SPEAKER_00 0:12

You're listening to the Philanthropisms Podcast with Rodery Davis.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Hello, you're listening to the Philanthropisms Podcast. This is the podcast where we try to put philanthropy in context. I'm your host, Rodri Davis, and we're getting towards the time of the year when I take a break on the podcast over the summer. A bit of a chance for me to recharge my batteries, and a chance for you to catch up with back episodes. In addition to this episode, there'll be one more out uh next week, just before that break. So stay tuned for that. But this week we've got a great conversation with Alicia Fernandez Miranda. Now, Alicia is the author of a new book uh coming out on August 5th uh called Someone's Gotta Give. And unusually for this podcast, it is not uh an academic tome about philanthropy. Um it's actually a kind of light romantic comedy novel, um, but set in the world of philanthropy. So it's about uh an American woman, uh sort of former fundraiser who marries a Brit and comes over to Britain uh and then gets a job in a private bank, uh, advising uh clients on philanthropy. But then this leads to a sort of exploration of um, well, obviously the characters in the book, um, but also some of the moral dilemmas she sort of faces as she's trying to balance her desire to broadly do good in the world with the realities of what it means to kind of work within that environment and mix in the world of the ultra-rich. Um, so Alicia and I sat down uh a week or so ago um for a really fun conversation. We talked about the book, uh, we talked about why she wrote it, how her experience of working in the world of philanthropy had informed that, what she wanted people to sort of take out of the book as well as enjoying it in terms of actual kind of messages about issues within philanthropy. Um, we talked about some of the characters in the book um and the kinds of archetypes that some of them embody about people who work in philanthropy or about philanthropists. Um, I tried to get a sense of whether any of these were based on uh real people or not, but Alicia was very uh diplomatic about that. Um we also talked about the whole world of philanthropy uh advice, particularly sort of with philanthropy advice to to the very rich, um, and some of the the sort of challenges that that exist in that world and the role of advisors. Um we also talked about the kind of the fundamental question of the challenge that people working in the world of philanthropy, who aren't necessarily the ones with the money face, where they're trying to do good and to sort of influence the world in a positive way, but sometimes find themselves making so many compromises along the way that they lose sight of that or realise that at some point they've kind of moved away from that original goal. Um, we also talked more broadly about the role that fiction can play in helping people to understand things like philanthropy in a in a more sort of complex and nuanced way, and whether actually, you know, fla uh fiction has the power to get points across in a way that no amount of dry policy reports or research can do. Given that we talked about why philanthropy hasn't actually been that widely covered as a topic in popular culture or in books, films or TV, or where it has, it's sort of been covered in quite a shallow way and why that is. We then talked a bit about what some of Alicia's favourite examples of where philanthropy and philanthropists have been portrayed in popular culture and why she liked those. And we also then talked a little bit about what some of the cultural differences between the UK and the US when it comes to philanthropy might be, because Alicia herself is um is American and has lived over in the UK for a long time, and the book is obviously a sort of uh largely centered around a character who is from the US, uh trying to make their way in the UK. Right, with so without further ado, let's go into the conversation. As I say, uh it was a really fun one, I really enjoyed it, and I hope you will too. Um, I'll put links in the show notes at the end to places where you can find the book and also other things that are relevant uh to the conversation. But for now, uh enjoy Alicia. Okay, great. Well, I'm here with Alicia Fernandez Miranda. Hi there, Alicia.

SPEAKER_03 4:40

Hi, I am so excited to be on this podcast.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

Well, that's a level of enthusiasm that I really like to see. So, yeah, as people all know from listening to the intro, um Alicia you've done many things uh throughout your career and you still have multiple hats. But the reason that you're here today, particularly, is to talk about a new book that you've got coming out, uh, a fiction book, but about philanthropy, so very relevant for this podcast. Uh, and the book is called Someone's Gotta Give, um, and it's out, I believe, uh, in August. That's right, August 5th. August 5th. Um, so people will be able to get it in time for the the second half of their holidays and read it uh on the beach or in the airport, uh, or you know, in work. I'm sure it's kind of justifiable to do it there if you work in philanthropy. So, yeah, really looking forward to to talking about the book and some of the issues that it raises about philanthropy. I guess the first, you know, the best place to start is can you tell us all a bit about what the book's actually about and sort of how it came about as well?

