SPEAKER_00 0:12

You're listening to the Philanthropisms Podcast with Roger Davis. 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 this week my guest is Dr. Xanthi Scharf. Now, Xanthi is the managing director for external affairs and the editor at large at the Freedom Fund. And prior to that, she was a media executive, a non-profit founder, and a journalist who's worked on many different things, including co-founding the Fuller Project, which is a global newsroom dedicated to journalism about women, which has won many awards over the years. And I sat down with Xanthi a little while ago to talk about the work of the Freedom Fund. And particularly the thing that piqued my interest was the fact that they've had not one but two very sizable gifts from Mackenzie Scott. And the opportunity to talk to somebody who's actually been there on the receiving end of a McKenzie Scott gift, or two in fact, was too good to turn down. So it was great to talk to Xanthi. So yeah, we had a great wide-ranging conversation. We talked about Freedom Fund, what it is, what the mission is, and the issue that it works on around modern slavery, what the scale of that issue is, how we should understand it, where it sits at the moment in terms of how much philanthropic funding it attracts. We then talked about Mackenzie Scott and the gifts that Freedom Fund has received from her. The original gift of $35 million in 2021 and a follow-up gift last year of $60 million. So I asked Xanthi about how that had come about and what the process was like and whether it was like some of those apocryphal stories here about sort of mystery emails or phone calls, and how the second gift had followed from the first and whether they kind of knew anything about why it was that Mackenzie Scott had come back to them for a repeat gift. We talked about what the gift had meant to the organization. What did it enable Freedom Fund to do that it otherwise might not have been able to do? What's the impact on the ground been of it? How have they made choices about how to use that money? For instance, how you know, have they true chosen to invest in their own organizational capabilities versus just passing the money on to the organizations that they work with? Did they choose to why did they choose not to create an endowment, for instance, and to spend the money now instead? We also talked interestingly about some of the challenges that come with gifts of this sort of scale, which might sound counterintuitive to some people. What a lovely problem to have. But there are challenges that come with having to deal with those kinds of large amounts of money in a very uh short space of time. Um so Xanthi and I talked about that as well. And we also talked about the idea of collaborative funds. Um Freedom Fund itself is a fund that works collaboratively or as a sort of pooled fund. We talked about why those are sort of having a moment right now and uh what the strengths of that model are. We talked about whether it makes it easier sometimes for donors to fund things they might otherwise see as too risky and whether that could kind of get money out to places that it otherwise might struggle to get to. Um and then inevitably, when you're talking to somebody uh in the US right now, we talked a bit about the political context that they're operating in and some of the challenges for nonprofits, uh, and whether the uh things like the dismantling of USAID had had um and the wider impact that's had had an impact on uh Freedom Fund's work and the operating environment with it in which it works. Um so without further ado, let's go into the conversation. I really enjoyed this one. I hope you guys all will too. Uh, and then I will be back at the end for the usual bit of housekeeping. Okay, great. Well, I'm here with Xanthe Scharf. Hi there, Zanthi.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

Hi, it's so nice to be with you, Rodri.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

Yeah, well, great to have you here. Um, and as people will have heard from the intro, so you are Managing Director for External Affairs and editor at large for the Freedom Fund. Um, and we're here to talk about the work of the Freedom Fund, but also particularly about the fact that you guys have had two sizable gifts from Mackenzie Scott, which is very exciting for me because I've done a lot of writing and sort of talking about Mackenzie Scott as lots of us have. So to speak to somebody who's actually been there on the receiving end, I think is really going to be fascinating. Um, but maybe the best place to start, if you could just tell us all a bit about what Freedom Fund is as an organization, what the mission is, and how it goes about delivering on that.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Thank you, Rodri. Freedom Fund is a collaborative fund, meaning it was started by funders with a mission to raise more funds, to bring those funds to the very front lines of the work to stop modern slavery in its various forms. And at the heart of what we do is re-grant that money to those frontline partners. We've had about 300 partners over our 12 years of work. And some of them are small community foundations, survivor-led. We've had 47 survivor-led foundation organizations last year. So just to give a sense, we really prioritize those folks who are close to the problem, dedicated to stopping it, and have been working on these issues oftentimes their whole professional lives.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

Yeah, and I'd love to pick up on some of that, the stuff around your collaborative model and also that idea of kind of getting money out to the to the front line a bit further on in the conversation. Um I guess an interesting thing, just for a bit of context, would to be give people a sense of the scale of modern slavery as an issue. I mean, it's something we obviously kind of are aware of, and the fact that slavery is not just something that happened in history, it's still happening today. But kind of what are we talking about in terms of scale and what kinds of wider impact does it have across society?

