 Good evening to everyone, wherever you are. I hope you are well. Before I introduce myself, I would like to let you know that we have an interpretation in Bahasa, Indonesia, French, and Spanish. So please click on the globe icon at the lower part of your Zoom window and select a language. All right. We've done that. I am Nonette Royal, your moderator, the executive director of the tenure facility. I welcome you all to this webinar on exclusive, inclusive finance for land governance, a conversation with donors. This is the fourth of the final webinar of the webinar series, Whose Land, Inclusive Pathways to Land Governance. This aims to provide a platform for different stakeholders engage in land governance to exchange on the importance and inclusivity of inclusivity and in meaningful participation of all relevant actors. This is both formal and informal in land governance processes. This series is an initiative of both ENTS and the Land Portal Foundation. So today, we are discussing the question, how do donors fund land governance initiatives through an inclusive process? We will learn from donors' insights about their challenges and struggles. And also, we would need to be sharing what our experiences are, especially with our expert panels, so that we would become more inclusive. So for logistical notes, a few additional points before we begin. This webinar is live streamed on multiple platforms. So please note also that tweeting is occurring. For this event from the land portal Twitter account, hashtag Whose Land. We have created a social media kit for this event, which is a shared to you in the chat. If you have questions, of course, put them in the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen. And we will answer that later in the webinar. Finally, in the interest of transparency, I should add that we are being recorded today in our session. And you will get this link in a video afterwards. An article will also be available for key messages at the Land Portal's website. So now let's start. Allow me to introduce our speakers. I'm joined by a terrific panel of women to discuss the interesting issues today. I'll start with Elizabeth O'Neola, who is with partner for equality, diversity, and inclusion at the McLean partnership. There she leads their work on supporting organizations in their efforts to become more equitable, diverse, and inclusive. And we have Hema Betzema, who is a senior program advisor with Land at Scale, a land governance support program of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and managed by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, RVO. She is currently also the chair of the global donor working group on land. Next, we have Danielle Hirsch. She's the director of both ENSE, an environmental and human rights NGO, that raises funds for independent organizations in the global south. She is part of a network of small grants funds and advocates for sustainable trade and financial policies in the Netherlands and Europe. Both ENSE has a close working relationship with the feminist movement. And we have Jenny Hodgson. She is the executive director of a Johannesburg-based Global Fund for Community Foundations. And she has overseen its emergence and continues to be the leading global voice in community philanthropy as a core strategy for people led development and shifting power closer to the ground. So this time, we are going to have an icebreaker. And we will ask, and let me ask you participants to join this. The question is, what does inclusive financing for land governance mean to you? So you go to menti.com and enter the code 5668522. I think it's in the chat or click on the link in the chat. I'll give you a minute to go online and make your contribution. Here we go. I see people are introducing themselves. That's good. Just on the chat. Just a second, let me start that over again. Apologies. OK, we're just starting over. This is to warm us up and to get us together on the same page for what we mean by inclusive finance. Share the screen again. OK, good. Now it's working. I couldn't share my screen and copy and paste text at the same time. OK, thank you, Neil. Thank you. So we have here the different colors, the words. Interesting. It's what's predominant is transparency. We have sustainable, accessible. Yeah, transparency is sustainable, accessible, accountable, accountability. Those are the four dominant meanings for us. Access, sustainable, transparency, accountability. Interesting. Equity, there's equity, there's access again. OK, so thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Very interesting. We will see if our panel of experts share the same notions and we will revisit the definition towards the end of the webinar. Panelists, we have three to four minutes each, minutes each to answer each round of questions. Let's go. Let me ask Danielle first. Danielle, both end sprites itself for taking an inclusive approach to financing the partners. How do you do that? What instruments or approaches have you found useful in making finance more inclusive? Over to Danielle. Thank you. And thank you for organizing this webinar. I don't know if everybody is aware, but it's one of the reasons it's organized is because of a recent publication we wrote about inclusive land governance. And I'm starting my response with that because we see finance as an essential part of inclusive land governance. So you cannot achieve, according to us, any level of inclusivity in how we treat our resources and who has a say over those resources when we don't also think about the finance structures that are behind that. And if I look at both ends, I think I can mention four elements of what we do to