A Pub Bore at the Movies

This is the time of year when it’s a challenge to fit in all the great movies which come out to line up with the awards season. I have therefore been given permission to divert from my main themes in this posting, in order to chunter about what I've seen recently. This isn't Peter Bradshaw, btw; no, this is the cyber-equivalent of the bore in the corner of the pub who just needs to tell you what he’s been up to recently.

First, Frost/Nixon, which we saw followed by a live Q&A by satellite (well, you can’t expect these busy people to come all the way to York, for heaven’s sake) with the writer, Peter Morgan, and Michael Sheen, who features in a lead role in most of Morgan’s oeuvre (irrelevant fact: Sheen's dad is a semi-professional Jack Nicholson lookalike). I haven’t seen the play, and someone who’s seen and liked both tells me that there is some good stuff in the play which isn't in the film – nevertheless, when, in the film, Frost asks Nixon “And the American people?”, you sit there waiting for Nixon to acknowledge the extent of his crime in one of the most tense silences I’ve known in the cinema. The film reignites an old debate about the permissible limits of fiction in the context of historical events – one of the key episodes in the film never happened. It took a question from an audience member to elicit this from Peter Morgan – which emphasised the foolishness of the interlocutor, Jason Solomons, an Observer film critic, in dominating the questions himself and only allowing a few minutes for the ordinary punters to have a go. Oh, I almost forgot - Peter Morgan dropped in the slightly amusing fact that the Broadway production of the play was called 'Nixon/Frost', because no-one in the US can recall who Frost was.

To Slumdog Millionaire: it’s very violent in parts, and has a visual scatological bit near the beginning which had the whole audience groaning out loud - definitely one to see with a crowd in the cinema. I gather that some in the Indian film business don't like the film, because unlike the generality of Bollywood films, it doesn’t try to sanitise the reality of life on the streets in Mumbai. Nevertheless, there’s a wonderful Bollywood ending over the titles – someone sitting in front of me tried to get up as soon as the first title appeared; he sat down again very quickly.

If you go to see Slumdog having read on the side of a London bus (those that aren’t advising you of the probable non-existence of an omnipotent deity, that is) that it’s a ‘feel good movie’, you may be in for a shock. Particularly if – like me - the last feel good movie you saw was Mamma Mia. Slumdog is to Mamma Mia as a bike is to a Rolls Royce. Both will get you there, and leave you pleased at having accomplished the journey. But you will feel much more battered by the elements at the end of the bike journey, yet also more profoundly satisfied at your achievement. They also have something in common – both stories are ludicrously improbable, but I doubt that anyone who sees them will care about that. The songs are better in Mamma Mia, even if they have to be shoe horned uncomfortably into the story (and if those takes were the best they could get from Piers Brosnan by way of a singing voice, then can we please be spared the ones on the cutting room floor, if they have such things in this digital age?). My daughter gave us the Mamma Mia DVD for Xmas, knowing that her mother had much enjoyed it on a girly trip to the cinema. This meant that I could watch it in the privacy of our home. (I am a devoted Abba fan. If the original recordings pall after a bit, try mezzo soprano Ann Sofie von Otter singing Like an Angel Passing Through My Room. Have a Kleenex to hand).

Films are much more fun than philanthropy; discuss.

Getting, Giving and Golf

On Christmas Eve, Nicholas Kristoff, in a New York Times article called The Sin in Doing Good Deeds, asked the question: If a businessman rakes in a hefty profit while doing good works, is that charity or greed? The season has also been enlivened – for those of us fortunate enough not to have been victims – by Mr Madoff whose name and swindle (as many have pointed out) are straight out of Dickens. It’s interesting, and sad, that so many charities lost money with Madoff. Ed Pilkington points out in a Guardian piece called Tales from the country club that the Palm Beach Country Club was at the heart of Madoff’s social and business circle. As Pilkington writes: anyone wishing to join has to prove they are not only persons of huge wealth but also of upstanding character - they must demonstrate that they give away hundreds of thousands of dollars each year as charity. In return, they gain entry to a social circle that can help them further enhance their fortune. Madoff, he says, was the epitome of the moneymaker/money-giver, as he not only coined wealth for himself and others, he was also a major philanthropist. It’s surely no coincidence that one of those who lost money with Madoff was Arpad Busson who, as both readers of this blog may recall is the same person whose charity, Absolute Return for Kids, benefited from a fundraising dinner (at which guests were entertained by Prince) which raised over £26 million. Pilkington has neatly summarised the process through which this kind of charity simply serves to reinforce the situations which give rise to the need for charity in the first place. It is regrettable that some very worthwhile charities have been caught in the Madoff backwash (and a good thing that Atlantic Philanthropies is coming to their rescue, in part at least) but those of us who have been deeply suspicious of this kind of conspicuous giving/acquiring can surely, as the New Year dawns, allow ourselves some comforting schadenfreude.

Free to Serve

[This blog has been bit silent recently. Lots of reasons: pressure of other stuff; not being able to see the philanthropic wood for the trees; some self-doubt – does anybody actually read this? Am I talking to myself? And, finally, I can’t decide how much latitude to give myself by way of subject matter. Any guidance on any/all of this will be welcomed]. Enough angst; to business.

It’s time for a public inquiry into the role and purpose of endowed grant making trusts. There – I’ve said it, and feel better for having done so.

