SPEAKER_01 0:38

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 is going to be the last of our current run uh of the podcast. I guess you might call it season two, which has been going on since September. Um the timing of these breaks is slightly sporadic in this particular case. Uh it's because uh it's been a long year. Um I've done lots of work, I've written a book, uh, launched a new organisation and website. I've done lots of these podcasts, uh, been working on all kinds of things, and I'm tired. Uh, and like lots of other people, I want a break over Christmas. Um so I'm gonna take a few weeks off the podcast and come back in the new year with some more episodes and interviews and lots of good stuff like that. Um but before we do that, I want to finish with our traditional end of year look ahead to what the next year might bring, we're in the shape of some predictions and trends about philanthropy and civil society in 2023. Now, anyone who's listened to me do this before on this podcast, or indeed on uh the previous podcast that I hosted when I worked at CAF, uh giving thought, will know that these are not so much exact predictions of a uh of a kind of um highly specific nature. They're more Nostradamus like Gnostic statements uh about trends and things that we should be keeping an eye out for based on the conversations that I've had with lots of people on this podcast and you know the work that I've been doing, which brings me into contact with all sorts of different people who work in different areas of philanthropy and civil society and know far more than I do, uh, and also the the time I get to spend sort of reading and thinking about philanthropy issues. So I think making exact predictions uh is obviously a a mugs game. Um, but I do think what we can do in terms of thinking ahead is look at what's going on right now, try and determine which of the things that we see represent kind of important themes and trends, and back that up a bit by looking backwards as well at historical examples, because I think often that's very useful in terms of differentiating between the signal and the noise in the present day, and also look for some of the weak signals, so the things that are happening at the margins and the fringes that might not be proper trends in their own right now, but give us some indication of might what be um what might be to come. Um, so I'm going to divide this up into looking at some trends sort of specifically around philanthropy and giving, including some sort of broad trends first about the the overall political, economic, and kind of environmental background, and then sort of zooming in on some more sector-specific trends. Uh, and then I also want to look at some sort of technology specific uh things. As an exciting sneak uh peek behind the curtain, I actually recorded another version of this podcast um in the same way that I did last year, which already ran to an hour uh and I hadn't even got to the philanthropy and giving predictions because I'd started with the broader ones and the technology ones. And the nature of this particular episode of the podcast is even more discursive than a normal episode, you know, the mind boggles, I'm sure. Um, but I I had uh gone off and extemporized to the extent that we were at 55 minutes and I was only halfway through my technology section. So I thought I would record it with the philanthropy stuff first, because I'm assuming that's what people are probably most interested in hearing about, and then bring in some uh kind of insights about what might be happening in technology that's relevant to philanthropy and civil society as well. So let's stop the introductory yak in and kind of get into it because I'm sure this one will end up running long too. So let's start by thinking about some of the things that we should be looking out for when it comes to philanthropy and civil society. And as I say, let's maybe zoom out to the big picture to start with. The most obvious thing to say about the wider political and societal uh environment for giving at the moment is it's very much dominated by concerns around the cost of living crisis and the the risk of an imminent recession, both here in the UK and globally. You know, this is something that's very front of mind, understandably, for lots of individuals and organizations who are worried about how they're going to be able to pay for energy and just afford the costs of food and fuel and all these other sorts of things. So I think we've seen a reasonable amount of focus on in on the short-term impacts of the cost of living crisis. I think what we will see over the coming year is a continuation of that, and unfortunately, you know, more examples of organizations finding it almost impossible to survive and having to compete in a you know very difficult uh climate for scarce resources when it comes to fundraising. But I think we'll also start to see some of the longer term and medium and longer term effects also become more apparent. And I think that's where the work of certain kinds of charities will come to the forefront. So not just the sort of immediate impacts on issues of poverty, so things like food banks and having to provide warmth banks for people who can't afford food or heating, but also uh things like the impact that it will have on mental health and also on things like rates of domestic violence, which when you look historically at periods of economic downturn, there's always a kind of corresponding increase in those problems. And organizations that work in those areas, I think, are already sounding the alarm bells about that, and I think we will see more of that over the coming year. I think there are also wider issues, even beyond that, uh, in terms of things you might not immediately think of. So animal welfare organisations as well are already uh highlighting the fact that they're being inundated with people bringing pets to them and wanting them to take them off their hands, not because they don't genuinely want those pets anymore, but because they can't afford to feed them and to house them when they're being forced to make decisions about whether to put the heating on or afford food for themselves and their families. So I think there are gonna be all kinds of challenges in that in that sense. The other question then, I guess, is on the sort of supply side in terms of money coming into the sector, what's gonna happen in terms of donations? Um, and I think it's useful to kind of separate this out a little bit into the kind of mass market of donations and kind of everyday giving, uh, and philanthropy in the sense of people with larger amounts of of money to give and the ability to make grants and what will happen to them. Because I think maybe there are two slightly different pictures here. I think in terms of everyday giving, the the historical evidence suggests that we should be reasonably confident in many ways that actually, even if the economic backdrop gets more difficult, that won't necessarily mean there will be a drop in donations. Actually, levels of giving have tended to stay relatively stable, even when there have been previous periods of economic slowdown and recession. But there is reason also to think that we might not be in that situation anymore, because ever since the financial crash in 2008, we've had a backdrop where actually we've seen kind of slowly declining levels of participation in giving. The overall headline amount, certainly here in the UK and and similarly, I think in the US and Canada and other places has stayed the same. But because fewer people are giving, what's happening is that we're increasingly reliant on a diminishing pool of donors who are giving more on average, um, which brings some concerns about the democratic implications of that. If we're sort of more reliant on a smaller number of people, does that mean that the sector is less representative as a whole? But I think more importantly, when it comes to the cost of living crisis, it's the pragmatic point that those people are a finite resource. And if we're increasingly reliant on that smaller pool of people and organizations are having ever more acute financial needs, then they're all essentially kind of looking to the same small group of people to fund them with new donations. Um, and you know, that is a challenge. And for organizations thinking what to do, it is you know, it's a difficult question. Do you go to your existing donors and ask them to give more, in the knowledge that this is a time when lots of people are individually feeling the pinch and feeling as though they might not have the ability to afford many things? Or you know, do you try and put more money into fundraising to try and expand your pool of donors? A decision which is very difficult at a time when investment of that kind is probably quite hard to justify, even if it is the right thing uh in a sort of rational sense with a view to the the longer term. So I think there are all kinds of difficult strategic decisions for organizations to make. I think when it comes to philanthropy