Philanthropists should be encouraging the charities they support to adopt a more entrepreneurial attitude to furthering their mission, the head of the horticultural grantmaker Project Giving Back has urged.
Speaking on the Third Sector Podcast, chief executive Hattie Ghaui said this meant pushing charities to “take a calculated risk” in trying new approaches.
Project Giving Back, which is funded by two anonymous donors, will be winding up later this year after financing dozens of UK charities to showcase gardens at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show since 2022.
“People can look at Project Giving Back and see there are ways of funding charities where you don’t just have to give funding to a charity,” Ghaui said.
“You can give them an opportunity. You can push them to take a calculated risk to do something they wouldn’t necessarily be brave enough to do.
“Putting themselves out here on the platform of Chelsea gets a charity out in front of lots of different people, but it can be quite daunting to do that with your own charity money.”
The 63 charity gardens funded by Project Giving Back have collectively raised more than £20m and featured in more than 7,000 media articles, according to Ghaui.
She said: “I think it’s on charities to speak the language of philanthropists a bit better and say, ‘This is what we’re trying to achieve. Can you help us experiment with some ideas around that?’
“And I think it’s on philanthropists to reach out to charities and ask them: ‘What is it you wish you could do if you had enough money to do it?’”
Ghaui said: “What the philanthropy world and business leaders bring to charities is an entrepreneurial attitude: Let’s try things. Let’s push a venture forward. Let’s recognise that it might not be totally successful the first year, but we’ll learn and we’ll build on it in the second year.”
Listen to the full conversation with Hattie Ghaui and representatives from Trussell, Parkinson’s UK, YoungMinds and the Bat Conservation Trust on the Third Sector Podcast.