SPEAKER_00 0:15

Okay, I guess. Hello, you're listening to the Philanthropisms Podcast. This is the podcast where we try to put philanthropy in context. I'm your host, as ever, Rod Davis, and this week we have a conversation, and it's with Sudhuff Sholwani. And Sudhuff is the Director of Learning and Evaluation at the Firelight Foundation, which is a really interesting funder. And I sat down a couple of weeks ago now with Suthuff to have a conversation about the work that they do at Firelight and to get some of her thoughts on the sorts of challenges that they've found with their particular approach to philanthropy. So we talked a bit about what the foundation actually does, how it came about, and what's sort of interesting and distinctive about its approach, which very much focuses on the ideas of using philanthropy to shift power as well as financial resources. And in practice, that means they have a particular approach to empowering communities and working with communities on the ground to identify and come up with solutions to their problems, and that's also reflected in the way that they measure and things like that as well. We talked quite a bit about the way in which Firelight Foundation shifted from framing the work that it does in terms of philanthropy or charity towards more of a focus on justice and why that was so important and what it meant. And we talked a bit about whether the Firelight Foundation's ambition is just to kind of do its own thing because they believe that's right, or whether they want to demonstrate a different way of doing things, or whether they were aiming to go beyond that and kind of influence other funders and to shift philanthropy more broadly. We talked about power and the sort of balance of power within philanthropy and some of the challenges around that. We talked about some of the questions that arise when you are involving communities with lived experience and trying to use participatory methods and some of the challenges that there can be with doing that, and how you kind of sell funders, other funders or donors, on the benefits of doing it, whether that was on the basis of a kind of moral argument that it's the right thing to do, or whether it's a more pragmatic argument that it delivers better outcomes. And then we also talked about measurement and some of the challenges that come in finding the right balance between not having so much measurement that it becomes something that kind of entrenches the power dynamic between funder and recipient, or kind of uh prioritises the funder point of view and and uh kind of imposes things on the recipient and not throwing the baby out of the bathwater and kind of losing the value of actually being able to measure the effect of the interventions and actions that we're taking. Um without further ado, let's go into the conversation. Um I hope you find it interesting. I certainly found it fascinating to hear more about the work that they're doing at Firelight and to get a set of uh thoughts on some of these questions. Um, I'll be back at the end for the usual piece of housekeeping and tidying up. Okay, great. Well, I'm here with uh Sothoff Sholwani. Uh hi Suther, how are you? I'm well, thank you, Rodri. How are you? I'm good, thank you. Um great to have you on the podcast. Um and Sotharf is Oh no problem. And Southern, uh just to introduce briefly, is the Director of Learning and Evaluation at the Firelight Foundation. Um, so maybe the best place to start for people who don't know the foundation is for you just to kind of say a bit in your own words about what the organization is, what it does, and what you do there.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Thanks, sure. So Firelight was established in late 1999, early 2000, um, in response to the needs of children orphaned and affected by HIV and AIDS and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. Um, and from the very beginning, the sort of the foundation's goal was to support community-based organizations and community-led solutions based on this sort of widespread evidence that vulnerable children are best cared for in their own families or extended families and in their communities rather than in institutions or by outsiders. And that's really been the underlying foundation of our work throughout Fire Life history that communities and community-led solutions are critical, especially when it comes to the lives of children, their families, and their communities. Over time, though, we moved from being a private foundation to being a multi-donor public charity fund. So this means that for the last 10 years or so, we've primarily been doing our work by partnering with major foundations, family foundations, individual donors, and so on to fulfill our mission. And as I said, our mission does continue to be about funding and supporting the capacity of community-based organizations who are rooted in and responsive to their communities. And in terms of myself, you know, my background is in research and practice in civil society, global development, philanthropy. I started off in the areas of child development and education and then moved into this sort of broader look at child rights, civil society, and community development. Um, and I've generally been involved in this work from a research and evaluation perspective. So at Firelight, um, I have the honor of leading our organizational research agenda, but more importantly, to work with our partners in Sub-Saharan Africa to develop and carry out their own uh learning agenda. So they, you know, we use very indigenous and participatory methods that are driven by the communities themselves to answer their own evaluation um outcome questions and learning questions. I hope that helps with a nutshell.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