specifically, I think there are a lot of questions to answer there. And I I wonder if some of that will become more apparent as we move into 2023. I think w I've heard a number of people say that actually they're surprised and potentially somewhat disappointed, I think, that the response of philanthropists here in the UK particularly to the cost of living crisis hasn't looked anything like the response that we saw during the COVID pandemic, which was quick and at scale and demonstrated a lot of urgency and flexibility. There hasn't really been that same sense of cohesion and urgency and people kind of recognizing that things needed to happen quickly and perhaps at a scale that was that was out of the ordinary. And perhaps that is because the nature of this crisis is different. Um, a pandemic is obviously something that seems finite, it's something that comes from the outside and affects everyone, whereas a cost of living crisis seems like it might be something that is relatively intractable and will go on for a long period of time. It's something that comes from the the inside and is driven by kind of political and economic decisions, so there's a political angle to it too. And also at its heart are concerns about wealth and inequality and the sort of unequal distribution of assets across society. And so they raise awkward questions about how philanthropy sits in in relation to those concerns about inequality. You know, is it, uh, as lots of people might argue, a reflection of that inequality and therefore should be lumped on on the side of part of the problem, or is it something that we should look to as part of the solution and a means of kind of redistributing some of that that wealth in a way that it hasn't been done necessarily by the taxation system or by public spending? Um and this raises all kinds of complicated questions that we've talked about many times on the podcast, which I'm not going to get into now because we'll be here for at least three hours. But linked to that question of the cost of living crisis as well is something else I think we need to bear in mind for the coming year, which is that because of the economic backdrop that we find ourselves in and I think longer-term trends in terms of inflation and the fact that real-term's wages haven't kept pace with inflation in this country, we're seeing a huge amount of um in industrial action and sort of unrest and strikes. This is a very much a sort of winter of disconsent discontent here in the UK. Obviously, this will affect charities, a sort of basic pragmatic point. You know, as infrastructure like rail and other forms of public transport and the postal service and the health service is affected by strikes, this will make it more difficult for charities to do some of their work. It will also mean that they have to pick up the pieces of various bits of work at time, although obviously not in a way that means that they are therefore kind of um undermining um legitimate protest and kind of collective action, obviously. I think also the other question is whether we will start to see collective action and industrial action within the charity sector itself more. There is there are sort of early signs of this, the most notably so far Shelter, the homeless charity here in the UK. Its staff recently voted to go on strike in terms of concerns about pay and in real terms pay having been eroded by by inflation and they're not being uh accompanying pay rises. And I wonder if we will start to see uh that will happen in other organizations, probably in larger organisations, because they are the only ones realistically that are likely to have a workforce that is organised enough to be unionized. And I think there are lots of broader issues in terms of union membership within the charity sector and the fact there isn't a specific representative union for for the sector, um, and actually lots of organizations rely on things like employee councils instead, and and some people um think that is in itself a problem. But I think you know this this whole question of industrial unrest is something that I think is going to be a real backdrop for for the coming year. The other thing to me it points to, um, and perhaps it it's causal or perhaps it's this unrest is symptomatic, is of the ongoing division within society and polarization. You know, it's certainly something we're seeing a lot at the moment continually with uh in the US, but also here in the UK, where uh a lot of the political discussion and debate around issues to do with strikes, but also many other issues, has become so embroiled in kind of polarizing narratives and and kind of uh culture war baggage that it's very difficult to have sensible conversations where people respect the point of view of people who are on the other side of political divides from them. And this is something I think as a backdrop for uh philanthropy that it's kind of important to be aware of. I think it raises particular challenges for philanthropy. I think it is something that perhaps makes it more difficult to have some of the debates about philanthropy itself that we need to be having. Because one of the things that I think I have seen is, you know, I I try to sit very much in the work that I do in the space, which is acknowledging justifiable criticisms and critiques of philanthropy and thinking about what we need to take on board from them in terms of thinking about how to make philanthropy better. And there are many ways uh indeed in which I think philanthropy does need to be better and can and should be better, but then also not falling into the trap of just getting polemical about it. Um, I think too often debate about philanthropy collapses into sort of easy binaries of philanthropy good and philanthropy bad, and then people on both sides get either overly polemical or overly defensive, and what it's difficult to do then is have conversations in the middle that have some element of nuance and accepting that these problems are often quite difficult and complex and don't necessarily have easy black and white answers, and that actually, if we want to, as I do, to try and think through how we can harness philanthropy as a way of driving necessary change uh and kind of progress within society, that is the space I think that we need to be comfortable sitting in, and that's much more difficult when the backdrop is this much more sort of polarized um political uh and societal debate. And I guess that brings us on to the sort of specific points about philanthropy and charitable giving and civil society, which is, you know, the first of which I think is to say an obvious trend that we've seen over the last few years and has been even more notable this year, is ongoing criticism and critique of philanthropy and more and more mainstream awareness of those criticisms and critiques. You know, we'd seen that a lot over recent years because of the spate of uh kind of books and articles about the issues to do with philanthropy and wealth inequality, and philanthropy and democracy, and um perpetuity in philanthropy and all kinds of various other things. And then I think this year there have been quite a lot of big stories that again have brought to light issues around you know the sources of wealth and what that means for the legitimacy of philanthropy. And then um, you know, late in the year we had the story of Sam Bankman Freed, um, the effective altruist donor and crypto billionaire uh whose FTX exchange uh spectacularly collapsed um a month or so ago. Uh and obviously the last episode of the podcast, uh we talked at some length about that. Uh, and that story brought to light pretty much every issue to do with big money philanthropy you could think of. So that really, you know, the amount of comment and analysis that's been flying around about that has really brought all of these issues to the front of people's minds, which is for anyone like me who is interested in these issues and thinks they're important is good. It's also challenging in that it often brings people into those issues who have particular axes to grind or come to it with pretty heavy ideological baggage and want to argue uh something or other about issues to do with philanthropy because they have uh issues to do with uh sort of broader political topics that that they want to make. And so I think we will see more of that in the coming year because that story hasn't finished yet, and I think there will inevitably be other ones. I think at the other end of the scale, or maybe linking two ends of the scale, the other thing that we've seen more and more of over the recent years is an ongoing, a sort of increasing emphasis on everyday giving and a desire to maybe reclaim something of the notion of philanthropy as as something that is not just about wealthy people giving very large amounts of money, but goes back to the kind of core definitional idea of it as the love of humanity, and it's something that's actually open to everyone to engage in. You know, this raises all kinds of questions about well, what's then is the difference