make the way we look at finance as inclusive as possible from where we sit. First of all, I think with us, everything starts with our strategy, which we develop together with a fairly broad group of organizations that we work with globally. So not only do we define the dilemmas that we have to solve together with a range of partners, but we also find the answers to those dilemmas by listening to what our close partners have to say about those. And once we have our strategy, which we normally make only once every five years, also to assure that we are aware of the time that it asks of everybody, based on that strategy, we develop proposals for funders, again, together with development local partners. And since we develop it together, there's also always a budget that is developed together and which is transparent for everybody to where we're asking one before and where it's supposed to go. The third level is that we've looked at the funding architecture that we're part of. So we are aware of the fact that a lot of the financing available for the issues that we work on is in the global north. And what we worked on is to make sure that the decisions about where that money goes can be taken in the global south. So together with, amongst others, you know that, but also with global green grants and with the women's funds, we have been able to establish what we call regional funds or small-grant funds in Brazil, in Indonesia, in India, in certain parts of the Africa continent. And those are activist leds. So they have different forms of deciding how funding flows. But people in region are in control over those funds. And they are also now positioned so strongly that they are fundraisers themselves. So we've been taken out of the equation. And the last part is that when we engage with funders, we put inclusive financing on the forefront of our conversations, even if it's funders that we work with already and that are not necessarily inclined to listen to that message. And we do so, amongst others, by bringing in those funds or the local partners to have their asks on the table clearly and explain why it's so important to look differently at funding. That's it. Thank you. Thank you, Danielle. Let me now turn to Jenny. Jenny, leading this global consortium, it's really focused on people-centered funding. So what efforts have you made to make financing more inclusive? Yeah. So please share your answer. Thank you, Nonette. You make us sound bigger than we are. We're actually a tiny organization of six people with an annual budget of around 1.5 million pounds. So we're not really a consortium. But I would say that we lie at the heart of a growing movement to shift power in philanthropy and development. So let me start by differentiating between what I would call vertical finance and horizontal finance. When I say vertical finance, I think I mean most of the money that's in the formal development and private philanthropy space that is intended to reach communities. I think a large part of that, despite the rhetoric, is largely exclusive. It's not inclusive. And the kind of work that Danielle was talking about of really making that case, it's not just the quantity of the money. It's the quality of the money. It's the emphasis on process, on building voice, I think is really, really important. Our work at the Global Fund for Community Foundations really focuses on what I would call the more horizontal type of finance too. The idea that communities have resources, money, yes, but other resources too, assets, knowledge, connections, knowledge of the community, relationships, trust, social capital, all of these things that really matter. And these largely get written out of the equation in terms of the vertical finance framework. So our work, we're a relatively small fund. We use grant making as a deliberate strategy to support organizations who want to become the kinds of organizations that Danielle was talking about. Local funds, foundations, women's funds, community foundations that perform three main functions really. One is they themselves are grant makers, so they are able to get resources deep into communities. And when I look at some of our partners around the world, many of those are able to make the $50 grant, the $500 grant, the $5,000 grant, which is just beyond the reach of most funders. So that role of grant making, not just moving money, but shifting power and resources to groups to do things for themselves, I think is really, really important. These are organizations that don't choose to make themselves big. They want to invest in the ecosystem around them. Most of our partners are also in the business of building and talking about local assets and local resources. And that could include money. It could include governance of large scale assets, whether that's land or resources coming from mining, but the idea of building, harnessing building and holding assets close to the ground, which could include community contribution as well. And the idea there is that everyone's contribution is recognized. So this really a place for managing and sharing power. And really, if you can do both of those functions of using grant making effectively as a strategy for building local networks, getting resources into the community and mobilizing resources so that people see themselves as co-owners of the process, that actually that builds trust and social capital. And what is often missing in the vertical finance world is trust. It's a system based on the flow of money, not really on the flow of trust. And so as coming back to us as a, as a grant maker, we, this is what we do is to try and seed this emergent system of alternative ways of working and being