10 Lessons from Open Philanthropy

Over the past 2 decades, we have sought to understand what would happen if the principles, practices and licences of the open movement were applied to philanthropy and social change. Here is what we have learnt.

Philanthropy

Modern philanthropy is rooted in the challenges brought forth by the industrial revolution, which compounded and exposed the dire conditions faced by workers and their families. As a result, a dual system of philanthropy emerged, characterised by courageous private efforts and an increasing sense of public responsibility. Early philanthropists embraced two key approaches: addressing the needs of the most vulnerable by establishing charities and providing support through businesses, and recognising the importance of elevating society as a whole by promoting the arts, establishing libraries and fostering opportunities for personal growth.

While the landscape of philanthropy continues to evolve, its fundamental nature remains largely unaltered. Today, we still assist marginalised communities or seek to provide opportunities for cultural and social elevation. However, we now have a more nuanced understanding. We recognise that marginalisation is often a result of the systems we created and the systems we uphold. Individual mobility is not enough. We need to change systems at their core if we want to not only alleviate suffering, but prevent it too.

Open

The open movement started as a response to the ever increasing reach of the intellectual property and copyright systems that defaults to closed. The legal regime of Intellectual property ownership and control was philosophically designed to incentivise innovation which is expected to benefit society as a whole. The practical reality means less access by society to access, use, improve, build upon and benefit from these intellectual outputs.

Rather than rely on select individuals and organisations to drive intellectual and technical progress, open actively allows anyone to freely access, use, modify, and share such outputs — subject, at most, to measures that preserve provenance and openness. Beyond the licences and publication, open practice is represented by the values, actions and attitudes that enable cooperation, collaboration and connectedness. At the core of this movement lies the realisation that there is no single product or solution that will meet the needs of everyone everywhere. By making the building blocks and blueprints freely available, they can be adapted and reused in ways the original creators could not even imagine, or could not reach.

Open philanthropy

As philanthropic efforts seek to alleviate suffering, challenge inequitable systems and enable positive progress, it is clear there is no single solution here either. Even with shared foundations, each intervention has to be context specific enough to resonate locally. Even with the best will in the world and limitless resources, it is not possible or even desirable that every intervention is scaled to every context as THE solution.

The opportunity that does exist is for each philanthropic and social intervention to make a contribution to global change by sharing their complete experience openly. By allowing others to freely access, use, modify and share their intellectual outputs, it enables everyone to learn, adapt and implement faster, with fewer or more focused research and development resources. It creates the conditions for working independently together towards a shared vision, which amplifies philanthropic investment and harnesses knowledge, energy and power from wherever it exists for where it is needed most.

Over the past 2 decades, we have sought to understand what would happen if the principles, practices and licences of the open movement were applied to philanthropy and social change.

10 lessons:

Our journey in philanthropy is characterised by continuous learning. Since philanthropic funding seeks to drive social change and improve the status quo, we constantly challenge our own philanthropic models to better support responsible social innovation with the aim of achieving lasting change. How you fund is as important, if not more, than what you fund. Acknowledging that there are no universal solutions, we embrace an iterative and agile approach. We readily admit mistakes, identify valuable lessons, and maintain transparency throughout our endeavours.

We default to open - philosophically and practically. This is what we have learnt.

1. Disrupting is instant. Building takes time.

To be open is much more than using open licences. In philanthropy it includes being open to unseen possibilities, to potential being realised beyond your control, to impact over time, long after the end of your funding. It means acknowledging that your intervention will make a contribution to change, not be the whole solution, and that lasting change will require the efforts of many, working towards the same goal over time. This means embracing long-term thinking and modular action.

2. Change is driven by people, not entities.

Registered legal entities with non-profit status are not the only option. The rules and regulations that govern these entities do provide some safeguards against the misappropriation of funds, but provide no assurance of efficacy or likelihood of success.

Supporting and investing in individuals who are driving philanthropic efforts can be particularly powerful. When individuals are empowered and equipped with the necessary resources and knowledge, they continue to carry their vision, wisdom and experience with them, even as the environment and circumstances change. This continuity of purpose and leadership can ensure that the philanthropic mission endures and methodologies evolve, driving lasting impact.

