In a context where authoritarianism is rising globally, even in countries some believed were out of reach, funders who seek to protect democracy and human rights often express that we’ve been outmaneuvered by well-resourced opponents that use powerful narratives to restrict freedom, create feelings of helplessness and fear, and reinforce inequities that stand in the way of just societies. But how do those narratives play out in the context of philanthropy?
Individualism. Competition. Risk aversion. Short-termism. Scarcity. Presumed expertise. Many of the norms by which philanthropy operates perpetuate the very narratives our sector seeks to change. If funders aim to be adequate partners in large-scale systems transformation, it is imperative that we unravel the myths that dictate how our sector operates and, as we’ve seen, limit what is possible to achieve.
Like it or not, the philanthropic sector is on the precipice of radical change. The same narrative strategies and social inequities that allowed repressive regimes to emerge, spread, and take hold in the 1930s have been used to expand the power of dangerous political, corporate, and cultural actors around the world today. When philanthropic institutions act independently to invest in familiar faces and operate through artificial issue silos with short-term aims that are driven by manufactured scarcity, we create a context that, ultimately, sets us all up to fail.
A world of justice, care, and belonging lies on the other side of this period of lawlessness, cruelty, and destruction, and funders have the capacity to decide how long this moment will last and whose version of the future comes next. More than that, philanthropy has a responsibility to catalyze its creation. To do so, we need to embrace the logics and methods that enable us all to practice the future we desire today.
In this special feature series, contributors who represent a cross-section of philanthropy will identify dominant narratives that underpin common practices in the sector, explore how these practices are self-defeating, and illuminate interventions we can all make to reduce harm, redistribute power, and redesign philanthropy in ways that set us up to succeed. Each contributor writes about a particular narrative that is deeply embedded in the sector’s design, highlighting work they’ve done that proves funders can operate differently and illustrating what is possible when we alter the flawed assumptions that underpin philanthropy.
The narrative field has been deepening, expanding, and gaining more visibility in the sector over the last two decades. Yet, most often when we hear people in philanthropy talk about narrative change, they focus on things that are happening outside of the sector, and they often don’t link that work to how philanthropy itself operates. Having observed this lack of self-awareness for many years, a question I began exploring is: what are the narratives that govern philanthropy, and how might people who work in the sector recognize and rethink the unacknowledged assumptions that are embedded in the ways we operate?
This series will highlight work that has long been happening to uncover and address some of the harmful narratives that drive philanthropy. It will make the work of narrative change more concrete, relevant, and relatable for people working in the sector, and open up new avenues for thinking about the consequential role funders can play as both resource stewards and agents of change — particularly in the places of power where they have access and influence, but others find impenetrable.
When we identify the narratives that underpin common practices in philanthropy, and unpack the ways these faulty logics have created habits that don’t serve our good intentions, it opens up the possibility to adopt a different set of logics and behaviors that allow us to imagine, design, and live into the world we want while letting go of things we’ve become accustomed to that are not fit for purpose.
My hope, alongside my fellow contributors to this series, is that these reflections, examples, and insights from fellow philanthropic practitioners will support you in reflecting on the narratives that shape our sector and help you discover ways to leverage the power of your position, whatever it may be, to put into practice the narratives we need to prefigure the just and joyful world that we long for and deserve.
Mandy Van Deven is the founder of Both/And Solutions, a global consulting collective, and co-lead of Elemental, a community of practice for funders that cultivates the conditions to resource narrative power.