SPEAKER_03 5:32

Yeah, absolutely. So I am a fiction lover. Uh, my entire life I have read fiction since I was very, very young. And so I wrote a memoir in 2023 called My What If Year. And after that book was put to bed, I decided to write something else because why that's just like what you do when you write a book. People are always like, when's your next book coming out? And I thought, gosh, wouldn't it be fun to try my hand at a novel, given how much I love novels? And because I have a 20-plus year career in the philanthropy world, I had a friend say to me once, everybody's first novel is about their big thing. So I guess my big thing is philanthropy, because I thought someone needs to do a devil wears prada for philanthropy, and maybe that someone is me. And so that was the kind of beginning of Someone's Gotta Give, which I started writing in 2022. And the book tells the story of a Latin American fundraiser. She kind of has this whirlwind romance with a British man. She moves to London, she has a baby, and she kind of finds herself at the beginning of the story a bit lost at sea. She doesn't know which way to look where when to cross the street. She doesn't know what a bobbin is when they're singing it and like singy songy, all these uh little baby classes, and she's not working. And so she's trying to figure out what she does with her purpose in her life. And she ends up getting a job through a contact as a philanthropy advisor at a posh private bank in the city that caters to the global, wealthy, and powerful. And she is advising them on their giving and their strategy and how to do the most good with their money. And of course, hilarity ensues as part of that. She has to negotiate her identity, she has to negotiate what purpose really means to her, she has to figure out how much of herself she's willing to give and trade off to kind of get to this goal and the goals that she has for herself, for her family, and for her work and for the world. And she has to have a little bit of fun while doing it. So that's really what the book is about.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Yeah, absolutely. And there's there's definitely, I think, you know, in amongst all the kind of the fun bits there and the things that genuinely raise uh, you know, smile and a laugh at times. There's also bits where as somebody who kind of works and thinks about philanthropy all the time, I was like, oh yeah, that is actually kind of getting to the crux of the issue. So I definitely want to come into some of that. I guess, you know, you you mentioned there that um it's kind of inspired by your own uh experience of working in philanthropy over over 20 years. Maybe you could say a bit about kind of how that experience did inform the book. Um, because it's you know, philanthropy is a weird world. Um, it's sort of hard to know from the outside what it's all about. And this book's very clearly written by somebody who's been there on the inside. So which bits of that kind of insider perspective did you find particularly valuable?

SPEAKER_03 7:55

I think it would be so hard to do justice to a story like this in the way that people in the social impact space would feel is relatable to them in their life without actually having worked in the sector because it is very difficult to explain to other people what we do and how we do it. And, you know, especially in philanthropy, you're kind of bridging this gap or towing a line between nonprofits and charities who are doing incredible work and donors who are getting money out the door and having to understand what happens in the middle of that. And that's been my whole career. You know, I started my career as a corporate philanthropy advisor way back in 2005. Everybody knows how old I am, so I'm not dating myself too much, I think. Um, and then I was in-house for many years at Standard Chartered Bank and at Thomson Reuters before starting IG Advisors with my husband back in 2011 and joining full-time in 2015. So, you know, I've worked on all the different sides of the table. I've seen all the different perspectives. And fiction ultimately is about observation. It's about kind of noticing the world around you and take your own take on it and reflecting on it. So I think that I needed to kind of have this experience in the philanthropy world. But I will also say that my own feelings about philanthropy have evolved in 20 years for sure. Certainly have evolved, I'd say, in the last decade since the first Trump administration, since Brexit, in terms of what are we doing and how are we doing it and what's the right way to do it. And so it's something that I think about a lot. But for me, being able to address it through this lens of fiction felt like the right way to go about it because I wanted to give myself the freedom to talk about many of the things that are, you know, not real experiences, but certainly aligned with a lot of my emotions and things I've been through in a way that felt a little bit more free and more of an opportunity to say the things I wanted to say without being too preachy about it.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Yeah, absolutely. And and just following up on that, what were kind of, you know, in as well as the story and kind of making that compelling and the characters kind of ones that people wanted to root for, what were the the kind of the handful of key points about or ideas about philanthropy that you sort of wanted people who read it to go away with?

SPEAKER_03 10:02

I one of the things that's come up come up since the I very first started writing the early drafts of this book was this difference between meaning well and doing good, which I think we see a lot of in this field. And I think, you know, you see, if you're not a person who works in this sector, you see a lot of stories about philanthropy, typically very wealthy people engaging in philanthropy. And there is this kind of general idea that like all philanthropy is good philanthropy, and everybody who's got great intentions, you know, they must be doing something good if their intentions are good. And I think it kind of discounts the sophistication of the sector and what you need to do if you only think that intention is the only thing that matters. And so, in thinking about one concept I really wanted to get across to a wider audience was the idea that it's not that meaning well isn't always about doing good, that sometimes even people with the best intentions who don't have the right approach can make things more difficult for the organizations or the causes they're trying to support, that we're all part of this big ecosystem and that we all have a role to play. Even if you are not somebody who would consider yourself a philanthropist, you absolutely can be. You have a role to play in supporting the third sector and the broader community, and that there are lots of ways to do that. And there are also lots of ideas that can almost be more harmful than not. And so I wanted people to just think about that gray area, you know, that not all philanthropy is great, not all rich people are terrible. There's a lot of gray in between. And I think that's something that's relevant to a lot of people's lives, not just those of us who work in the sector.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

Yeah, absolutely. And and and the other bit, I guess, that really struck me, and maybe this is because as somebody who kind of works in philanthropy and is grappling with this, I kind of feel this quite keenly. And I I would guess other people reading the book will too, is the this sort of there's this running thread throughout the book of the this question of the kind of ethical and moral challenges, where do you do you work within a system that you know is not perfect and is flawed and you would you'd ideally like to change, but do you work within it because that's a sort of practical, pragmatic thing to do to achieve good and to kind of harness wealth and go where the resources are? Or do you kind of make the choice to stand outside it and criticize it, the, the, um, the system? And if you do decide to take that insider route, you know, at what point do you have to be careful that you don't tip over into suddenly realizing that you lost sight of that bigger goal? Um, was that something that you were kind of keen to explore?

