Bring in the New

Q: Where can you find more than 9,000 philanthropists who took the brave and often complicated step of creating a new grant-making charitable trust (a ‘foundation’ in international terminology)?

A: In Factary’s new New Trust Update Archive.

The new NTU Archive is many things. It’s a simple, fast and efficient way to find trusts and foundations in the UK. It’s a great way of finding out about philanthropists, and it is a history of the last ten years of philanthropy in the UK.

Factary began recording the new wave of philanthropy back in 1993, when we noticed that the Charity Commission for England and Wales was experiencing a boom in trust registrations. We discovered that the registration documents for charities – which are in the public domain – contained information that allowed fundraisers to get a clearer idea of what the activities of new trusts, and who was behind them. This was not, at the start, an easy process. We had to take the train to Taunton (where the Charity Commission keeps part of its archive) and request, one by one, the registration documents for these new charities. We then had to go through each document by hand to pick out the charities that looked like they might be, or might become, grant-makers, and start the process of research.

The second part of this process has not varied much over the years – we still carry out detailed research on each trust, contacting trust administrators and aiming to establish who is behind the trust, what their interests are, and what they hope to do.

The Factary team moves fast on that research, and subscribers to New Trust Update (we limit the number of subscribers to 100) rely on us to be the first to hear about new grant-makers.

The result is a rich database of more than 2,500 trusts with interests in arts, rights, women, older people, animals, the environment… the whole range of charitable activity. Users of the NTU Archive can search the entire data set using combinations of codes (for example, ‘Education and Training’) and keywords, to find trusts that were created with those interests.

Users can research trustees by name. There are more than 9,000 trustees listed here, so this is a rich database on individual philanthropy – people who are concerned enough about a social or environmental issues to create a foundation or to join the board of a new foundation. Information on philanthropy in the UK – with the honourable exception of Factary Phi – is hard to find and this data, linking people to their philanthropic interests is invaluable to the non-profit sector.

Factary’s Will Whitefield emphasises that this is a record of the moment that the trust was created. ‘It’s like a birth photo of the trust. When we research the trust it is around a month or two old; so the trustees, objectives and finances are from those early days.’ But that in itself is valuable, because it allows a researcher to see who the baby was, and how it grew up.

There are plenty of examples of this. The Bernard Sunley Charitable Foundation that we reported in June 2005 topped £4m in income in March 2015, double its spend at start-up. The Schroder Foundation, reported by us in March 2005 and created with a £10 deposit, had grown to £2.2m by April 2015 – that’s 22 million percent growth if you do the maths.

But tracking less spectacular growth is also relevant. For example, a search using the keyword Africa throws up 167 trusts. Pick an early one, such as the Egmont Trust and compare it with the Charity Commission’s current record for the foundation you can see that founding trustees Clare Evans (who had worked with ActionAid in the 1990s) and Jeremy Evans are still in place, but that three others have joined (and two left) over the ten years since we reported its registration in our April 2005 edition.

In here you will find the origins of venture philanthropy and impact investment. The Private Equity Foundation – we reported on it in November 2006 – is in there as is the moment in 2013 when it merged with Impetus to form Impetus Private Equity Foundation. The Apax Foundation – we reported its registration in March 2006 – is there too.

Finally, there is all the great inventiveness of philanthropy here. There are foundations with names based on Beatles’ lyrics (“Love Is All We Need”, registered and reported in 2007), those with hopeful names (“The Making a Difference Foundation,” “Heaven Can Wait” or “The GoodFund”) and foundations from the UK’s vast pool of celebrities, from Gordan Ramsay, chef to the late Dan Maskell, tennis champion.

Factary’s new NTU Archive is an open book on the growth of organised philanthropy in the UK. For more information just get in touch with Nicola Williams.

I want to be in America

It’s frustrating, living in Europe (no, this is not going to be a piece about Mr Cameron and his referendum…)

It’s frustrating because we have so little data on philanthropy. Everywhere I look there is data on philanthropy in the USA, and a stream of clever academic research papers from across the Atlantic on who is giving, why they are giving and what they are giving.