While everybody's been going on about the importance of charities and public benefit, the focus has been on organisations which appear to serve the interests of the privileged and yet receive the tax benefits of charitable status (the obvious example being the laughingly named ‘public’ schools). As I’ve written here before, the absence of any specific regulatory regime which focuses on the trusts means that they are regulated just like any other charity. Despite the fact that they don't raise money from the public, the law treats them as if they did – and its main concern is that the public aren't ripped off. The main purpose of the foundations is to give money away, but in practice, the only interest the law has in how this is done is that the money is spent on things which are legally charitable. We need at the very least a public debate about the role of foundations. In these cash-strapped times we need to decide why exactly we give them tax privileges -- why we agree, as a body politic, that you and I should play a little more tax in order that they should pay none, on their income at least.

Let's have a heated debate. Why hasn't there been one already? The reason for that, I think, is clear. Almost any non-statutory organisation with a capacity to initiate such a debate is likely to be in part dependent on income from trust grants. It takes courage to start something which might look as if you are biting the hand which fees you, or might feed you in the future. The organisation which could initiate such a debate and could announce that is going to look at endowed grant-making foundations as a special category, is of course the Charity Commission. While it would be nice to think that the foundations themselves might initiate such a debate, perhaps through the Association of Charitable Foundations, I am sceptical about whether this would ever happen, however, not because ACF isn't an excellent body (it is, albeit with a small percentage of the 8000-odd UK foundations in membership), but because - with notable exceptions - foundations have demonstrated a lamentable inability to work together on anything. That's one of the issues that such a public debate might explore -- to what extent it is still appropriate for the intentions of founders long dead to be used as an excuse for determinately ploughing one's own furrow despite the changing scale and nature of social problems?

How might the debate start? I think it needs a focus -- a commission of inquiry would be a good start, made up of people of independent mind, some with knowledge of the foundation sector and perhaps some without it but with the capability of gaining it quickly. And, yes, I would be free to serve, even if it means yet fewer posts to this blog.

Jeremy Hardy was wrong

Morning-after ruminations. On this bright new day, it’s interesting to note just how close some of the US foundations have been to the whole process. Two of them - the Annenberg Foundation and the Joyce Foundation – got caught up in the McCarthyite smears which Republicans used to try and damage Obama. And now that they’ve failed, foundation people are amongst those likely to find places in the new administration. My friend Colin Greer, director of the New World Foundation, gave what turns out to be quite a prescient interview to Open Democracy in December 2004, just after Kerry had lost, on how the Democrats could win. The interest which US foundations have shown in politics, social justice and related issues is in stark contrast with the situation here, even allowing for the difference in scale. Why do UK foundations find it so difficult to work together, to respond to crises, to focus on matters with a political dimension? The formation of the Woburn Place Collaborative is a potentially significant step forward, and those of its meetings that I’ve been privileged to attend have been positive and constructive occasions. But then you come to action – to actually doing stuff, launching programmes, making smart interventions - that’s where it all seems to go pear-shaped. So much so, that I now honestly believe that the most significant crisis facing humankind, with profound implications for social justice, will, so far as actual work goes, be largely unacknowledged by even some of the most progressive UK foundations. There are honourable exceptions, of course, including some here in my home city of Old York, but by and large UK foundations are hoping that climate change will go away, while they bury their heads under the duvet. Meanwhile mine (head, not duvet) is aching from banging it against a brick wall (see Stepping up the Stairs, Responding to the Rooftops).

But, hey, nobody likes a whinger at a time like this. Maybe the truly amazing events of this week will inspire UK foundations in ways as yet unimagined - it may take a little time. As for me, I'm still finding it difficult to adjust to the reality of President-Elect Obama; ever since - just after the first UK bank collapse - Jeremy Hardy asked the News Quiz audience "Listen - if there's anyone out there who seriously thinks the USA will elect a black man to the presidency, I'd like to meet you, as I've got some Northern Rock shares I'd like to sell you...", I've convinced myself that it couldn't happen (a conviction aided by the man from Pittsburgh with whom I had breakfast - see earlier post). And, astonishingly, unbelievably, wonderfully, it has.

Irritating my Ingratus

I hesitate – seriously – to go for full frontal criticism of a fellow labourer in the philanthropic vineyard. After all, I’m a nice person. OK, I’m not a nice person, but at least I try. Well, OK, I try most of the time but make exceptions, such as Sarah Palin (but then I gather she doesn’t have a good word to say about me either). But Martin Brookes, Chief Executive of New Philanthropy Capital, has touched my nastynerve (or, as I believe medics call it, the ingratus. Incidentally, I don't advise googling 'Latin' and 'nasty' - it brings up lots of links to 'Latin ladies' who are apparently keen to do nasty things...). Anyway, in an article in the Autumn 2008 edition of New Philanthropy Capital’s quarterly magazine, Giving Insights, Martin Brookes attacks Polly Toynbee (which in my book is a punishable offence anyway) and David Walker for their criticism of philanthropy, in their book, Unjust Rewards. I hasten to add that I haven’t read the book, but I have read the extract from it which appeared in the Guardian on 4th August. In it, St. Polly and Mr Walker take issue with vast gifts from wealthy individuals which are used, in effect, to ‘buy’ both social position and influence over social policy. They are especially sniffy about philanthropy which comes with conspicuous consumption as part of the process – citing, for example, the way in which Arpad Busson generates cash for his charity, Absolute Return for Kids, which raises money for academy schools. They mention specifically a fundraising dinner which raised over £26 million, at which guests were entertained by Prince, and items auctioned – by the deputy chair of Sothebys no less - included a day on the set of the latest Bond movie and dinner with Mikhail Gorbachev. Criticising this sort of thing, according to Mr Brookes, will only discourage future givers. And, he concludes, it will be the poor and disadvantaged who will suffer.