between philanthropy and charity, which again, the very first episode of this podcast, we discussed that at some length. And in fact, uh also the book that I have coming out in March next year is very heavily centered around that question, so I'm not going to go into it much now. But I think the interesting thing is that increasingly we've seen sort of big donors support efforts to develop cultures of giving amongst, you know, more kind of everyday donors as well, whether that's because of a belief that that's good in terms of the general health of society because giving is inherently good, whether it's because they think that's good for organizations because it broadens the range of support they have, or whether it's in part driven by an acknowledgement of the fact that allowing people with very large amounts of resources to have a kind of disproportionate effect on society and on public and political discourse and debate is anti-democratic, and they want to rebalance that by using their giving to support um others being able to give and express free choice through through philanthropy. I don't know, it could be one or a combination of all of these things, but certainly I think you know we have seen examples like the Gates Foundation um supporting Giving Tuesday, which is you know the movement, uh the global sort of movement for generosity, um, which has uh grown and grown in recent years. I think also something I'm quite interested in, which maybe is a weak signal to me, or feels like a weak signal, because it's not something I see getting talked about very much in mainstream discussions of philanthropy, and certainly not within the philanthropy world itself, is that it feels like there is a whole different world of people starting to use the language of philanthropy and a new generation of people self-defining as philanthropists that that mainstream philanthropy is not really aware of. And I'm thinking here of examples like the many kind of YouTubers who you know base a lot of their online persona around philanthropy. So, Mr. Beast, for instance, you know, a lot of what he does is is beast philanthropy. Uh, and if you don't know, he's he's a sort of multi billionaire YouTuber who does lots of different things, including pranks. Um, but also he has a model of philanthropy which is very much based on kind of surprising individuals uh and you know, turning up with a film crew and and giving them life changing amounts of money. And this to me is really interesting. Because he's enormous, and lots of kids and children and young people are very aware of him. And this is probably the first and probably only time they've heard the word philanthropist. So it very much shapes their understanding. And, you know, it's based on a relatively problematic individualistic model of philanthropy that seems to me like a kind of neo-Victorian, you know, the largesse of somebody with very large amounts of money coming in and deciding arbitrarily to change the lives of individual people based on how compelling their life stories are, rather than, as most people in the philanthropy sector would want, you know, a more kind of considered and systematic and structured process of kind of planned um distribution of resources. That makes it sound very, very boring, doesn't it? So but but you know what I mean. But you know, I I wonder what effect that will have on shaping the understanding of of philanthropy among this new generation and whether actually in all these discussions about the meaning of the word philanthropy, without most of us being aware of it, there's a whole other world of people starting to use this language in in a very different way. Similarly, it's I noticed um a while ago that um a number of uh footballers, uh England footballers and others, in their Twitter bios, for instance, part of what they described themselves as is philanthropists, which you know, a few years ago I'm sure we wouldn't have had that, because I think the word did have all these kind of uh connotations of a sort of Victorian historical figures and and you know old white men with beards kind of endowing libraries and public institutions, and to see a much younger group of much more diverse um people kind of reclaiming this language for themselves, I think is really interesting and something that I I would be really interested to hear more about and to kind of dig into a bit more. Just sticking on on sort of philanthropy at the bigger level um for the moment, I think one thing we'll might well see more of over the coming years is some new players entering the market or existing players kind of becoming more uh apparent within the mainstream because they they kind of make big pledges or big statement gifts. So this year, for instance, we saw um Yvonne Schuinard, who is the founder of Patagonia, the outdoor clothing manufacturer, um, who's been a you know big giver for a long time and used his company to give away profits for a very, very long time to environmental causes, but caught the headlines a few months ago, although it's easy in some ways to forget with all the philanthropy news there's been since then. But Schuinard announced that he was giving over the ownership of his uh his company, Patagonia, to a non-profit uh structure, and that then money from the company profits will go into that structure and be used to go towards environmental causes. Um it's a little bit more complicated than that. Um, when you can read about it uh in a piece that I wrote, certainly, and I'll I'll put some links in the show notes to that. But essentially, this you know, this is the kind of crux of the story. But there have also been you know big announcements from the likes of Jeff Bezos, uh, again, um, you know, the latest in a series of seeming large announcements about his philanthropy, this time though, announcing that he was planning to give away the majority of his wealth during his lifetime, although you know, details still TBC. Also, more recently, I noticed that Craig Newmark, um, the founder of Craigslist, um, who's been a big philanthropist for a while and a really interesting one, has made a similar announcement that he's planning on giving away pretty much all of his money during his lifetime as well. And, you know, this obviously builds on the work of the Giving Pledge over the last decade or so. Um, but I wonder if we'll see more individual philanthropists coming out and making these sorts of statements and also using sort of slightly different approaches to do it. On that note, I think just winding back to Yvonne Schuinard for a minute, one of the things that's very interesting about what he's done is that it sort of re-blurs the lines between corporate philanthropy and individual philanthropy. For various reasons in the US, certainly, and to some extent in the UK, there has been a strict division between those two things, um, largely because a rule was introduced in the 1969 Tax Act that prevented people giving um shares in their own companies to their own foundations because there was a whole issue with self-dealing and people using it for sort of tax evasion, tax avoidance purposes. That hasn't necessarily been the case in other parts of the world. So actually, non-profit or foundation uh ownership of commercial entities is actually relatively common on main in mainland Europe, for instance. But the the precedent set by Patagonia, uh, and also um something that might have been missed by a lot of people because it's relatively technical, a ruling um regarding the Newman's own foundation, which is the charitable foundation set up by Paul Newman and his family to manage the the money from the the Newman's own uh sort of salad and condiment brand that he set up. There was a ruling that said that that was essentially acceptable as well, and basically carving out an exception for that allowed companies to be owned by non-profit entities in the US context. And I wonder if that will open up, if not a floodgate, then at least um then a kind of doorway which allows more of those examples to emerge over the coming year. Particularly because I think there was already a trend for commercial entities increasingly to sort of talk about their social purpose and the good they do in the world, um, rather than necessarily their straightforward commercial activities. Um I quite often note when I look at adverts or hear adverts on the radio that it feels as though companies and retailers are talking much more about their the work that they do in the community and their sort of charitable and philanthropic work than they are about what they actually sell. Um, and that's both in terms of appealing to consumers but also to potential employees. So I think you know, we will see more and more examples of companies putting that into practice in a more structured way by actually kind of taking on new legal forms that reflect that desire to show that they have a social purpose. Well, I'd say that's time uh enough for a jingle. So uh let's just uh take a brief listen to this and I'll be back in a second with a few more thoughts.