But Europe? Yes, there are some very good centres of research, but there are not nearly enough of them.

This morning I checked the listings for academic centres of research into philanthropy, at the International Society for Third Sector Research. The results? Of the 153 academic centres of research identified by ISTR, 53 are in just one country. Yes,the USA. The next nearest country by volume of research centres is the UK, with just 11. Counting all of the centres across Europe, we still come to a smaller total than the USA with 36 centres against their 53.

Here are the (approximately) 50 countries of Europe:

Academic Research Centres in Philanthropy, Europe
Academic Research Centres in Philanthropy, Europe

And here is the single United States of America:

Academic Research Centres in Philanthropy, USA
Academic Research Centres in Philanthropy, USA

Quantity is not the same as quality, and Europe’s research centres produce a lot of very useful and valuable data. But we are being held back in our understanding of philanthropy in Europe because we have not built the academic power-houses that our colleagues in the US have created. This is a source of bias in our research – with all that wealth of data from the USA the models from across the Atlantic have become the norm. In Europe this has led a few people – notably in France – to look for new paradigms, different models, in philanthropy research. Good news, if we are to build a balanced, culturally-sensitive, understanding of philanthropy.

Still wondering about major donors?

If you had any doubts about “major donor” fundraising – at Factary we use the term “strategic donor” – then today’s article by Martin Wolf should help dispel them (Wolf, M., 2016. The economic losers are in revolt against the elites. Financial Times).

In the article, Wolf reviews the work of Branko Milanovic, previously Lead Economist at the World Bank’s research department, who showed in a 2013 paper (Milanovic, B., 2013. Global Income Inequality by the Numbers: In History and Now. An Overview. Global Policy (May 2013), pp.198–208.) how personal incomes for the majority of people in Europe and the US have stagnated whilst the incomes of the wealthiest 10% have grown. This we knew from other studies of the wealth gap. But what makes this chart so interesting is that there is another group of people whose incomes have stagnated – the poorest 10% globally.

Change in real income between 1988 and 2008 at various percentiles of global income distribution (calculated in 2005 international dollars)

income distribution global

Notes: This is global income, so the middle class in Europe is in the 70%-80% range. The vertical axis shows the percentage change in real income, measured in constant international dollars. The horizontal axis shows the percentile position in the global income distribution. The percentile positions run from 5 to 95, in increments of five, while the top 5% are divided into two groups: the top 1%, and those between 95th and 99th percentiles.

So here is a demand and a supply argument for strategic donor fundraising. On the demand side (of the non-profit world) the poorest of the poor are staying poor or getting poorer. Non-profits have more to do, must raise more to help more.

On the supply side, the “normal” donors (or “consumer donors”) who provide the bulk of donations to Europe’s non-profits are earning the same as they earned in 1998, or less. Perhaps this is part of the reason why regular fundraising has been struggling for so long; middle income donors (in Europe) have been taking home the same wages for the last ten years, so they are unable to increase their gifts, despite the best efforts of fundraising. As Prof Adrian Sargeant never tires of telling us,

‘In the UK, charitable giving is estimated to be around one per cent of gross domestic product and while there are annual variations, this figure has proved remarkably static over time. Despite the best efforts of governments, philanthropists and a generation of fundraisers, the needle hasn’t moved much on giving since data were first recorded.’

(Sargeant, A. & Shang, J., 2011. Growing Philanthropy in the United Kingdom. A Report on the July 2011 Growing Philanthropy Summit, Bristol, UK: University of the West of England. Available here.)

But up there among the elites the picture is very different. The top ten percent of earners enjoyed real-term income growth over the period 1998-2008 with the top 1% winning increases of 60% on average, world-wide. Yes, the subsequent recession may have taken a little off the top of that, but as the annual European wealth lists show us, wealth has survived the recession in remarkably good shape.

So at both ends of our work as fundraisers there is a case for strategic donors; at the poorest end where we have to do more and more for people with less and less, and at the wealthiest end where we can see a significant segment of the population heading up the income ladder.