SPEAKER_01 6:14

Yeah, so I'm gonna start by breaking down modern slavery because it is a term that I think can be confusing to some folks. It's a term that is effective for advocacy. You know, people immediately have everyone agrees this is something that we need to stop. But when it comes to actually understanding what it means, we have differences, including between the US, Europe, UK, Africa, the way people use these terms. So, first of all, modern slavery is different than, for instance, in the US, where we've got the horrible history of slavery, which was legal in which a person was owned. Modern slavery is very often uh more about control, coercion, someone's being tricked into a situation and then their wages are being captured or someone's being tricked or coerced or pushed. It may not be physical. It may be actually psychological. So it has lots of different forms. Some of the forms, and we can get more into this too, of course, but some of the forms, um, child labor, you know, worse forms, um, sex trafficking, labor trafficking. So trafficking, also a confusing term that can, you know, people can think of in different ways, but uh where again, where people are in situations where they're working and they're not getting the benefit of their own labor, somebody else is taking advantage of them. Child marriage, it depends where you are, whether or not child marriage is included in the definition. But in the global definition that we use, in which 50 million people are in some form of modern slavery, we we think that child marriage or forced marriage of any kind uh must be included. So that's what's adding up to this 50 million number. It's worse than it's ever been. It's grown by 10 million over about the last 10 years uh since uh the survey of modern slavery has been done by uh walk free.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

Yeah. And in terms of the additional bit of context on that, is the the sort of problem. What's the the kind of scale of philanthropy that's focused on this as a at the moment? Is it an area that gets a lot of attention or is it one that's kind of traditionally been underfunded?

SPEAKER_01 8:12

This is an underfunded area. I have to be honest, I was very surprised because I come kind of from an adjacent part of the field. Before this, I spent 10 years starting and then running a newsroom focused on women called the Fuller Project, where we did reporting on uh forced labor affecting women around the world and that sort of thing. So I know the issue from a journalism perspective, but I have not been, I haven't been inside the field until last year. And when I came in, I was just really surprised to see how few funders are actually dedicated to this issue. And this issue of modern slavery, it does touch on many different things, including, for example, education, right? So there's a much broader pool of funders who uh may be doing programs that are related or may want to work on uh modern slavery, but modern slavery as such, very few funders. And that's where I think Freedom Fund is really special because there were three funders that started the Freedom Fund, and they were really committed to modern slavery work. So founders are walk free, which is a really important organization that does the data work that gives us that 50 million. They collaborate with the International Labor Organization to do these are huge surveys. And without this, and you hear that talking point reiterated over and over again. Without that, we just wouldn't know the scale. So it's massively important, and they do a lot of other really important work as well. And Mindaroo, a related foundation from that family. So this is the Forest family, Grace Forest runs walk-free. Also, Humanity United, which is the foundation of Pam and Pierre Omidiar, uh, they came together uh along with Legatum, which is a Dubai-based investment group that at the heart of their ethos, everything they do is about giving back, it's about prosperity, it's about individual freedom. And so they started the Freedom Fund along with a couple of other funds, which we'll come back to in the McKenzie conversation, because their other funds have also received Mackenzie money. So interesting. Um, so Legatum has this concept of collaborative funds. Um, and together, these three groups started the Freedom Fund with this idea that we've really got to address this particular issue of modern slavery head on. And we've got to bring the other, we've got to bring some other serious funders to the table. So that's what Freedom Fund represents, some of the most dedicated important funders on this issue of modern slavery, working together to get money to the front lines, keep overheads low. And then also do we're we're not freedom fund kind of um the the freedom fund itself doesn't do advocacy other than to say we need more people funding this issue. That's our core advocacy message.

SPEAKER_00 10:55

Okay. So I mean, let's come at this point to the the McKenzie Scott gift because it's kind of you know the centerpiece of what we were going to talk about. Um I'd be really interested just to hear about the backdrop to, well, you've had two of them, which I guess is interesting in itself and kind of um there's some you know something I want to kind of talk about there. But that original gift, which I think was $35 million in 2021, you know, we hear a lot in terms of Mackenzie Scott about these sort of stories of people getting emails or phone calls and then putting the phone down or kind of putting them in their spam folder because they just don't believe it. And I just, you know, was that the case with you guys? Was it something that totally came out of the blue and kind of how did that process work?

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Well, so I wasn't around for this first one of 35 uh million in 2021, but I was around for this most recent one of 60 million. So I can tell you that story, Rodri. And it is just like you described. Uh our CEO, Nick Rono, got a call. Uh, I know on the call he made a point of asking 60 or 16. Could you just say that again? Because he shared that, you know, the first time around, he had been in so much shock that after the call, he found himself asking, you know, did that really happen? Was that really the number? So um he made sure. And then uh I got a call from him. It was a weekend, you know, called me on WhatsApp, let me know um this happened and it's 60, not 16. And watch your emails because something's gonna be coming in and it's gonna look mysterious. So from that point, you know, we're all um I had started monitoring my email by the second. And and in comes the news from a kind of anonymous looking, you know, it comes from yield giving, but it's not necessarily, you know, we you know how it is. We've been in this field forever. You you expect to see the name of someone who knows someone, you know, but this is someone I've never met, not heard of. Um, and they're just letting us know the deposits going to be made. There are a few, you know, there are a few security things that need to happen. Um, but basically the money's going to be deposited in our bank account within days. And that's that. And that's the end of it. And there's just a little bit of coordination about, you know, the communications release. That is it. So um I will say that I do think that there's a lot that influences this process in a positive way, just by nature of Freedom Fund and what we bring to the field and what we know to be the values of the donor, Mackenzie Scott, and um and yield giving. So I feel like, you know, Roger, you like you said, you've reported on this. So you know what some of the clues are. And I could reflect on what some of the clues are from Freedom Fund side as well, but we're also guessing because there's no feedback.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

And on that feedback point, that's really interesting. Because I guess in your situation, particularly that second gift, you guys, you know, that she's come back for more, and it's sort of there's something in that. And so obviously, even though there's not an expectation with that first gift that you're gonna report on it in a particular way, clearly something about the impact that that has had that has had has got across to her, and she's thought, yeah, I'll I'll give those guys more money. Was there any sense of a narrative about what it was that had brought them back again?