SPEAKER_04 28:41

Yet today is not far distant when the man who dies leaving behind him millions of available wealth, we want me for him to administer during life.

SPEAKER_01 29:28

Okay, so uh we're back with uh some more thoughts on trends and and themes to look out for in 2023 in philanthropy. And just picking up on what we were saying before about some of the kind of critiques and criticisms of philanthropy, I think some of the interesting stuff to keep an eye out for is in terms of what donors and funders choose to do about some of those critiques. Because I think they definitely, many of them are perfectly well aware of them. Um and to some extent, one of the interesting things I think is how much certain funders and donors have internalized some of these critiques, particularly, I think, among a kind of younger generation of donors. I I feel like I've seen quite a few new donors or donors that I've only become aware of over the last year or two, who think very deeply and sort of self-reflectively about how their wealth sits in relation to questions of inequality and how their philanthropy sits in relation to questions of justice and what you know, what the source of their wealth means in terms of the legitimacy of their giving and all these sorts of things. So I think you know, we will see more and more of that. Um you know, at one end of the spectrum, I think don't donors who genuinely are concerned about these issues and issues of justice will combine their traditional philanthropy with things like joining movements calling for wealth taxes. So movements like patriotic millionaires or millionaires for humanity, which uh involve many people who are themselves significant uh philanthropic donors, are based on the idea that that philanthropic giving itself is not enough to address um the issues with inequality in society and to sort of meet the needs of justice. So there needs to be an additional push for more progressive taxation and particularly more taxation on wealth. And I think we will see more donors joining those kinds of movements and perhaps sort of more awareness of them within the world of philanthropy and sort of beyond that. I think within the world of philanthropy, when it comes to the giving itself, what we'll also see more of, I think, is more awareness of the tension and the choices to be made between the kind of paradigm of philanthropy that's been dominant for however long, you know, decades, if not hundreds of years, of a relatively kind of donor-driven, top-down model of strategic philanthropy, which is the sort of Carnegie-Rockefeller idea that the donor has the wisdom and the resources, and they set the parameters of the problem, and then they institute programs and structures that address that problem by giving out money in a systematic way to organizations that are carefully chosen and often with restrictions put on the use of that money. Between that and a more trust-based model, which essentially says, I, as the donor and don't have all of the knowledge and wisdom, uh, I recognize my responsibility to give. And actually, if I want to do that in a way that meets the needs of society and addresses the problems that I want to address, I should give not only the resources but some of the power over to organizations that do know how to address those issues and involve members of the communities and groups that are affected by those issues. And this is very much the model that is uh being kind of typified by Mackenzie Scott at the moment, who is uh continuing to give very large amounts of money with you know sort of no strings attached to lots of uh grassroots groups and movements, particularly focusing on kind of marginalized communities, um, and really, I think, sort of shaking up uh some of the traditional ways that we think about big money philanthropy. Um, and she will no doubt continue to do that. And I think we will see more other philanthropists join her in that. I don't think all will, and I think there will, as I say, it's an ongoing conversation about the the pros and the cons and the trades off trade-offs between strategic and trust-based philanthropy. But I think it forces us to ask questions about what we mean by uh by things like effectiveness and what we actually think the purpose of philanthropy is and what the role of the donor is and and what our expectations are of gratitude and things like that, as as again we discussed on a recent episode of uh podcast. Linked to that, I think, among those donors who do want to give over power and adopt uh a sort of trust-based approach, um, it's partly about giving over the money uh and giving sort of core cost grants and and longer term funding. I think it's also about things like experiments in participatory methods and funding grassroots organizations and social movements and maybe kind of non-traditional organizations. I think we will see more of that. I think we'll see kind of more interest and awareness of how you do participatory philanthropy and grant making. I think we'll see more examples of traditional donors and philanthropic funders funding more radical movements, I think, particularly in spaces like climate and racial justice, where I think a lot of people feel as though the traditional non-profit sphere has not necessarily been radical enough or pushed hard enough for sort of fundamental change and reform that's required. So they're looking instead to other types of organizations to drive that change. I think we will inevitably see some examples of the challenges that this brings to bear as well, because I think often there is a mismatch between the perception of funders and donors of how best to go about dealing with issues and the tactics that should be used and those of more radical groups and movements on the ground. This has historically always been the case. There's always been that tension, and I suspect we'll see more examples of it. And also the challenges of even the best-intentioned donors and funders who want to fund movements and grassroots organizations finding that the sheer scale of the resources they have available to them mean that there's a real danger that they sort of skew the direction of movements or kind of skew the emphasis of uh kind of areas of social justice by the choices that they make and by the ways in which they fund. And I think there will be kind of more awareness of that. I think one thing to look out for as well, in terms of that tension between uh trust-based and strategic philanthropy, is whether we also see more examples of people moving slightly back in the direction of donor direction and sort of being strategic. So, one thing that I've seen this year, which I thought was interesting, is um some examples of where funders and donors were um experimenting with direct cash transfers, so essentially giving money directly to individuals or to kind of community groups to spend as they were, but but adding increasingly kind of conditions on them, essentially kind of reintroducing an element of donor direction and getting away from the idea that the best thing to do is to relinquish that that power. And I wonder if we'll see more of that as people embrace the language and the narrative of kind of shifting power and trust-based philanthropy, but actually kind of increasingly start to add caveats to that that mean that we start shifting back in the other direction. Another thing I think we should look out for uh in terms of how donors and funders themselves work is whether we see more collaboration and people kind of working together. I think this is something that we saw a lot of almost by necessity through uh the pandemic, where lots of organizations realized that the the urgency and the scale of the challenges meant that they needed to put aside institutional or individual ego and kind of work together in a way they perhaps hadn't necessarily been comfortable doing before. And the hope of many, myself included, was that we would see more of that once we moved out of the pandemic. I think it it hasn't necessarily marked the kind of sea change that that at some points you might have expected, but it definitely has been a development in terms of the growth of things like uh giving circles at a kind of individual level. So donors coming together to work in a collective way to identify problems they want to work on and sort of work out how to distribute the resources they have. And also at a more sort of institutional level, setting up pooled funds, which um are essentially kind of intermediary vehicles that can take money from a whole range of other funders or donors and then distribute those out to a wide range of um of kind of organizations and groups. I think these are really interesting, both because they they are predicated on the idea of collaboration and and coordination, but also because they can maybe address some of the challenges that come when uh we're that we were talking about a minute ago, when um funders and donors are looking to support more radical organizations and grassroots movements, because these intermediaries can sometimes kind of walk a fine line where they are able to uh kind of make the donors and the funders feel sufficiently confident that the money will be used well, but they are also able to embrace a higher degree of risk and have a higher risk tolerance in regards to how the money is then used on the ground than those individual donors might be able to do uh themselves. So I think maybe they can allow philanthropic money to get through to more kind of radical and interesting work. I think the other thing they do in terms of forcing more collaboration that I uh you know really encourages me is they kind of get away from what I feel are is the unhealthy myth of the sort of philanthropic loan saviour, which is this this idea, I think, this default model that we have, and is still prevalent, I think, in some examples of big money philanthropy, particularly has to be said, uh, that done by men and men of a certain kind, often from the tech world, where it's essentially, you know, the idea is never fear, I've decided now to put, you know, not only my wealth but the the incredible force of my intellect uh towards philanthropy. So I'm assuming that all of these complex and intractable social and environmental problems will now, you know, easily be solved by this hack that I've come up with, which is obviously not how these things work. You know, none of these problems have been caused by any one sector in society or any one factor. So the idea that then a single individual or individual funder could come in and solve them is nonsensical, but that doesn't stop this particular kind of model continuing to be perpetrated. I think the other thing in terms of funding practices and people taking on board critiques of philanthropy that that is interesting is the debate about the appropriate time frame for philanthropy. So as a result of concerns about justice and the legitimacy of big money philanthropy, I think there's been more focus in recent years on the idea that actually allowing foundations and endowed structures to exist in perpetuity is problematic because it it basically it sort of creates the problem of the dead hand of the donor, where decisions made at a certain point in time about what is important and how to distribute money can potentially affect, you know, not just that generation but countless future generations to come, and that is unjust. It sort of creates an intergenerational injustice. So both because of that and because of an increasing sense that some of the challenges that we face are really pretty urgent and need addressing now rather than slowly over many, many decades. I think there's an increasing focus within the philanthropy world on getting money out of the door now. And again, this is somewhere where Mackenzie Scott is very interesting, because I think her giving challenges the sort of Andrew Carnegie idea that it's more difficult to give money away well than it is to make it in the first place. I think she's sort of implicitly saying with her giving, well, it only is if you apply a certain mindset to what you think the purpose of that giving is and what you think the role of the donor is. Actually, if you're willing to just give away power and hand over the resources to organizations doing the work, it's quite easy to give away very large amounts of money quite quickly. So I think, you know, again, I th I wonder, you know, where that debate will go in the coming year.