Time to chase after your well researched prospect pool…with a strong, well-researched, case statement.

Which leaves me – and many fundraisers – in the ethical soup. I joined fundraising as a means to an end – the end of social inequalities, of poverty, of human suffering. So while I celebrate the growth of the strategic philanthropy market…I disapprove of the system that makes a few rich and leaves the rest poor.

Difficult dilemma.

But there is a lot of potentially philanthropic money out there, and a lot more people who need it; so stop wondering about major donors and get on with it.

Tony Elischer

Dear Tony

I had the terrible, terrible news today that you are gone, to cancer. To cancer! The irony, for the person who helped to build modern fundraising in what is now Cancer Research UK.

For me and many, many fundraisers you were the aspirational model – if only I could be like Tony. Continually, defiantly innovative in word, thought and deed. So fearless of consequence as you pushed yourself to new frontiers in fundraising. So hard working – I have wondered at times whether you slept – and so funny. Your capacity to mimic, to crack me up into gales of laughter just when I was getting serious, was unequalled.

I would write “RIP”. But resting in peace is the last thing you would do. Rushing Into a Performance is more like the Tony that I shall always remember, as the star turn in the two closing plenaries that I produced for the International Fundraising Congress. To be historically accurate, you were the creative mind, the stage master, the script writer, the personal coach and the director of the plenaries, whilst I hung out at the back with the technicians and made occasional mumbled suggestions.

You were continually brilliant on stage because you worked so hard to prepare beforehand. And that for me was the lesson you left; prepare, prepare more, and then go for a prize twice, ten times, a hundred times your original target.

In Catalan people say of the dead that they have ‘gone to the other neighbourhood’, which seems a good way to think of you. Just around the corner, or possibly watching just over the shoulders of all of us fundraisers as we try to solve a knotty problem; you are whispering the solution in our ear.

We, all of us, will miss your colour, your company and your creativity. Yours is an act we cannot hope to follow.

Chris

The Laboratory for Philanthropy

I am just back from the annual European Venture Philanthropy Association conference, this year in Madrid. I have attended most of the organisation’s fifteen conferences – because venture philanthropy is at the cutting edge of all of Europe’s philanthropy.

The conference is increasingly focused on impact investing. This phrase has as many interpretations as there are official languages in the EU – but it covers the broad range, from grants, to projects that can demonstrate social impact, to for-profit investments in social enterprises that deliver near-market rates of return. There were a mixture of social enterprises, charities and foundations pitching for business at the event, but all of them were able to show precisely what return – social or financial or both – they could offer. More, to be blunt, than many of our largest charities can manage.

Scale is a central theme. This word is used to mean “growth” as in: ‘We’ve got a great idea – how can we scale it up?’ It is the obsession of my friend Miquel de Paladella who announced a successful second round of investment – €430,000 – to expand the JumpMath franchise in Spain. Visit their website (in English) and you’ll see that their impact indicators are on the front page. This display of impact is not the only reason for their success, but it is central to explaining why they raised finance.

Crowdfunding was popular at the conference. It’s growing fast in all its varied flavours, from crowdfunding for equity through crowdfunding for loans. Factary’s former landlord, Jamie Hartzell of Ethex, gave a concise description of the ethical issues that surround this type of finance. The first social stock exchange in Spain, La Bolsa Social presented its crowdfunded equity programme, and we also heard from Babyloan (yes, that is its real name) in France. Babyloan has tied up with Total, the French energy company, to crowdfund microfinance for green energy projects there.

We discussed the role of foundations and trusts in all this. BMW Foundation described their work in professionalising ‘pro bono’ support for non-profits, working with their alumni and staff. Seb Elsworth of Access Capital described the blend of loans and capacity building that they are planning to offer smaller organisations in the UK, some via Community Foundations. And Arnaud Gillin of Innpact in Luxembourg described the Shell Foundation’s involvement in creating loan structures to support small, growing enterprises through GroFin; it looked complicated but in essence it involves the foundation providing a grant to a lending entity to encourage other investors to join a structured, layered, lending scheme. If the loans fail, the grant money takes the burden of failure, giving lenders higher up the tree greater security. Innpact demonstrated that a grant-maker could multiply by at least four, and sometimes up to 20, the impact of a grant by working in this way.