that start with people, their resources, their knowledge and builds up. And yes, external money has a role to play. But the other piece of our work, I would say is a little bit more political around the narrative to shift the power, which is to say it's no longer okay to talk, to have the good rhetoric about shifting resources to the ground. We actually need to see it and make it happen. And so using our role as a network weaver, as a relationship builder, really to try and strengthen that demand side of systems change. There's a lot of discussion in the dominant development system about the need to localize, about the need to come through on COP commitments, et cetera. But actually this is really mobilizing the voice from the ground up saying, this is the system we want. We're already building our own systems and structures. Help us to build these things. So that's our role in the ecosystem there, Manette. Thank you. Thank you very much, Jenny. It's amazing. It's a shifting of money, power, assets, governance, trust. JAMA, we've heard these two very diverse, but at the same time parallel perspectives so far, sporting advocacy and growing, growing social movements and assets. How does the approach of Netherlands Enterprise Agency, RVO differ in these inclusive financing through the land at scale program? And just to complete the question, what lessons have you learned over the past two years and what insights do you have for hearing from other donors as chair of the global donor working group on land? Yeah. Thank you, Manette. And also, thanks for the organizers for this webinar. It's already a very interesting panel, I would say. And as you mentioned, I'm a program advisor with the Land at Scale program. And we currently fund interventions in 12 countries. These can be larger scale multi-donor programs in which land is a component, for example, in Somalia. But also we have, for example, in Chad, we have different smaller interventions. So we work with the UN and with the national government on supporting a new land law, where we also fund a larger component through a Chadian NGO, which is more focused on awareness raising of land rights. So yeah, the type of interventions that we have in countries is quite diverse. And indeed, also currently the Netherlands is chairing the global donor working group on land. The group is a group of bilateral and multilateral donors, UN organizations and some philanthropic organizations funding land governance. And we meet about six times per year to exchange updates, new programs, having thematic exchanges as well. So through the group, for example, we pushed for inclusion of the land indicators in the SDGs. We had a few sessions recently about evaluations of land programs. How do we do that? What are some of the lessons coming out? But so for today, I wanted to say that I will share mostly landed scale lessons. I cannot speak on behalf of the other donors because I didn't get their inputs, but it will be, I think, a very interesting follow-up conversation to have in that group. So I'm also very much, well, listening today with a focus on what I can bring back to the group, but also, of course, to land at scale our program. So that was to start with a small disclaimer, but also an expression of interest or an invitation. So land at scale is programmatic, as I mentioned before, it means that the program we have is flexible to use different financial instruments to support projects. Many programs are not programmatic, and then you are very fixed in terms of the frameworks, the requirements, the demands that you need to ask. Land at scale being programmatic, we have a number of program advisors, including myself and a small team, and we have time to really work with partners in countries to develop interventions. And then the project design is demand-driven based on what is identified as a priority topic to work on. And we find, at least from our experience, that the programmatic approach has offered us opportunities for supporting also a bit more local organizations as compared to when we would be having a very standard subsidy grants program, which is somewhat more rigid. Yeah, something to mention is that from our perspective, we see that the program has also led to somewhat more innovative partnerships. For example, a partnership in which more technical organizations are working together with more advocacy-oriented organizations or larger international organizations working with smaller NGOs under separate funding arrangements. And we see a lot of value in having such, well, somewhat, if you could call it, more innovative partnerships of organizations who might not so easily work together otherwise. So also in an effort to break down barriers between those different elements of land governance that we all try to work on, and if we do work with bigger organizations, we can still ask those partners to include local organizations in their activity, to work with community-based organizations, et cetera. And of course we know from experience, and it was just mentioned now as well, that local embeddedness is, of course, crucial for the success of the intervention and creating opportunities for those local partners to feed back their experiences is a fundamental element there. We try to have inception phases for all of the activities that we have, which creates room for bringing together all different partners involved and having reflections and ideas being fed back into the design of the program. So we are no experts on inclusive finance, I would say, but we're very happy to learn and also well to share some of these very first lessons emerging from what is, I think, three years of implementation