Aaaargh! This is so screamingly wrong that I don't know where to begin. Calm down, Steven, take a deep breath. OK; people are poor because of a social and economic system which allows some people to be disgustingly rich. Charity from such people helps some of those poor people to change their circumstances a bit (though whether academy schools have that effect is to say the least debatable) but does nothing to change the system which gave rise to their need for charity in the first place. Money-raising which happens through such bloated and tasteless methods – I mean, Prince! - serves to remind everyone involved that some people are rich, and some are poor. Martin Brookes gives a nod in the direction of social justice by stating that ‘Philanthropy is not an excuse for inequality or unfair taxes’ (my emphasis); he’s right – philanthropy of the kind criticised by Toynbee and Walker reinforces inequality. And I don't see why we should shut up about it in case it scares the poor dears off giving any more -as Martin Brookes would apparently wish us to do. When Arpad Busson spends big bucks on arguing for a more progressive taxation system, then he will have my respect. NPC says that among other things, it’s concerned about ‘understanding the root causes of societal problems’. Based on Martin Brookes’ article, it seems to be more concerned about the flow of philanthropic money, regardless of how it’s raised, and regardless of what effect it has on social injustice. Like everything in this little sub-region of the blogosphere, this thought is startlingly unoriginal; to quote Joseph Rowntree, yet again: Charity as ordinarily practised, the charity of endowment, the charity of emotion, the charity which takes the place of justice, creates much of the misery which it relieves, but does not relieve all the misery it creates.

Now, nurse, please take me to a darkened room. I need to lie down.

Obama in airport cash shock.

At last - a philanthropy angle on the US elections. It's here. I just wish I had a vote.

Is this research centre about charity or justice?

A new research centre was launched this week. I couldn’t be at the launch but that’s not because I don’t think it matters. Because this is what’s officially described as ‘The UK's first independent, multidisciplinary and academically-based Centre for Charitable Giving and Philanthropy’, and it – or at least its funding- has a curious history. Government and/or the ESRC was always going to launch such a centre (at the same time as launching a separate centre with a focus on the Third Sector). But then, in 2005, Alison Harker and I wrote a report for the Carnegie UK Trust called Stepping Up the Stairs, (SUTS for short) about social justice philanthropy. Amongst our proposals was the idea of.... yes, you clever things you, you guessed ... a research centre. The then director of Carnegie, Charlie McConnell, saw an opportunity and went for it, persuading his trustees to offer funding, and seeing the resulting centre as a quick way of meeting the SUTS proposal. The centre has three spokes, and the second spoke, labelled as ‘charitable giving and social distribution’ at least seems relevant. So, as the new centre gets going, I wish it well, but I also hope that spoke two doesn’t get lost or captured. Because the fundraisers – those who care more about increasing the amount of money raised for charitable purposes than how it’s spent – have a way of making their voices heard. But they have their vehicles already – for example, the Institute for Philanthropy has done some impressive work providing support, encouragement, training and research to underpin giving and to get more of it. There is – till now – no research centre asking the difficult question: what good is philanthropic money doing? To what extent is it changing society for the better? How far is it contributing to greater social justice, and how far is it perpetuating social injustice? - recalling the words of Joseph Rowntree who wrote, when he was only in his 30’s, that 'Charity as ordinarily practised, the charity of endowment, the charity of emotion, the charity which takes the place of justice, creates much of the misery which it relieves, but does not relieve all the misery it creates'.

"Give me land - lots of land - under starry skies above..."