SPEAKER_03 42:34

At Meeting of Industrial Leaders in Washington, here's Julius Rosenwald. Most people are of the opinion that because a man has made a fortune, that his opinions on any subject are value. Don't be fooled. I believe once a man is rich. There is ample proof of the thing theory.

SPEAKER_01 43:07

So I just wanted to finish off thinking about philanthropy with a couple of thoughts sparked largely by uh what has happened in recent weeks around Sam Bankman-Fried and the implications that has for effective altruism, but also questions it raises about the the sources of wealth uh and also things like the philanthropic funding of journalism. Um again, these are things we discussed in quite a lot of detail in the last episode of the podcast, so I'm only going to try and sort of skate over them here. I think in terms of effective altruism or EA, again, not to labour any of it uh here because you can go back and listen to that other episode, but Sam Backman Fried's downfall does raise big, if not kind of existential, challenges for EA, I think, um, as both a movement um but also as a kind of intellectual framework and an academic um theory. Because his EA beliefs, pretty clearly, I think, were not incidental to the ways in which he chose to make his money and the sort of problematic practices that he ended up engaging in. They were something that drove those, or at the very least, enabled them. And so I think this kind of raises pretty fundamental questions about some of the individuals at the top of the EA movement, but also just some of the kind of basic principles of this consequentialist utilitarian reasoning that is certainly there within EA, if not the whole of EA. In terms of what this means going into 2023, I think, you know, the challenge for EA is that the public perception of it now is well, the public are much more aware of it, but probably not in a way that EA would have ever wanted. My sense is that what we might see is a bit of a fracturing or a splintering or a kind of reorganization of the overall movement of EA or the landscape of EA, where those people who are were always more interested in the bit of EA that was about making a pledge to kind of give uh as much of a percentage of your money away as you could afford to do, and focusing on maximising the impact of that in the world by giving to effective organizations and focusing on things like um treating diseases in in the uh in the developing world and low-cost solutions like malaria pills and bed nets and this kind of thing. Those people probably feel as though a lot of the problems with Sam Bankman-Fried are more to do with the direction in which EA had gone towards thinking about long-termism and kind of existential risks from AI takeover and this sort of thing. And so I think perhaps there will be people who want to say, well, let's let's jettison all that stuff and go back to sort of first principles about what EA was in the first place. I also wonder if there will be a splintering a bit between the kind of practice and and academic study of EA, where again, something I've thought for a long while, um, and I was really interested to see reflected in an article that Dylan Matthews of Vox wrote um uh just this week, was that uh the the problem, in a way, with EA is it's it essentially comes out of academic philosophy. And anyone who spent any time hanging around in a room with academic philosophers will know that they are very much minded to to kind of push the boundaries of ethical theories and other theories to try and come test them in ways that you wouldn't necessarily do in the real world when you have to take into account sort of realpolitik and and other kind of practical considerations. So I think the kind of the the more extreme and bizarre versions of EA and some of the views it puts forward are the ones that come out of that that academic philosophy. And the problem is that the kind of there hasn't been a clear delineation between that and the real-world application of EA in a practical sense, and I think maybe there does need to be. So actually, EA is a set of tools, and even as a as an ideological framework, when practical considerations are taken into account, I think, you know, has has its merits. I mean, and still some challenges, but certainly has merits. And I wonder if we'll see more people within that movement and organizations trying to sort of create more of a clear um dividing line between the sort of EA as as a graduate seminar debating uh tool and EA as a practical tool that can be used in the real world to guide decision making when it comes to philanthropy or indeed policy making. Um the other thing I think that the Sam Backman Freed uh example brought to light again, and it's by no means the only uh example of this phenomenon this year, or indeed in the last few years, is the whole question around tainted donations and sources of wealth. Um so I think the the idea that there are some forms of creating wealth that are sufficiently ethically problematic that they undermine any efforts to do good through giving that money away is as old as the Hills, but it keeps coming back around again. Um I think the challenge is and always has been, not so much the clear-cut cases where you know the law says that this money is illegal, uh, or you know, either because something like it it turns out that SPF has committed actual fraud and so that money is is entirely fraudulent, uh, or you know, it's a Russian oligarch and they get sanctioned by the government and all of a sudden their money is is uh is illegal. What's more difficult is the grey area of money that is still technically legal within the sort of laws of the land as they stand, but where people have ethical concerns about it. You know, historically this might have been the arms industry or the tobacco industry, but increasingly those questions are being asked about um sort of extractive industries, uh like fossil fuels and other natural resources, but also maybe the tech industry, where you know a lot of the individuals and products and companies involved in that, I think, are showing themselves to raise quite a lot of sort of problematic ethical questions. And so maybe there will start to be more questions asked about whether money from those sources is tainted in some sense. I think from the point of view of organizations faced with those donations, the practical challenge has always been, well, is it better just to say no and keep our hands clean, or is it better to say yes and to to try and do good with bad money? Um, and what are the kind of moral trade-offs uh involved in that? I think one of the things we might see over the coming years, uh, over the coming year is more people trying to look for models that allow them to do the latter and to take the money. I think just in acknowledgement of the fact that there are some pretty, you know, major challenges around climate and inequality and other things that need resourcing. And pragmatically, people would like to be able to just take that money and put it towards that work. So are there models that allow you to do that, but in a way where you aren't in any way kind of condoning the donor or buffing their reputation, but mean that you can take the work and take the money and perhaps even put it towards work that kind of fundamentally challenges uh that donor. In practical terms, obviously that's difficult because how how many donors genuinely want to give money to things that structurally challenge them and their wealth creation, I don't know. But it you know it will be interesting to see because I've heard a few conversations around this um in recent months that I've thought were really interesting and sort of challenge my thinking on an issue that I do think about quite a lot. I mean, here in the UK as well, it's worth saying I think there's new charity commission guidance coming specifically around uh ethical issues around fundraising and sources of wealth and tainted donations, which might help to clarify some of this and might potentially clear up some of this grey area. So I think it'll be really interesting to watch that. I think the final thing just to say, and again, this is something we talked about in the last episode of the podcast, is that Sam Bankman-Fried and you know his spectacular downfall has raised some challenging questions, I think, about the philanthropic funding of journalism, because it turns out that he was funding all kinds of news outlets and news startups, um, big name ones and also sort of industry-specific ones. And a lot of that seems to have been to buy favourable coverage or at the very least, kind of avoid critical coverage of him and his business practices. And so I think the problem with that is that it will naturally lead to wider cynicism about the support of certain individual philanthropists for news media and journalism, which would be a real shame given that I think this is a really interesting area of funding for philanthropy when done well, because it can be, I think, an important tool to make philanthropy something that kind of strengthens democracy rather than undermines it. Um, but it will be, I think, really interesting to see how that develops and how the narrative about philanthropic funding for journalism adapts to what's happened uh in the wake of Sandbankman Freed over the coming year. Okay, well, we've definitely run pretty long there, but um, I'm just gonna take a short break now and we'll come back with some hopefully relatively brief thoughts on technology uh trends to keep an eye out for in 2023 as well. So stay tuned for that.