now of land at scale. Thanks. Thank you very much, Hamama. It's a multi-donor complex, in a way as a mosaic of government, UN, technical experts, advocates, NGOs. It's a different type and it contributes to the same purpose of land governance. And let's now hear from Elizabeth. It's a pleasure to have you to be part of the webinar and you bring a different perspective as an expert on inclusivity and not a donor. Yeah. So how do you interpret these efforts our colleagues have described? What in your view would be constituting inclusive approach to financing on land governance projects? Sure, from my perspective, I think a lot of the key things that I would highlight have been mentioned. So the idea that you bring in local community voices through and centering them would probably be some of the key things that I would ensure is within and part of your process. So inclusivity is a grassroots effort no matter who you are, no matter what organization or work that you do, it's grassroots, which means those you need to bring local communities, local people and you need to censor their voices within your entire process from beginning to end. And not just that, from experience and from working with other organizations, some of the challenges they face is fair enough they're getting information and data from the local communities and groups within their workforce completely is not representative of those communities and groups. And that can also be a challenge. So your workforce also needs to represent the local communities that you're trying to support and that you're trying to fund. So there's a need to always bring it back to the grassroots and ask yourself, so whose voices are we not hearing and whose voices are we not taking into account? And that's what it needs to be inclusive. And if those voices are not present, then you're essentially being exclusive in your process. It has to be a collaborative effort, so you have to remove a savior approach. I know when you're giving money, it tends to be you're doing favors and you hold most of the power and that's been mentioned already. So there has to be a conscious decision and effort that it's a collaborative effort, not only are we funding, but we're also here to learn. So it has to be a two-way process. And that also means making sure that at all times your processes and procedures don't automatically exclude. As someone who's worked in dispersant government funding before in the past, some of the processes automatically excluded the people that they were trying to help in the first place. And that just meant you were perpetuating and only funding the same people again. So there's a need to make sure that your processes is not overly tenuous and overly bureaucratic that you end up excluding people that you're trying to include in the first place. So I would say a lot of the things that I would take into consideration or I would audit within my work are present. And it's just making sure that that's consistent throughout the process and not just one part of your process. Thank you. Thank you so much, Elizabeth. It is really that, yeah, grass roots, collaborative, representative, and making sure we do not miss what we wanted to do trying to be inclusive in the first place by setting up too much of the systems that would then hit us. The second round of questions that we want to explore with you is about approaches for measuring inclusiveness. I'm going back to you, Danielle. How do we know when grant making is exclusive enough? Is measuring inclusive enough? Is measuring inclusive financing part of your approach? Yeah, I would say it is. And I just want to resonate what's been said before that measuring is about data, is about numbers. But I think in the case of being inclusive or making an effort to be inclusive, it's also about your process. So oftentimes we come up with numbers from our site that are like interesting to see, but not necessarily tell us a little about the way we do things. So we can measure how much funding or percentage of our funding flows through these decentralized funding architecture. We can measure how much of our funding goes to women led groups or to youth led groups, but that doesn't say a lot about the way you're inclusive. So when I talk about process, I think there's a couple of things that we have put in place. Always from the perspective of, or the realization that being inclusive demands us to be adaptive. So we don't have the pretension that we can think out processes that are perfect. So we thought about processes that allow constructive criticism, observations, a sharing of needs to be part of what we're doing together. So first of all, we have one part of the, so we have sort of feedback loops. One of those is that we have very regular conversations, just talk with people that we work with globally, in the global South and the global North with donors, with partners, where we ask not only what is your, what do you need? What is your ambition? What's your vision? How can we help with that? But also what are we doing? Okay, where do you think we should be doing better? Where, what do you think we should stop doing, et cetera? So we have constant check-ins with our colleagues all over the world. The second process element is that we have in place a planning monitoring and evaluation system that is focused on learning, but not learning as an organization, but learning as an ecosystem. So if we do an evaluation or we design a monitoring setup, it's always taking into account and together with the people that are in our program, but also always giving back and learning together about the results of what we have come up with. So the PM&E process is inclusive