Yeah, that's no, that's great and it gives a really good overview. Um, and yeah, there's lots, I think, that's that's fascinating about the foundation and the approach. And you mentioned there that um there was a shift from being a private foundation um to to an organization that then um exists uh almost as a public charity to kind of take money from other donors and and to work with them. What was it that motivated that move? Because it's uh it's a fairly unusual one, I think.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Yeah, you know, I think many large um foundations and family foundations were interested in funding at the community level, um, but didn't feel they had the own capacity to their own capacity to do so. Um and I think it was really a statement of trust that they asked to partner with Firelight and uh wanted to fund through us. Um I think in the beginning it was more of a traditional process we took, traditional approach we took, where um you know we would um sort of work with these large foundations and set out initiative goals and then work with community-based partners to reach those goals. Um, I would say over the last five, six years, we've actually gone further to shift uh to a more community-driven approach to you know what we call community-driven systems change, where we're actually trying to set the agenda from the community perspective and then finding foundations and donors who are willing to meet those um needs rather than starting with the donor agenda and moving towards um you know asking a community to um carry it out. But it really started in this desire that we've seen increasingly from large foundations and individual donors to fund at the grassroots level. I think there's a recognition that um while you know funding uh large NGOs and governments is also important, that there is a need to get right to the grassroots. And we've seen data that very little funding does get to the grassroots. Um and so it was really in response to that um desire for many, many funders to be uh funding at a more grassroots level.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Interesting. And and what's the the sort of response generally been in terms of that shift? Because as you say, lots of funders kind of come with, you know, at least in theory, want to fund at the grassroots. And that but the reason they're not doing themselves is that there are kind of challenges to doing that, whether they're just practical challenges or whether they're sort of more theoretical challenges about the reality of kind of giving up power and control, um, you know, and have to shift from a model where you as a funder maybe are sort of setting, you know, programmatic design and the goals. If if you're trying to shift a model where you're helping them to sort of start from what the communities need and want, do you are they receptive to that, or do you find that that's a kind of conversation that needs to be managed quite carefully?

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Um, you know, so um many of the funders that we've been working with have been on a process of learning with us. So um some of the funders that we've been working with for the last 10 years or so, um, you know, came to us with with the started off with a more traditional top-down approach. And as we started doing more um intentional inquiry, conducting more intentional inquiry and dialogue with our partners, we were always circling back and sharing those learnings with um the funders. And a lot of the feedback we got from our community-based partners, um, and this is documented in the report that we um had published last year, um, a lot of the feedback that we got from community-based leaders is that these sort of restricted, top-down uh donor-driven um initiatives were well, very well-intentioned. But at the end of the day, you know, maybe the impact would be, would fade away after some time. Sometimes the program wasn't even effective, and sometimes it was even harmful to the community. And I think hearing that feedback was hard for us to hear. Um, but we brought our funder partners along with us in that journey. And so for them also, it was difficult to hear that they had, you know, invested maybe, you know, a couple of million into an approach that was not only, you know, sort of not um not as effective as they would have liked, but that may have actually caused unintentional harm. So I think by being in that learning journey with us and coming through, and this happened over many years, that we did this process of learning and we continue to learn. This is one of the things I think is really um um distinctive about Fire Likes approach is that learning is central to everything we do. Um and we bring our funders along in that journey. So that for the existing funders who were working with us, I think they've been part of the learning with us and they've come along. Um, I think they are often operating organizations that are large ships that are hard to shift direction, but the desire to change is there, the desire to listen is there, um, there is receptiveness to feedback that we um are sharing. In terms of new funders, you know, in the last couple of years, Firelight has been increasingly vocal about shifting power, about the importance of listening to communities, about racial justice and white supremacy, how white supremacy plays out in philanthropy. So, you know, today, if a funder uh seeks to partner with Firelight, they know who we are exactly as they walk in and they know the approach we take. And so I think we also feel more comfortable and confident in pushing that because we know um that they have, you know, come to partner with us with the recognition that, you know, we're gonna speak our truth and speak what um our community-based partners um um have told us.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

Yeah, no, it's really interesting. I definitely want to come on to talk about some of that work around shifting power and and sort of you know the challenges around racial justice when it comes to philanthropy. Um something that was really interesting what you were saying then struck me, um, is it's something I've kind of thought before and spoken to people before as a kind of um potential, not necessarily attention, but a choice to be made when talking about participatory methods, for instance, which is between presenting the value of them as kind of inherent and the reason that it's good to do is because you are kind of democratising philanthropy and getting power down to the the communities who you know traditionally would have been seen as just the recipients of philanthropy, but engaging them. But then there's also a sort of more pragmatic or practical argument, which is where it just delivers better outcomes. When you're talking to funders, you know, how how often do you find which of those two approaches do you sort of find yourself leaning towards, or does it sort of depend on who you're trying to convince? Or do or do you think they there isn't really tension and they're both kind of one and the same thing?

SPEAKER_01 12:09

No, I think there is a tension. And I think sometimes we feel tempted to go with the practical, right? Just saying that this is more effective, because that's um an easy win, right? Everyone says they want results, they want results, and so on. But I think that when we move just to what's practical and effective, we we lose out on some of the more underlying values or the work that we need to do internally, uh both as you know, as organizations and as individuals, to unpack some of these systems, these um maybe systemic inequities and implicit biases that we hold, the way in the ways in which certain um, you know, maybe white western global north ways of doing things are privileged and preferred. Um I think for me, um at least, um, there are two different arguments. And only going to the effectiveness argument is actually in many ways perpetuating the capitalist results-oriented, reach-oriented, impact-oriented um system, which is great, but it doesn't actually shift the system. It doesn't create a larger underlying shift in how we think about things, how we do things. And for me, that those those questions of ethics and values become more critical, and the internal work that we need to do becomes more um important for the for a long-term shift um in the system.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

Absolutely. And I noticed in on your website one really interesting thing, which you won't see on on that many foundation uh or or you know websites of funders, is quite a heavy emphasis on the distinction between charity or philanthropy and justice. And it seems as though kind of the notion of justice is very important to the the work that you do at Firelight. I mean, in what way does that kind of shape your thinking and your approach? Are you are you always thinking about what you do in terms of justice rather than sort of traditional ideas of charity?