SPEAKER_03 12:16

You got it exactly. I mean, isn't isn't that just such a common feeling that so many of us have, you know? I think that, especially in an advisory capacity, my approach always has to be, you know, I want people to come along on the journey. And also, I'm like a people pleaser from the earliest ages. So I I realized pretty early on that a good role for me in creating the kind of change I wanted to see was this insider role. I believe very, very strongly that there is a huge, you need everybody in the ecosystem. You need agitators and activists. And that was never gonna be me because I really want everybody to be friends and I want to bring as many people along as possible. And from my earliest days, I was very good at that. I was very good at talking to my clients when I was 25 years old and also talking to the grantees they were supporting and saying to the grantees, tell me what you want, and then bringing that back. So I knew that that was a good place for me to play, but that only works in a system where you have everybody and lots of different people playing lots of different roles. But it is something that personally I have struggled with. And again, you know, I think in the last decade or so, as we've seen some really difficult changes happening across the world in the two countries that, you know, I spend most of my time in the US and the UK, especially, feeling this real feeling of have we done enough? Are we doing enough? And in the corporate philanthropy world, which is where I spent so much of my career, really feeling that. I remember going to an event in this was pre-COVID, probably like 2016, 2017, in a big tech company's offices uh in the city. And there were four different people from four different companies speaking about their different corporate philanthropy programs. And I remember sitting there and I kind of sat in the back of the room and I had this moment where I was like, my God, we could have been having this conversation in 2005. And yet here we are, 10, 12 years later, having the exact same conversation. And we're doing something wrong, if that's the case. So as a person whose tendency is always to like, oh no, no, I want everybody to like me, I want everybody to come along, I want everybody to feel good about this. Exploring this question through Lucia, my protagonist, was awesome because, you know, I can see now throughout my career where I have made a lot of these compromises and trade-offs myself and where maybe they weren't always the right decision. And I think you can only, at some point, you need to figure out when the right when the right time is to stand up for something that might be uncomfortable. And I think it's happening, you know, everyone's saying like now more than ever, now more than ever, but kind of now more than ever. Like, you know, there's a real, there's lines being drawn about what people feel like their values are and who they want to work with and what they're going to stand up for. And so I think this is a real question that people are facing every day in their work in this field. How much of myself, how much of my values, how much of my what I stand by, my principles, am I willing to give to get to this longer term objective? When is the time that I need to actually say, you know what? No, this is not gonna be okay because this hasn't isn't really working towards the mission I want to work towards. And, you know, it's tricky. I don't have the right answer, but I think it was very cathartic to explore it through a fictional character.

SPEAKER_01 15:21

Yeah, I can imagine. I was quite cathartic to read it actually. And there was a bit, I I noted down actually just one sentence that um a couple of sentences that um one of the characters says at one point. They say to one of the other characters talking about this exact thing, you know, welcome to the great philanthropic paradox. We sometimes overlook hypocrisy in the name of doing good, but do we? We'll never really know. And that kind of that it feels to me is a conversation that a lot of people, as you say, in the philanthropy world on the advisory side or working in foundations, sort of have with themselves is just every once in a while stepping back and trying to kind of tot up, you know, on balance, am I am I doing good in the world, or have I kind of slightly lost sight and need to rebalance? And one of the things I wanted to ask as well was you kind of mentioned a couple of times about the the role of advisors, and obviously, you know, that in the book they they play a big uh role. Lisa, the protagonist kind of is an advisor and works in a firm, uh, and you yourself have. And and one of the things that I noticed there's a couple of examples in the book where the bank that she goes to work for actively sort of tries to discourage donors who are to attempting to do things more progressively or do things that are more interesting and sort of political. So you get this dynamic where it's not advisors trying to push kind of reluctant philanthropists to do things that are a bit more progressive. It's exactly the other way around. And the advisors are acting as a break on that. Is this a dynamic that you've kind of seen out there in the real world? And do you think this is a real challenge in philanthropy?