SPEAKER_01 13:53

No, I mean, we don't have any actual information about this, just to be clear. But here's what I think from my observations. I do think that uh, first of all, the focus on frontline organizations is clearly important. That is clear, there's clearly a pattern there. The fact that other collaborative funds have gotten funding from Mackenzie Scott, I think that she sees the value of this high impact. We can put a lot of money on the table and know it's getting to front lines. Don't are, you know, these organizations are not duplicating one another. There's not a hundred different individual interests. There are individuals that have come together to put the front lines first. So that's clearly a feature. I think another feature that's really important is transparency about strategic planning and about the work itself and some diligent communications. And so with the when the 35 million came in, um Freedom Fund decided to spend that money over a period of years. We were able to make some concrete accomplishments that were really important. Um, for example, starting a survivor leadership fund to fund survivors who are kind of more nascent or early in their journey as leaders, building organizations. Um, we were able to support or open, we call them hot spots, country-based programs in Kenya, in Bangladesh, and two programs in Brazil. Some of these focused on child sex trafficking or commercial exploitation, some on child labor. And we also were able to do the research that set up uh what we call the seed fund, which is strategic litigation support and capacity building for organizations in Asia so that they can sue companies that are using forced labor. So we had these like very concrete accomplishments. And then we also did a strategic planning process, which was a full year of discussion with partners, frontline partners, staff, external stakeholders, and we published and communicated about that throughout. And I don't think it's a coincidence that we publicly released this plan and the gift came some months after that. I think that communication was important. I think another piece that was important is that when the US government froze aid, we were able to keep funding going to our partners and tell our partners we're not, we're not, you know, we are in the fortunate position, we don't have to cut off this life-saving work because we have the support from Mackenzie Scott. That core money is allowing us to, we don't have to overextend. We have this money for this kind of vital, vital work. And so we were able to do that. And our our CEO, of course, we don't have direct contact with her, but he did make a point of just letting folks know, hey, in a in a genuine spirit of gratitude, you know, folks who may or may not be advising her. This really important thing happened. And we couldn't have done it without the support. That's also just the spirit of Freedom Fund, which is that we we've produced 200 research reports. We have it kind of in our DNA to be collaborative, connecting people, making introductions, lifting up other organizations. And that field building, I think field building, I do think is important to her. I think that's some of it. I mean, I I would also like to believe, and this is that, you know, this is the uh this is my editorializing coming from having worked for women and girls for almost 25 years now. I do think that the fact that so much of our work is for women and girls also matters.

SPEAKER_00 17:20

Yeah, and I think you can see that across the spread of her other grant making. That's clearly kind of an area that's that's of particular interest. Um I guess I'd be really interested, you know, obviously the most organizations, you know, listening to this would say, you know, oh my God, a gift of $60 million, you know, that's just universally a positive thing. But clearly there are also challenges that come with that and suddenly kind of being faced with the the question of how to spend that kind of money as effectively as possible. I know you've mentioned there that you know a large part of what you've been doing up to that point is sort of trying to just get that money through to the to the front line where it's where it's needed. Was there any moment when you were faced with the second uh donation where you you stopped and thought, actually, is there a need to consider alternatives like setting up an endowment, for instance? Because obviously, with that amount of money, that's what a lot of organizations would be thinking of doing. Or were you always clear that there was enough need out there that you could distribute the money effectively?