SPEAKER_01 13:50

Yeah, I think for Firelite, this was actually a fundamental shift, uh a transformation, I would think, in our own organization's thinking. So when we sat down and unpacked these questions, um, you know, we what we realized as a as a team, and and we worked in particip in in partnership with our community partners to unpack this, um, that, you know, charity approaches in this sector, they they tend to come from good intentions and they have thoughtful implementation. But generally, and I'm I'm generalizing here, they tend to involve sort of band-aid responses to symptoms, um, and not as much fully unpacking and addressing underlying systemic um or root causes, right? Systemic issues or root causes such as poverty, inequity, or unjust social systems. As well, you know, in charity, power tends to lie with the giver, right? The giver is the one who determines who's worthy of receiving funds, how those funds should be used, how success is defined, you know, whether the person is, um, the activity has been worth it. Um, and so what this does is it results in initiatives or approaches that are deemed appropriate by the people who have the money. And that's usually, again, I'm generalizing, but usually wealthy white people from the global north. And their perspectives or their lenses um are going to be at best limited and narrow, right? We're all biased, and so they're gonna, but at worst, their perspectives are actually biased and self-interested, right, in maintaining these inequitable social structures that have uh created these inequities of who has wealth and who doesn't. Um, so you know what we felt ultimately is that charity doesn't actually challenge the system. It maintains the system and it makes the giver feel better about themselves by, you know, sort of giving a little bit of money to help, you know, a few people, but it doesn't actually fundamentally change um the circumstances. On the other hand, when we when we thought about what justice meant to us, justice is about fairness, right? So it's about it's about rights, about you know, equitable distribution of money, of opportunities, um, of power. And so then when you when we took a justice approach, those band-aid solutions or band-aid responses rather are inadequate, right? And it becomes necessary for us to understand and address underlying root causes, um, which are rooted in systems that are inequitable. So when we, again, when we take this justice approach, then it goes hand in hand with this commitment to solidarity, this idea that we are all responsible to fight um for justice to work for everyone in the world, like we're actually in it together. Um and for me, this notion of solidarity is actually more in line with the original meaning of the word philanthropy, right? The love of one's fellow humanity. If we truly love each other as humans, then we are in solidarity. And our um, you know, it's um for me, it's best summed up in the words of Leila Watson, the Indigenous Australian artist and activist. And she has this beautiful quote where she says, Um, if you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together. Um, and I think that's the epic that Firelight has now um taken forward. And we actually use this framing in everything we do. If we're developing a report form for a grantee to report back on their use of funds, we think about what in what ways does this perpetuate a charity mindset and in what ways does this actually demonstrate justice and solidarity. So we actually use that as a framework for our friends um in in pretty much everything we do as we're making critical decisions.

SPEAKER_00 17:02

Yeah, it's fascinating. That's a lovely quote as well. I hadn't hadn't heard that one before. Um, and in in sort of practical terms, when it comes to, I mean, I guess it's too simplistic given what you do to say making a grant, but when it comes to supporting one of your partner operate uh organizations, how how does that actually work then? If you can give me a sense of the the process, how you get from, you know, uh I mean, who decides for a start what the cause areas are and and kind of the selection of organizations and how the process works in terms of determining what's going to be done and how it's going to be assessed and that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