SPEAKER_03 16:44

Such a great and geeky question that I love the answer. Oh man. Because look, so I have never worked as a philanthropy advisor in a bank. I worked at a bank for many years, but I was on the corporate sustainability side. So I have not specifically had that role and so cannot speak to what happens in the real world. Here's what I know in my life as an advisor is that oftentimes I think intermediaries and gatekeepers become you've got a system of misaligned objectives, right? So if you are a relationship manager at a private bank and you have a client that would like to do some philanthropy, in most banks, not all of them, it is not in your personal best interest to help them get that money out the door as quickly as possible and as loudly as possible because you want to keep those assets under management. There is an entire deleted like half chapter of this book that my editors were like, nobody is gonna be interested in this, all about how incentives work at private banks and like how AUM works. I mean, no, if anybody wants to read it, I'm happy to share it with you, but it's like so deep cut. And my editors were like, you actually can't have this in here, nobody cares. But I care. I care about that. So I do think that there is definitely, and I'm not the only person who has seen this or talked about it, there is definitely a challenge of unlocking more philanthropy by gatekeepers who are incentivized to keep that money in. Now, in terms of how progressive or not progressive they are in terms of advisory, that I don't know from a real life experience. I think I've been very lucky at IG to work with a lot of clients who they come to us because they want to be pushed a little bit in their thinking, right? That's why they go to us and not somebody else, because we are not the type of firm that's gonna be like, yes, we're just gonna help you write this big check to insert large international development charity here. We really want people to think about this as a journey. And so, but that's, you know, 20 years of a career in the making and 15 years of an advisory firm being able to do that. I do think that the question of reputational risk does come out for people a lot. I don't know if that happens as much in an advisory capacity where like an advisor wouldn't necessarily be on the line for uh one of their clients making a big, slightly controversial gift. But for sure, this is a discussion that's happening everywhere else in the sector in terms of what is the risk of taking this donation, what is the risk of giving this donation, how is that going to reflect back on me? And I think there's a big fear that exists in terms of what if I put my head too, and I think this exists on the donor side, and I think it's legitimate for some people. If I put my head too high above the parapet, I'm gonna get it chopped off. And that comes from a lot of different factors, maybe sometimes from advisors, but also from others in the space. And I think that's a shame because sometimes it's the riskiest, most exciting gifts that are the ones that are able to make such a significant difference. So I think that dynamic exists in different pockets. Um, and I certainly think that I would love to engage the advisory community on more ways they can encourage their clients to give and how to align their own incentives uh with making that happen. Because I don't think it always happens.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

Yeah, and and the other thing, I guess, that comes out really clearly in the book that definitely my experience reflects real life is there's the relationship between advisors and donors and kind of how that can work in different ways. But then there's often the relationships within families that are the wealth holders, um, because you know, in a lot of cases, you're not just talking about an individual who's got money and wants to give give that money away, but you're talking about them and their their spouse or partner, but also their kids, and they might have quite sort of different views about the world. You know, how much of that was sort of informed by things that you've seen out there um in your professional experience of kind of how big a role do you think those family dynamics play in philanthropy?

SPEAKER_03 20:11

I mean enormous. Enormous. Because part of the reason why philanthropy is so personal is because money is so personal to people. And it's been a real privilege to, in my life, connect with lots of different multi-generational families of people who are giving in different ways, and to see how a lot of those dynamics work and how challenging they can be in a way that I think, again, like it's more nuanced than people just think, oh, how bad could your life be? You're inheriting a whole bunch of money. Surely you should just spend it everywhere on the things you want. When in practice, it's really not that simple. Um, you know, I think that when I started writing the book and like my first book, this is the book that you're reading on the shelves is draft, I want to say 10 or 11. Like, you know, I was a first-time novelist. There was a lot of work to get to where we got to. Definitely in my early drafts, there were things that I was like, oh, I really need to write about this thing that happened to me because, you know, I really have to get this off my chest. But through the process of the whole novel unfolding, through the editing process, it really became a story and a world and characters and experiences of their own that are fictional and completely unique. What is real though for me is the feelings. A lot of what Lucia feels and those feelings that she has, and those deep and complex emotions are things that I have felt in my experience. And certainly my relationship with a lot of people who are next-gen uh wealth inheritors and who are entering philanthropy for the first time or trying to find their feet in it, those feelings that I have for them, certainly I share with Lucia a lot of those because it is a complicated role to be in. It is not as simple as people think. And it's really money, but it's also your legacy. It's your relationship with your parents and your siblings, it's the kind of world you want to see and how that might be different from the values that the rest of your family holds. So, you know, I think few things are more personal than that for people.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Yeah, absolutely. And and you've you said there that you know in the process of refining and writing it, the you from the starting point you kind of developed a you know a genuine set of of characters, and you know, there are kind of really kind of strong characters there in the book. I was really interested at as as I read it, the extent to which they were just purely characters and whether there were elements of them that were based on either specific people that you knew or at least kind of archetypes of people that you'd worked with in in philanthropy. Was there any of that in there? I'm not expecting you to name names, obviously, but I'm gonna be able to do that. It would be imprudent and mostly open me up to legal action if I said yes.