How can we use all this? In past blogs about EVPA I have emphasised the need to keep an eye on what is happening. Now it’s time to move from watching, to action. Take a look at the extraordinary growth of crowdfunding for example. Robert Wardrop, a Research Fellow at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance showed figures from their 2015 report that indicate a 104% increase in donation-based crowdfunding 2012-2014 in Europe excluding the UK. Reward-based crowdfunding is growing even faster at 127%. There are opportunities for fundraisers here.

Or take the new financial models for foundations – could your organisation structure an entity to offer loans to, say, small farmers, using the expertise you already have and a few of your foundation partners?

And finally, one cheering fact. Despite concerns that we have expressed before (see our report Trust Women for example) about the lack of women in senior positions in European philanthropy, this year’s conference had a majority of women present; 51% of participants were women. A strong message for the future.

The EVPA conference is the bubbling laboratory for philanthropy in Europe. It is where you will meet new people with new ideas – some scary, some brilliant – and see where the mainstream will be, five years later.

Next year’s conference is in Paris. See you there?

Trusting Prospects

The UK has had a strange fundraising summer. It started in May with the suicide of an elderly lady in Bristol. That sparked a tabloid newspaper storm led by the Daily Mail. The newspapers claimed that the lady had jumped to her death as the result of pressure from telephone and direct mail appeals from charities. The inquest held in Bristol in September was told by the family that this was not the case.

But the media were not to be restrained by the mere facts of the case. They continued to ride rough-shod over charities and fundraising. And then the Government – led by the party that had espoused “Big Society” – waded in. In July the House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee announced an enquiry into fundraising. NCVO was asked to report, a Fundraising Preference Service was hurriedly assembled and even the normally sanguine Information Commissioner leapt into the fray with new rules on the use of the telephone.

This has not ended yet. There is to be a NCVO Summit on the future of fundraising regulation in December, and we can expect the tabloids to continue their fundraising feeding frenzy as Christmas approaches.

How should prospect researchers react? What is the best we can do for our colleagues and, above all, the people, places or causes we work for?

We know them

We prospect researchers know our donors better than almost anyone else in our organisation. We have spent time learning about their motivations and the stuff they don’t like – their objections. These may include objections to the way we manage our relationship with them. It is time to apply that knowledge answer objections that may have been inflamed by the media firestorm.

Relationship Management

We are members of the team that is managing our relationship with our donor. Right now some of our donors will be feeling a little bruised, so it is more important than ever to engage the skills of prospect researchers in cautious relationship management. Time too to remember a primary skill in research – listening to the donor.

Institutional Memory

Researchers stay longer in post then their fundraising colleagues. So we often become the repository of our organisation’s memory. Old Mrs Smith who does not want to hear ever again from our boss – they fell out 5 years ago. Or John who is having an affair with Peter who is married to Rachel in Accounts. We can’t keep that stuff in a database but we ain’t going to forget it either.

You are a Protocologist

Prospect researchers are above all people of systems. Now is the time to ensure that our systems work… for everyone. Time to review protocols and policies to make sure that they are clear to all of our stakeholders, donors included. We can be proud of our protocols because now – in the difficult moments – is when they really will make a difference, for the good.

Just About Managing

This is a new more challenging fundraising environment. It is a time for critical decisions by management, for the creation of new strategies and new models. Those big decisions have one basic need – information. Who is best placed in the organisation to uncover, analyse and transmit that information?

Yes, the prospect researcher.

Ethical Thinking

Prospect research has always been a place for ethical debate. We have to live in the grey, foggy frontier between the donor and our organisation, a place where personal values, organisational values and sometimes the law can easily be lost. That’s why we have codes of practice, and full, frank debate in our online forums and meetings. We are decent honest people doing good and we are right to question our ethics all of the time. We can apply this careful, thoughtful process of developing ethics to help our colleagues.