SPEAKER_00 52:59

Genius billionaire playboy philanthropist, genius billionaire playboy philanthropist, genius billionaire playboy philanthropist, genius billionaire playboy.

SPEAKER_01 53:30

Okay, so let's do some tech trends, and I will try to keep these brief because as I say, when I recorded uh an earlier draft version of this podcast, these weren't really long, so I'll do my best not to this time. Um the first thing that I wanted to uh to talk about a little bit was um what's going on in terms of the social media landscape. Um, particularly obviously this is kind of sparked by Twitter. And maybe I need to be careful about not being too myopic about this. I'm a pretty heavy user of Twitter. I found it a very useful tool for connecting and staying in touch with people and learning uh information uh over the last decade or so. So I'm relatively invested in it. Um I would be very sad if it entirely disappeared, but equally I am sort of increasingly concerned about what Elon Musk is doing to Twitter and whether it is a place that both in practical and in ethical terms it will be possible to remain on um over the coming year. So I guess the question is will well, first of all, will people actually move? How many people are actually kind of having these slightly hang-wringing conversations with themselves in the philanthropy and charity world like I am? I think quite a few are. I mean, judging just you know, very much uh kind of anecdotally from my my timeline, um it feels quieter on Twitter. So I think there are people doing that. What are they actually doing, I guess, is the question. Well, I think some people are just sort of who aren't that bothered about social media and it isn't integral to their work or their their lives or anything like that. Um maybe just will quiet down, stop using it for a bit, hope it gets better. And if it if it doesn't, maybe they'll just think, oh well, that was something that was useful for a while, but um, you know, now let's move on to to something else. Other people who need some form of uh a kind of platform for communication of of some kind or another may well be looking at alternatives, and certainly this is you know something I've been doing. Um, I have set up a Mastodon account, I've also kind of experimented with things like post. So I think you know, I'm I'm very much in that that space. I guess over the coming year it will be really interesting to see how that develops. I mean, in philanthropy terms, certainly in philanthropy and charity terms, it doesn't feel as though there's anything like a critical mass of people moving on to Mastodon at the moment. I think the barriers to entry for it are relatively high. I think, you know, maybe they've been lowered as people have become more aware of it, but I think the whole thing about having to choose instances or servers because it's a kind of decentralized federated structure. I think for people who really only view these things as tools and just want to be able to do it in a straightforward way, which is probably quite a lot of people in um in the charity sector, you know, they might feel as though they'd only really just about got their heads around Twitter, and so they don't want to have to adapt to this entirely uh new platform and also to have to kind of rebuild all of their networks and their social graph from scratch. I think even if people do move onto some of these new platforms, the danger is that unless everyone moves wholesale onto the same platform, um, there will be the risk of kind of balkanization as you know, some people move to this platform and other people move to that, and maybe particular subsectors or industries favour one platform or another, and so they become more siloed from one another and aren't able to kind of create those linkages and that sort of bridging social capital between groups. I think that would be a real shame. So it'll be kind of interesting to see that. Um I mean, one thing I'm interested in is if there is more focus on the sort of federated and decentralized models like Mastodon over the coming year, within this year are we going to see some of the downsides of that? Because I think you know, something I've written about before, that there's a lot to like about decentralized and kind of horizontal forms of organizing, but there are also all kinds of issues in terms of the way in which they allow hidden cliques to emerge, and there are kind of questions about who actually has power within those groups and and how decisions are made and who identifies as sort of leaders within a leaderless movement. So I think that will be really interesting. I think another interesting question for sort of in the context of philanthropy and uh and charitable giving is given that a lot of these uh sort of decentralized or federated models rely on a sort of open source approach where people are freely giving up their time to run these instances or servers, how does that relate to more traditional forms of volunteering? I mean, does that replace it? Is that something that sits alongside it? Is this a new form of volunteering and social action that we need to count alongside all the other forms when we're sort of trying to assess how much overall social action and giving there is? I don't know, but it'll be, you know, if these things take off, it'll be really interesting to think that through. I think there are also sort of broader questions about platforms, not just social media ones. One of the things I think that we've seen as a very clear trend over the last few years when it comes to charitable giving is the kind of continual growth of platforms and apps as the main method of doing that. And particularly, I think the the growth of commercial platforms uh enabling people to give rather than sort of non-profit specific platforms. I think there are interesting questions with with both of them. I think in terms of non-profit specific platforms, many, you know, many of which there still are out there, even if they are arguably starting to be eclipsed by these commercial platforms, there are questions about whether the the companies or the organizations running those platforms have uh we should have higher expectations of them in in ethical terms than we should of commercial operators. And what does that then mean in terms of their responsibilities when it comes to deciding who can or can't be on the platform? So I think there were all kinds of interesting cases. Um, there was the issue with Blackboard uh a while ago where they got heavily criticized because people realized that you were able to give to the National Rifle Association through Blackboard, which is obviously a legitimate, you know, legal organization, but one that lots of people have ethical issues with. And also it turned out that they weren't just able to give uh to Blackboard, but Blackboard was um was receiving sort of preferential treatment because it was one of their favoured customers. And this led to questions, people sort of saying they were going to boycott Blackboard and look elsewhere for their platform needs. Um, but actually, what what is the responsibility of an a company like Blackboard as the operator of a platform? Is their responsibility only to allow people to give to those things that it's been decided by the relevant authorities are okay to give to, or do they need to go above and beyond that and make decisions about what is or isn't acceptable? Now, obviously, we're sort of seeing in the context of Twitter at the moment that this has become a hugely kind of contentious issue where a lot of uh Elon Musk's and his followers' uh criticism of Twitter is that it had kind of had gone above and beyond what was uh what was kind of legitimate for it to do in terms of making decisions about what was or wasn't allowed to be on the platform. And I wonder again if some if if over the coming year we will see some of those kind of free speech framings of these arguments start to be applied to the the context of giving. So I think we will see examples where platforms might want to take decisions not to allow giving to certain kinds of organizations or groups because they they have ethical issues with it, but then that will become an arguing point in the in the culture war where people will say, oh, you know, this platform is is appointing themselves as the arbiter and and they are are kind of you know part of the woke liberal mind virus or whatever. So I I suspect we will see some of that happen. I think in terms of the growth of commercial platforms allowing giving, maybe it's a slightly different set of challenges because maybe they they won't make those decisions. I think there the question is what does that mean for the way in which we're able to make decisions about giving? And I think it's particularly in the case where we're talking not just about enabling people to give to any organization that they want to uh from a kind of list of all organizations, but increasingly where they are presented with recommendations or suggestions or choices, particularly, I think, where we're starting to talk about things like um conversational interfaces, as we'll kind of come on to in a moment, there the system is not just saying, here is a list of all the things you could give to, it's saying, it's answering a question that you might ask, like, what is a good charity to give to in my local area? And if it gives you a single answer or, you know, two or three answers, on what basis have those organizations been suggested? What is the the underlying list and what is the algorithm? This obviously would put a huge amount of power in the hands of these commercial platform providers to shape the choices people make when it comes to giving. And I think we need to really be aware of how those decisions are being made and kind of you know examine and challenge them. The other thing I think about the sort of platformization of