SPEAKER_03 22:34

So I will say every single character in the book is completely fictional and a craft of my own mind. But okay, look, there's there's a tech bro philanthropist in there. I was just, we were talking before we started recording that I read that scene recently for the Hispanics in Philanthropy and Native Americans in Philanthropy Joint Summit. There were some where it was just a little bit fun to poke fun. Brody Cutler, who's that character in that scene, was just one of them. I think I I had fun writing all the characters, but it is nice to just, you know, and my my one of the things that my editor, one of the biggest compliments she gave me for this, is she said, you never punch down. You know, this is not humor where you punch down. And I really appreciate that because I tried very hard. But certainly some of these tech bro philanthropists are just ripe for a little bit of satire. There was a whole cut chapter on a private jet, actually. Um, that was really uh an extended version of the conversation that you'll see in the early part of the book with Brody Cutler. That was just so fun to write. But I think it had to be sacrificed for the greater story, which I get we had to do. But yeah, I mean, you know, some of just like in any other field, a lot of these archetypes exist. A lot of them exist for a reason because there are people who fit those uh those terms. But I think that I really, certainly with the main characters, you know, Brody gets like a little scene, right? He's not a big guy in the book. With the main characters, I wanted to make them slightly more complex because that is what real people are. Real people are not caricatures or archetypes. Real people are complex, they have shades to them, they have depth. Even the worst people tend to have good characteristics about them, and even the best people tend to have things that are really tricky. And I think that's what makes a good book, or at least the kind of book that I like to read. So I hope that I have taken people on a journey where they feel like these characters are believable, but where there won't be like an article like who's everybody and someone's got to give in real life, like, let's name names, because that was definitely not the case.

SPEAKER_01 24:22

No, absolutely. And I guess I mean that brings me to the sort of wider question about one of the things that's really interesting, you know, reading this to me is that it feels like that there is at the moment maybe a kind of growing amount of uh popular culture, you know, books and TV, certainly in films, about wealth. It actually feels like we're at a moment where there's a particular kind of focus on on wealth and a lot, a lot of fiction about it. But there's still not, apart from mentions here and there, anything that really sort of front and center deals with with philanthropy, apart from your kind of own interest in in writing, you know, a piece of fiction because that's something that you'd wanted to do. How important did you think it was to use fiction as a tool to try and get some of this stuff across? And and kind of why do you think f fiction is a particularly powerful or unique tool sometimes to do that?

SPEAKER_03 25:10

That's a great question. Because was this my mission from the beginning? No. From the beginning I was writing a story, like that's how I started doing this. But I think that philanthropists and philanthropists who tend to also be very wealthy people have an outsized and perhaps I might dare say unfair impact on a lot of the things that do affect people every day, particularly in the US, where you have a tax benefit. So you're basically saying when someone gives a huge gift, don't put that money into your democratically elected officials. Uh, you decide where to spend that money yourself. So, in a really fundamental way, these people who come in and set up these huge foundations and take this huge tax credit that then therefore doesn't go into the tax base, have an outsize sway on everybody's everyday life. And you need no better example than Elon Musk and what he has done uh since uh Trump got elected this time around, because here's an example of someone who is very wealthy, who has been able to access these high corridors of power, yes, in an unusual way, but there is this has an impact. It has an impact on everybody's everyday life. And so there was an element of wanting to bring that to people's attention. You know, it's not, it is a fiction book because I also want and need to read and view content right now that is a little bit escapist, that is entertaining, that makes me feel good. I feel like things are very heavy. I feel like those of us in the sector are, you know, at the front lines of a lot of what's happening. I would never say that for myself personally, but certainly every time I get on the phone with a nonprofit right now, there is some crisis that they are dealing with that they weren't dealing with before. And so I wanted to write because I like to read things that do that. And that's what makes fiction such a nice tool for this very big, heavy topic. If I had written a book or an article like, is philanthropy anti-democratic, you know, let's talk about that. There would be some philanthropy people who would read it, but I'm not sure it would get such wide exposure. This is a nice way to bring my little window on this world to a wider variety of people, many of whom may not be interested in philanthropy at all, but who come to it for a different reason. They read my memoir, they're a new mom, they like books about London, whatever. And I think that's really exciting because this is a world and a sector that has a huge impact and also does so much. The third sector is so unbelievably critical to the healthy functioning of a society. And I think we kind of have been getting a bad rap in the last uh little bit of time. And I also hope that there is an element of people seeing and understanding what a great job some of these people that are actually working at nonprofits are doing every day. And it's also something I'll be highlighting through the promotion of the book and the tours that I'm doing, um, is just great organizations doing phenomenal work and helping draw some attention to them.

SPEAKER_01 27:56

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's yeah, a really interesting series of thoughts there. And particularly what you were saying then, we were talking about this just before we started recording. But in terms of that thing you're saying, you know, you actually just want something that is a little bit escapist. I think it we were saying it kind of strikes me at the moment, working in the world of philanthropy, because there there are some massive challenges and lots of things that need to be taken seriously. I think there's this kind of idea that that the whole time when working on those things or addressing them, there's a kind of mode in which you can't even entertain a note of lightness or kind of make, you know, a joke about something. And um, I think that's a a challenge because I mean, as I was saying, I kind of my natural mode of being is there's a sort of inverse relationship between how seriously I take something and my willingness to joke about it. So actually, the more that I make jokes about things, it's usually a good sign that I care about it. I think it's important.

