Philanthropy is often discussed in terms of head versus heart. On the one side are evidence-based, metric-driven approaches to ensure money has the most impact. And on the other, the warm glow of doing good, giving back and trusting in those you support. The same polarities arise in the day-to-day practice of allocating philanthropy resources. In terms of being an assessor or someone making decisions on grants and donations, are you a neutral gatherer of facts, weighing these against criteria and deciding on the best-matched group to achieve your mission? Or, do you get to know the people involved to see if you believe they have the values and passion needed to achieve their goals?
As with many situations, a good response often combines both. Or, as author and philanthropy advisor, Paul Connolly wrote: “when joyful and passionate conviction converges with judicious and dispassionate analysis, a powerful creative energy emerges.” When assessing applications and making choices on which organisations to fund, you need to make as fair a decision as possible, weighing up the information found in proposals, websites, accounts, short films and conversations and judging this against criteria and priorities. This process involves using both your rational thought and your emotional conviction. And imagination also plays a crucial role.
Imagining the future of an organisation
Imagination is the ability of the mind to build mental scenes that do not exist in front of us. We use our imagination when making many types of decisions – for example, we might rent a flat because it is affordable and conveniently located, but also because we can ‘picture’ ourselves living there. The same is true of choosing a school or a care home or a new job. We tend to think of being imaginative as a creative process – for artists, writers and inventors. But even just reading words on a page creates images in our mind. This is as true of reading proposals and budgets as it is of novels. So, when reading an application or hearing a funding pitch, we use our imagination to think about the organisation’s future potential and to wonder if it has the capacity, experience and drive to deliver what is proposed. We also hold the more detailed steps of a plan of action in our minds and mentally test whether we can see it leading to the desired outcomes.
Imagining the future of those we seek to support
As well as its use in thinking about the future and results, imagination is also linked to empathy. Philanthropic decision-makers are not considering their own future experiences but are having to imagine on behalf of someone else who will benefit. When we do this, we have to remember that our imagination can be limited by our current knowledge and experience of the world. For example, ‘the empathy gap’ is a cognitive bias which means a person who is feeling relaxed and safe will often struggle to imagine the perspective of someone who is feeling threatened. I have been involved in a few grant panels where something is wrongly dismissed because it is not in the decision-makers experience. Comments like “I don’t think this will engage the young people” even when the solution has been co-designed with young people and the person commenting is much older. This is why diversity and lived experience is so important within the staff teams and decision-making structures of Foundations, and donors should always be listening to those with expertise and experience in their areas of interest. It is why processes need to go beyond an application form and draw on information from different sources: social media, films, visits and phone calls wherever possible to flesh out the story and challenge our assumptions.
Imagination for change
Imagination is not just important for the day-to-day practice of philanthropy. It is also an important tool for rethinking and rebuilding a better (different) future and philanthropy’s role in making that happen. As we emerge from the immediate effects of the pandemic, many thinkers and communities are looking to imagine a better world. There are calls for imagining a zero-carbon economy, decolonialised education, an equitable society. McKinsey’s recent report on how Foundations should respond to coronavirus was titled “Reimagining European philanthropy”. And we are starting to see new funding programmes calling for this imagination: the Art Funds latest funding programme offers “respond and reimagine grants” to help museums, galleries and cultural organisations with immediate challenges connected to the Covid-19 crisis, and offer support to adapt and reimagine ways of working for the future; the Lottery’s Emerging Futures Fund will fund projects that “activate and strengthen social imagination in communities so that the voices and ideas of local communities can contribute to the renewal of civil society”. All of us working in philanthropy need to use our heads and hearts and join in this collective act of imagination.