Yeah, this is a great question. And I'm gonna say I'll share what fire life's experience is, but it's no by no means prescriptive. I think if I were to describe what it means in practice to take this approach of justice or shifting power overall, I would say it really means about humility and respect and about walking with and being guided by the people in the communities you're seeking to support. And it's messy and it's gradual and it's difficult. Um, and it, you know, sort of results in somewhat tangible and somewhat intangible shifts in underlying systems and norms. And it's going to involve mistakes and risk and learning and accountability in all directions. For me, that's the overall, but I can tell you what it looks like for Firelight. Um, so you know, for Firelite, again, we operate as an intermediary, which means that we are in this sort of you know middle zone between funders and community-based grantees. In an ideal world, what we love the best, what we appreciate the best is when we can work with community partners to start mapping out the issues that their communities are facing and to actually identify the key issues that they want to focus on. And then we take it to a funder to identify those who are willing to support the communities in their own actions. A lot of the time it doesn't actually happen that neatly because, of course, a funder might approach Fire Light saying, we want to work on child marriage in Malawi. Um, and then what we do is we actually just really honestly and openly go to community-based partners or community stakeholders that we know in the particular country, and we say, here's this funder who's interested in this. Um, you know, how do we make it work? How do we identify how we can define these concepts broadly so that you're not limited to the uh short-term band-aid solutions that normally happen with these kind of donor agendas? So, for the example of child marriage, um in a situation like this, when we sit down with um community-based partners and they sit down with their communities to say, okay, what is the whole picture around child marriage? It has, you know, child marriage actually just ends up being one small symptom. You start finding things around gender norms, you start realizing issues with the education system, um, you start, of course, huge issues around poverty. And then in that same vein, when communities start identifying the actions they want to take, they're talking about income generation generating activities. They're talking about working with community and faith leaders around gender norms, they're talking about working with the government to improve education systems. So even though the entry point might have been child marriage, because that was the donor's um interest, with what Firelight does is we play this very active role in making sure that we're not limiting it to the donor, you know, sort of restricted perspective and actually broadening it quite widely. So that's an example of a situation where we do have a funder quote unquote agenda and we're trying to optimize it for the communities. But in the other scenario, we have an example of a funder who's actually supported Firelight to work in three countries in Zambia, Tanzania, and Malawi, to do exactly the community mapping that I just talked about. And so we've actually worked directly with community stakeholders, with government leaders, with families, with children and youth themselves to ask them what is it like to be a child in your community? What is it like to be a youth? What is it like to be a girl? What are the issues you're facing with? Where do you feel safe? Where do you feel unsafe? Um, and based on all that learning now, we actually have a wealth of data that we can actually now take back to funders and say, hey, XYZ issues came up from communities, um, and we're actually now actively working to find funders to support those issue areas. So, in terms of issue identification, um, you know, in an ideal world, we would be as broad as possible, supporting community-driven change, but we find these sort of gray areas um in between the funder and the and the community space for entry points. Um, how we work though, then, we have now made it a standard policy across all of our projects or initiatives to have a planning period. And we call it a planning period, but it's actually an opportunity for the community-based organization to work with their community to identify the key issues that they are facing, to identify and sort of understand root causes, to map out the stakeholders in the system, to start identifying which actions need to be prioritized and by whom. And so by the end of the six to 12 month period, um, communities have come together and developed an action plan. And the community based organization who Firelight is working with and Firelight just become one actor in that plan. It's actually a community driven plan. Um Then by the time the community-based organization comes back to Firelight with a quote unquote proposal, it's actually been developed by the community. And our reporting process also maximizes uh reporting back to and reflecting with the community rather than reporting to Firelight. So those are sort of some small examples of the ways in which we've tried to shift it. So it's about uh developing community agency and strengthening the CBO's relationship with the community rather than focusing on their accountability to an external funder. We are there to support, to catalyze, but our goal is that when we, when the project funding ends, it's like barely noticed, right? That if there's so much community-driven action happening and there's a little bit of project funding that's helping to catalyze it. Um, and in order for us to do that, we really have to step back and let communities lead and let CPOs lead and just be there as a support and as a um you know, as a as a injection of, you know, maybe strategic financing were helpful.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

And have you ever found any situations where there's been any sort of, you know, it because a mismatch in a way between what a community decides for itself, you know, are its kind of priorities or the best way of meeting its needs, and either, you know, your own perception or the perception of another funder who's involved in what they might have thought was was required. Because it always seems to me that that that's where the sort of the reality of adopting participatory methods or kind of shifting power really bites, which is if you as a funder are willing to accept that you know the money might not end up getting spent in the ways that you would have spent it, but that's okay because you know the community has decided for themselves that's the best way to spend it. That seems to me where the where the tension is. Have you ever kind of had situations in which you've had to sort of manage that a bit?

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Yeah, and you know, I think that um so I think it's a really good question, and I'm glad you answered and you asked it because it's it's a it's an area where we have to always be aware of our own power and our own biases. And sometimes we might have a very valid perspective. For example, you know, you there might be a child protection issue that we're concerned about. Um, but it's hard sometimes to distinguish where you have a maybe you know justified ethical concern versus um a bias that's you know based on your own upbringing in the in the global north. Um, so it's definitely a constant um uh question for us. Um I'm gonna give you a few examples of the way in which we handle it because there's no again, no black and white answer. One is that um where there are parameters, um we are very honest about them. So, as an example, we have an initiative that's focusing on early childhood development. And as you can imagine, early childhood development can pretty much be used as an entry point to anything in the community, right? From poverty to infrastructure to so on. Um, and so we did work very closely with the funder who's partnering with this to really map out what are your parameters. Like what are you going to, you know, really struggle with funding and what are you not gonna, you know, what are you gonna be okay with funding? And we've made those really, we've been very honest with our community-based partners about those. For us, you know, it's not always about saying, here, you can, you know, use the money any way you want, because it's not true. Oftentimes we are restricted by funders, but we are truly honest with our partners, with our community-based partners and our funder partners that these are the parameters we're working within, and we want to work with you to make this work within those parameters. So that's one thing, but there's a lot that you can't predict, right? There might be things that come up. Um, and I think there's um two major approaches we have in our own organization. At Fire Light, uh, most of our staff who make uh the critical decisions around grant making, around um, you know, approving programs or um interpreting evaluation results, they're um they are completely Black Africans living in Africa. Um and I say this because you know our colleagues, my colleagues are deeply rooted in in sort of community spaces, in organizational spaces, and understand the context and can challenge other team members where we might be implementing some of our own biases. As an example, there was a you know a situation in Tanzania where um girls were being tested for pregnancy in schools and it raised a whole bunch of feelings at you know at Firelite. And we we had really difficult questions as an organization about um you know what was culturally universal versus culturally distinct in terms of what's right and wrong in terms of child protection. Um I can't say we came to a neat answer there, but I think that having the diversity of perspectives and having the safe space to challenge one another has been important. And in the same way, you know, we sometimes also fall back into doing you know business as usual. Um, and so our colleagues will challenge us. Um, and there are times when we will say to a community-based partner that unfortunately we just can't fund this for X, Y, Z reasons. But I think that's the ultimate goal is being honest, being transparent, and dialoguing about um about things rather than just shutting down the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 26:53