SPEAKER_01 18:13

Yeah, this is so interesting. I mean, yes, to the to the last part of your question, there is so much need. We can most definitely distribute this money effectively. I think that was never a question. The the portions in terms of what we do, I mean, even if we spend $25 million a year, just to give a tiny sense, there's um uh piece of research that says that the amount of money that goes into the pockets of people who are using uh trafficked labor in the private sector is about two or just under 250 billion a year. So even if we're if we're spending 25 million, I mean, this is a drop in the bucket. And we are the biggest international collaborative fund. Uh there are a couple other, you know, large organizations, but but really this is a tiny drop in the bucket. So we never had any doubt about that. I think the the the important and responsible question that you raise about endowment, I do think organizations really need to grapple with that, of course. And you know, this this is a gift falling out of the sky. Would there be another? I mean, who could know, right? You you you could not, you could certainly not um gamble on the idea that, oh, there'll be another one of these extraordinary moments in the future. We just can't know that. And so, you know, endowments are so important because I think on the one hand, one of the things that they do is signal that the organization has staying power. And that I do think that's important. On the other hand, the debates and discussions we had were this donor didn't give us money to hold on to. She's she's giving out all of her money. So the spirit of this seems to be that if if we feel we can, if we can manage this and if we can spend it and and keep and do it responsibly so that our organization stays afloat, that feels more in line with what the donor is doing in her own actions. And because, and again, I don't think this is right for every organization, but Freedom Fund is in a position where we felt we could spend it. And we felt that we are our capacity is is strong enough, our ability to fundraise over time, we feel confident we can do it so that we can spend this, we can increase our spending. We we then must also increase our fundraising. So this is the tricky part. I think, you know, we decided very quickly that we would spend this down over nine years. And already, immediately, pretty much uh within two weeks, decisions were made. Um, our CEO really demonstrated wonderful leadership, uh, as did our board. And I thought it was quite brave to move with such um deliberation in line with the strategic plan that we had already produced. So we already had our roadmap and already for 2026 increased spending out to a number of our hotspots, Kenya, Uganda, um actually ramping up a hotspot in Uganda, in Amazon, um, in Nepal, but also ramping up the flexible grants that we give to organizations in the spirit of the funder. So giving greater proportions of grants that are unrestricted and just supporting organizational capacity building, and also giving more of what we call elevate grants, which are $50,000 unrestricted grants that allow organizations to do whatever they need to do. You know, we have one organization who I just visited with in Ethiopia that used that $50,000 to start an income generating program, which is actually doing uh knitwear. I'm just I'm I'm holding up for Rodri the beautiful scarf and pink hat that they gave me, which I wear around as much as I can. And they're hoping that that will contribute 20% or even more uh towards their ongoing costs. So that's the kind of thing that we feel like this money is for. Okay, I mean, there are challenges and we can talk more about those um in terms of ramping up the fundraising to catch up with the increased spending. I think.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

One of the questions, I don't know whether there's a challenge so much, but a question is if you are increasing that expenditure, what's the balance between increased support for existing partners versus widening the, you know, casting the net further and trying to kind of engage with other partners? Did you because presumably, as ever with these things, you you could quite easily just give a lot more money to organizations you're supporting doing great work, but did you have to sort of think about how to balance that against the need to also look further at organizations you weren't yet engaged with?

SPEAKER_01 22:27

Yeah, that's a great question. Actually, the thing that I think is interesting and important. So Freedom Fund works really hard to keep our overheads low. That means we have a very light footprint in the countries where we work. And we our strategic has us doing less in a way so that we can give more money for them to do more. So it does actually demand quite a lot of our staff because even if you are just making grants, which they do more than just making grants, but even if you're just making grants, there's a whole lot of monitoring and evaluation that you need to do and you know, compliance and safeguarding and all of those things. Um, our teams do also convene our partners. So we do communities of practice. So, for example, um, oftentimes we'll have about eight partners in a country, like um Indonesia, where I was last year visiting with our board and some of our funders and guests. And so you might have partners who are unions, you might have legal aid partners, um, just a range of different actors, some who have more capacity to do data collections, some who can be involved in strategic litigation. And when you get them together, that's where really the magic happens because that's what makes it a movement. They can share in each other's capacity. Maybe somebody identified a legal case that then the union can pick up, and then there's a strategic litigation. And, you know, so it just, you know, engaging with the government, you know, so so, you know, I think that's where I think that's where um we want to be careful that we're not overburdening our staff. That being said, our program, uh, Hubovi Wadia, who heads up all of our programs, has been clear. Actually, our partners can absorb more money. We can give our partners more money. Um and they do have the capacity to take on quite a lot more. So that's that's on the side of let's give more money to the people that we're working with where we can, but also our strategic plan has us going into some new hotspots. And where those are is not yet determined, other than Uganda. So launching Uganda is really important thanks to this funding. Um, and I think over the coming years, we'll be figuring out are there one or two other hotspots or places in countries where we can additionally um ramp up. Um, the other thing that we have also ramped up is our responsible supply chains work, which is this cross-cutting global work that we do to deal with human rights and human rights due diligence, uh, taking advantage of some progress that we've had in the UK and Europe with the legal frameworks. So our, you know, the advocacy organizations that we fund can be even more effective now. Um, and also that strategic litigation work.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

Yeah, absolutely. And and I guess the other thing on the Mackenzie Scott gift I'm curious about. And again, it feels like I'm just looking for problems here. But um you mentioned their kind of the, you know, that makes a better story. The resources themselves allow for more investment in kind of fundraising. And part of it then is to think about how do we kind of make self-sustainable um, you know, for the for the long term. But do you get any sense that there's a potential risk that the fact that you've had these couple of big gifts, maybe, you know, is it going to be a disincentive or a barrier to raising money from other organizations if they look and say, well, hang on a minute, you know, surely you've had lots of this money already? Or do you think it will have a multiplier effect?