Almost every speaker in every conference session I went to in Melbourne (see previous posting) began by a ‘welcome to country’ message, paying respect to the original owners of the land, in this case the Wurundjeri people. This made me feel quite uncomfortable (incidentally, my discomfort rating went off the scale at this exhibition - as doubtless it was meant to); it was one thing to hear it said once or twice, but when it’s said by everyone, it begins to lose meaning and to become a bit ritualistic. And maybe a substitute for giving back the land, which clearly isn't going to happen anytime soon . I asked an Australian friend about the 'paying respect' thing– she explained that they did it because representatives of the Wurundjeri people had asked them to. So I suppose that makes it OK. I got away without doing it because I’d have felt a fraud – instead I apologised for not doing it, explaining, truthfully, that as an overseas visitor I felt I needed to understand more. But it set me thinking about the social justice issue in relation to land in the UK. We have no aboriginal people – Robert Winder’s excellent book, Bloody Foreigners (not recommended for reading on trains near Daily Mail readers as they may not appreciate the irony) shows how few of us Brits are anything other than foreigners, depending on how far back you go (not very, in my case, I’m proud to say). The Land Registry is currently trying to identify who owns our land – and 40% of it is unregistered. Clearly, quite a lot of it is owned by various dukes and churches, who came by it in questionable ways. But I don't hear much from social justice advocates in the UK about land ownership. Perhaps if we all owned a fairer share of the land, we’d be happier people, or perhaps not. One of my fellow speakers would have a view – he was Karma Tshiteem, Secretary of the Gross National Happiness Commission of Bhutan. Bhutan, much of whose population lives at World Bank poverty level, measures GNH on seven 'wellness' criteria - Economic; Environmental; Physical; Mental; Workplace; Social; and Political. It’s also the only country in the world to have banned the sale of tobacco, so it’s not the place to go looking for Ken Clarke or David Hockney. Karma seemed a very happy fellow himself, and it made me happy that the local media were only interested in him so he had to do the early morning news programmes – so I sat in bed at 7.30 drinking my morning tea and watching him ‘live’ (on all previous visits to Aus I've been asked, in their phrase, to ‘do media’ which has usually meant a visit to an otherwise deserted radio station early in the morning or long after my cocoa and slippers time.). It (Bhutan, in case I’ve lost you) is a democracy whose monarch set an age limit for monarchs, and abdicated in favour of his much younger son. I can’t remember the age, but I think it would probably mean that we would have neither Betty nor Chuck enthroned. And that would make me happy too.

Back to Telegrams and Anger

OK, that's summer done with; after all that lazing in the sun over Pimms, it's back to telegrams and anger. In my absence from this space, I've completed a report on the social justice consequences of global climate change and how British foundations might respond. You can download it here. I've also done my bit for climate change by flying to Australia to speak at a conference on mental health; not, as I made clear in advance to the organisers, that this is my field, but they had a philanthropy bit to which I contributed. The papers will doubtless be online in the fullness of time. This brief entry is just to get going after the break - a ''proper' entry will follow when I get a) round to it, and b) over the cold I picked up in the metal tube in which I resided for 21 hours last weekend...

Making History

I've just been at a meeting of the International Human Rights Funders Group in a hot and sticky New York. My job there was to speak about the challenges of evaluating human rights projects, based on work I’ve done in the past year or two evaluating projects funded by the Atlantic Philanthropies. It's clear that US funders have 'got' the notion that evaluation should be about learning, and not zero-sum success/failure judgements, though the issue of just when a funder is justified in withdrawing funding is still left hanging. However, recent experiences at the hand of evaluators, rather than as one, have left me pondering their responsibilities, and those of the funders who hire them, as historians. I can’t recall who said that 'journalism is the first rough draft of history'; but for social change projects funded by trusts, evaluators may be the first drafters. And if it matters at all to those that come after us, then they had better get it right. To do that, they need good evidence which tells the story as it was perceived at the time. (I recall a fellow student in the Law Department at Manchester in the 60s trying to sell his old legal history book. We were always told that it was dangerous to buy anything but the latest edition of all our textbooks - probably just a racket to keep academics in royalties - but he got round this by advertising it as 'old edition but more valuable since written nearer the time of the events').

Rather like those novels which have the same episode described from different perspectives (this is a great example) peoples' perceptions of how change came about can vary enormously. I have very sharp memories of an organisation set up around 1990/91 and am clear – had thought I was clear - about how it began. Till the evaluator rang, and told me how she thought, or had been told, it began. Which was totally different from what I believed (and actually still believe). And I was there at the time! Can my memory really be so dodgy? (rhetorical question; no hurtful comments needed). I'm sure that there are PhDs about this kind of issue, but for the moment, at a more prosaic level, it seems to me to highlight the need for funders to keep good records, not just with an eye to the auditors and the Charity Commission, but with an eye to history.

So: here's my idea – every organisation, including of course grant-making trusts, should appoint someone on its staff to be its history champion. This should be an enthusiast – someone who cares about history. They would, as it were, be licensed to ask awkward questions about what's being kept where, whether records are clear enough for future generations to understand what really happened, whether a story has been told and captured. As evaluators will tell you, just keeping minutes of meetings isn't much help; you need to be able to see the wood (the full story) rather than the trees (the minutes). I can hear both readers of this blog yelling at their screens – hasn't he heard of knowledge management? (and I must say, mother, that I'm surprised you have). Well, yes, I have, actually; but this isn't about managing knowledge for contemporary use; it’s about making sure that posterity has a fair chance of finding out what really happened.

And I know I'm right about that project, so there.

[This blog will now be doing whatever blogs do when they go on holiday. But there's an even better one to keep you entertained in the meanwhile, which you can find here. I will resume in the autumn unless I get a lot of encouragement/bribes not to.]

A Breakfast Encounter

I had breakfast with a man from Pittsburgh the other day. Actually he was from a small town just outside Pittsburgh. And while we were having breakfast, at a very pleasant B&B in a town called Harper's Ferry 66 miles outside Washington DC, he told us (I was with my wife and son) that "we don't have any blacks in our town -- that's a good thing of course". Avoiding a collective choke on our freshly baked blueberry muffins, (oh, yes - on this blog you get recipes), one of us - not me - batted this away with "well, different people have different views". Reflecting on it afterwards, it occurred to me that what was worrying about the episode was not just that he held the views he did -- of course many people in the USA and probably in the UK hold those views -- but that he felt quite able to share them with complete strangers. As someone who is rooting for Obama, it was a reality check. Will Americans really elect a black man to the highest office in the land? And if they do, how will my breakfast friend react?