Yeah, no, it's um fascinating. I think you're right. I mean, a lot of these things are not necessarily soluble because of difficult uh challenges, but but the openness about them goes a long way towards making it possible to kind of navigate it. Um I wondered also, because what one of the sort of things that you you find from looking at the kind of historical interaction, particularly between foundations and funders and social movements, which often is kind of you know within a particular domestic context, but um, but just in general, that kind of interface between hierarchical, traditional, philanthropic institutions and and more sort of you know, um horizontally organized, loosely uh networked organizations, um, is that that even where the funder is is well-intentioned and the sort of examples of this, there are challenges just due to the sort of uh the asymmetry and power that mean that um you know the the funder can have uh an influence simply in terms of the choices it makes about which organizations it will or won't fund, or the the sort of tactics and activities that they're willing to allow. Have you I just wondered like how much you're kind of aware of those. I know I'm sure you are because you've already talked about your sort of awareness of your own power as as a funder, but whether you'd had instances where organizations that you wanted to support wanted to engage in activities perhaps that were, you know, more things like direct action or other things where for various reasons you couldn't support them and sort of how those conversations might go.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

Yeah, um, so I think you know the ideal would be to have these unrestricted funds where um, you know, groups, not you know, uh where groups of community and local stakeholders, you know, um including government, including um, you know, thought leaders, um, can come together and make the best decisions for their own context. Um, but I think even where we are not able to do that completely, where there is um some sort of uh power differential or restriction. I think there's a there's two or three things that have helped us navigate this. The first is, as I mentioned before, the learning and planning period that we support at the beginning is not only about learning and planning around the Firelight grant. It's about the community coming together to unpack what are the issues that they're dealing with as a community, whether or not they're related to what Firelight is able to support. And then there are resulting community action plans, um, 90% of which have nothing to do with Firelight support. And so the community actually has a lot of potential and space to do the work they need to do that Firelight can't support. Um, and if you know they need to do some advocacy work that we are not able to support because those donor restrictions on our side, um, you know, the hope is that they um have then mobilized their own resources or resources from other sources to be able to achieve those needs. For Firelight, the greatest success is if we have, you know, after three or four or five years working with the community, if by the end of that period they are um they are stronger in their agency and in their um inclusion of each other and in their dialoguing and in their action. Um so I think for us, our insertion or our funding shouldn't be so overarching that it's actually, you know, um shaping the direction that the community takes. Um it's one component, one catalyst, one injection of uh of financing. The other thing that we um have found really important is to have long-term partnerships with um our community partners. And this is important because it helps build trust. So, as I mentioned earlier, our our community partners don't even have to submit a proposal to us until they've been working, they've been partnered with us for about a year already. So the first grant that they receive is a learning and planning grant, and it's at the end of that first year that they submit a proposal. What that does is it creates time for us to build trust for, and and trust is actually really important. So many of the community organizations we partner with, they don't believe us when we say, we want to learn from you, we want to hear about what you want to do. They're they're kind of waiting for the trick. They're like, okay, but what do you really want us to do? What do you, you know, what do you really want us to say about our communities issues? And you just realize how much experience they have working with funders who have clear restrictions and have clear expectations. And um that one year that we take in in learning together with them is really unusual for them. What it does though, I think, um, I hope, is that it creates that trust where they can push back on us more. And many of our partners, um, I'm really proud when they actually challenge us. Um, it for me it's an indication of how much um uh of a relationship we've built. That said, that's not enough. We also build in other mechanisms for uh confidential and anonymous feedback, whether it is a you know annual confidential survey or external um evaluators who get anonymous feedback and so on. Um, because I think it's important for us to continue getting that feedback in an honest way. So I don't know if that um kind of guessed at what you were asking.

SPEAKER_00 31:47

Yeah, absolutely. Um, and it it strikes me, as you said, you mentioned already in an earlier answer about the importance of approaching things with humility. And again, it seems like that's a very big part of sort of shifting power within philanthropy. Have you, I mean, have you sort of found in your experience, or do you think that you're part of the challenge to making that a norm uh more widely is is the sort of unfortunate reality that there's still a lot of kind of funder ego around, and particularly institutions and the people who work with them, if they're if they're if they're judged and their success is judged on the extent to which they can show that their funding was responsible for producing X or Y outcome in the world, that leads you into a particular mindset where you want to be able to kind of attribute your own contribution to solving some sort of problem. And that if that's the way you look at philanthropy, it's it's quite difficult to do what needs to be done to actually kind of give up that uh up that power. Have you have you ever sort of found with any of the organizations that you work with that actually there's a kind of resistance to, you know, at some points to kind of giving up on that more sort of traditional idea that that it's the funder who comes in with the solution and that that can be kind of directly measured?