SPEAKER_01 25:43

I think it's both. You know, I I think you're right that at a time of such distress in the global domain, that there will be some funders who could say, you know, I want to keep this other grantee afloat because they are about to go under. And so I'm gonna focus on that. Uh I'll come back to you guys. Yes, I think that, you know, I think that can be a factor. On the other hand, it can be completely the opposite, which is that Freedom Fund's staying power is very clear. And I think that's really important for some funders to know that look, if I give you these funds, I want to make sure that I'm giving funds to a stable organization that has a strong corpus, because I know that if you have strong core funding, you know, we can talk about, you know, work in this particular area. And I know that my funding is going to be well leveraged. I'm going to really be able to make this money go far because so many of your other needs are already kind of covered. So, you know, I think it can go in both directions. We, of course, of course, we want our funders to understand that, yes, we raise this money and it is, you know, an endorsement of the work that we're doing, but we spend it out over nine years. Yes, it allows us to do more work, but by no means does it mean that the work is done. The incremental gifts that we raise now will in some ways go even further. And we do also have the ability to work with funders on a country level, uh, you know, so so that such a huge amount of what they're given can go directly to the program, or even in some cases, all of can go directly to the program. So that is what we want funders to understand that even though our scale uh it's smaller than some, it's larger than others, but what matters is the impact that you're gonna have with the money that you give to us to steward and to get to the front lines. Uh, we're still dealing with tiny, you know, we're still dealing with really small frontline organizations. We've had 300 partners. These, those are the people who are getting the money. We are here to steward, to get it there, to, you know, cover those monetary and evaluation needs that funders have, to connect those people together. So, you know, that work goes on. I think, Rodri, the challenge for me, because my work is with external affairs, is to cover fundraising and communications and to do that on a strategic level. For me, what I think about is we will increase our spending, you know, significantly. And yet we're not gonna increase, we're not increasing the spending on our staff. So our fundraising team is not going to increase, our communications team is not gonna increase. In fact, just before we got this money, we cut everything down really significantly. So we're we've just pushed ourselves to spend less. And and this is an extraordinarily challenging fundraising environment. I'm not gonna say that it's, I don't think that it's necessarily, apart from the government situation, which is of course a crisis for, you know, in its own way, that we don't have a kind of government funding, you know, US, UK, I mean, so many governments are are pulling back their uh bilateral aid and also spending more on national and on military matters. So that's its own thing. But let's ring fence that and put it to the side. It philanthropy that comes from foundations and individuals will actually increase. So, in that sense, it's not a full-out crisis across the board, but a lot of nonprofits aren't gonna know how to get at that money because some of that money is gonna be hidden behind DAFs, some of it's gonna be new funders who are working with niche causes. So, for us, we actually need to build some muscles and capacity in order to increase our fundraising. When we look at our projections over the over the next 10 years, we still don't know how we're gonna fundraise at a level that's gonna get us high enough up to meet that new spending. We will figure it out along the way, but that's the strategic challenge that we have. And we can talk more about the strategies that we have in place to work on that now. But because Freedom Fund, when we go into a hotspot, we want to go in for about 10 years. We really want to go in long and strong. And so that's why it's important for us. And that's what I, if I lose any sleep, that's what I lose sleep thinking about is how can we be really strategic and have a really, really good learning loop so that in this year, as we work on our individual giving program and we think about how do we get to these new folks, these new wealth holders, this massive wealth transfer, you know, these people who are doing their IPOs and all of a sudden come into wealth. How do we connect with them and help them understand modern slavery, which is a topic that not a lot of, you know, it's not a household name. It's not like girls' education, which is now well understood. So that's sort of the strategic opportunity and challenge that this gift brings into focus for me.

SPEAKER_00 30:30

And I guess as well as sort of highlighting the issue around modern slavery and getting donors to potentially kind of understand it and connect with it, there's also something interesting about the particular model that Freedom Fund has as a kind of collaborative or collective giving um fund that I'm really interested in. Kind of what what would you see as the pitch or the the kind of the USP of that approach to a potential donor? I mean, is it that you know you'll get your money to groups that are kind of of a scale that otherwise would just totally fly under your radar? Or is there also something about you know, you can get money to fund things that are maybe a little bit riskier than any individual donor would be comfortable with themselves, but actually, you know, don't worry, we're we're there in the middle and we can kind of help manage that risk for you. What what do you see it as?

SPEAKER_01 31:15

Yeah, well, you've hit two of the four, so we can just bring you on, payroll, and you can make the argument for us. So I mean, I think I think those are the those are two really, really big ones. And as far as risk, I think that people do think that way and that it's an important thing to discuss. At the same time, the actual risk, the real risk, is not that great. I mean, the the partners really do a phenomenal job. And out of 300 partners, of course, there may be an issue, you know, here or there. But overall, we've had phenomenal relationships because our people on the ground actually they know these folks, they see them all the time, right? So it's not, you know, some for them, it's not some far-off organization. It's some organization down the road who they've known for years. So, um, but I do think, you know, people think about that. And there is the ability Freedom Fund can sort of absorb that. And I will say, in some cases, we've worked in difficult places. And so, you know, there's there's that aspect of just we have to monitor political events, we have to monitor environmental events, we have to be able to provide a lifeline to staff or partners where needed. And that's sort of so that sort of risk, yes, I think that that part is really important. I think there is another piece, which is, I think, possibly even more of a draw when people get up close, like the difference between what you read about and what you actually experience, which is the human connection. You know, I I think it's it's really powerful and important for people who have dedicated their lives or large parts of their lives to this work for freedom. And they want to be walking arms with other people who are doing the same thing. And they want to learn and they want to be with people who are committed and smart and really thinking and drawing lessons across geographies. And this is like the best sort of boot camp possible for someone, especially it could be someone who's early on in their journey and they want to kind of come on board and learn about all of these different approaches and all these different grantees, and they may be building out other parts of their philanthropy elsewhere, or it could be someone who just is lifting a lot of different things and they know that this investment in Freedom Fund with these people allows them to stay really tuned in and tapped in while managing other things. So I think, you know, motivations can be different, but I know, you know, we do this very special trip once a year with the board and with guests. Um, our board chair is Molly Gotchman. She is also the founder of Stardust Foundation, which is a really powerful feminist foundation. She is an activist artist. She does incredible art and installations around motherhood and to raise awareness about trafficking and migration. And so in Indonesia, she, you know, was one of the folks just creating this environment in which people can come together, sit down over dinner, really discuss their experiences. And we do have, we have survivor leaders on our board too. We have incredible, incredible, you know, renowned leaders who have lived experience of trafficking. And so it's a forum for listening, um, hearing the partners. And a lot of, I mean, to be honest, you know, my team does this work, a lot of work goes into just creating the space for that kind of connection and learning. And it's very deeply relational. You know, some folks are faith-driven, some folks are driven by, you know, other um really deeply held beliefs about equality and opportunity and opportunities they did have or didn't have. So that relational piece actually, I think, is the beating part of this.

