Open Philanthropy seeks to explore an alternative model to traditional structures of
philanthropy, where power and decision-making so often sits with Boards and staff, with
little to no consultation or contribution from the communities most affected. The
philanthropy sector isn’t alone in wrestling with how to be more inclusive, more equitable;
less restrictive, less entrenched. It’s a challenge that’s more urgent than ever.
What are we doing?
Earlier this year, we awarded more than £500,000 in grants to organisations tackling financial
hardship and individuals experiencing financial hardship, through our inaugural Open Philanthropy
fund.
The “we” in question here was:
- 22 panellists with lived and professional experience of financial hardship who made all
decisions
- a set of expert advisors who supported them in that process
- a staff team at NPC who administrated the decisions
This “pop up” fund has now awarded all of its grants – you can read who got them on 360Giving –
and we’ve shared the learning from the process in a toolkit. We’re now exploring applying this
approach in more sectors and with more funders.
What have we learnt so far?
The Open Philanthropy pilot was an enormous learning curve – which is why we wanted to
produce a toolkit to help share some of these learnings. Overall, a lot of it worked well and made a
compelling case for others to adopt more open approaches. Our panellists made decisions that
professional grantmakers or philanthropists would not have made, drawing on different expertise,
and different priorities.
The benefits to this work have been to grant recipients – who both received valuable unrestricted
funding and found the process more accessible - and to those involved in decision making, who
found that participating has been transformative for their confidence and understanding of grant
making, and who have gone on to be vocal ambassadors for Open Philanthropy going forwards.
As we think about the next phases of the Open Philanthropy programme, we’re thinking about we
can build more space into the timelines. In the pilot, we worked to finalise the research elements of
the programme before thinking about process design, recruitment and decision making, which
meant that at times we were asking for significant decision making in short time frames, and were
requiring a lot of capacity from NPC to do the administration around this. More “slack” in these
timelines would have given us more breathing room, more space for reflection, and increased
accessibility for all. It also would have allowed us to share more learning externally as we went,
inviting feedback on our approach.
What can you do?
If you’re interested in exploring an Open Philanthropy approach, look at the Open Philanthropy
toolkit which shares everything we learnt in the pilot phase of this programme. Remember that
openness and closedness are not polarities, and there are lots of ways that your philanthropy could
become more open.
Spend time exploring some key questions:
- How has my philanthropy or grant making been inclusive or transparent in the past? Where
has it not been?
- What do I want to achieve by being more open? Which approaches may bring about these
outcomes?
- What resources do I have to dedicate to this approach? Who do I need to get on board with
the idea?
We have shared our learning so far, but our programme also drew on the learning of hundreds of
organisations around the world which are experimenting with more inclusive or transparent
practices. Once you have an idea of the approach you’d like to take, or what you want to achieve,
explore who else is working in this way and try to draw on their learning.
If you’d like a conversation about Open Philanthropy, get in touch with NPC.
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