do, learn again, and then do again. Every failure offers an opportunity for everyone in the ecosystem to learn, because when our programmes, approaches, and organisations fail and restart, they don’t start from scratch, rather from experience.

As donors, we must support norms and practices that minimise the costs of failure for leaders, missions, and the ecosystems in which we operate. Norms in how we, as donors, perceive and react to failure—not as a loss but as a chance for the sector to learn and iterate from. We must create shared spaces for our leaders to openly discuss these failures by encouraging the idea of public goods and public resources such that even when missions fail, the content and tools and methods built remain available to build upon by others.

As funders, we also need to have humility and empathy

Empathy is required to recognise that we need to redistribute, reorganise, and transfer power and agency rather than knowledge or resources alone. In her new book, Melinda Gates identifies that it is easy for funders to kill diversity in the areas they enter because, first, “…if a major funder enters an area and picks one approach over others, people working in the area might abandon their own ideas to pursue the funder’s because that’s where the money is. If this happens, instead of finding good ideas, the funder can inadvertently kill them off.” Second, “…in philanthropy—in contrast to business—it can be hard to know what’s working.” And third, that “…wealthy people can think that their success in one thing makes them an expert in everything. So they just act on instinct instead of talking to people who’ve spent their lives doing the work.”

And finally, we need the courage to let go and to say we do not know it all. Brene Brown says it best, “…vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never a weakness.”

Maybe 2020 can be redeemed yet. The year when we learned to meet others where they are. The year we learned to lead with love. After all, the modern definition of philanthropy—according to Francis Bacon who considered it synonymous with ‘goodness’—is as the ‘love of humanity’. Love, not log frames.

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Originally published at India Development Review on 4 January 2021.

Co-authored with Supriya Sankaran.

Where would you begin if you wanted to help everyone share in the sum of all knowledge? What ‘models’ would allow for the most inclusivity? Encyclopædia Britannica, first published in 1770, had a mission of compiling the sum total of human knowledge. In 2012, they announced the end of their print edition. Did they achieve their mission?

In 2001, an upstart called Wikipedia was founded with a similar mission as Encyclopædia Britannica; however, it adopted a radically different approach. Rather than an encyclopedia created by experts, Wikipedia believed that open content on open platforms would attract a community interested in improving the quality and quantity of knowledge over time. Today, Wikipedia has around six million articles in English alone and is available in more than 300 languages.

Remarking on how Wikipedia’s approach is interesting, but would not work for Britannica, the managing director said, “My job is to create more awareness of our very different approaches to publishing in the public mind. They’re a chisel, we’re a drill, and you need to have the correct tool for the job.” The final print edition of Encyclopædia Britannica had around half a million topics covered.

Will an open platform model like Wikipedia’s work in India?

Will an open platform work in areas other than those whose mandate it is to compile and share knowledge? Pratham Books is a case in point. A tiny publisher with a mission of ensuring ‘a book in every child’s hand’, Pratham Books was able to experiment in ways most other publishers did not. Open content, and open platforms and communities enabled them to pivot, and target both variety and quantity of books for children all over the world. They began releasing their books under open licenses and after years of experimentation, built an open platform called StoryWeaver, which today has nearly 17,000 stories in more than 200 languages.

But it wasn’t just books that flourished. Individuals and organisations, both known and unknown to them, created multiple derivative works ranging from iPad and iPhone applications, to creating versions of their books for the print-impaired such as DAISY and Braille books, as well as audiobooks.

Intention alone, or sharing resources only when approached, does not lead to true openness and spread.

These are just two of many journeys that build a compelling case for all of us, as philanthropies and civil society organisations, to create open resources and digital public goods.

But what does that really mean and involve?

The philosophy and intention are not unfamiliar to us in civil society. Many of us intend for the resources—the data, code, content, and processes—we create to be shared widely and used by all. Many leaders emphatically state their desire for their ideas to grow and for people to adopt them. But we all know that such intention alone, or sharing resources only when approached, does not lead to true openness and spread.

What does it take to be truly open?

Openness must be anchored in intent and to truly create open resources and digital public goods, we must proactively practice openness of three kinds.

1. Technical openness: Resources must be available in an easy, timely, and user-friendly manner online, adhering to a set of applicable open standards.