SPEAKER_01 33:03

Yeah, I um, you know, it keeps coming back to this charity approach that um, you know, I talked about earlier, that um this this paternalistic charity approach, it makes us feel good about ourselves, right? It it makes us feel like we're a good person, we're benevolent and kind and we're helping or saving uh the poor, or even just make a difference, right? Making a difference. Um but also it doesn't threaten our sense of self, right? It doesn't make us question our role in perpetuating inequity or in how we benefit from that inequity. Um and so I think that's why you know funder ego um or our rights aviarism are so pervasive. For Firelight, you know, I think we've been fortunate because as I said, many of the partners we've been working with have walked hand in hand with us. The funder partners have been on this learning journey with us. And those of us who, uh those of those partners who don't dive with it, um, you know, no longer partner with Firelight. Um and those funders who come and reach out to Firelite saying, hey, we want to work with you to fund at the grassroots level, um they're sort of, you know, again, we've been in these spaces where we've been challenging, you know, this charity mindset, where we've been challenging, you know, white supremacy, we've been challenging global north imperialism. Um so I think you know, we've been fortunate in that regard that we are we're we generally attract to us uh ourselves the those funders who are who are willing um to step into the difficult work. Um but you know it's in all of this, right? This that that that um many many people who entered philanthropy or development entered with that desire to do good in this world. And I think it takes um it's difficult, it's uncomfortable uh internally to shift from this notion of being a good person to actually recognizing that you might be harming and that you need to um you know step up and take account and be accountable for way more in terms of not harming before you can even think about you know supporting others. Um so I would agree that yes, those are um widespread and major barriers.

SPEAKER_00 34:56

And and in terms of addressing barriers like that, and you mentioned you know earlier about um fielite becoming more vocal about issues like racial justice within within philanthropy and kind of you know mismatch between sort of imperialist mindset from the from the global north when it comes to development and aid. Do you do you sort of primarily see yourselves as having an impact on those areas by demonstration, by sort of showing people a different way of doing things and kind of letting that do the talking? Or do you also kind of focus efforts more overtly on turning that into sort of influencing and policy work that's designed to kind of get others to change their behavior?

SPEAKER_01 35:32

We definitely do both. Um, you know, we are always speaking out about our learnings, the evidence that we're capturing, um, you know, um, even the feedback that our partners are giving us. And part of this is also um when we are in funder spaces um to you know engage in advocacy and dialogue and sharing our learnings, but also um bringing forth the uh community partners themselves who from whom these learnings came. So while it's important for us to quote unquote be a race for our partners, um, it's always more important for us to pass the mic. So one of the things we actually try to do a lot of the time when we are in funder spaces is to invite our community partners in. We want to make sure that it is going to be a respectful and um supportive space for them as well. Um, but to actually have our community partners um share themselves how the traditional wave has been harmful and uh or ineffective, you know, um, and and what needs to be done to actually have the transformative change that you know many funders are actually claiming that they wish to support, wish to fund. Um so we do both. We try to show the impact of our work, we try to do advocacy. And one additional thing that we do is we are often contacted individually by uh funders, by large foundations or family foundations who are sort of stepping into this process and want to have a thought partner or a critical friend. And so we do a lot of one-on-one, you know, sort of um thought partnership or peer-to-peer support, um, which is really a lot about mutual learning. Um, and we find those to be really important spaces because that's where people are a little bit feel safer to unpack what's really, you know, um difficult.

SPEAKER_00 37:10

Yeah, fascinating. And and in terms of the organizations that you have either kind of worked with directly or or or or influenced in some way or kind of you know attempted to influence, what have you what have you seen in terms of how working with you and talking to you has kind of affected the the work that they do more broadly outside of their direct partnerships? I mean, the funders who have worked with you or individual donors, have you seen them then go away and and kind of change how they do things more broadly as well?

SPEAKER_01 37:41

Yeah, in some cases we have. In some cases, we we see a significant change in how they're working with us, but the work they do elsewhere might follow some of the more traditional approaches. But in many cases, we do see um over time that funder, for example, becoming more vocal about shifting power, about listening to communities. Um, so you know, I think we'd like to think we have a ripple effect, but we're also Firelight's not operating alone in this shift. There are many different actors pushing for this um, you know, shifting power movement or or sort of raising um their voice around racial injustice, around global north imperialism in in philanthropy and in development. So I think us along with many other influencers, I do see um small shifts. But but I, you know, I will be honest that I think there is a long way to go. I think that we have a lot of, we see um a willingness to change among maybe the program officers or the grant officers. Um, but where they often hit resistance is among their boards, their their trustees or their senior leadership. Um and I think that's the resistance that's maybe harder to challenge. And it makes sense, right? There are many holders of power and wealth, right, in these um leadership and decision-making positions um in boards, and they probably have uh maybe subconscious and ovested interest in maintaining the status quo, the you know, underlying inequitable systems of you know, capitalism and exploitation that actually um you know maintain um their wealth and power. And I will say I think a lot of the time it's subconscious, I don't think it's explicit, but I think that's where we hit the resistance that the those who are working directly with us and with community partners, um, they I think it's very quick for them to see um both the ethics and the effectiveness of shifting power and listening to communities, but I think the struggle is um in the larger um structure of the organization.