For social justice philanthropoids, this kind of thing reminds us of the importance of attitudes, and of what becomes respectable in polite society. I'm not sure whether somewhere in the universities there are bright people who understand how these things change and change for good. When I studied law at Manchester University in the late 1960s, my most inspiring teacher was the late Harry Street (sadly no easily findable link to him - he wrote the first edition of a seminal book called 'Freedom the Individual and the Law', still published but in a new edition by Geoffrey Robertson) who at that time was working with a young lawyer called Geoffrey Howe (wonder if he ever made anything of himself...?) on the UK's second Race Relations Act. Harry believed in the power of legislation to shape expressed attitudes, if only because generally people want to be law-abiding. Given, he said, that legislation had made racism respectable in South Africa, why should it not make it disrespectable in the UK? I have always thought that time has proven him right in the UK (with other 'isms' as well) but I’m not sure about the USA.

There are some ironies here - Harper’s Ferry is the site of an 1859 raid by John Brown on an armoury, in order to use the weapons to liberate slaves (he was caught and hanged in neighbouring Charles Town, which is why his body lies a moulderin’ etc, though I guess it would be by now anyway). And it’s the USA which may be about to elect a black head of state and chief executive; no sign of anyone non-Caucasian anywhere near the monarchy or number 10 yet. As so often with this blog, I’m not sure where this rumination takes me, except I do wish we’d spend more time understanding how attitudes change, at least to the extent that people don’t feel it’s OK to say prejudiced things to complete strangers over breakfast.

Pay Them

There will be great celebration in the land to mark the publication of the new version of CC11. (No one reading this blog will need telling that this is the Charity Commission for England and Wales’ guidance on trustee expenses and payments, so I won’t mention that). Front pages the world over will be held. But enough! Enough cynicism. This matters. For grant making trusts, it matters in social justice terms. CC11 bangs on about voluntary trusteeship being a ‘defining characteristic’ of the voluntary sector; well maybe, as it now seems to be OK to pay charity bosses whatever the market rate is, though what this market is, given the vast range of fields of activity covered by the sector, is never really explained. But that truism shouldn’t be used to avoid facing up to the real issue; why should the power of spending other people’s money in order to tackle social injustice be overwhelmingly vested with those who have no firsthand experience of that injustice? However busy we get training people to be trustees or grant makers or whatever, we can’t train people to experience social exclusion – surely one of the best qualifications for making grants to tackle it. And – shock horror – poor people may need paying in order to be able to afford to be trustees. Isn’t it just a bit irritating that the whole debate about paying trustees has been conducted in terms of professionals - solicitors, accountants, estate agents (OK I know, but it’s a sunny day and I’m feeling magnanimous) - who want to charge for their time? So: here’s a suggestion – anyone in salaried or fee-paid professional employment should not be permitted to be paid as a trustee (yes, there’ll be problems identifying them, but we can find ways and if it quacks like a duck etc etc); whereas for those who are unemployed or on low wages or who have little control over the use of their own paid time, there is at least a presumption that it’s OK to pay them to share their valuable experience as part of a board of trustees. In this market at least, solicitors and accountants are two a penny; whereas those who understand from experience the problems facing socially excluded people are few and far between on grant making boards. So – let the logic of the market prevail. Pay them.

Nothing Better to Do?

What? Two postings in two days? Has the man nothing better to do? Fear not; just a brief note to point out an interesting (to UK philanthropoids anyway) article - the top story, in fact - in yesterday's New York Times, exploring the apparently growing challenges to the tax-exempt status of US charities, on a variety of grounds - for example, when is a nonprofit a business? does a nonprofit hospital give enough to charity care to earn its exemption? (cf the 'public benefit' test as now applied to fee-paying schools here in the UK) . You can read it here.

Soup

The New Yorker is a wonderful magazine -- the best. Anyone disagree with that? No, I thought not. Barely a week goes by without me being excited or moved or challenged by something in it. This week, it was all three, in a remarkable - and beautifully written - account of a church-based day centre for homeless people in Manhattan. Ian Frazier's stories of the writers’ workshop which is attached to a soup kitchen, the effect it has had on people and the changes it has brought about in their lives are truly impressive. The soup kitchen is clearly about more than soup.

But it is its funding which was the challenging bit. After all, the very phrase ‘soup kitchen’ symbolises everything that’s wrong about old-style philanthropy. My mentor in this world is (of course) Joseph Rowntree. In December 1904, he used the example of the York soup kitchen to explain why he wanted the trusts he was then setting up to focus on tackling the causes of problems rather than the symptoms. He wrote that ‘The Soup Kitchen in York never has difficulty in obtaining adequate financial aid, but an enquiry into the extent and causes of poverty would enlist little support’.

I’ve bought into that approach to philanthropy in a big way. I distinguish between individual heartfelt responses to need, and institutional foundation responses. It's one thing to dip into your pocket when somebody waves a tin outside Sainsbury's on a Saturday morning, or to write a cheque after you've been moved to tears by images of suffering on television. But it’s quite another when you have the opportunity to sit and reflect, to look at written applications, to deliberate on a committee; institutions don’t have tear ducts.