2. Legal openness: Resources must be legally licensed under an ‘open’ license for all manners of use and adaptation, whether commercial or not, subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute or share alike.

3. Financial openness: Resources must be accessible for free.

All three are critical to ensure that the resources we create are truly open and accessible to all, independent of the organisation or mission.

As changemakers and philanthropies working for public benefit, such an approach is obligatory. What we create must be designed as public goods. Given that the sourcing, creation, and validation of code, content, and data is time- and resource-intensive, opening up publicly-funded resources is critical—it will advance equity and enable collaboration.

Opening educational resources such as training materials, processes for running a local campaign, software, codes or applications can enable your resources to be localised, translated, and adapted far beyond their original purpose, intended reach, and individual imaginations. When KaBOOM!, a US-based organisation with the vision of ensuring every child has a great space to play, open-sourced its model of building playgrounds and created toolkits for communities to build their own playgrounds, it resulted in local communities building ten playgrounds for each one that KaBOOM! built. This resulted in more than 17,000 playgrounds that have impacted the lives of more than 10 million American children, and the activation of 1.5 million volunteers across the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Opening data and code, in particular, can unlock scarce resources, avoid duplication of effort, and generate savings.

Opening data and code, in particular, can unlock scarce resources, avoid duplication of effort, and generate savings. For example, legal researchers take 8-24 months to source and clean datasets and a single project can cost anywhere between INR 20 and 50 lakhs; this is because it needs to be collected, collated, and then rationalised. The same is likely to be true in the fields of data-driven journalism and research in science, governance, and the environment. As seen from the example of the Human Genome Project, opening data and codes can enable publicly funded projects to go beyond their single use to be further built upon by others. Such openness increases the return on investment in each initiative, and the field as a whole.

Recognising this, foundations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have adopted an ‘open access policy’ as a non-negotiable term for all peer-reviewed, published research, partly or wholly funded by them. The policy also requires that the data underlying the published research results should be accessible and open immediately. This means that not only the published research but the process of research is also available to the public to make the best use of it. The underlying rationale is that “free, immediate, and unrestricted access to research will accelerate innovation, helping to reduce global inequity and empower the world’s poorest people to transform their own lives.” In various jurisdictions, and in the field of science in particular, the gold standard for the credibility of any research and data-driven effort is to make the data, ideas, and research open.

Opening resources is not without risks of misappropriation or misuse. Measures can and should be taken to mitigate these by placing appropriate disclaimers or limited warranties, documenting the process of creation, and enabling users to understand how the resource can be correctly used. But while weighing these risks, it is equally critical to consider the risk of not opening your resources, in terms of limiting their potential and spread beyond their own context and as seeds for new efforts and ideas.

In many ways, the bazaar (or market) has led in its contributions to the digital commons—with more than 4,500 employees actively sharing codes on shared open platforms such as GitHub. Microsoft may be the largest contributor to open codes. Sarkaar (the government) too has started doing its part with the Open Data Portal and Open Source Code Repository. It is high time samaaj (society), the philanthropic and civil society ecosystem, did the same.

We can each reach our highest potential only if we adopt ‘open’ as the default position.

All change begins with setting the intention, and we can take an ‘Open Resources Pledge’ today to put forth our commitment to creating open resources. It is key to remember that there is no requirement to open every resource or dataset, and we can start simply by opening up parts of resources one by one. We can leverage various guides to enable us to choose the datasets, apply an open license, make the data available online on our own website, or a third party website (DataHub, GitHub, Ekstep), or application programme interfaces (APIs), and make them discoverable.

We can each reach our highest potential only if we adopt ‘open’ as the default position. We have the power to create public resources and digital public goods of a new kind, where not only does their use not deplete the commons, but it enriches it.

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Co-authored with Supriya Sankaran. Originally published at India Development Review on 19 December 2019.

Co-authored with Reshma Anand. Deployed well, this form of funding offers multiple advantages. Here is a quick guide to understand the various options available and find the one that best matches your requirements.

Pooled funding from multiple donors has historically been used in emergency response situations, such as natural disasters and human made conflicts, to get timely resources and results on the ground.

However, the principle of pooling funds is increasingly being deployed by donors on issues that go beyond humanitarian aid. They see multiple advantages to this approach: they can take a comprehensive approach to a problem, address multiple facets instead of providing symptomatic relief, and have flexibility in supporting areas aligned to their priority areas.