giving that's been really interesting over the last year, and I think we'll see more of, is that it maybe challenges where we think the boundaries of what counts as philanthropy lie. And I think this particularly in the context of the war in Ukraine, one of the things that's been really interesting is that a lot of the fundraising for that has not necessarily taken place in the form of kind of traditional NGOs and INGOs fundraising, although there has obviously been that too. There's been a lot of individuals and groups within Ukraine using crowdfunding platforms to directly fundraise from other individuals and groups in other countries, and that allows them then to fundraise for things that it would be almost impossible for kind of traditional non-profit organizations to fundraise for or to fund things like you know weapons and and armaments and munitions. And actually, they're kind of cleverly utilising you know fundraising tips and and uh tricks in order to do this. So there was a story certainly earlier this year about a group that was fundraising within Ukraine to buy um shells, I think, and they were offering to donors that they would write a sort of tailored personalized message on that shell and send them a photo and this kind of thing. So I think you know, this is just one example, and I wonder if we will see some of these tools that are not inherently um bound by the existing rules that govern the kind of the laws and regulations around charities and non-profits start to push the boundaries of what we think it is, you know, acceptable uh to fundraise for. And you know, I think it'll be really interesting to see what examples of that uh emerge. There's a natural progression from thinking about sort of giving via platforms and digital giving. One area that it's worth keeping an eye on um over the coming year is around crypto philanthropy. Again, off the back of the story about Sam Bankman Fried that we we talked about a little while ago and and very much more in the last episode of this podcast. I think there will be a knock-on effect on crypto philanthropy, not necessarily a direct one from that individual example, but I think that is symptomatic of wider issues in the crypto industry and crypto markets, which were already becoming more volatile and where values had slumped enormously, and where there are ongoing questions about contagion. Um, and you know, as I record this, questions are being asked about one of the other big platforms, Binance, and whether its finances are actually uh, you know, they're not especially transparent, and people questioning whether there are issues that we should be aware of there. So, you know, I think some people might think that crypto markets and the whole sort of structure of cryptocurrency is going to come crashing down in the current uh year. I'm not sure it will be quite that severe, but I think in terms of Crypto philanthropy for those organizations that are already heavily invested in this, which is a really small handful, really, you know, those that have direct crypto, wealthy crypto donors giving to them, they might want to do some more enhanced due diligence off the back of concerns about people like Zambachman Fried. Organizations that are actually holding assets in the form of cryptocurrency might think about whether they want to be exposed to that kind of risk and volatility. But then for those organizations that are only exposed to crypto philanthropy in the sense of being signed up with a platform that allows them to take cryptocurrency donations but then turns it back into fiat money before it ever gets to the charity, they might just stick it out for now, I guess, because there's not any particularly sort of um enhanced risk for them, unless they have more fundamental ethical issues at this point with the whole nature of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology or kind of environmental concerns about it, um, there then they might choose to kind of pull back from from uh experiments in crypto philanthropy. A maybe more interesting tech area I just want to talk about briefly, which has been hitting the news in recent weeks, is is around artificial intelligence. I mean, this has obviously been hitting the news for quite a few years, but the the thing that's really kind of grabbed people's attention recently is around uh generative artificial intelligence. So, particularly, a lot of people have been falling over themselves about uh GP uh Chat GPT 3, which is the text-based machine learning system uh which essentially can kind of deal with natural language in a conversational form. So you either speak or type in questions or requests to it, and it will then produce written text, or you can have it converted to spoken audio. And it's really very naturalistic and and convincing. And lots of people started to write articles about whether this will do away with all sorts of human creative uh endeavours, what it will mean for things like giving you know children and students homework, is that now impossible? Uh, and all these sorts of questions. I think you know, these are questions many of which apply in the context of philanthropy and charity. I mean, you know, what will be the role of marketers or fundraisers or grant writers if you can just ask an AI system to write a credible grant proposal for you? I mean, my sense of this is it it is, you know, it is really interesting what what they're doing, and it's genuinely quite impressive. I think it's easy to get carried away and ignore the fact that really at this stage what this system and these systems are doing is essentially producing relatively kind of lowest common denominator content. So it's definitely it's just doing stuff that kind of reflects the most basic version of what a competent human would do. And actually, there's still an enormous amount of room to add value above and beyond that. So I think you know what we'll probably see over the coming year is organizations start to experiment with some of these tools to do some of the sort of grunt work of producing copy for websites or as I say for things like grant proposals, but then still a la you know having a human tune that up or add to it. Um but you know, in terms of productivity, there's plenty of writing that we all end up doing, and I certainly do, which is which is relatively kind of grunt work um stuff, just things that you need to get down on paper, and there's not a huge amount of creativity in it. I think one thing that we might see more awareness of as the initial excitement over these tools sort of uh normalizes is people in the charity world being aware that there are ethical questions about whether these systems essentially just kind of piggyback on the work of human beings. So Chat GPT only works because of the vast amount of you know material that's been written by human beings that it's able to draw on. And similarly, image-based uh generative AI like Dor Lee and others, that's a kind of text to image uh translator. So you basically type in you know a description of something and it will come up with a series of images, which again is you know it's very impressive, but it g it only works because it's able to draw in sort of countless thousands of examples of artworks that have been created by human beings. So I think there's a a sort of question about whether there is a sort of unacknowledged debt to human work and creativity in some of these systems. But I think to me, the most interesting question about chat GPT and you know whatever follows after it is the impact it will have on the way in which we search for information online. So I think yes, use it to kind of create written text is one thing, but but the other thing that you use these systems for is to ask for information, and it's sort of yet another step in terms of that move away from list-based search, where you know you you put in a search term in Google and it comes up with a list of things. Now, obviously, we all know these days that that list is not an objective one, it is very heavily skewed by the ranking algorithm. But the difference to me is you are still able to dig further and deeper into that list, although it's you know increasingly difficult, that has to be said on Google, but you can get down to page five or eight or eleven or whatever and find some of the less obvious um pages uh that have been found as a result of of that uh of that search but haven't necessarily ranked high. But if you are asking for information in the form of a question to a system that then comes back with a single answer or a list of answers, what does that then mean? And this is something you know we talked about a moment ago in the context of platforms. For instance, if people start to use these systems to ask questions like, you know, what is the best charity to give to, uh, what's that going to mean? I did a very brief test on this the other day by asking ChatGPT, you know, what's the best charity to give to in Britain? And it gave me the sort of answer that you would probably expect, which is something about how this is a personal decision and everybody, you know, has a different view of what are the best charities. But then it actually said, but some of the examples you might want to give to are, and it was, you know, as you'd expect, RNIB, Council Research UK, uh, the RSPB, all of which are good organizations, but it it does give me a slight uh you know incipient feeling of dread that what will happen is that this might end up with a kind of skewing of um recommendations and therefore donations more towards big name brand charities and also towards kind of causes that are more well known and perhaps less controversial, and they're smaller organizations and more controversial causes will find it even more difficult to cut through this than they do now. So I think you know, we these are things that we need to be thinking through over the coming