What we need to centre and deconstruct: Thoughts on reimagining philanthropy

For someone who writes a lot, I must admit, I initially struggled about what to say.

It’s not that I don’t have thoughts on the future, but that thinking about the future right now is actually really sobering. Even more so in today’s context of ever deepening intersectional systems of oppression and exploitation, of anti-rights resurgence, of genocide and impunity. Something is going to give – and I’m not sure yet what direction that something is taking us to.

But even without knowing – as people and organisations committed to a just society, and who recognise that we need to reimagine how we get there – we have to prepare to be in service of whatever that will ask of us. So how do we, in the words of a colleague, “rethink how we get there, without burning it all down”?

Two things have been sitting with me as we take on the task of reimagining. The first is what we centre. The second is what we deconstruct. When we know what it is that we hold at the core then we know what needs to be dismantled and what needs to take its place. We have to start with us, not with externally imposed conversations and frameworks. And this has been both the opportunity and the challenge as the field of African philanthropy has been developing.

So, what is it that we need to centre?

For starters, that our narratives of philanthropy are expansive and diverse. Giving practices embedded in our cultures lie side by side with age-old institutionalised practices.  African philanthropy can just as easily refer to Kuvuwula, a practice in Malawi, which is a time-bound lending of livestock in which the recipient keeps one/some of the offspring and returns the original livestock, as it can to the establishment of the first university in the world, over 1,000 years ago in Morocco, set up via a waqf, by a Tunisian woman Fatima el Fihri, as it can to the African-led foundations we see today. When we think about the future of philanthropy, we must speak of African philanthropies. Plurality is key. We must centre who our philanthropy involves (spoiler alert: contrary to prevailing notions, African women play significant philanthropic roles at many levels and African individuals play significant roles in resourcing our organised civic spaces). We must centre what our diverse philanthropies look like, what they stand for and the roles they play – only then can we dismantle the imposed narratives that have for so long shaped both African and global conversations on what philanthropy is and what it should be.

Where we start matters. To give an example, when we are talking about futures philanthropy there is some assumption that this is new terrain. Foresight and futures thinking, however,  is already embedded in some of our approaches and cultures. So even as we seek to think ahead, we need to simultaneously reflect on where that forward looking thinking already exists, in our cultures and in our civic formations – and what we can we learn from that.

Second, we need to centre the agency of those we seek to support. In the institutionalised philanthropy space, African philanthropy and philanthropy in Africa, the futures of philanthropy or philanthropy futures or philanthropy frontiers is the topic of the moment. But we need to pause and take several steps. The conversation does not start with us or where we see the future of philanthropy.

It’s about asking those we seek to serve “what does a just society look like?”

It’s about recognising that the civic spaces of the future may look fundamentally different to the ones we prioritise supporting today.

It’s about reflecting collectively on what the demands of those civic spaces are on those of us who are deploying resources.

For philanthropy to remain relevant to a just future, we need a fundamental rethink, which in turn requires a deconstruction of the ideology around the role of philanthropy, a deconstruction of imported “best practice”, a deconstruction of who holds knowledge and expertise and a deconstruction of who it is that should be deciding where and how resourcing is deployed.

Third, we need to centre context. In a continent as vast and diverse as Africa, as much as we have and seek to develop pan-African perspectives on what is needed from institutionalised philanthropy, we consistently need to hold ourselves accountable to context and to de-construct the generalisations that still see “Africa as a country.” The pathways towards just futures and philanthropy’s support of that absolutely needs to be contextualised within the intersecting systems of oppression at play and rooted in priorities of those who bear the brunt of these unjust systems.

This brings me to the last thing we need to centre, which is a radical solidarity that breaks the systems that create injustice. Solidarity, not money, is where the core of our allyship begins. When we centre solidarity, we think beyond the transactional mechanisms and start to have honest conversations about where we fit into this work and what those we serve think are the internal transformations we need to undergo in order to be fit for purpose. What solidarity looks like is not for us to determine. I repeat, what solidarity looks like is not for us to determine. As we think about futures philanthropy – let us centre that.

Moreover, solidarity is not just a buzzword. In therapy circles they say, “you can’t just say the words, you have to do the work”. And doing the hard work of reimaging solidarity, in ways that will serve the civic spaces that are at the forefront, will require some significant dismantling.

Of our power.

Of our privilege.

Of our ideas.

Of our resources.

It will require an interrogation of resource justice, of how we make the money. An interrogation of once sacrosanct notions like endowments and philanthropic reparations. The spaces of these re-imaginings are already fermenting and what they demand is not the incremental tweaking we are consumed with. It’s time philanthropy caught up.