Deployed well, pooled funds can improve efficiencies, limit duplication of efforts amongst donors, lower transaction costs with economies of scale, and ensure better risk management if governed well.

The different models

There are several ways in which donors can pool funds. Their impact and success depend on a range of factors, some of which are illustrated in this article.

1. Classic co-funding refers to a large-scale programme with two (or more) donors bringing in a similar quantum of funds.

• Funds may or may not be centrally pooled in one place–donors may hand over the baton from one funding cycle to the next.
• Key decisions are usually run through steering committees with representation from donors.
• This model may involve smaller, sub-contracted grants as well.

This model is widely known and adopted, especially since there is an emerging practice amongst Indian donors today to support no more than 40 percent of a programme’s cost. The onus usually lies on the implementing partners to find matching donors or use their own funds to finance the rest of the programme.

2. A managed fund entails a community of donors coming together for a common cause and common set of outcomes.

• Funds are typically pooled at a central repository and are managed either by a professional agency or a dedicated programme team based at the lead donor.
• The governance structure for this kind of a model involves a steering group, programme management group, an advisory board and an external evaluation agency.

The Dasra Giving Circle and the recently launched Co-Impact (from the creators of The Giving Pledge) are examples of this kind of funding.

3. An independent platform differs from a managed fund primarily in terms of the legal structure. In this case as well, a common cause and ambitious impact outcomes bring together a community of donors.

• The operational model, however, comprises a new and separate legal entity that is set up for developing and implementing strategy towards the intended impact goals.
• Oversight and control for an independent platform involves varying combinations of boards, advisory groups, steering committees, selection panels and programme management teams.

Examples of independent platforms include Ashoka University and the Independent and Public-Spirited Media Foundation (IPSMF).

Ashoka University is India’s first collaboratively funded, liberal arts private university with over 90 donors bringing in INR 750 crore.

IPSMF is a foundation with contributions from several Indian philanthropists to fund independent journalism. Decisions are taken by an independent operating team and the donors have no influence over the organisations funded.

What to ask when picking a model

Each of these funding mechanisms have their own unique compelling factors, including alignment of purpose, structure, governance and systems for operational excellence, that will determine their sustained impact and ultimate success.

Within these factors, we have listed some guiding questions that we can ask to arrive at the funding model that would be best suited to help achieve the results we seek in our spheres of work.

Alignment on purpose (across donors, boards/committees and implementation teams)

• Is there a shared understanding of the problem?
• Is there a consistent articulated vision of what impact would look like? Is it tangible?
• Is the overall purpose politically neutral? Is it likely to have broad-based resonance or does it appeal to a restricted, finite group of people?
• Are there a couple of well-regarded core champions for the idea who can drive peers to contribute and collaborate?
• Are the motivations of the core champions clear and aligned?
• Is there a broad strategic framework that defines what the vehicle would do and not do?
• Is there an in-principle agreement on the risk(s) the collective is willing to take?

Alignment on metrics (across donors and implementation teams)

• Is there a clear set of cause-impact hypotheses in place?
• Are outcomes and impact metrics emerging from the core hypotheses defined?
• Are operating team performance metrics clearly defined and aligned with the above?
• Are the metrics of impact in sync with the proposed timeline for engagement? Are they feasible given the time frame?

Oversight and governance (board, selection/ steering/ advisory committees)

• Should the board/steering committee be constituted to maximise for credibility or practice?
• If the board is maximised for credibility, is the operating team strong enough on the subject matter? Does it need an advisory panel?
• If the board is maximised for practice, how is the operating team empowered with freedom to execute?
• Is the board in sync with the risk appetite of the overall partnership?
• Does the board define boundaries of what it would do and what not?
• Are clear firewalls in place between boards, operating teams and external experts/selectors?

Selection

• A grantee selection panel or committee is one way to build in independence into the model. The composition of this panel is an important determinant to factor in.
• Is a distinct selection team of external experts in place? Do they have a clear set of criteria for selection based on the overall strategy?
• Is selection done internally by the programme team based on an approved set of criteria determined by strategy?
• Is the external panel balanced between practitioners and subject matter experts?
• Is the selection of panel members free from bias and influence?