SPEAKER_00 39:33

Yeah, absolutely. And I suppose the the more power you have to start with, the more painful process giving it away might be. Um and I guess that's the reality of shifting power is that it does require some people to then have less power. Um uh and certainly, you know, uh, you know, from my point of view as somebody who in in many ways is kind of certain from the global global north and kind of you know relatively sort of privileged in all sorts of ways, I'm aware that it's not a kind of uh the process of you know, engaging with it and saying that you want to be involved in shifting power within philanthropy, if that at some point comes at a cost to me in terms of you know me having less ability to do things or having to allow that you know someone else get to work instead of me, that that's that is the price that has to be paid. But I guess that's why it's easy in some ways for the rhetoric to flow and for people to say they want to shift power. It's only when the reality of, well, what this means for you is is this. Uh, that's sometimes when people go, oh, right, okay, okay. So it's comfortable.

SPEAKER_01 40:28

And this is where the danger is, right? Like when you uh co-opt the terms and even the superficial practices around shifting power where you claim to listen, um, but then just kind of co-opt you know what you've heard into serving your own agenda, um, you're you it actually damages the movement overall. Um and I think that it um we've seen that amongst many of our community partners, is where they're really um hesitant to trust because they've been uh co-opted. They've been, you know, in the past, people have said, we want to listen to you, but then come you know back and do what they want to do. So for me, I think that's even riskier. It's safer when you come in and you're just honest about your agenda. But when you use the language um and you sort of, you know, sort of have superficial practices around listening and shifting power, that's when it's more risky. So when, you know, when I when I engage with other funders or INGOs around um what it means in practice to shift power, you know, I always start with these, the distinction between charity and and justice and solidarity. But the other two things that I really push around are around these individual and institutional biases and racism. So how you know, what is it within ourselves, each and every one of us, and within our organizations that actually reinforces or perpetuates racism. And I always remind everyone that it's not about, you know, the sort of traditional perspective on, you know, the KKK or that kind of white supremacy. I'm talking about the white supremacy that exists in each one of us, even me and you. Um and it's this unconscious bias that we have towards the white way of doing things, or it's about how we tend to see most foundation boards and leaders as might. It's about you know more funding going to white-led organizations. So it's it's so pervasive. And then it's implicit within us as well. It's the ways in which we define professionalism, the ways in which we talk about um pain or trauma and the way in which we instrumentalize other people's pain and trauma for um fundraising and for communications and so on. So for me, those become that becomes the the most critical starting point is really unpacking your own pieces. And then the the last thing that I really emphasize is how we think about like what does effectiveness mean to us? What does impact mean to us? What does success mean to us? So, you know, as I said, Firelite had this very in-depth research inquiry that we did over three years with community leaders across sub-Saharan Africa. And one of the most, for me, transformative findings was around how they defined effectiveness, impact, sustainability, quite differently from how we tend to conceptualize them in traditional global north approaches to development. So, just as an example, in you know, in when it comes to impact and success, in global north development and philanthropy, we tend to focus on measurable um inputs, evidence of results, reach and scale, uh, often cost effectiveness and replicability. And our community partners did appreciate many of these concepts. But more importantly, they they emphasize the importance of empowered communities, community agency, community-driven action, meaningful improvement in community members' lives, and lasting change in underlying systems and root causes. And for me, so so much of this echoes the distinction between the charity approach and the solidarity approach, right? The charity approach is about we're gonna give you the money and you need to prove to us that you're gonna use it well. And the solidarity approach is like we want communities to have power, we want communities to take action on their own to make a change. And if you want to walk with us on this journey, you're welcome to join us. Um, and so that's the other piece that I want to always come back to is how are you even thinking about success and who's defining it? Who gets to define what success is? What even things like risk or credibility or validity, um, how do our current definitions perpetuate you know certain mindsets, whether it's charity or white supremacy? Um, and then also how do we actually shift power, not just over resources and activities, but also over conceptualization, design, um, you know, definitions of success. And the second part around um relinquishing control around how success is divide is arguably harder, right? Because it goes down deep down into what we think is important and how we understand the world. But that's actually why it's more important, because when we don't do that, we're continuing to perpetuate this imperialism across the world.

SPEAKER_00 44:36

Yeah, it's so interesting because it's, as you say, in a way, it's easy for the debate around something like um effectiveness or in a measurement and what success looks like to be characterized as one where you have the sort of standard models that we use in the global north of success. And then anything that that isn't that, that's kind of you know has fewer figures in it or relies less on measurable outcomes is is somehow less rigorous. Whereas actually that reflects you know, a view where you're prioritizing one form of knowledge over another, and actually the sort of recognition that that there are other ways of you know evaluating these things and measuring effectiveness and success that are not lesser, they're just different. Um, that that I think you know feels like the the step that you know, the hurdle that needs to be overcome. And as you say, you know, it feels like one that it's a challenge, certainly, but that's kind of where where things need to go. Um, I was just going to ask on that, because I, you know, um I'm aware that we're we're coming up on on the hour, and I don't want to take up too much of your time, but on the sort of specific question around measuring effectiveness, because again, it's kind of in all the discussion around things like trust-based philanthropy and shifting power, sometimes I think there's a perception that if you're talking about trust-based approaches and sort of core cost funding, what that what that then somehow implies is that you're giving up on the idea that you need to measure anything at all. You're just kind of handing the money over and hoping for the best. And obviously that's not the case, particularly with a with an organization like yours that puts a lot of effort into learning and evaluation. So, what is it that you are doing in that situation to make sure that power is being shifted, but also you're you're sort of making sure that you know that the money is being spent in a way that that actually benefits the communities that uh that are getting the money?