SPEAKER_02 28:46

That is also, by the way, maybe the most British thing you've ever said. Like, is that not just the definition of British humor right there?

SPEAKER_01 28:53

Yeah, yeah. And maybe, maybe that's it, and maybe that's why um, yeah, it kind of goes well, when it goes across with Americans well, it goes really well. And then occasionally I've been at things where I've sat in rooms of people making sort of what I think are perfectly normal, sort of rye as sides, and you get these entirely blank looks. Um, but yeah, I thought that that thing about tone is really interesting. The other thing um that I just wanted to kind of dig into a little bit more is that thing about character, because again, it sort of strikes me that um you can't get away from the fact that philanthropy, particularly if you're talking about elite philanthropy, I mean, yes, it's about you know systems and and kind of themes at a macro level, but it's also inescapably about individuals, and that means you have to kind of deal with what is it that drives individuals, the complexity of individuals. Do you think fiction's a good way of doing that? Because it does allow you to focus on the individual and the nuance of character rather, you know, and that's the way to get people to the systemic stuff rather than starting the other way around, which I think is quite a high bar for a general audience. Totally.

SPEAKER_03 29:53

I think there is a there's room for all of it. There's plenty of amazing nonfiction books about philanthropy that I have read and loved. Um, but I think that fiction, it it's like a little gateway, like it allows people to find different pockets of interest and then learn something while they're doing it. That's like the best fiction that I have read. I mean, think about, you know, I do talk about The Devil Wears product because that was a book that made such a huge impact on my life. I actually wanted to be a magazine journalist until I read that book, and then I decided I did not want to go into magazine journalism at all. But, you know, these novels that take a world and couch it in a really human story, such an amazing thing that fiction is able to do. And I think that it is a great way to bring people in. I mean, you know, I've been taking a screenwriting class and I've been working on screenplay. And man, screenwriting is a totally different beast. You're gonna write a feature, you get 120 pages max. Every single piece of real estate, every word you use counts. You have to convey very complex emotional thoughts through like a picture on the wall or like a facial expression. And in novels, you don't have to do that. I had like 80,000 words to just mess around with the depth of these characters and show their nuance and show them in different scenarios and with different relationships. You know, one of my favorite things about the book are Lucia's different relationships that she has with the people in her life, with her husband, with her best friend Suze, with her friends at work, Melissa and Tristan, with Henry and her other clients, you know, because I think that that is so rich. And that's kind of how you come to know a person or a character is through those relationships. Fiction is a fantastic way to do it. And I like to think there's room for all of it. You know, the nonfiction books, those heavy tomes, they are so vital. They, the ones that are bringing issues around systemic change. I will definitely shout out Winner's Take All was a book that changed how I looked at philanthropy, even though I had been working in it for so many years. Phenomenal, phenomenal book. But fiction, it uses a different part of your brain. It uses a different part of your emotional core. And I think that's nice to be able to take that and apply it to uh kind of learning or finding out new things about something you maybe didn't know in a way that's like sort of secretive because you really think you're just reading like a super fun book about, you know, rich people behaving badly.

SPEAKER_01 32:05

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um and and just on that, what you know, we've kind of mentioned that actually maybe philanthropy hasn't been especially well served by fiction for whatever reason um up to this point. But do you have any particular examples of um philanthropy or philanthropists in popular culture and fiction that you like and you sort of look and say, oh yeah, that you know, I think that's great. That really kind of hit the nail on the head or sort of got to the core of something.

SPEAKER_03 32:35

It's such a great question because do you know, like if you're if well, you may you will not know this. When I was pregnant, all I ever noticed around me was like other people being pregnant. And once I started writing about philanthropy, all I noticed is depictions of philanthropy in different ways and like fictional settings. So there are three that come to mind right now, for good or bad, but that I really loved. One is the new Amy Sherman Paladino series Etoile, which my French is very bad, but it means star in French. And it takes, it's a series about two ballet companies in New York and Paris. And it's a drama, it's a very human-centered piece, but there is a character in it who funds this swap, and he's a huge donor to the ballet companies in New York and Paris. And he's played by the incomparable Simon Callow, who just can play any character. And there are throughout the series, you know, it's an like an eight or 10-episode series, but there are these handful of moments and conversations that happen with him as a philanthropist that I think just illustrate this so beautifully. So there's a great one where uh he is, you know, he's funded this, he's talking about how much he loves dance, he's funded this swap out of the goodness of his heart. And then the next episode, you see him meeting with the French Minister of Culture, and he says, Oh, well, this doesn't have anything to do with dance. I actually really want to open an ice cream truck outside of the Louvre, and that's always been my dream. So, this idea that philanthropy actually gives you access to people who may not otherwise talk with you, I thought that was illustrated so beautifully. So, Atoile for sure does that really well with the Simon Callow character and how that push and pull of the artistic space, but also the commercial necessity of having donors, I thought that was beautiful. Um, I also, okay, The Gilded Age, which is uh now recently just back for season three, that I have been obsessed with how that show has impacted my life in so many ways. It's made me think about obsolescence and what happens when technology changes so rapidly. But it also has a great depiction of how philanthropy was used at that time for social capital. And so I love these little drawing room conversations that are ostensibly about funding the new opera or giving to the Red Cross, but that are really about people's social standing and where they sit among others and how they use that again as cultural capital and social capital in their lives. I think it handles it brilliantly. And so random. But the last one is this young adult book series called The Inheritance Games, which um did you have you read it? My daughter's obsessed with them at the moment. Okay, so I read it first and then gave it to my daughter because I was like, you gotta read these books. I read the whole trilogy. They're so good. And I'm not gonna spoil the end for people, but uh the way that uh that that the kind of main character who's a young woman approaches philanthropy through the book as she becomes this inheritor, um, I just absolutely loved. She's like all about participatory grant making, spoiler alert. And I was I was like, oh, somebody told this writer what to do because she's done it so, so well. So I think it happens in little bits, but it does tend to be couched in a story about something else. Um, and so I'm excited for people to see, get see the philanthropy world in all its fictional glory.

