These are the speaking notes to accompany my Philanthropy: Past, Present & Future for the Wealth & Society 2018 event

1.  What I want to do now is to look both back and forward: to
give some idea of where philanthropy has come from and
where I think it might be going
 I want to highlight some of the key factors that have
shaped philanthropy, how these relate to trends we can
see today and the challenges and opportunities that the
future could bring
 As you can imagine, it is impossible to cover all the
relevant issues in the time I have!
 But hopefully this will be enough to get everyone thinking,
and to set you up for the rest of today.
Past into present
 First I want to take you back 400 years. (SLIDE)
 To when “philanthropy” in its modern sense began.
 The crucial point is the Reformation, during the 16th
century, when Henry VIII decided to split from the Catholic
Church and establish England as a Protestant nation.
 This had a massive impact on the history of Western
Europe for the next few hundred years.
 It had a profound impact on philanthropy too.
 Medieval catholic doctrine taught that the purpose of
charity was to cleanse the donor’s immortal soul, and
thereby secure their passage to heaven after death.

2. Hence the focus was entirely on the act of giving, and
there was little thought given on what was actually
achieved with donations.
 Protestant teaching, however, shifted the focus to what
was achieved with donations during the donor’s lifetime.
 This change was fundamental as it eventually paved the
way for the secular conception of philanthropy we have
today.
 And established the key idea that philanthropy is not just
about the act of giving but about the PURPOSE of that
giving.
 As modern philanthropy developed, a number of other key
themes emerged that remain important in philanthropy
today. (SLIDE)
Philanthropy vs State
● The last 400 years in the UK have seen an ongoing
debate about where the balance lies between the state
and philanthropy when it comes to meeting the welfare
needs of citizens.
● Analogous debates have happened over different
timescales in many other countries, and continue today

3. ● Since the introduction of the Statute of Charitable Uses in
1601, when the government first took a view on where the
balance for providing welfare lay, state and philanthropy
have existed in tandem.
● During some of the time, Philanthropy was the senior
partner (most notably in the Victorian era). At other times,
the state has taken the lead.
● But the important point is that this has never been a zero-
sum game.
● It is not about “Philanthropy or State”, but about
“Philanthropy and State”
● This puts an emphasis on understanding the unique value
of philanthropy and the role it can play. So what is this
value?
● A good starting point in answering this question is to
consider the words of William Beveridge. (SLIDE)
● He is known as one of the key architects of the Welfare
State.
● But it is perhaps less well-known that he wrote an entire
book outlining his view on the continuing importance of
philanthropy and voluntary action in a welfare state.
● BEVERIDGE QUOTE.

4. ● And I think much of that still holds true today
Risk & innovation
● Building on Beveridge’s words, a key strength of
philanthropy compared to the state is often argued to be
its ability to take greater risks, or to be more innovative
(SLIDE)
● The risk in question can take many forms: financial,
outcomes risk, political risk, reputational risk etc.
● Philanthropy can potentially bear this risk better than the
state: because it can spread it over a longer timescale, or
because it is not accountable to voters, or constrained by
budgetary siloes
● If philanthropy is able to take risks, it can drive innovation.
● That innovativion can come in a wide variety of forms:
finding new interventions to solve problems, driving
improvements to systems and infrastructure, supporting

5. the adoption of new technology, or bringing new issues a
causes to mainstream attention
Campaigning (innovation in causes)
● This last one is especially interesting, as it highlights one
of the core truths about philanthropy throughout history
and today: that it is just as much about campaigning for
social change and influencing others (governments, the
private sector etc) as it is about direct service delivery.
(SLIDE)
● EXAMPLES FROM HISTORY: abolition of slavery,
universal suffrage, ending child labour, LGBTQ rights etc.
● NB: Importance of campaigning to historic success of
philanthropy highlights why we should all be concerned
about closing space phenomenon. (SLIDE)
● One of the key challenges for philanthropy at the moment
is to defend the right of civil society to campaign,
advocate and speak truth to power that is a such a vital
part of any healthy democracy.
● The other thing that campaigning makes clear is that the
value of philanthropy vs the state is not just about the
outcomes that are produced, but about the way we go
about pursuing those outcomes.