But that’s not how it looks from the other end of the process. Frazier, writing about the funding of the soup kitchen, says of the foundations -

… they are well-intentioned and generous but subject to moods. "Donor burnout" is one of those. Fashions in charitable giving also come and go. Recently, foundation charity has been more focused on "making a difference," an idea that works against the soup kitchen, which changes people from hungry to not, but invisibly. Also, foundation donors now like to talk about "measurable outcomes" -- they expect recipients like the soup kitchen to single out the people who are helped, and measure the improvement in those people situations over time. Again, that's not something the soup kitchen, with the off-the-street population it serves, can easily do. In the past 18 months, several major foundation donors have dropped out, and no replacements have been found.

It would be very interesting to have Frazier debate the issue openly with someone from one of those foundations. We (I’m not permanently associated with a foundation at present, but I feel part of the foundation community) ought to be willing to open these issues up for discussion, and the power relationship being what it is, if we don’t do it, no-one else will. I’m struck by how few opportunities there are for this kind of discussion – most UK foundations have websites, but very few use them in any bi-directional way; it’s all about ‘these are our policies, this is how to apply; take it or leave it, and we certainly don’t want to know what you out there think about us’. Frazier’s candour is unusual, and should make us think hard – not least about why we have to read this stuff in the New Yorker, as distinct from hearing it as part of our day-to-day business.

Another journey round the houses.

Someone wrote in response to the previous entry on this blog “Nice blog entry - a bit circuitous but vaut le voyage as they say in the Michelin guide (apparently)”. Well, stick with me because this voyage is also a bit circuitous…

One of the most interesting things about the London mayoralty election, other than the election of a larger-than-life upper-class racist homophobic liar, was the increased turnout, by comparison with other local elections in the UK. This is put down in part to the focus on two famous characters, but may also have something to do with the fact that that -- unlike other local elections in England -- the system of voting is not one based on "first past the post". Instead (as most will know, but a few won't, so please forgive me) the alternative vote system meant that if no candidate got more than 50% of the votes on the basis of first choices, then second choices for the bottom candidate were redistributed, until someone (in this case, the l-t-l,u-c, r.h.l.) got a majority. There’s a theological debate about whether this is proportional representation or not, but it does mean that your votes count even if your first choice candidate isn’t elected.

The problem with FPTP is that most people vote the same way in most elections, voting being to a large extent a tribal thing - “We’ve always been Labour here…”. Accordingly, most constituencies are ‘safe’ for one party or the other and for most people there doesn't seem much point in turning out on a cold wet Thursday night. The relatively small number of people classified as "the swing vote" tend to be those who spurn the real rubbishy tabloids and read what they regard as a ‘proper’ newspaper -- often the Daily Mail. And to a significant degree, the Mail is about prejudice -- prejudice against anyone who isn't like its interpretation of "us", be they poor, black, homosexual, foreign etc etc. Thus it is that if you want to win FTPT elections in England, you have to pander to an agenda based on prejudice and hate. Which is why foundations interested in social justice should also be interested in electoral systems.

The day after the third Thatcher victory, my old employers, the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, happened to be meeting and tearing their collective hair out over yet another kick in the teeth (Ed: isn't that a mixed metaphor? SB: don’t be an old pedant) for those who were poor and or otherwise socially excluded. One of our trustees, now retired, Grigor McClelland, proposed that the Trust should embark on what became a programme of funding to address what the trustees all saw as a democratic deficit. And while the JRCT couldn't and, I guess, wouldn't claim credit for all the constitutional reform which followed once the Labour government came to power in 1997 -- including systems of (possibly) proportional representation for elections in the UK other than local elections in England and Parliamentary elections -- the work that people did with Trust funding surely contributed to changing the climate, and establishing a dynamic of reform. Of course, as a charity we were limited legally by what we could support -- but to use that as an excuse for doing nothing would have been an unnecessary copout.

The turnout in London last week may have produced a result which many of us intensely dislike, but FPTP would have given Boris an even larger majority. In the long run, greater social justice demands that those who suffer injustice see it as being in their interest to vote for the political party most likely to improve their circumstances. And in a first past the post system, for much of the time there really isn't much reason for most people to vote. FPTP also creates disincentives for governments to address social injustice. Ipso facto - because this blog wears its minimal learning on its sleeve - when foundations work within charity law limits to support work to change the way we conduct our elections, they are working to promote social justice.

There! Nous sommes arrivés. Hope you enjoyed the journey. I certainly feel better.

Mike Leigh, Shakespeare, and - yes! - Philanthropy

In the past week or so it's been almost impossible to turn on the radio without hearing latest national treasure Mike Leigh speaking about his uncharacteristically optimistic new film, Happy-Go-Lucky. We saw it last week in a preview with a live Q&A with the director afterwards (only he was in London and we were in York and a satellite effected the link). But in all the fuss about the film I think something important has been missed.

We have been endlessly told that Poppy, on whom the film focuses (played by Sally Hawkins) is a model of positiveness and that we could all learn something from her. And while that might be true, she also makes it very difficult for anyone she encounters who doesn't want to share her relentless cheerfulness. When, early in the movie, she goes into a small bookshop and tries unsuccessfully to engage a staff member in conversation, I was reminded of Auden's ‘I have no gun but I can spit’. If she'd have gone up to the bookseller and playfully pinched his bottom, all right-thinking people would have agreed that she had trespassed into his personal space – but is personal space only physical? Don't we all have a right to some psychological personal space? If I want to be a miserable old git, don’t I have that right, so long as I don't impose my miserable old gitness intrusively on others? (message to my family: the question is rhetorical in this context).

