Day 4 ⏐ Session 4
Funding the future:
where next?
Where next? How might we support the emergence of a system of finance that is up to the task of transforming other core societal systems, and creating the new ones we urgently need? We will hear from: Philip Essl, Big Society Capital (UK); Dr. Johan Schot, Deep Transitions Project, Utrecht University Centre for Global Challenges (NL); Steve Waddell, Bounce Beyond and Catalyst 2030 (US), Cassie Robinson, Funding Strategy & Innovation Advisor (UK); Joe Nelson, Sealaska (AK) and Derek Bardowell, Ten Years' Time (UK).
“If the mentality... remains the same, then the mentality means that what you’re doing is just putting some really nice icing sugar on a really under baked cake”
Resources
Quotes from the session
“Investors need to start investing in transition dynamics” (Johan Schot)
“A first step for investors is to learn and to open up the assumptions about what to invest in.” (Johan Schot)
“The quality of the learning will shape the transition dynamics, the quality of the visioning will shape the process, the way things are circulating, and to what extent a circulation of ideas will influence” (Johan Schot)
“There's been waves of colonisation coming after the different resources: the sea otters, the salmon, the gold, the oil. The most recent wave of colonising, though is really coming from philanthropy and conservation groups coming to lock things up” (Joe Nelson)
“So it's really just embracing everybody and then eventually shifting their thinking to our indigenous thinking which, when I'm talking about indigenous thinking it's about the long term.” (Joe Nelson)
“So you got to figure out where you're going and why you're changing what's happening and for us for our Native entities, we've got 10,000 years of indigenous good thinking and roots that go so deep and connect into place. That is that our ancestors carved a path for us that we just need to continue to follow and we need to pull in the rest of the system that came hundreds of years later to be part of our system. And that's really the thinking…” (Joe Nelson)
“It's also moving from transactions to relationships. We as Native people relationships with with each other but more importantly, our relationships are with everything, the all physical environment around us that is just embedded in our thinking and how we operate. So it's just pretty intuitive when you when you're grounded in indigenous thinking that you're going to get the right size things and balance things in your thinking in a way that is actually going to get to those good conservation outcomes when you focus on the people that have are been there for 10,000 years” (Joe Nelson)
“...what Joe is doing is investing in a transition which draws on very old knowledge in order to create very new kinds of systems that's an incredibly interesting combination, a powerful combination to create a different demonstrator of an alternative economy” (Charlie Leadbeater)
“I always talk about the abolition of philanthropy and just saying, in this world, we wouldn't need philanthropy as it stands at this particular point because that wealth, and I'm not just talking about the grant making wealth in the philanthropic world, we're talking about the investments, we're talking about how that is redistributed, and particularly redistributed towards communities or those that are on the frontline of harm is where that money could best be deployed, which doesn't in the way that this is often framed pit those that's in philanthropy, against communities. and that's how it's often framed…” (Derek Bardowell)
“I met Pia Mancini from Open Collective and Democracy Earth. She says [on her website] she has a deep belief that we are 21st century citizens doing our very best to interact with 19th century designed institutions built with information technology of the 15th century. And the thing that struck me about that sentence being very, very true, was also the fact that what we're dealing with is 19th century attitudes.” (Derek Bardowell)
“But if the mentality that sits behind [policy interventions in liberating philanthropy money] remains the same, then the mentality means that what you're doing is just putting some really nice icing sugar on a really under baked cake” (Derek Bardowell)
“...I don't think we're paying anywhere near enough attention to… are we holding philanthropy to account around really transformative, ambitious, imaginative, laboratory work. So I worry that some of the tools we currently draw on that we think are trying to push philanthropy in the right direction are actually keeping us stuck in the current system.” (Cassie Robinson)
“What are some of the shifts or changes that we need to see in the system and within the organisations that are part of the system? So for us, I would talk about these learnings in three buckets; the mindset changes that we've been through, the way we work with others and engage with others, and thirdly, the way we actually think and build our own institution, our toolkit, and and develop” (Philip Essl)
“So when we started 10 years ago, we started off as a financial institution to address market failure. And we opened the door with a bucket full of money and not much happened. And we were sort of sitting there saying, we have a problem, what are we going to do with this money? And, and that required a really fundamental shift to say, Okay, what's actually possible, how do we need to change our frame to think about creating a market? (Phillip Essl)
“What we now at least aspire to is much more a movement building mindset, rather than just invest in the city mindset. And that really cuts across the ecosystem.” (Phillip Essl)
“...you have other investors that are really important. It was always important for us to say, we want to build the market we don't want to be the market” (Phillip Essl)
“There is no way to tackle this except to tackle the whole thing at the same time. So you’ve got to be thinking on many different levels all the time” (Joe Nelson)
“Right now I've got my board gathered here. We're gonna adopt our next annual operating budget and plan, but in the heat of the moment in a debate about next year's budget, I'm like, where's our 100 year plan? And that really helps shift the thinking of all our managers, of all of our executives. We still haven't written that 100 year plan. But even that question as the leading question almost, helps people get out of the argument about next year's budget and actually think about impact, think about what we're doing here, think about our purpose here.” (Joe Nelson)
“...more social movements should be funded, but we know that they get minimal amounts of money and we know that the systems that have been built to mediate wealth getting to communities really restricts the possibilities of funders being able to do that.” (Derek Bardowell)
“It reminds me of something that the writer Edwardo Galliano said, ‘I don't believe in charity, I believe in solidarity’. And I think even if you were just to turn philanthropy and move that away, and start calling it solidarity, then I think even just saying that changes the mind the mindset of people who are in this field and their place within that.” (Derek Bardowell)
“It takes an ecosystem to change an ecosystem” (Steve Waddell)