year as people start to actually use these tools out in the wild. I think another area of AI I think that's just worth keeping uh an eye on, an AI on, is around the the increasing development of tools that allow you to develop AI systems and models and tools, but without having to have expertise in sort of you know the underlying uh coding and machine learning. So I'm just thinking here of the kind of no-code approach, which we're also it's not just in in AI and machine learning, it's also in things like you know, web design um and other forms of of coding, where tools and platforms are being built that allow you to essentially kind of pick modules and and you know build things. Like I don't know if anybody's used any of the sort of website builders like um Squarespace or Wixie or that kind of thing, but essentially that, but for building other forms of software up to and including kind of AI systems, where uh the interface allows you to sort of pick from lists of things and put them together as modules and build these systems. And this could be really you know valuable and important for the charity sector in particular, because I think one of the things that we'll come on to in a in a moment is that there's still a big skills gap, I think, in terms of what knowledge and expertise there is within the charity sector and the charity sector's ability to attract and retain technical expertise, particularly when there's a lot of demand on it uh elsewhere in the commercial world. And so if there are these tools that are that make it possible to use some of these emerging technologies without having to spend vast amounts of money employing coders and developers, then that's potentially really exciting. Um and then the final thing just about AI that I think we should also have in mind over the coming year is I'm not sure, you know, apart from things like Chat GPT and the use of that, that that the immediate impact of AI will will in the charity sector will necessarily be in terms of the way that philanthropic organizations and charities themselves use AI. I think it might be more about how AI affects and reshapes the wider operating environment that they work within. So lots of algorithmic and automated decision-making systems are already being used in things like financial services and increasingly by kind of regulatory bodies. And so, for instance, for organizations working in an international context that have to move money around the world, they've long had to deal with issues around um anti-money laundering regulation, counter-terrorism financing, and all these sorts of things. And if increasingly decisions about who does or doesn't get a bank account or who is or isn't, you know, subject to sanctions and where it is or isn't okay to move money are made by automated systems, the danger is that uh charities and non-profit organizations might find themselves on the wrong side of decisions that it's then very difficult to understand or indeed to challenge. It was already quite difficult to challenge uh a lot of these decisions, but if it's not even made by uh a human individual or or group of individuals, but by an automated system that operates essentially as a black box and where nobody really knows quite why it made the decision that it did, that that could raise real challenges for lots of organizations. So I think that is something that as we think about challenges facing global civil society over the coming years, we need to be increasingly aware of. And then the final thing I just wanted, or final two things maybe I wanted to say about uh technology before we finish. I mean, one is around the way in which technology is enabling changes to the ways in which we work. And again, this is you know something that lots of people have flagged up. I think you know, we've inc we've seen pretty big shifts in the last couple of years as people were forced to adapt to new ways of working and and uh new kind of remote and digital tools as a result of the pandemic. And I think the coming year ahead, one thing we need to look out for again and keep an eye on is what direction that goes in. I think we're at a point where you know some organizations have decided that this shows a path to the future and have really embraced remote working, flexible working, working from home, using kind of online videoing, uh video conferencing software and this sort of thing. I think there are also signs that some organizations are returning to kind of mandatory in-person presence at an office, particularly in the sort of commercial sphere. And I don't my my worry about that in a way is that it doesn't even necessarily always seem to be particularly a practical thing. I think in some cases maybe it is because you do need people in an office, maybe, or just physically present. But I think it's one of those things that's very much in danger of getting tied up in a kind of culture war divide where those who are in favour of four-day working weeks and flexible working get painted as sort of part of of the woke liberati, and actually there's a kind of rugged, you know, muscular, let's all work 20-hour days and sleep in the office, and this becomes a kind of cultural divide. Now, I'm not sure that cultural divide itself will be felt within the charity sector, because I would hope there are very few charities that that sort of take that that punitive and and kind of punishing a view of of work. I think what's more likely is that if charities are increasingly get on board with new ways of working and and flexible and remote working and and all these sorts of things, this might be another front on which they are then kind of painted as on one side or other of a culture war. You know, for instance, in the UK, with very much this this debate has been going on within the civil service, where some politicians have sort of, you know, accused the civil service of being lazy or woke or whatever because people have got used to working from home and working remotely and quite like it. And then culturally, politicians like Jacob Brees Morg wanted to make everybody come back to the office because that fits their view of what what constitutes work. And I think if charities are seen as being on the side of you know the the progressive view of the future of work, that to my mind is great. But I think it could also be a basis on which people, you know, add to their criticisms of charities, um, you know, those who sit on the other side of that that political divide. And then the final, final thing, final, I promise, uh, that I wanted to say is just in terms of that question of whether there are the skills and knowledge within the charity sector and the non-profit sector to take advantage of any of this stuff that I'm talking about. I think that will remain a big issue. I think the danger always when talking about the impact of certainly emerging technology is that this is so far beyond what most organizations, particularly smaller ones, are able, you know, are aware of or able to think about when it comes to technology, that there's a lot of work to be done before that in terms of just basic understand understanding and skills and kind of getting trustees and senior management on board and all those sorts of things. So, you know, I totally acknowledge that, and I think that will continue to be an issue over the coming year. I guess the the one thing that I was uh interested in, I read a thing the other day, somebody suggesting that actually one of the big trends within the tech world this year has been that there have been huge job losses and job cuts of lots of organizations that scaled up over the course of the pandemic. And I wonder whether there is actually an opportunity in some ways for the non-profit and the charity charity world to offer a home to those people and to to be quite forward-looking and sort of saying, why don't you take those skills and that expertise that you have in technology and bring that into a sphere and a sector that is all about trying to look for solutions to societal and environmental problems, and that this you know could potentially be uh a positive thing both for those people who lost their jobs in the tech world and for a charity sector that needs more of that technological expertise. So hopefully that's a relatively you know hopeful note on which to leave things.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:41

Back where I come from, there are men who do nothing all day but good deeds. They are called Philip uh Philip uh good deed doers.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:23

Okay, so I'm sure I've beaten you into submission at the end of this current run of the podcast. Uh, if you've made it to uh to this point, whether that was in one byte or multiple, well done. I will put links in the show notes to uh articles and other episodes of the podcast uh linked to all the sorts of things that we were talking about, where you can read or listen to more on anything that you're particularly interested in. If you are interested in issues around philanthropy and civil society and technology and all these kinds of things, do check out uh all the stuff that's on why philanthropymatters.com where there's all the episodes of this podcast, but also lots of articles and bits where I've written for for other people as well, um, and some videos and that kind of thing. Um so check it out and and see what takes your fancy there. For now, you can still follow me on Twitter at Rodery underscore h underscore Davis or at for literacy. Uh, you can also find me on Mastodon, I'm Rodri.davis at mstdn.social, I think. Other than that, just remains to say thanks ever so much for listening during 2022. Uh, we'll be back with lots more episodes in 2023. And yeah, just like, subscribe, tell all your friends about it, leave us a nice review on iTunes or wherever else you get your podcasts, and I'll see you next year. Bye.