Operating processes

• Is a team or organisation structure in place for operationalising the strategy?
• Are clear and distinct roles in place for core members?
• Does the team have the right balance of generalists and specialists?
• Are effective management systems in place for periodic tracking of deliverables and course correction?
• Is the operating team suitably empowered to take core implementation decisions?

Expertise

• Are core subject matter experts in-house or external?
• Are subject matter experts represented through the board, selection panels and operating teams? Or only at certain levels?

Funding

• Should a bulk of funding to be raised upfront? Or is the mandate to seed, prove and then scale?
• Who should take the onus for fund raising? Core champions or others?
• Should there be a consistent fundraising momentum with new donors being added each year?
• Should the mix of funders be a consistent cohort or a mindful mix? Are individual philanthropists, institutional donors, CSR natural allies and partners?
• Are there clear benefits—wider, deeper impact, efficiency, influence, etc—for the funders who join the cohort?
• Is there any potential conflict of interest between the cause supported by donors and their ‘core business’? When does this become a deal breaker?

What is the expectation from government funding? Are areas likely to get government attention and funding more likely to be successful for pooled funding mechanisms?

Pooled funding vehicles are excellent venues for learning and we believe that these models are a natural progression as philanthropy moves to tackle difficult systemic issues.

However, what holds true for all such pooled models and must be a vital first step, is asking the right questions about their design, structure and governance. We hope that this article provides a starting point for your own pooled funding journey.

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Co-authored with Reshma Anand. Originally published at India Development Review on 15 February 2018.

Philanthropists and funding organisations grapple with various kinds of risks when considering grant making opportunities. Some are failure risks of theories of change, some of organisational capability and some of sustainability.

As grant makers and partners in change, it is imperative to proactively identify and mitigate these risks. Over this year we, at Nilekani Philanthropies, engaged in interviews and research that highlighted unique ways in which crowdfunding could change and expand the way we imagine our nonprofit engagements.

Why should philanthropists be thinking about crowdfunding?

While the primary case often made is to think of crowdfunding as a way to de-risk traditional funding models, there are other benefits and upsides that we identified.

It can be a crucial way to facilitate deeper engagement between nonprofits and the wider public–to create new ways of bringing people in and build networks and communities of support.

Digital networks have the potential to keep us disconnected from the lives and experiences of others. This deprives us of the empathy, vibrancy and ideas that flow from the diversity of communities beyond our own.

Crowdfunding engagements offer an opportunity to change that; to get involved and to acknowledge our interdependencies.

What can philanthropists do?

We believe there are clear opportunities for philanthropy to support and incubate crowdfunding platforms at a strategic level, and as a tactic within grantee organisations.

Offer matching funds

There is tremendous signalling value in philanthropy showing belief in the model and it can do so in multiple ways. It can be via for-profit investments in crowdfunding platforms, or through offering matched funds to grantees or to crowdfunding platforms to drive individual giving. These can be done either through the lens of sector portfolios or events such as #GivingTuesdayIndia.

Support storytelling and communications costs

It is important to keep in mind that organisations that are effective at crowdfunding are those that can tell their stories using both data and empathy.

As a primary step, grant makers must recognise the importance of this from multiple perspectives: it is vital for organisations to be able to tell their own stories of change; it is important to the narrative around civil society; and it is critical from the perspective of reaching out to wider audiences and engaging the communities so built.

Encourage grantees to experiment by underwriting implementation costs

Philanthropic commitment to the nonprofits they support must extend beyond the immediate grant period; they must be partners for the long term.

One way to do so is by creating capacity for sustainability within their portfolios. “Grants as the primary solution to funding needs are not sustainable” and organisations need to communicate their cause and impact to the public at large.

Grant makers can nudge nonprofits to experiment with such models by moving a small percentage of their philanthropic funding to matching grants against monies raised through crowdfunding and by underwriting the costs of implementation and execution.

Think beyond the immediate portfolio

Donors have an interest in the civil society ecosystem beyond just their immediate portfolio. Creating capacity within their portfolios to tell their stories of change and impact allows for new conversations and connections within the ecosystem and outside of it. This is vital if we want to move the needle on India’s societal challenges.

There is an opportunity to create a new energy around India’s vibrant civil society that includes a much wider section of citizens in change, and also has the potential to create new pathways to sustainability.

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Originally published at India Development Review on 20 December 2017.

