When I was asked to speak at a recent event on the future of philanthropy, I was faced with a conundrum, writes Rose Longhurst. How do you offer a vision for the future of a sector you don’t believe in? While I accept the need for charity and philanthropy in the world as it currently is, I’d like to imagine that those of us who are part of the sector are all aiming to work ourselves out of our jobs. The thought that we would still be relying on philanthropy for basic services in the future is dystopic.
“Philanthropy”, however, does not have to mean the non-profit sector as it currently operates, where private institutions attempt to redress shortcomings in the provision of public goods via their leftover wealth, voluntarily donated (and subsidised by taxpayers). Philanthropy can be interpreted much more broadly, as actions that stem from a love of humanity. And it was this framing that I grounded my vision for the future in.
During my Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity fellowship, I researched the role of philanthropic foundations in democratic societies. At the same time, I was involved in two funds that model democratic ideals in the way they provide grants for social change. The “solidarity, not charity” model that The Edge Fund promotes has been an inspiration since 2013, introducing me to the notion of philanthropy as reparatory justice. FundAction display participatory democracy in action through their use of the open source technology Sortition (in which randomly selected people from a community make decisions) and deliberative processes.
So, I decided to draw my inspiration for the future from this work: reimagining the world as one without gross wealth inequalities; where people act in solidarity, rather than out of guilt; and where everyday people are trusted to make complex decisions. You can see my vision below, which I have set out as a letter written in 2071 to randomly chosen UK residents to decide on how a Climate Reparations Fund should be spent.
There are many gaps in this vision. But it’s not as wildly utopian as you might imagine.
As the Atlantic Fellowships demonstrate, people everywhere are challenging the vast inequities that our system creates. Calls for reparations are no longer fringe ideas, and recent racial justice uprisings have demonstrated the paucity of our education in the UK on issues such as colonialism. The challenges to the classic “Generous philanthropist/ Grateful beneficiary” model of philanthropy are rising – the recent Future of Participatory Grantmaking event itself is evidence of this. And, all over the world, deliberative, participatory democracy is on the rise, because we see that “ordinary” people – if they are given enough time, information and support – are better at making decisions about complex issues than politicians.
Since the 28 January event in which I shared the letter set half a century into the future, many people have reached out to me to ask, “How do we make this vision a reality?” My sense is that we will begin to do so when we problematise inequality, rather than the people who are suffering from it. Built as it is on current realities, I hope that my vision for 2071 looks quaintly unambitious in 50 years’ time.
The views expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme, the International Inequalities Institute, or the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Rose Longhurst
Head of Democratic Renewal Team, Open Society Foundations
Rose Longhurst is an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity and the Head of the Democratic Renewal Team for Open Society Foundations - Europe and Central Asia. She has spent her career working in the non-profit sector and has specialised in fundraising and advising institutional donors on how to give effectively.