SPEAKER_01 35:30

Yeah, absolutely. I I find that, you know, you'll be sort of watching something or reading something, and then hanging and you suddenly be like, hang on a minute, this is about philanthropy. I wasn't expecting to be doing, you know, come out. Exactly. Are these billable hours now? Can I uh yeah? It's always a weird thing. Um I just wanted to ask as well, uh kind of uh, well, two final questions. One was, you know, uh a big part of the book, as you say, is about um the main character being someone who's kind of moved over to uh Britain from the US and is kind of struggling with some of those cultural differences. What's your take on the cultural differences um as they relate to philanthropy? I mean, do you think US philanthropy is is fundamentally different from British philanthropy? And as an American yourself, you know, kind of what did you find weirdest about British philanthropy or kind of took you most by surprise?

SPEAKER_03 36:16

I mean, the short answer to that is yes, they are fundamentally extremely different. As different as we are, what is it, two cultures celebrated but uh separated by a common language? Is that how we describe ourselves? You know, I've been in the UK for 17 years. The overwhelming majority of my philanthropy career has been in the UK. But I have many clients in the US and I'm so connected to that market because it's where I'm from originally and my family is still there, and we do a lot of work there. When I first moved over, one of the biggest shockers was around uh board giving, which is so commonplace. The US and many organizations, the purpose of the board is to give. It is a fundraising board. There's a minimum donation to be able to get in. And I joined my first board here in the UK when I was pretty young, I think 26 maybe or 27. It was the board of UN Women, the National Committee in the UK. It was UNICE UNIFEM at the time. And um, I'm sitting around this table and I'm like, great, okay, let's talk about fundraising. Like, who's giving? How much are we giving? How much do we need to give at a board? Everyone is like, horrified, horrified that I even brought up the subject of board giving. Um, but I think that sometimes people like to place value judgments on what's better or not. And I actually think that there is room for all of the different models. I think one of the great things about boards here, and certainly boards that I sit on now, are the diversity of people that are able to be on a board because it's not just a fundraising board. And if you actually want governance to give you a diversity of perspective, that can't only be people who can give 25,000 pounds a year or more. So that was a big shocker in the early days. I do think that in the last 17 or so years, increasingly there is so much more sharing across the border that there's a lot more that happens, uh, kind of trends that come through in both places. Sometimes the UK will be a bit ahead, sometimes the US will be a bit ahead. And I think that people who are working on progressive philanthropy are often working very closely together across borders. And that's not necessarily the domain of one country to another. But the fact is that for most individuals, the just the incentives for philanthropy, because those are so different, I think fundamentally makes the culture very, very different. The other thing that I will say, which I still think is true 17 years on, is that I will constantly find this real hesitance over here to talk about the size of donations, how much you're giving, to share that, to crow about that. You know, people do want naming rights here, but sometimes it's like, oh no, no, no, please don't acknowledge me in any way. And I don't think that that's the case so much in the US. I think generally people like to be recognized for their gifts. Uh, and that I haven't seen change too much in the last 17 years.

SPEAKER_01 38:39

No, and the the the depth of the cultural resistance to talking about money is is so great. It's very deep. It's gonna take something to overcome that, I think. The final thing that I wanted to uh to ask you, um, which I'm aware is the sort of question people always ask when somebody is uh promoting a book, and it's probably uh unfair, is to move on to what next. Um, but obviously, you know, this book is coming out in August. Um, you'll be doing lots of work to promote it and kind of get the word out there about it. Um, but you know, if you were thinking about following up, you know, with another fiction book, assuming, you know, this one goes well, would you take philanthropy as a topic again? Uh and if so, are there are there sort of ideas or themes that you didn't get to cover in this one that you'd like to throw into the next one?

SPEAKER_03 39:24

I think I need a break.

