Anne-Birgitte Albrectsen on co-impact philanthropy

The second of Green Templeton Lectures 2023 was held in the EP Abraham Lecture Theatre on Thursday 23 February before an in-person audience with a live stream enabling an online audience to join simultaneously.

The lecture was given by Anne-Birgitte Albrectsen CEO, Lego Foundation (2021 to 2022); CEO, Plan International (2015 to 2021); and former UN Assistant Secretary General.

Watch online

Read report of the lecture

Heather Jost (MBA, 2022) writes

The problems that philanthropy seeks to address today are complex and systemic, and the way philanthropists approach impact must rise to that challenge. Anne-Birgitte Albrectsen’s talk illuminated several of the gaps in philanthropy today that can only be solved by a humble and collaborative approach to the sector.

Her choice of title for the lecture, ‘Never walk alone: Co-impact philanthropy,’ reflects this crucial collaboration piece that is missing if change-makers are to tackle the deep systemic issues facing our world. Because philanthropists don’t have all the answers, and no intervention can single-handedly solve any of these issues, philanthropists must work together and elevate the voices of those they purport to serve. She pointed out that only 5% of philanthropy is done collectively, yet collective approaches are what will lead to effective and sustainable interventions.

Many in the sector know that this needs to happen, but donor-driven solutions are still pushed without this shared knowledge that is needed to reframe the ways solutions are thought about. To nudge us in this direction, Anne-Birgitte started by giving us some evidence about the field of philanthropy to challenge our common assumptions.

When people think of philanthropy, they tend to think of it as organised giving to improve life, often done by corporations or particularly wealthy people. They notice it is increasing, such as Mike Bloomberg’s recent decision to give his company to his philanthropy, yet when one dives deeper they discover that, in the US at least, the proportion of wealth that goes to philanthropy has not changed.

Additionally, the effects COVID has had on philanthropy have revealed quite a bit about the changing landscape of this field. The countries who used to be top performers in giving have dropped far lower on the list, being replaced by countries including Nigeria and Indonesia, who sustain high rates of giving and volunteering. It is also seen that while the wealthy are often the ones highlighted for their generosity, the poor give more per capita, and they continue their giving through external challenges while the wealthy tend to drop off.

Anne-Birgitte highlighted several other assumptions, such as the idea that philanthropy results in a redistribution of money, but this is fundamentally untrue. A majority of finance in this sector goes to institutions such as universities, continuing to benefit the ‘haves’ rather than the ‘have nots.’ Much less goes to initiatives toward poverty alleviation, where it is needed.

Practitioners also need to address the systems that create the need for philanthropy, because when those are forgotten, giving loses all meaning. This is especially true for corporations who may give money to solve problems, but ultimately benefit from the systems that cause those same problems.

Recently there has been a much-needed call to decolonise philanthropy. The citizens of the ‘global south’ are able to see the lack of change and the new ways of philanthropy needed, yet they are seldom asked to drive solutions. The sector still doesn’t fully understand what decolonising philanthropy means, but this pursuit will lead to better evidence and better impact overall.

Moving to solutions needed in this field, Anne-Birgitte highlighted six shifts that are absolutely necessary, discovered through her experience as a practitioner.

Changing the way we talk about impact

Many funders speak of impact as ‘my impact’ or ‘our organisation’s impact,’ but this is an illusion. Real impact – not just simple output – happens internally in the community. It consists of shifts in mindsets of communities and their leaders. This cannot be an individual or organisation’s doing and shouldn’t be credited to that. Many factors, especially locally led factors, coalesce into impact. Putting the focus on one organisation’s bespoke ways of operating or measuring impact not only adds unnecessary complexity and cost, but it fragments the sector. This silo-ing of impact also leads to choosing less ambitious pursuits and failing to address the systemic nature of issues.

Understanding varied reasons for impact

One needs to acknowledge that different stakeholders have different requirements and reasons for evidencing impact, and needs to take that all into account rather than prioritising a funder’s needs. These stakeholders, aside from funders, include global NGO leaders, recipient-country governments, and the community members affected, among others. Each has needs to see what is being done and if it is effective, from their perspective and role. To get here, and especially to value the most important voices, the sector needs to see community members as the experts on their own lived experience of the issues.

Redefining ‘good’ evidence

As a sector, philanthropy needs to take another look at what it considers quality data and evidence of impact. Institutional philanthropy has the benefit of being able to afford to fund different types of evidence than what is usually gathered, based on having more patient capital, and not having the pressure of election cycles. Some of the largest gaps in terms of evidence are lack of meta-evaluations, longitudinal studies, or data about the most vulnerable. All of these are imperative for real impact, but they are expensive, therefore the current data is much more tied to individual organisations. Philanthropy has the power to step in and allow these things to happen. In this area though, Anne-Birgitte gave us an additional, and important warning. Organisations must have a higher standard of how they protect data of the most vulnerable. Data protection is improving, but the collectors of data put these people in danger if they do not do all they can to protect their information.

Shifting accountability models

Philanthropy needs to be committed to use its power responsibly and to be held to account by those is serves primarily, and donor secondarily. AAP – Accountability to Affected Populations – is a great step in this direction. Data, insight, and evidence should be collected by the communities affected and used first and foremost to design better programs. Reporting to donors is indeed important, but not more so than using the data to do a better job with programmes. When one considers the size of some philanthropies, especially the largest ones, they can admire the huge power they have to solve the world’s biggest problems. But with that size, one can see that they are not held subject to democratic processes like many governments are. Thankfully, many of these are doing great things, but people operating in this sector need to rethink how they hold philanthropy accountable because of how much power they have.

Increasing transparency and data sharing

Transparency and data sharing must be a core business model in the philanthropy sector. Anne-Brigitte posed the question of what if the data they as philanthropists have was ‘their data’ that they share with those they serve and others pursuing impact? The possibilities are immense, and that wide range of evidence points could show them if their philanthropy is working. Transparency has to be the common ground if this sort of collaboration is to happen. Governments and humanitarian aid have come a long way, but philanthropy is lagging behind.

Loving failure

Finally, philanthropists must learn to love failure. They need to embrace knotty problems, difficult topics, and the unknown if they are to make impact beyond the easiest targets. Failure and mistakes give them the opportunity to innovate. Evaluation can’t be the end, where one stops, but the beginning, where they iterate, learn from mistakes, and improve. The way philanthropy currently stops at evaluation, not learning from mistakes, lets evaluators and funders off the hook. The right way forward in this area is to give money to organisations who show an ability to adapt in response to mistakes.

In summary, the world needs bolder philanthropy and more transformative ideas. There is a contradiction in philanthropy’s current unwillingness to fund difficult or hard-to-measure issues. Funders tend choose areas such as health with hard evidence, neglecting important, but hard-to-measure, areas such as human rights. Additionally, almost no money is given to prevention because you can’t measure something that didn’t happen. She pointed out a shocking realisation, that the sector would only need 1/7 of the money currently invested in the humanitarian sector to simply prevent those issues from happening.

Anne-Birgitte closed her lecture with an encouragement for all of us interested in shaping this world: to support a more fundamental shift in and change our questions about evidence. We should make sure that no investments are made without being fully informed by the lived experience of communities. By heeding to this, we can shape the way impact is created and sustained. Real impact happens when we ask the right questions.