SPEAKER_00 34:55

Yeah, absolutely. And just circling back for a second to what you said about risk, it's really interesting that you you sort of made the point that actually the the gap between the perception of risk and the reality is often pretty big. Would you see the role of an organization like Freedom Fund to kind of mitigate that risk or actually over time to educate funders, you know, that the risk isn't as big as they think. So the, you know, the ideal end result is that eventually they could just do it themselves. You know, they'd fund directly because they're kind of comfortable with it.

SPEAKER_01 35:25

Yes. I think that's an important, I think it's an important message. Yeah, I do. And one of my colleagues, Aaron Phelps, led on an initial initiative called funding frontline impact, which is sort of a toolkit that's available on our webpage. They did a rollout of it to help folks just have the tools to manage relationships. So I think that's important. There is a relational aspect to this as well. So I think moving away from the idea of risk is almost just people like to give to people that they know. You know, it you you want to be there, you want to feel, you know, you want to see, you know, we want, we kind of want to shake hands. And there really isn't a substitute for that. You know, that that's why, that's why it was so important to me personally to get out to Ethiopia, where I got to meet three of our partners and I got to visit this shelter that I mentioned to you has this income generating project. It's uh it's called Ofrice. It's a reintegration center for girls who are pulled into domestic servitude. It's um, it's a it's a very tragic story, and but I'm very proud of Freedom Fund's work on getting this issue better known. So the issue of we can we call it um CDW, child domestic workers, these are girls in in Ethiopia. I I came to understand that that's this is quite common that there are girls from rural areas and brokers or family members match them to urban households and they're promised education. But when they get to the household, in some cases it may be benevolent, hey, you're getting an education, you're helping out. In other cases, it's deeply exploitative. And there's sexual abuse, there's physical abuse, the kids not getting food, they're not getting proper sleep, they're, you know, eating in a corner by themselves, being mistreat, really horribly mistreated. So this shelter has girls as young as six. And it was very meaningful to me to get to visit and to see these girls. And also they have girls as old as 17, which is a very different challenge. Very because, you know, at six, they still have their childhood ahead of them. 17, their childhood had really been robbed. So the thing that was interesting to me was I couldn't stop smiling the whole time I was there because it was just such a joyful place. And you can just feel that, of course, these kids have experienced trauma and they are getting psychological counseling. Some of them are going through lawsuits. Of course, this is a really, I mean, it's really horrific issue. At the same time, this shelter, you can't fake that. You can't fake that, you know, they make these kids feel safe. The kids are um, you know, they're reading, they're um performing uh, you know, they they do role play, so they have a drama that they put together that they want to do with us, and you know, they wanted to dance with us. We had these interactions. One of them challenged us to uh ping pong. She was the, you know, one of the teenage girls was the ping pong champ of the place. So we had, you know, quite the these this getting to know you of the staff and having the briefing and being able to ask questions because, you know, this is very sensitive. How do you take forward a legal case for a child? And how do you protect the child and and and being able to really go through that? So I think the like you said, all nonprofits in some ways are trying to work ourselves out of a job. And in the ideal scenario, we can make those introductions and funders get to know these folks and can make gifts. I think one of the opportunities that we have in the era that we're in with digital communications is that maybe we can find ways to make it easier for people to get to know each other. Maybe we don't have to have a handshake. Maybe we can have a video. So that's one of the things my team is working on is sort of how do we make the storytelling and the personal aspect of this more efficient for the partners? Because they don't, these partners are not real, they're not built like US nonprofits, which are fundraising machines, right? Like they're really programmed delivery organizations. And the money is usually most of the money's in the US. I mean, a lot of it's in Europe or in other places, but most of it's in the US. So if we can find ways to amplify and multiply their efforts, like we went to the shelter, they told us their story. We went to a survivor-led organization that's helping women who return from being abused in the Middle East. We so with them, we were able to take some videos and put this together, and then we can share those videos with funders. So we can hopefully just make it easier for trust, you know, relationship building and trust.