Data Guardian

Data rules are probably the slipperiest part of our job. They are not evolving as fast as the Internet, and so the net is full of contradictions. Prospect researchers have a clear guardian duty on behalf of the donors and supporters whose data we hold. Now, when the use of data is being questioned (ironically, by a media that survives by selling personal data…) the steady hand of the prospect research guardian is more vital than ever.

Risk and Reputation Savers

These media and Westminster attacks on our sector represent a risk. Adrian Sargeant, in a paper published this month[1], quantifies that as £2 billion in lost income by 2020. Charity reputations are on the line. These themes of risk and reputation are central to prospect research. We know how to do reputational research. We measure risk whenever we assess a prospect. Now we have to apply those skills to help our own organisations to reduce risk and safeguard reputation.

And Research, Of Course

In these shifting sands – it is not at all clear that there is a policy behind any of these rushed reforms – your colleagues need your research skills more than ever. Not to write another profile – although that as well – but to track what is happening in the sector, in the media, and in the Government so that your organisations can be ahead of the curve. Or at least ahead of the Mail.

In the end this summer’s discontent with fundraising is about trust, as is so much in our non-profit sector. We prospect researchers can rebuild trust one donor at a time by explaining our systems and our methods with honesty and transparency. In the end that transparency and honesty will win over the sensationalism of the press and the knee-jerk tabloid policies of Westminster. Remember that according to Mori[2] research only one person in five trusts a journalist to tell the truth and just one in six trust a politician.

Prospect researchers are central in rebuilding trust in non-profits. We are a central link in the chain between a donor who wants to do good and a beneficiary who needs that help. We’ve got a job to do. Let’s do it.

[This blog is based on the talk I gave, 23rd November 2015, to the Researchers in Fundraising annual conference. My presentation is at http://prezi.com/b78cxodq30it/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share ]

 

1. Fundraisers’ perceptions of fundraising regulation reform and the Fundraising Preference Service, Results of a survey conducted by the Plymouth Charity Lab, Prof Adrian Sargeant, Rogare/Plymouth University, Nov 2015.
2. Ipsos Mori, Trust in the Professions, 2015.

Philanthropy in the Gulf – Reporting from Takaful 2015

I am at Takaful 2015 in Abu Dhabi, the conference on philanthropy organised annually by the Gerhart Center, American University of Cairo. It is a fascinating insight into how philanthropy functions in societies in transition – a single frame in a long movie whose end we cannot see.

The big theme on day one of the conference was youth. Defined here as anyone under 35, youth were the focus of the keynote speech by Sheika Al Zain Al Sabah, the head of the Ministry of Youth Affairs in Kuwait. She described how the ministry is working as a lightning conductor for the views of young people in the country. It was the educated younger people of these societies in transition who led the demonstrations and protests of the Arab Spring, and Kuwait has responded by creating a Government department, led by a young member of the Royal Family, to channel their views into policy. Young people were also the focus of a presentation by Lina Hourani, Director of CSR at Al Ahly Group (http://www.csralahligroup.com/), who run 10 day training courses for young social entrepreneurs – next year they run the course at the University of Bristol.

Venture philanthropy is present in the region, and Khulood El Nawas, Chief Officer for Sustainability, Emirates Foundation (http://www.emiratesfoundation.ae/EF/en/about-us/vision-mission) described their four-stage Incubate – Pilot – Scale – Spinoff model for developing programmes. The big gap for them and other speakers was the lack of data – baseline data on young people was absent or unreliable, so measuring impact was difficult or impossible.

The traditional forms of giving are evolving rapidly in these societies, and Omar Bortolazzi of the University of Bologna (https://www.unibo.it/sitoweb/omar.bortolazzi2/cv-en) described the ways in which awqaf (endowed foundations) are changing in Muslim countries in South East Asia, where donors can give through the internet to “e-waqf” set up for a variety of charitable purposes. Dr Youcef Benyza from the University of Batna, Algeria (http://www.univ-batna.dz/index.php/en/) tackled the governance of Zakat funds. Zakat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZakaT), the third pillar of Islam, is a form of religious giving based on income and assets such as savings that are not being circulated. In Algeria each mosque collects zakat and passes the money up to a regional zakat office, who report to a government sponsored zakat agency. The process lacks transparency (there is no auditing, and no public reporting) and as a consequence there are regular newspaper reports of corruption in the system. But there is also strong resistance to reform because the funds are regarded as sacred and thus outwith the realm of government or auditors.

