Beyond safe bets: How can philanthropy shape the future?

• Today, issues like climate change and mental health are important causes for philanthropists, governments and the public. 20 years ago, these issues were outliers. 

• What difference might it have made, if the billions being spent on climate philanthropy today had been spent in 2007?

• What issues, in 20 years time, will be in the mainstream that are on the fringe now? How should philanthropists think about these issues?

Issues that are safe bets today for philanthropy were once outliers

I did my first work with civil society in the climate sector in 2007, as they tried to learn some of the lessons from successful campaigns in international development. 

Whilst even then climate issues had passionate advocates, thoughtful funders and some terrifying science, climate campaigners had to fight hard for money, attention and airtime. 

Today, any philanthropist funding climate work is making a safe bet. There is plenty of work to do and plenty of good organisations to give money to. Back then, it was a much harder job. It was less clear what to spend the money on. Funders were reluctant to fund new teams, or policy work, or public opinion research. Some were afraid of the criticism that might come from funding a “political” issue. Some did not want to conflate climate, health, humanitarian and development issues and kept them in separate funding buckets.

Today, it is much clearer that this work is needed, and that all those issues are connected.

Climate is not the only issue that has moved to the mainstream. 

Over a decade ago I spoke with leading mental health advocates, who saw the shift in the place of cancer in society in the previous generation as a model for what could happen to mental health in this generation. 

Cancer was once a taboo subject, understood by the public as a single, monolithic disease and often perceived as a death sentence. Today, there is a mature public conversation about cancer, a sophisticated understanding of different forms of the disease, the importance of prevention and an exciting pipeline of new treatments. People have a much clearer sense of how health services need to support them, and fund charities to support patients, care and research.

Mental health campaigners had similar ambitions, and have had similar success in changing the public conversation. What was a difficult, more radical ask 15 years ago is a much more mainstream issue today. Corporate partners will now sign up for mental health initiatives in a way that was far less common only a decade ago. 

For impact, timing matters

Good philanthropists will think about the impact of their funding. They try to identify high-ROI projects, quantifiable returns, strong teams, scalable solutions, high-burden issues and other similar indicators of impact at scale.

In my experience, they think less often about the impact of investing bigger, earlier and riskier - especially when it comes to uncertain issues, new teams and emerging environments. 

Funding issues that have become mainstream and socially acceptable is a safe bet. Many trusts and foundations, concerned with stewardship, prefer to manage risks carefully. 

But what difference might it have made, if the billions being spent on climate philanthropy today had been spent in 2007?

Philanthropy can afford to take a longer and riskier view

Philanthropy can do things governments and businesses cannot do. 

Foundations and philanthropists have different accountabilities, different definitions of success, and different constraints to governments and businesses. 

They can work to different time horizons, risk profiles and ways of thinking about a problem. 

It’s clear that the best foundations and programmes fund things intentionally, based on a clear point of view about the future and mature view of risk. (Whether they should or not is a slightly different question. The article ”What are Foundations for?” is a good summary of the case for foundations in a democratic society). 

Their independence means they can be idiosyncratic, but that should be a strength as much as a weakness in a pluralistic society. Most public institutions are not allowed to be idiosyncratic.

What are the social causes of the future?

If foundations saw their job as taking on long-run, high-risk public experiments that no-one else can afford to take a risk on, what sort of things would they be funding today that they are not already funding?

Looking back, it always felt that leaders in climate and mental health had good evidence of the importance of their work, but struggled to convince cautious funders to support these issues early.

What looks like that today? In 2044, what will attract many times the philanthropic funding it does today, because by then it is seen as a safe, mainstream, sensible philanthropic investment?

Another way to ask this: What will be boring to fund then that is weird to fund now?

We think philanthropists should think more intentionally about this. They should use their answer to reflect not only on who they fund, what they fund and where they fund, but when they fund. 

This reflection is likely to raise questions that go beyond selecting issues, but will also ask questions about people and relationships, funding and partnerships, risk and power.

We’ve used futures methodologies, such as scenario planning and weak signals analysis, to help organisations think through these issues. Once they have been through a futures process, it is much clearer to identify the outlier ideas to invest in, the areas to learn more about, and the future they want to invest in. 

The challenge is to find and fund the unsolved problems of today, so they can become other people’s safe bets tomorrow.