SPEAKER_00 39:51

Yeah, and I think that that point about storytelling and that. So I think increasingly that realization that, yeah, you do need to monitor and evaluate and have kind of impact measures, but that it's not enough, it's almost never enough by itself. You've got to have some narrative and story that kind of grabs people uh and makes that connection. Um I wondered as well, actually, just on that question, you know, if we're thinking about the possibility further down the line of other funders being in a position where they're able to fund some of these smaller grassroots organizations, one of the things that's kind of been raised uh in terms of the questions that that arise when you have big organizations, big powerful organizations funding very small ones and particularly sort of social movements or grassroots organizations, is even when the funders well intentioned, you can have these issues where they unintentionally sort of distort the activities of those small organizations just by what they're willing to fund or not fund or what they think is a good way of doing things. How is Freedom Fund modeled what you see as the kind of best practice in terms of how you engage with your partners so that other funders can kind of do do likewise?

SPEAKER_01 40:55

Yeah, that's a great question. I think something that we're learning more about. And this idea that even if the funding is unrestricted, it can distort movements. So Freedom Fund's approach is to get to know the various actors in a hotspot, get to know their sense of the issues, um, and then develop as organic a process as possible of understanding their proposed ways forward. There are exceptions to that where we have partners, funders with whom there's you know more discussion about the kind of the boundaries of what funding is or isn't available. So I wouldn't say that's universally true. In some cases, for example, like with child domestic work, we have funding which is for child domestic work. But then within that, partners or partners are able to direct strategies in terms of what's actually going to be done. And that's essential because that's where the innovations are coming from, right? So to bring us back to Ethiopia, since I've started to give a little context there, I visited with another partner, Padet, which is a wonderful development organization. And they're also working on child domestic work. And we sat down in their room and they had brought two of the women from the watch groups that have developed in order to work on this issue of child domestic work. And these women were very powerful in what they shared with me. They shared um stories about how they're working inside the communities to socialize the fact that this is actually abusive child labor in some of the ways that it's manifesting. Because this is a, you know, it's it's traditional for people to have kids working in their homes. And so where exactly is the line of what is legal or illegal or okay or not okay, or abusive or not? Obviously, sometimes, you know, if a kid's actually getting abused, I think that's easier to recognize. But sometimes it could be harder to recognize. Like, aren't they getting good enough food? Um, and so what they do, um, they have their ways of getting people to open the front door. And they said they had one case where they knew the kid was being abused. They knocked on the door 15 times before the adult opened the door and would start to engage them with a conversation. And this was a kid who was who was experiencing really, really severe exploitation, but they were able to convince and convert that adult so that the child was given a chance to go to shelter and to get reintegrated and to get, you know, all of the support the child needed to get back with their family. And that adult then became kind of a convert and was able to help report other instances. So, you know, we can't sit in Washington and come up with those. I know we don't know how that works. Um, the other thing that I was so interested to hear about is um uh the role of the Iders, which are community groups, they're sort of community, uh not watch groups, but actually community structures that have oversight over certain things within the community. And there had been an innovation that Idders can take the issue. Of child domestic work under their wing and actually make it part of their charter, part of their bylaws, that that's something that they should also be looking out for. So it's this deep socialization work that, you know, we we are here to support those advocates who are already there on the front lines, those mothers or those parents are who've seen it and they know, they just know instinctively that this is wrong. And we're here to give tools and connection and that sort of thing. So we have to follow their lead. Um, and I can share more examples of that as well. But that's at the heart of what we're always trying to do.

SPEAKER_00 44:36

Yeah. Yeah, really interesting. And as you say, kind of some when you really get to kind of the granular level and understand how things work within communities, then you sort of see where the money needs to go and where the resources need to flow and stuff. But it's almost impossible to see that if you're, you know, uh uh too far away. So um one thing I just wanted to ask about, because we touched on it briefly earlier when you mentioned about the challenges around what's happened with USAID and the kind of knock-on effects of that. I mean, obviously, more broadly, the political context at the moment, both in the US but globally, is extremely volatile and challenging. I just wondered what kind of challenges that's presented for your work, either in terms of kind of you know greater demands on what you're doing or with the partner organizations you're working with, or whether it had sort of raised issues within the US, because obviously the kind of political climate around nonprofits has has become much more kind of critical and negative.