Sometime in 2013, Bill Gates said, “Philanthropy should be taking much bigger risks than business [and] if these are easy problems, business and government can come in and solve them.”

Think risk

While most philanthropists agree with that sentiment, it does not necessarily reflect in their philosophy of giving nor in the way they manage risk for themselves and their portfolio.

There are different kinds of risks involved in grant-making–financial, reputational, and impact. If donors are to see themselves as partners in change, then identifying and mitigating these risks must be central to the conversation.

And sustainability, resilience, and network-building are all critical and interlinked elements of this conversation.

Think sustainability–a bit differently though

Every donor is concerned with the sustainability and longevity of the work they fund. Likewise, for nonprofits, expanding their donor base is a priority.

The traditional approach has been to target a few high value donors rather than build a network of many small donors. And understandably so. The effort and capacity required to do the latter is very different from what is required to unlock institutional or philanthropic capital.

Nonprofits must actively diversify their funding bases and look beyond ‘large’ ticket sizes.

While this might be seen as a choice or a trade-off, we believe that this is better understood as a continuum that nonprofits ought to progress along and something that philanthropy ought to acknowledge, support and accelerate.

Funds from foundations, corporates and high net worth individuals will continue to feature as substantial components of an organisation’s budget. But we also believe that nonprofits must actively diversify their funding bases and look beyond ‘large’ ticket sizes.

Advantage crowdfunding

An increasingly popular yet under-utilised model is one that leverages crowdfunding. There are multiple approaches to crowdfunding from creating one’s own giving platform as Pratham Books did with Donate-A-Book, to utilising existing platforms like Bitgiving and Ketto.

This idea, of creating a large network of small donors via a platform, is one we think has tremendous possibility and lends value to an organisation beyond just fundraising.

It de-risks the model

A diversified portfolio that balances foundation and crowdfunded support offers nonprofits in your portfolio resilience of two kinds.

• Funding resilience because it is de-risked from single points of failure–from changes in donor priorities to the regulatory.
• Insurance against operational risks: Building a large support base comprising many individuals enables nonprofits to create a community that supports their work and their mission.

Allows for innovation

Very often, traditional funding is tied to programmatic work or has limited headroom for people and experimentation costs. As a result, grantee organisations are constrained in their attempts to prototype, iterate and experiment with new models of change and impact.

Unconditional capital from crowdfunded sources could serve as a vital source of money for them to learn and experiment with new opportunities for impact.

Communicates impact

Crowd funding from hundreds of individuals also pushes nonprofits to improve their storytelling around their impact to engage this retail donor base. This has tremendous value beyond just the organisation as it creates new conversations and narratives for the sector as a whole.

Creates networks

In creating a compelling story about their impact, organisations also end up building networks with diverse participants–other nonprofits, donors, individuals and media, who might have common shared values. These partners can enable greater access to knowledge, skills and support for the grantee organisations.

Beyond risk

For philanthropists, there are other good reasons why you ought to consider supporting these newer models of fundraising.

• Crowdfunding can unlock further philanthropic capital for your grantees as it builds credibility for the work, the organisation and the sector among significantly larger groups of people.
• It also allows for varied funding engagements with nonprofits at different ticket sizes and through multiple lenses of programs, functions and issues, rather than only through the entirety of a nonprofit’s work or theory of change.

Fund it

There are many ways in which philanthropists can support this shift. You can start by recognising the importance of it and seeding the idea within your portfolios. Once this conversation starts, you can help in the following ways:

• Support the costs for creating the capacity within your grantees to tell their stories of change to large audiences who have limited knowledge of the issue and short attention spans.
• Nudge nonprofits to experiment with it by moving a small percentage of their philanthropic funding to matching grants against monies raised through crowdfunding,
• Underwrite the costs of implementation either in the form of the fees that existing platforms charge or, in some cases, for creating new crowdfunding platforms.
• Provide the initial few grants to crowdfunding campaigns to create a signalling effect of trust.

Philanthropists can support this shift to crowdfunding.

It is still early days for crowdfunding in India. There is a tremendous sense of possibility and a large upside in supporting this gradual shift for organisations, donors and for the sector at large.

Early adopters of these models will have a first mover advantage and this is why we advocate the time for donors to support this is now.

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Originally published at India Development Review on 17 August 2017.