SPEAKER_01 46:16

Yeah, so you know, you know, measurement and learning and accountability are not the exclusive domain, right, of the global north. I think there are many communities, indigenous communities around the world, who have been, who have had their own approaches, indigenous approaches, to um figuring out if something is working or not, to making sure that resources are being used efficiently and effectively. Um, and I think that's where we want to um sort of ground ourselves, that if we are working with the community, um and this is where we start, and when I say we, it's not actually us, we work with our community partners to drive the process. Um but that's where we start in terms of asking the community, you know, here are the things that you have agreed that you want to achieve over the next five years. How will you know if you're on the right track? How will you know if you're you know having an impact in the way you want to have an impact? And and the for us, that first question around how will you know you're on the right track is actually quite critical because in a case like you want to improve, you know, nutrition outcomes for children, it might um take time to address the underlying root causes. You might be able to have some band-aid solutions, but you might start seeing shifts in uh systems. So um some of our community partners have come up with um indicators of success that they've defined as an example that um in the early childhood development initiatives that I mentioned earlier, um, you know, one indicator that they felt was really important is that their local village development committee, which is an existing community structure supported, you know, um, or or decentralized through the government, um, that their local village development committee uh discusses and addresses issues of concern relating to early childhood every month. And it's you know, it's it's not a typical outcome, right? A typical outcome would be, you know, children meet their developmental milestones. Um, but for our partners, they were like, if we want to see in the long term that these systems are improving to support children, it needs to be responsive and accountable to our community. And they need to be systems within our community that already exist, not an external, you know, in intervention coming in. And so those that's how we're trying to shift our understanding that um, you know, and and not to say that they only focus on process indicators, they also do include a lot of outcome indicators. Um, but it's really about sitting down with the community and saying, what does success look like for you? What does progress look like for you? Um, and having that, those um learning processes, evaluation processes being driven by the community, being accountable to the community. So one of the things we really make sure to do now, you know, in the past, we used to have an evaluator come in and collect data and write a report up. And now we've moved away from that. If we do have any external evaluators come in, they're only there as a support. It is the community partners themselves who lead the process. The evaluator might support them. But the community leaders themselves, the community organizations themselves are the ones who collect the data, analyze the data, and discuss the data with their communities to figure out what's working, what's not working, and how do we improve. And as a side effect, Firelite will, you know, access that data for us to learn as well around what's working and not working. So we we do still emphasize the importance of data, of evidence, of learning, but it's really about learning, not about this sort of punitive, you know, judgment about whether someone is worthy of funding or not. Even if an organization has been implementing a program for three years and doesn't show outcomes, we don't view that necessarily as a failure of the organization, but we view that as a collective learning process and a recognition that sometimes change happens in intangible ways and can't always be measured in our traditional ways of measuring things. Um again, really the emphasis being on learning, learning, learning.

SPEAKER_00 49:46

Yeah, that's absolutely fascinating. Um just I'm aware that we're running out of time. So I just before I finally let you go, I just want to say, you know, thanks ever so much for coming on the podcast. It's been a really interesting conversation. And just to ask whether you have anything coming up that you'd like to alert people to or kind of uh signpost.

SPEAKER_01 50:05

I think so, first of all, thank you for having me. It's it's such a pleasure to to be able to engage on these questions um and and really um you know questions that that get to the heart of the matter. So I appreciate that. Um I would love for um any um any listeners who are interested in hearing more about how Firelight has actually been trying to operationalize this to check out um our community-driven systems change report um that's I think available on our website. Um and it's helpful because I think it outlines some of the um the values and the sort of contextual things that led to our research and then the actual research that you know we conducted with our community partners and how that led to a complete transformation of our own approach and how we've now fully embraced this model of community-driven systems change. So um I think that might be of interest and I'd love to hear people's feedback on that.

SPEAKER_00 50:55

Great, absolutely, yeah. And I'll put links in the show notes to where people can find that so they can some follow-up and read it if they're interested. Um just remains to say thanks ever so much for coming on the podcast, Elif. Um, it's great to talk. Um, and you know, certainly some point further down the line, maybe I will uh twist your arm and get you back on to find out how things have developed further.

SPEAKER_01 51:14

It's such a pleasure, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 51:24

Okay, great. Well, my thanks again to Sutherf for coming on the podcast. Um, great to have a chance to talk to her. Um, if you're interested in some of the things we mentioned there, I'll put links in the show notes to where you can find out more about the work of Firelight Foundation and the report that Sutharf mentioned. I'll also put some links to other podcast episodes you might be interested in and some things that I've written that might be of interest. Um if you are interested in more broadly in thoughts on philanthropy and civil society, uh do follow me on Twitter at Rodri underscore h underscore Davis or at philiteracy if you want stuff that's more kind of about the history and theory of philanthropy. Um if you want to find back issues of this podcast, do check out uh philanthropisms.com where you can find all of those. It's a growing collection, and there's some great conversations and sort of deep dive episodes in there now. Um you'll also find uh uh an email address on the website where you can get in touch with us if you've got ideas for topics we could cover or people that I could interview on the programme. Other than that, uh it just remains to say like, subscribe, do tell anybody that you think might be interested in the podcast about it and kind of uh spread the good word, and I will see you next time. Bye!