I ran a workshop on building partnerships with philanthropic foundations, where we talked about some of the barriers in the region to partnering with outside agencies. In some parts of the region there is suspicion of external funding partners (from Europe or the USA) and there is also a strong sense that regional nonprofits should be raising funds in their own countries, not depending on outsiders. There are legal constraints too – sometimes not clearly defined – that make it hard for organisations here to accept financial support from external partners. But there is a real interest in sharing expertise and knowledge, so we focused on building partnerships at the technician (specialist, expert) level; nonprofits here have developed clever ways of dealing with social problems, and I am looking forward to hearing today (Thursday) about the Wataneya Society for the Development of Orphans (https://www.linkedin.com/company/wataneya-society), who developed a quality standards scheme as a way of improving the conditions for the thousands of children in Egyptian orphanages.

Safe Harbour in a Storm

On Wednesday it was headline news in Luxembourg where I was working with clients: the European Court of Justice had struck down the Safe Harbor agreement. Max Schrems had won a battle with Facebook and the Irish data protection authorities.

The court ruling that European Commission Decision 2000/520 is invalid means that we can no longer share data easily with US colleagues: Texting your New York colleague with your UK donor’s data of birth just became illegal.

There have always been two routes to data transfer from the EU to the USA: Safe Harbor, and the use of a model contract. The latter route is still open, according to the lawyers; there are useful posts on the ruling and its implications from Norton Rose here and from Clifford Chance here.

So how will this affect prospect research, fundraising and philanthropy?

First, it underlines the relevance of employing prospect researchers. Increasingly, prospect researchers are the custodians of personal data relating to potential and actual supporters. We act as the interface between fundraisers who want to know everything about everybody and the law which restricts what we can record and what we can share. Especially, what we can share with colleagues outside the EU.

Second, it reminds us that personal data is personal. There is an increasingly uncertain frontier between what is public and what is private as social media carries more and more of our donor’s lives. At Factary we have long had concerns about the material that people post in their Facebook pages, and have excluded it from profiles as a general policy. All of us in prospect research should continue to review and re-review our protocols to ensure that we are up-to-the-minute in data protection.

Third, it will mean some hard work over the coming weeks for organisations (universities, arts and culture, NGOs…) with sisters outside the EU (for example, your “Friends of” organisation in Washington DC) to revise or renew agreements that allow data transfer.

Fourth, it means UK suppliers such as Factary should review their data processes to ensure that all of their data is held inside the EU. At Factary we did this some time ago, and yes, all our data and servers are inside the EU.

Finally, this will be especially difficult time for fundraising and philanthropy. Increasingly philanthropists are international – a home here, a business there, and a foundation somewhere else. To work with a donor who lives in Paris but works out of New York we need to be able to share data quickly and effectively with our team. Our philanthropists (major donors, strategic donors) want us to react quickly and to provide coordinated, joined-up service. That is going to be a delicate, difficult job following this ruling.

The closure of Safe Harbor means choppy seas for all of us.

Trust Women

Why so few women in UK foundations?

We’ve analysed all of the newly created grant-making trusts (foundations) registered in England and Wales since 2005 – a data set of 2,312 new grant-makers. Our findings are in a new Factary report, ‘Trust Women’, available for download here.

Key Findings:

  • Boards are not balanced – on average there is just one woman per board across all of these trusts.
  • Almost one third (29.7%) had all-men boards when they were registered.
  • Just one trust in five has women in the majority on boards.
  • And we found some evidence that trusts with women in the majority were poorer at start-up than those with men-majority boards.

Our report is based on Factary’s New Trust Update dataset (http://factary.com/what-we-do/new-trust-update/ ).

To find out more about this data, contact research@factary.com

Download ‘Trust Women’ here.