6. Philanthropy as activity, not outcomes
● The point here is that philanthropic approaches can bring
added value above and beyond the outcomes they deliver
directly : for instance
○ in terms of giving people a sense of agency (which
taxation does not);
○ building social capital through voluntary action, or
○ bolstering wider civic engagement. (SLIDE)
● This is something that was noted by the 1952 Nathan
committee, and intriguingly it has been made the central
thesis of the new Charity Commission strategy here in the
UK.
Rationality & Impact
● Outcomes are obviously still important though
● Even if there is inherent benefit in the way in which you
pursue goals, you still need to know that you are actually
having demonstrable success in achieving them too!

7. ● This raises the question of how the goals of philanthropy
are determined, and how success against them is
measured.
● And this has been a huge debate at the heart of
philanthropy for hundreds of years:
○ Is it primarily about heart? i.e. the beliefs, emotional
factors and so that affect individual donors. So the
focus is on their freedom to choose how to give
○ Or should it be more about head? (i.e. Objective
measures of what problems to solve and how. So the
focus is on making the allocation of philanthropic
resources more rational at a macro level?)
● Many have tried to reconcile this difference, and to make
philanthropy more rational in one way or another.
● Governments have long tried to do it via laws and
regulations.
● But there have also been many efforts from within the
world of philanthropy itself: (SLIDE)
○ The Charity Organization Societies of Victorian
England & the Scientific Charity movement of early
C20th, which sought to do away with the perceived
scourge of “indiscriminate giving”

8. ○ Philanthropy advice e.g. Charles Dickens & Angela
Burdett Coutts
○ In the modern context we have
● efforts to make philanthropic decisions
more informed by providing information on
charitable organisations (e.g. Guidestar,
Givewell);
● Initiatves which aim to provide frameworks
for setting shared goals and metrics (The
SDGs); and even
● philosophical movements like Effective
Altruism, which seek to reshape the very
nature of philanthropy to make it entirely
rational.
Blended approaches & social investment
● One particular way in which many have tried to impose
greater rationality on philanthropy that is particularly
relevant for us here today is by the adoption of “business
principles” or blended approaches.

9. ● So we have social investment and impact investing, which
seek to use models that combine the pursuit of social
goals and financial goals so that we can benefit from the
rationality of market forces (SLIDE)
● Again, the idea of blended approaches is not actually new.
In fact in many ways the disatinction between
‘philanthropy’ and ‘business’ is something we have only
relatively recently learned, and are now trying to unlearn.
● Many major donors of the past, like the Quaker George
Cadbury, saw no distinction between his business
interests, his philanthropy, and indeed his political activity.
For him they were just different tools for achieving the
same fundamental set of ambitions.
● Likewise Julius Rosenwald leveraged his position as CEO
of Sears & Roebuck to make his ambitious programme of
supporting community school building in the deep south
during the Jim Crow era
● There were also notable attempts to create new
approaches to philanthropy in the past that harness
markets principles. This was particularly apparent in
housing philanthropy, where many major donors of the
late 19th and early 20th century such as George Peabody
and Octavia Hill experimented with “4% philanthropy”

10. ● This was where they would build affordable housing in
areas that had previously been blighted by slum dwellings
and charge residents a below-commercial rate of 4 or 5%.
So they effectively underwrote the difference as part of
their philanthropy.
● The range of blended approaches available today is rich
and diverse, as i am sure you will hear later today, and
more than ever they need to be part of a philanthropist’s
toolbox if they want to achieve the maximum possible
impact.
Responsible business
● The other thing we should note, though, is that it is not
just about applying business approaches to philanthropy
● It is also, conversely, about making business approaches
more socially responsible or purpose driven.
● One of the long-standing criticisms of philanthropy is that
there was assumed to be a separation between the way in
which money was made and how it was given away.

11. ● Many of the famed philanthropists of the past took this
view, and were castigated for their business practices as a
result (e.g. Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt etc.)
● Recently former New York Times journalist Anand
Giridharadas’s book “Winner Takes All” has been making
waves for its criticisms of market-driven approaches to
philanthropy and its argument that the way in which many
philanthropists make their money undermines their ability
to do good through their giving.
● And in the last few months Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
have faced a critical backlash following the announcement
of his philanthropic plans from those who highlight issues
with working conditions and the company’s approach to
corporate taxation.
● So questions of responsible business are unavoidably tied
up with questions of philanthropic legitimacy.
● Purpose is not something that can be kept for the
weekends and done solely through philanthropy: the same
principles and values must guide the way that we do
business to.
PIVOT