The other key character in the film is a clearly damaged personality who works as a driving instructor. Poppy’s approach to life is as different to his as it is possible to be, and when the two approaches collide, it's he who comes off worst. I saw an interview with Sally Hawkins recently in which she spoke of the character she plays as "very sensitive". Oh no she isn't. If she was sensitive she wouldn't go around winding people up -- she would know when to shut up, and when not to impose her sunniness on someone else.

What, you will by now be asking, has this got to do with philanthropy or social justice? Well, there is a link, albeit a tenuous one. Before I spell it out, I want to say something about another experience last week -- we saw Northern Broadsides version of Romeo and Juliet (which would doubtless be advertised in the States as ‘William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet’) at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough on Saturday (after an excellent fish and chip supper at the Princess Café – that’s just to add colour, and has absolutely nothing to do with philanthropy).

The Friar, in his eagerness to help the young couple, and in his certainty that he knew what it was right to do for them, was the immediate architect of the ensuing tragedy. He, and Poppy, and many in the field of philanthropy -- there you are, I promised we’d get there -- seem to have a kind of unthinking confidence about what is good for others. Of course, sometimes they might be right -- but if they're wrong than the lesson of Happy-Go-Lucky and Romeo and Juliet (Mike Leigh, who I'm sure is an avid reader of this blog, will doubtless be delighted that the two works are written of in the same breath, so to speak) is that the consequences can be awful.

This, of course, is the importance of grant making for foundations. It's grant making, when done well, which ensures that foundations are listening to the people at the sharp end and if not to them directly, then to people who are close to them. Foundations interested in social justice need to be sure that they are pushing their resources in directions where they will do good and at least do no harm. That's one of the messages of Happy-Go-Lucky and Romeo and Juliet; it's just that Mike Leigh and Sally Hawkins haven't realised it yet - though Shakespeare, who realised all sorts of things centuries ahead of his time, probably did.

Giving with one hand...

When York author Fiona Shaw wrote her first novel, The Sweetest Thing – a love story set against the background of the chocolate factories in York at around the turn of the century (19^th to 20^th) – one of the reviews suggested that her plot was unrealistic, because it featured a Quaker chocolate manufacturer who was also a philanthropist, and who used industrial espionage. This, wrote the reviewer, would never happen. But Fiona (who is a trustee of the Rowntree Society, a small charity which I chair) had in part based the character on Joseph Rowntree. There is ample evidence to suggest that JR did indeed use industrial espionage to keep Rowntree’s ahead of the game in cocoa and sweet manufacturing; and of course his record as a philanthropist, progressive employer and Quaker needs no elucidation to readers of this blog.

What, you will be wondering, has brought this on? Well, the other day at the Royal Academy From Russia exhibition, I was gazing at the wonderful picture of Tolstoy, and the voice in my headphones pointed out that he too was a bundle of contradictions – dressing like a peasant during the day and being waited on by servants in the evening, promoting the benefits of celibacy while…oh, you can imagine the next bit.

And of course the same applies to many of the great philanthropists. I got into a bit of trouble (see foot of 1st column on 13th page) a year or two back when, speaking about Andrew Carnegie at an event organised by the Carnegie UK Trust, I hinted that Carnegie had been a brutal employer. The same is true for that great philanthropist of the art world, Henry Clay Frick, who, acting on instructions from Carnegie, had his Pinkerton guards shoot strikers dead (I have a small interest in Frick – the man who tried and failed to murder him, Alexander Berkman, may just have been an ancestor).

Does it matter, when they give with one hand and take with the other? We all have inconsistencies in our lives; we present a face to the world which may not be exactly the one we present to those closest to us, or the one we see in the mirror in the morning. But, yes, I think inconsistencies on this scale do matter, and are at least worthy of critical appraisal. I don’t feel that Joseph Rowntree did much harm by his use of industrial espionage, and the good he did is in no way undermined by it; he might have argued that he was only enabled to do what he did by ensuring the commercial success to which the espionage contributed. But I’m not at all happy to wander round the magnificent Frick Collection near Central Park without recollecting how it came to be there. You (well, I, anyway) can’t just gloss over a conflict in character as sharp as that between a killer, and a collector and donor of great art.

Of course, Frick is an extreme example. But perhaps a little more critical scrutiny would be in order when the next contemporary billionaire businessman is feted because of his decision to give serious money to charitable causes. This takes us neatly back to the Mike Edwards book on philanthrocapitalism mentioned in my last posting. In her comments on it, Caroline Hartnell, writing for OpenDemocracy, said:

But more than anything, the underlying values are in conflict: philanthrocapitalism is a product of individuals making large personal fortunes. The very wealthy can wield enormous power in society, through their philanthropy as well as their economic activities. But social justice demands greater equality between people in terms of possessions and power. And the limits of the hard-pressed earth we live in mean that if everyone is to have enough, many may have to be content with less. How much transformation of the world that has made philanthrocapitalists so rich can they be expected to support?