Milan x 2

I have been to Milan twice this month. This is not just because I am a lover of Italy’s food, fashion and people (I am) but because both the Festival del Fundraising and the European Foundation Centre Conference were held in, or near, Milan.

This was like a Barcelona-Real Madrid match, with each team playing solo, two weeks apart. Two of the most significant stakeholder groups in the non-profit sector, the fundraisers and the philanthropists, each with their own view of how to change the world.

Amongst the differences there were common themes. Both sectors are growing. This year’s Festival del Fundraising was the largest ever, and the EFC Conference was a sell-out too. The rate of foundation growth is astonishing – two new German foundations are created each day, and we know from Factary’s New Trust Update that 214 new grant-makers were registered in 2014 in the UK. The same growth story emerged at EFC from all over Europe.

Both foundations and fundraisers are becoming more professional. Foundation staff are training at centres such as the Erasmus Centre for Strategic Philanthropy, while fundraisers are going to back to school at universities across the continent, including Italy’s University of Bologna, and the course I teach on, the Postgraduate Certificate in Fundraising at the University of Barcelona.

While both teams are training, there is a remarkable demographic similarity between them. Women lead both teams. The population at the Festival, and at EFC reflected this, whether we were talking about the all-women fundraising team at Save the Children in Rome or the Chair and key staff of Turkey’s Vehbi Koç Foundation. The future of our increasingly interconnected sector will be shaped by women.

Both conferences dealt with social change, in slightly different ways. At the Festival we heard about social change brought about by donations through non-profits. At the EFC we heard about social change through collaboration. Yes, collaboration. Not grant-making, or at least not centrally grant-making. An excellent workshop led by Nicky McIntyre of Mama Cash showed how Oak Foundation was focusing on changing the situation of women by collaborating with companies. Katharina Samara-Wickram from Oak Foundation described the organisation’s evolving Theory of Change. The foundation had initially focused all its women’s rights efforts on women’s rights organisations. But it had also commissioned research, from AWID amongst others, and had discovered that it might get more rights for its dollar (or Swiss Franc) if it instead worked on the millions of companies employing hundreds of millions of women around the globe. As a result Oak has developed an 8-point Business Case for women’s rights aimed at employers and using them as the vehicle for winning rights for women. This was one example amongst many of collaborations between foundations, NGOs and business to effect change in society.

I discussed this with a team from a leading UN organisation. The implications for fundraising are important, with the role of the fundraiser changing from being simply a grant-chaser to becoming the central relationship point for a complex web linking her own organisation with foundations, companies and other stakeholder groups.

The significant divergence between the two conferences came when we talked about investment. Fundraising team leaders in Italy complained about a lack of investment. Salaries in the sector are still modest and few organisations are willing to take the brave step of dramatically increasing investment in fundraising. By contrast the foundation sector spent a lot of time on investment, and appears to be ready to take on risk, so long as it has a social end. Thus the Italian majors, Fondazione Cariplo and Fondazione CRT both have programmes for investing their endowment in activities with a social as well as a financial purpose. There was some talk of divestment – with foundations encouraged to divest from the fossil fuel industry. But the bigger theme was Mission Related Investment. This was talked about across the EFC conference, with foundations making substantial investments in the social housing sector, and as venture philanthropy in social enterprises. Mission Related Investment opens up a substantial new line of funding for social purpose organisations – another challenge for traditional fundraising teams in Europe.

With only a little hindsight, both conferences felt like a revolution. Just ten years ago the Italian fundraising sector was tiny – a handful of visionaries in a few risk-ready organisations. At that time most European foundations were a closed shop – few published an annual report or had a website or could be induced to talk about their work. Their boards and management were older and dominated by men. Since then we have had a wave of transparency legislation running across Europe accompanied by a push for the same by the EFC itself – so now we can see what’s happening in foundations in Switzerland, the Netherlands and Spain (ironically, Italy remains somewhere behind the pack on transparency.) The feeling that a revolution is taking place in the sector ran through both conferences.

It is great to be living in revolutionary times.