3. Learnings only become building blocks when they are shared.

Seismic shifts rarely happen purely as a result of a single intervention. Change happens at the tipping point of a critical mass, the sum of what has gone before. Reaching that tipping point takes so much less time and money if we all contribute to the critical mass of knowledge, experience, resources and leadership that is needed. It does not have to mean direct collaboration. It does mean sharing what you have done - how, why, when and what the outcomes were. When combined, this enables learnings to be extracted and components to become building blocks which can be reused wisely and iteratively.

This openness is a two way process. As we iterate, we can and should consult other open resources, allowing us to better design new approaches while saving time and optimising resources. Embracing an iterative approach to philanthropy, donors and organisations recognise the necessity of consistently reviewing and adapting their strategies as new information and feedback emerge.

Nothing is completely perfect. Sharing winning strategies and best practice is very valuable, and so is sharing missteps, mishaps, blunders and failures. This process underscores the importance of learning from failures, sharing hard earned lessons with others, and making necessary adjustments. Sharing both actively and openly turns every intervention and experiment into a positive contribution to change. It is one way to acknowledge that there is no universal solution; there are lessons, iterations and ideas that can be repurposed for context specific needs.

4. Risks are everywhere. Open helps.

Working towards social change is inherently risky. There is no guarantee of success. Timeframes are murky at best. There will be resistance from vested interests and from inertia. Competing priorities will vie for resources and attention. Interventions are likely to draw criticism, some deserved. The idea of being open about this work can seem like an amplification of this risk. But it is the opposite.

Being open means allowing others in at every step, which increases opportunities to identify points of failure early on. It allows others to join the mission and expand its reach by using and adapting the open building blocks. It fosters a learning environment in which all outcomes are shared and constructive criticism welcomed as part of a cycle of iteration and evolution. And it allows the ideas to live on until the time is right.

Risk can be ring-fenced by making finite commitments in terms of time and budget, and having clear decision points and criteria towards the end of the period. This approach means the limits of the risk taken is known upfront. Within those loose constraints the partners and participants can iterate and evolve their strategies as they learn while working towards a shared and agreed vision.

5. Being open means sharing power.

Open philanthropy promotes decentralised decision-making to ensure power is distributed and harnessed where it is most needed. It is open to diverse perspectives, empowering participants and partners to contribute their wisdom and skills to the benefit of all.

Money is not the only, or even the most important, driver of change. It may kickstart a specific initiative, but it is a blunt instrument when it comes to the nuance of social interventions. Yet funders typically have disproportionate power in the ecosystem, with their ability to and familiarity with providing resources (or not) extending to the ability to decide about other details they are far less familiar with. As long as all of the perceived power is concentrated with philanthropists, all solutions will be philanthropist shaped. Sustained, positive impact can only be achieved through shared power working on context shaped solutions.

6. Progress is the ultimate measure of success.

It is essential to endeavour to measure the impact of philanthropic interventions. Monitoring, measuring and analysing are the most important tools for assessing whether your efforts are helping or hindering progress, and whether resources are being allocated effectively or could be better applied.

Measuring impact properly relies upon clear goals, appropriate indicators, and the passage of time. This third factor usually presents the biggest challenge. Evaluation during or shortly after an intervention can only tell you about the outputs, not the outcomes. But it is not wasted effort. Only asking whether we have achieved our ultimate goal is based on a binary perspective with an unanswerable timeline. The evaluation question to ask is whether we are making a contribution to change. Did we make progress, internally and externally? This supports an iterative approach to philanthropy, continuously reviewing and adapting strategies based on new information and feedback.

Success in philanthropic endeavours is multifaceted and not confined to binary outcomes. Instead, it is a dynamic journey that hinges on building blocks of progress. An iterative approach, guided by data and responsive to feedback, remains crucial. Sharing both the data and the analysis openly contributes to the sector’s ability to better assess future contributions as well as to conduct longitudinal comparisons in future, truly measuring impact.