SPEAKER_01 45:29

So to break out different pieces of this, so our funding wasn't coming through USAID. So in some ways, we had some shelter from that situation. And we do have US money. Um, we also have money from other governments. I think Freedom Fund is fortunate in that the issue of trafficking is a bipartisan issue. Um, in the US, you know, Congress supports the trafficking person's report and the trafficking person's office. And so it in some ways that has provided us with kind of a level of stability that not all organizations have. And again, this McKenzie Scott money that we've had that also has tidied us through. Um, so we've been, you know, we've been able to kind of keep those aspects going. Um, our partners, of course, you know, like I mentioned before, we definitely have had partners tell us that uh when USAID funding was cut, they lost all of their other funding. So that, you know, that's really significant um in terms of their overall capacity. And now, especially with this gift, we, you know, have that ability to offer some additional funding to some of those partners um through elevate grants. So it's it's really significant. I mean, I think government funding is government funding has its own challenges, right? And and it does require government funding requires many more just reports, just on a basic level, your monitoring and evaluation. It could be easily fourfold or more. And in times of change, it's going to be even more, of course, because very dedicated government staff are working to keep things going and they need more information because things are just moving much faster now than they used to move. So that does create uh a need for more communication. But fortunately, we're in a position to do that. I think to put a to put I think to try to put a positive look on the situation is that government funding has its place. It's been really important for us in allowing us to um establish baseline studies, really develop whole areas of work, have really, really robust understanding of what interventions work. And no matter what happens in the future, we will still have that. I mean that that foundational experience is essential. Again, on child domestic work, for example. We need to build a field on this issue. People need to understand this issue. I I mean, like for me, I you know, I spent 10 years building a nonprofit for girls' education in Malawi. So I saw girls in homes, but I didn't understand the breadth of this issue across Africa in place places in Asia as well. So it was quite enlightening to me. Oh, there's this is uh it's like um a whole you would expect to see a whole sector of support around this, but actually no, it kind of falls in between education, protection, and you know, gender, gender-based violence. So this, you know, these kinds of government partnerships allow for these leaps forward. That being said, I don't think it makes sense to ever count on keeping government funding when administration change. You just can't know. There's there's inherent risk because administrations can be very, very different, whether it's the US or France or you know, these there are these big swings. So we have to always be building out the more kind of reliable funding, which is coming from individuals. And foundations, of course, swing quite a lot as well. I mean, we we're lucky to have long-standing foundation support, but um it's really individual. So I think that the positive way to look at this is this kind of collapse of global aid does force us to think much harder about individuals and how we connect with them, how we educate them, you know, because there are issues as well with sort of the capitalism that's inherent in in individual philanthropy, but how we educate people and bring them along and use storytelling and use donor education and field building in a sort of altruistic sense to create magnets to our organization and other organizations, really bring people in.

SPEAKER_00 49:22

Yeah, I think that's a yeah, really good point. And it's kind of even if nobody would have necessarily chosen for this to be the situation, particularly around and USAID, the the reality is that's how it is. And I guess it's kind of what do you do with that context, and rather than just seeing it as a crisis, to see where the opportunity potentially is. And there are opportunities, I suppose, to do some of the things that people have long been saying needed to happen with global aid and sort of global philanthropy, um, and sort of putting uh a different emphasis on things. So um, yeah, I think a really important reminder. I'm I'm aware that we're coming up on the time that I've got you for. Um I just wanted to know at the end if there's any other things that you've got coming up that you want to direct people's awareness to or any kind of final thoughts you want to leave people with.

SPEAKER_01 50:03

Absolutely, Rodri, this is the 100-year anniversary of the sl the signing of the convention at the League of Nations to end modern slavery. So this year is really important. That date actually comes up September 26th. So at Freedom Fund, what we're thinking about right now is the second 100 years. And as quickly as possible, in the second hundred years that's coming up on us, how we are going to make sure that we've got many more people with us getting funding to the front lines. So that's where our head is at. We um our team will be in, you know, we'll we'll be talking with folks coming up since you asked where we'll be. Um, you know, we'll we'll be at Skull, we'll be in New York for Anga. And even more importantly and accessibly, we're pushing out uh videos and donor education content through our channel. So Freedomfund.org is where you can find our newsletter. Um, we have a research bulletin that we push out and pull up information from the whole space, um, but also, of course, on uh LinkedIn and Instagram. Please join with us if we have an ask of you, it's that you help us to share out these videos and material that center our partners so that we can bring more people together around this movement in the second hundred years.

SPEAKER_00 51:14

Great. Yeah, and I'll make sure I put links in the show notes to places where people can find uh all of that. Um just for me to say thanks ever so much, Lancy, for coming on the podcast. Really great to hear about the work you're doing uh and your experiences with uh an actual genuine Mackenzie Scott gift or two genuine Mackenzie Scott gifts, um, and just wish you all the best for the future.

SPEAKER_01 51:32

Thank you so much, Rodri. Great to be with you.

SPEAKER_00 51:43

Okay, great. Well, my thanks again to Xanthi for finding time to come on the podcast. It was really great to have a chance to talk to her all about the work that she's doing with Freedom Fund and about the uh Mackenzie Scott gifts. Um, I'll put links in the show notes to places where you can find out more about Freedom Fund and the work they do, and also about some of the things that we talked about. If you're interested more broadly in issues around philanthropy and civil society, always good to check out the website at whyphilanthropymatters.com. Uh, there's all the back episodes of this podcast, over a hundred of them now. Uh, there's also articles about things that are going on in philanthropy or things that I think might be interesting longer term in philanthropy, as well as some shorter guides about kind of topics and trends in philanthropy and lots of news updates, so lots of things to dig into there. Uh, if you want to follow me on social media and get shorter updates, you can do that as well. Uh, I'm on LinkedIn most of the time. I'm also on Blue Sky a bit, so come and find me in either of those places. Um, if you like the podcast or you think other people might like it, you know somebody in particular that might, um, you know, please do share the good word. Um, you know, like, subscribe, share it on social media. But also, you know, in-person recommendations really count for a lot uh in this day and age. So I think if you know somebody that you think might like the podcast, please do share it with them. And if you've got ideas for people that I could talk to as guests or topics that we could cover on the podcast, I'm always open to those. So do drop me a line. You can find my contact details at the Y Philanthropy Matters website. Just remains to say, thanks as ever for listening, and I will see you next time. Bye.