Reasons to be Cheerful

I seem to have been doing a lot of cheering over the past few days. Here's why. First, someone drew my attention to Gara LaMarche's keynote address at the Better Business Bureau of Metropolitan New York Symposium at the end of February, called 'Building for Capacity for Maximum Impact', available here. GLM is, of course, the relatively new boss of Atlantic Philanthropies, a significant funder of nonprofit evaluations (some of which yours truly has worked on). In it, he is candidly critical of much of what has passed for conventional wisdom in the field of evaluation, which is rather remarkable not least because AP itself has promoted much of that wisdom, with its love of logic models etc. GLM steps back, and takes a common-sense view of the whole business; it's well worth reading in full. But for a flavour, try this: he says -

I propose a three- year moratorium on logic models, theories of change and the like that use geometric shapes and arrows, particularly when arranged in a circular or oval form. I’ve never seen one of these that is not absurdly reductionist. I just threw that in to upset people, particularly those among my own staff and consultants. But if it results in a world with fewer Power Point slides, I feel I will have accomplished something important in my time on Earth.

...and this -

...remember that the lessons of business, the experience of the private sector, have much to teach non-profits but many limitations as well........ I would argue that most enduring successful business ventures must also have social value, but it’s also true that you can be successful in making money, at least for a while, by riding roughshod over community values – look at Wal-Mart’s impact on small business in small towns and rural communities, or the rapacious gains of certain extractive industries. Social investments, on the other hand, can’t be measured only in dollars and cents, and the bottom line has many components.

Which brings me neatly to my second reason for cheering which is Michael Edwards' new book, Just Another Emperor?, which dares to take on the philanthrocapitalists and their largely unchallenged conventional wisdoms. He unpicks what he calls the hype surrounding philanthrocapitalism, and examines the evidence (or lack thereof) which underpins it. But he does it in a constructive and balanced way; this is not mere polemic. This short book (92pp plus extensive endnotes) is essential reading for philanthropoids interested in social change and social justice.

Now, cheers usually come in threes, and there is a third reason for cheering, albeit one which isn't a close fit with the core purpose of this blog, but what the heck, it's my blog and if I say it goes in, it goes in. I've just read Obama's race speech in full and found it amazing - it's the sort of speech Bartlet would give (and we West Wing fantasists constantly had to remind ourselves that, sadly, that was fiction). Of course, it might not help him win the White House, but all praise to him for delivering it - read the full text here. With such a man in the White House, who knows what might be possible?

Is it socially just to let me travel free on the buses?

Emerging from a long weekend of partying, to mark the State's sudden burst of generosity towards me (free bus pass, cheap entry to theatres, museums etc, free prescriptions), I'm bound to wonder whether this is a wise use of your and my taxes. My good chum David - who, aged 60, has a well-paid fulltime professional job - told me the other day that he'd reckoned in that week alone he'd had £60 ($120 approx) of benefits by virtue of his age. That's over £3000 in a full year, in an ageing population. It just isn't sustainable. But neither is the problem solved by saying "Well, just give it to people who aren't in fulltime work, then"; for someone aged over 60 who is employed on a minimum, or near-minimum, wage, then these benefits - and perhaps especially the travel and prescriptions - will be vital supports. So - does it come back to some form of means-testing? And can that be done in a way which doesn't scare people off or deter them from saving?

There's another, slightly insidious, aspect to all this. If one is fortunate enough to be reasonable healthy, as I am (or will be, when I've recovered from the partying), and particularly if one is still working which I am (or will be, until would-be clients read this blog), then turning 60 isn't likely to mean that you suddenly start thinking of yourself as 'old'. But then, along comes the State, pats you on the head, offers you a seat and a pile of benefits, simply on account of your age. So, then you do start to think "Well, if the State thinks I'm worthy of all this stuff, then maybe I am old", which isn't, to my way of thinking, a very sensible frame of mind into which to get.

And all this is happening when the Government is failing to meet its targets to abolish child poverty. Something wrong somewhere. I will ponder all this as I walk to the station to get my Senior Railcard. Now, where did I put the Alka Seltzer?

Never mind the width; feel the quality...

Is it just me, or is it really a bit frustrating that there is such a research emphasis on the question of how much money people give away rather than about to what they choose to give it? The latest example is some recent work by the excellent Prof. Cathy Pharoah, who must know more about patterns of giving than just about anyone else. Her recent report, Family Foundation Philanthropy, gives a league table of the 100 largest family foundations in Europe. Has the time come when there should be an absolute - self-imposed - ban on any more research about how much money wealthy people give away? How does it help us to know this? Of what relevance is it to be able to compare what happens in the UK to what happens in, say, the US, or elsewhere in Europe? What I want to know is what they are spending their money on. The term 'philanthropy' can mean so many different things depending on the context. Those of us who think that it should be about changing the circumstances which give rise to the need for it in the first place need to know who their friends are.

Good, then that the new UK Research Centre on Charitable Giving and Philanthropy, in which CP is involved, is to focus on, as co-director Prof. Jenny Harrow puts it, "furthering the effectiveness of philanthropy" (my emphasis). But the danger is that the Centre will be 'captured' by the fundraisers, whose main concern is to find new ways to bring money in, rather than with how it is used. The next question for Professor Harrow is, of course, "Effectiveness at what, exactly?"