Charitable foundations are often “deeply conservative or complacent” and need to reform the way they work, an event heard today.
Danny Sriskandarajah, chief executive of Oxfam GB, told the Association of Charitable Foundations that its members should take a more radical approach to designing and distributing funds.
Identifying what he called his “number one frustration about private philanthropy”, Sriskandarajah said: “In some ways this could be the most radical of sectors. You could be the most radical actors.
“Many of these foundations are endowed [with private funds], they have the freedom to take the long view, to take risks.
“Yet it is also a sector that shows up as deeply conservative or complacent, where participative grantmaking [through which beneficiaries help design grant schemes] is seen as a cutting-edge way of devolving power.
“We should never have got ourselves into a position where we think involving our grantees and the people we claim to support in the decision-making and systems of our organisations is somehow innovation.
“That should be fundamental to what we do.”
He also admitted that Oxfam GB, which itself raises and redistributes millions of pounds in private funds every year, needed to reform, saying: “What we have come to realise is that we have become part of the problem, that we have held onto power, that we don’t genuinely devolve decision-making to the communities and partners we claim to be serving.”
Oxfam GB was working to change this, Sriskandarajah said, and had signed the new pledge for change which committed his charity to “move away from a paternalistic or patronising form of philanthropy, towards one of mutuality and commonality”.
He was speaking at the ACF’s annual conference, which took place in central London.