12.  That is by no means all that can be said about the current
state of philanthropy and social investment, but at this
point I want to turn to look at what the future might hold- in
terms of continuing these trends and potentially bringing to
light entirely new ones.
Future
New Models for doing good (SLIDE)
 We’ve already noted that blended models might not
actually be a new phenomenon
 But in the future, technology is likely to enable a far
greater proliferation of these kinds of approaches
 It will also enable other models: some which reinvent old
ideas in new ways, and others which represent genuinely
new
 One thing is for certain though: the marketplace for doing
good is going to get more crowded and philanthropy will
not have a monopoly on the idea of being purpose-driven

13. Tech for Good (SLIDE)
 One are in which we are already seeing new models
emerge is in the field of “tech for good”, where new and
existing technology is being used to develop innovative
ways of addressing social and environmental problems
Examples: AI - Parkinson’s UK, Lindbergh Foundation
Blockchain: Disberse, Alice, BitGive, WFP
VAR: Royal Trinity Hospice
Digital Assets (SLIDE)
 As well as opening up new ways of addressing problems,
technology is also likely to create new ways of resourcing
them
 Already seen huge proliferation of cryptocurrencies
 Having an impact on philanthropy: Fidelity Charitable
reported in 2017 that it took $69m in crypto and that this
represented its fastest growing asset class.
 Also starting to see emergence of other digital assets,
including- for the first time- truly unique, non-fungible
digital assets that can have scarcity value.

14.  Highlights the possibility of the range of assets for
philanthropy being vastly increased in future.
Disintermediation and decentralisation (SLIDE)
 The underlying blockchain technology that makes these
digital assets possible might also affect philanthropy in
other ways
 For instance it opens up the potential for large-scale
disintermediation and decentralisation
 We have already seen a trend away from traditional
middlemen: towards platforms that put creators and
consumers or donors and beneficiaries in direct contact
 We have also seen the emergence of networked social
movements
 And it is possible that blockchain will accelerate this trend,
by allowing markets, value chains and even the
governance structures of individual organisations to be
decentralised and thus radically transformed
Transparency and Open Data (SLIDE)
● Networked models need some way of replacing the trust
that was traditionally guaranteed by a third party

15. intermediary – and often that is done through
transparency.
● This highlights a broader trend for the future.
● We are already seeing growing pressure for greater
transparency within the philanthropy world: open data etc.
● Emergent tech opens up possibility of “radical
transparency” (SLIDE)
● Positive potential in terms of overcoming lack of trust, but
also downsides: e.g. questions about what is made
transparent, who can see it and what they are able to do
with it.
Automation
● A key part of creating greater transparency is about
making data more open, but the value of data goes much
further than that.
● As the raw fuel that makes machine learning possible, it is
one of the crucial factors in the current explosion of
development in AI.
● We have briefly touched upon how AI is being used to
address causes, but it will also have a major impact on the
ways in which we give (SLIDE)

16. ● We are already seeing the use of conversational AI and
chatbots to enable donations and provide advice and
services, but this is only the beginning
● In the future, we are likely to see AI influence philanthropy
in a range of ways e.g.
○ Robo advice: building on use of robo advisers in
FSI, we are likely to see AI used to develop similar
approaches and make philanthropy advice a mass-
market service for the first time.
○ Philgorithms: applying AI to identify the areas of
greatest need at any one time, and the most effective
interventions, and direct philanthropic resources to
achieve a rational matching of the two
○ Collective intelligence: Combining AI with
networked human intelligence to create powerful new
hybrid approaches that could transform philanthropic
decision-making.
New challenges
● But having highlighted the opportunities that tech will
afford to increase social impact and make philanthropy
more effective, it is important to acknowledge that it will
bring new challenges too.

17. ● In particular it will change the nature of the problems that
people and communities face SO the focus of a lot of
philanthropy may have to shift.
● E.g. Machine bias (SLIDE)
● E.g. Deepfakes and propaganda (SLIDE)
● E.g. inequality (SLIDE)
Conclusion
 (SLIDE) It is hard to know how these trends will develop,
and which if any of the existing technologies, platforms or
companies will last the distance, so making predictions is
very difficult.
 However, it is worth bearing in mind a piece of wisdom in
the tech world known as Amara’s Law: this states that we
tend to overestimate the impact of technology in the short
term, but underestimate it in the long term.
 The key challenge for philanthropy, it seems to me, is to
bring all of those attributes that make it unique to bear and
cut through the immediate hype surrounding a lot of what
is going on in technology so that we can ensure that the
opportunities for using tech to drive social good are
maximised, whilst the risks of harms to people,
communities and our society are minimised.

18. Thank you.