7. Cohesion over collaboration.

Collaborative efforts among philanthropists, nonprofits, and other stakeholders can achieve more than individual efforts. Partnering with others who share similar goals can create synergies and increase the effectiveness of charitable work. It can also be difficult, if not impossible, to agree on the details of such a collaboration. Goals may be similar, but they are rarely exactly the same. Even small differences in objectives and theories of change matter a great deal when designing interventions that will impact the lives of real people.

Being open enables efforts to be aligned based on similarities while allowing space for experimentation and learning from differences. Each open initiative adds to an open ecosystem. Everyone in the ecosystem can work towards a shared vision by making their own unique and/or cumulative contributions. Newcomers can see what has been done, what people are working on and where they might be able to help. Through cohesion and contribution you accelerate and expand impact while creating the conditions for possible collaboration.

8. Think local, act local.

It takes a great deal of time and effort to bring about societal change, even more to sustain it. There has to be just the right fit between the challenge and the solution, all within a specific context. Yet the catch phrase is: Think global, act local. This approach proposes that we imagine every intervention as a solution for the world, that will ultimately be delivered to the world. It presumes that the more people you can reach the better, scale is desirable and that it is possible to design and implement one intervention that will be fit to scale. This is a distraction that directly affects interventions as organisers make decisions on the possibility of each component to be applied elsewhere rather than whether it is needed in the here and now.

Open philanthropy recognises the importance of empowering local communities to drive change. Supporting community-led initiatives can have a more significant and sustainable impact, immune to the fashions and fads of funding. Rather than designing for scale, design for impact, for efficacy, for sustainability. Sharing each component, along with your progress and learnings, openly allows others to assess its suitability, make the necessary adaptations and apply this solution locally with direct sight of the context. Open allows others to join you in spreading your solution, adapting and improving as they go.

9. Open is a shortcut to trust.

Change is hard. It creates uncertainty, challenges beliefs, interrupts or disrupts established habits. To offer and to accept an opportunity to change requires a willingness to be vulnerable and push through the discomfort. To be vulnerable, there needs to be trust. And trust is hard earned and easily lost.

Open philanthropic practices mean much more than being transparent. It goes beyond disclosing relevant information to sharing the inner workings - the recipes and methodologies, policies and processes, meaning and motivations, history and road map. It goes beyond allowing others to view information all the way to enabling them to engage with, interrogate, change, challenge. It encourages understanding along with knowing, brought about by the full picture rather than a small window. Actively practising open is a powerful signal of a willingness to be vulnerable as a philanthropist, as a grant maker, as a project leader, which creates the opportunity to learn along with all partners and participants. It is the first step to demonstrating you are worthy of trust. For some it may take a detailed analysis of all of the open resources, verified against every action. For others knowing they could is enough.

10. Change is a continuum. Monitor, measure, move.

To help make the world a better place, philanthropy needs to keep doing better, being better, iterating and evolving as we learn. We need to acknowledge that the path to change is neither linear nor binary and place the emphasis on long-term impact and ongoing advancement. We also need to recognise that not all initiatives are destined for success or immortality.

Assessing the effectiveness of interventions and making necessary adjustments are fundamental principles of open philanthropy. This means continuously monitoring, measuring and analysing the outcomes and eventual impact of our interventions. Being deliberate about incorporating learning, and then sharing what we find openly.

What comes next?

As long as there is inequality and inequity - no matter how big or how small - there will be a need for brave individuals to step up and do their best to make their corner of the world better for all. Climate change is no longer the story, it is the context in which everything else takes place. We need to iterate and evolve with some sense of urgency to survive this storm and weather the next.

It starts by committing to open as a philosophical framework for your work. Open can help accelerate change by amplifying ideas and multiplying resources. It enables tangible evidence of progress to become the foundational building blocks of the next wave. As philanthropists we cannot keep our solutions to ourselves, should not control who has access and when. We have the opportunity to achieve impact at scale, if we are prepared to share, be natively open and invite others in.