SPEAKER_01 39:25

I think that's fair enough, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:27

I mean, I'll tell you what's interesting. I am trying to, although this may never get done, but I feel like manifesting it in this podcast means it might happen. I I do really want to write a screenplay draft for Someone's Gotta Give, because I think that you can tell a similar version of this story on screen in a different way. That would be a lot of fun to explore different angles a little bit more and different elements of the world and the characters. Um, I have uh already drafted my next novel. It doesn't have anything to do with philanthropy, but it does have to do with what it means. I think, I think where I've where I've found my depth of interest is actually around this point between motherhood and ambition and how difficult it can be to negotiate that. And that seems to me to be a very rich well of clearly a lot. That maybe that's my big thing, and philanthropy is not my big thing at all, but certainly that is what my next book's about. It's about uh a woman with teenagers. Um she's extremely busy. It's kind of a little bit of a take, a fun satirical take on the self-care and well-being industry. Um, there's like a bit of AI and technology in there too, which is sort of fun. But no, I think that I'm really looking forward to talking about this book and putting it out there. I'd love to write the screenplay as well. But I think that maybe um I'm gonna stick to advising my clients for for now. But who knows? Maybe we'll have to come back for a sequel at some point where well, I don't want to spoil the ending for people. Where Lucia, you know, I don't know, maybe she gets elected like president and she changes all the regulations about philanthropy and tax, and no one would read that, but maybe me and you.

SPEAKER_02 40:59

But it'd be fun to write, wouldn't it?

SPEAKER_01 41:00

I mean, you know, yeah, uh a sort of a frothy romantic book about uh nonprofit tax law. Absolutely. So sign me up. The book we've all been waiting for. Uh maybe more so these days. I mean, I I think I've been, you know, kind of apologizing for my interest in nonprofit and philanthropy tax law for a long while, and all of a sudden it's you know, everybody's talking about it.

SPEAKER_03 41:20

So you're the expert, and you make your content very accessible to people, which is really nice, actually. So, all kidding aside, like I do like the idea of making some of this world accessible to a wider audience. And so you may see that in different things that I do or write, uh, even if it's not a full book.

SPEAKER_01 41:36

Brilliant. Well, best of luck with the book. I'll put links to the show notes to places where people can find it uh once it's out and can find a bit more info about it in the meantime. Just finally, before I let you go, are there any, you know, apart from directing people towards the book and getting them to buy it, are you got any particular things where you're out and about talking about the book that you want to flag up to people?

SPEAKER_03 41:54

I will be on tour. So my first event will actually be the Edinburgh International Book Festival, um, which I'm super excited to be speaking at. Uh, and then I'm gonna be in the US and in the UK. I would say the best place is my website, which is Aliciafmiranda.com. But we've got some really cool events planned, including this, the this will be the public public announcement. First announcement of this event is that we're doing um a really interesting debate about ethical fundraising that is kind of connected to the book, but that's really geared towards donors, fundraisers, people in the sector, based on a similar conversation I hosted up here in Edinburgh last year uh around clean money. So is there such a thing? And is what matters more where money goes to and or where money comes from or where it's going to? And that is a question in addition to the one about meaning well and doing good that's on my mind all the time. So I'm really excited to have like a bit more like philanthropy geekier uh debate about that. That's gonna be in November in London. So really excited about that.

SPEAKER_01 42:51

Brilliant. Well, yeah, I mean, probably one of my favorite questions of all time is the whole sort of tainted money. Is it better to take the money and do good with it or to keep your hands clean thing? So yeah, I'll keep an eye out for that and I'll put links in the show notes to it. Thank you. I mean to say thanks ever so much, Alicia. Uh, really great to have a chance to talk and yeah, all the best with getting the book out there in the world.

SPEAKER_03 43:08

Thank you. An unbelievable honor and pleasure to be on this podcast with you. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 43:22

Okay, great. Well, my thanks again to you, Alicia, for coming on the podcast. Um, it was great to have the chance to talk. It's a lot of fun, as I'm sure you can hear. Um, I put links in the show notes to places where you can find the book, which as I say is not quite out yet, although you can pre-order it and then come August 5th, you'll be able to get hold of it and hopefully take it with you on holiday or read it by the pool. Or if you work in the world of philanthropy, maybe you could take a day off and pretend that that's actually part of your job. Um, who knows? It is August after all. If you're interested in issues around philanthropy and civil society more broadly, do check out the website whyphilanthropymatters.com. Uh, lots of articles, long reads, shorter guides there, also all the back issues of this podcast, lots of news updates about things that I've done over the last few years, uh, and certainly over this summer break, while I'm not producing any new output. If you're interested in any of that, do take the time to dig into some of it. If you want to follow me on social media, you can find me on LinkedIn and on Blue Sky, although hopefully I won't be doing anything uh on those uh for the next few weeks because I'm going on holiday. I'm gonna try my best to entirely disengage from technology and indeed the world of philanthropy. But if you do have ideas for people that would be good to talk to on the podcast when it comes back in the autumn or topics you'd like to see covered, drop me a line. You can find the contact details at the website. Other than that, just like, follow the podcast, leave us a nice review wherever it is that you get your podcasts, and I will see you next time. Bye!