by definition. And therefore there's also always something in it for others beyond our own organization. The third element is that we have a complaint mechanism where you can anonymously say what you, like if there is a problem with a decision or something that we are doing as an organization, you can share that without saying who you are. And there is a whole process to assure internally, to assure that we take that complaint seriously. And within a certain amount of time, so within six weeks, it's not a very long process. And the last one is that we also try to innovate ourselves. So one of the latest things we've started is there's a lot of talking about shifting power, but we chose to don't say have that as an objective, but have an examination of the power that we have, the power that we have by ourselves, the power that we have with others, the power that we might need to devolve to others. So we won't pretend that we can give up all the power we have given where we are and what we are, but we do put it to ourselves that we need to understand what we're doing and make very constant choices given the powers that we hold. Thank you. Thank you, Danielle. That is very insightful on the many processes that I have also really been familiar working with you. Back to you, Jenny. Your organization and the community foundations, the work that you do, you must have some way of defining what success means in terms of inclusive financing. So do you measure, and do you say that that's successful if you've measured it according to what metrics? So how are your partners measuring that? Okay. Let me try. So first I should say that the idea of community philanthropy as practice, as development theory is a very young one. The idea that you can consider the mobilization and organization of local resources as a strategy for achieving long-term social change. So this is an emergent field. So nothing's fixed in that sense. Some of the oldest organizations are handful are over 20 years old, but most are a couple of years old. So this is, we are all trying to sail our boats while we're building them along the way. So I think we've always had an aversion to trying to box things in. We're very much in the notion of emergence that actually the practice will be innovated by those doing it on the ground, and then the sharing and the iteration with others is what will sort of expand it. So in terms of the way that we've tried to look at our work and our position as a grant maker, the first thing I should say is, because we make small grants, most of our grants are in the region of around $20,000, it removes a lot of the issues to do with power because if you're looking for more money, then you won't come to us. People come to us for grants that support something very specific, which is to support their ability to mobilize local communities and resources, to rethink how development work is done, to experiment and to innovate. And I think that the success of that approach, which isn't possible for all organizations, is exemplified by the fact that many of our long-term partners and allies, we have no grant relationship with them at all now. Our relationships don't depend on our money. And I think oftentimes in the grant-making world, you only have a relationship when there's a contractual agreement and then the contract ends and the relationship is over. So I would say in a sense, I think a lot of what we, I have learned around how to use resources to build movements and relationships and connections is what we've learned from our partners on the ground who bring a similar kind of approach. So although there may be hard metrics about how much money was raised, how many grants were organized, who did they go to, we've been very interested in using indicators around social capital and specifically a kind of three-legged stool of assets, capacities, and trust. So how does the work that we do and the work that our partners do help grow, harness, recognize assets? How does it move resources to others to do things for themselves and particularly those grassroots groups who are receiving money for the first time, that process of receiving money, organizing around it, spending it, accounting for it, that seems like a critical moment of development work. And the third is around trust. So when we talk to our grant partners around their work, we ask them, how did the work move or on some of these social capital indicators? How do you know that trust was built? How do you know that assets were unlocked? And often they're completely different things. So one group might say part of the community decided that they would use their traditional art forms to come together to organize an exhibition and celebrate the fact that there is knowledge and culture in this community and we would name it and that would fall under assets. Others might say, we held a fundraiser when suddenly the community realized that they could afford to build that concrete toilet block that they've been waiting for for years for someone else to build and here's the concrete toilet block. So we try to use buckets, similarly around trust, around capabilities or capacities to cluster like with like, but we're really about trying to create a container, a framework in which we can be asking different questions. And the last thing I would say about us as a grant maker, our grant making is very much relational. Like we want to accompany, we offer money, but actually the biggest thing I think that we offer is the network. So if you're innovating in Brazil, setting up a women's fund, maybe you want to talk to the feminist fund in Poland and that often is much more important than the money. And so seeing that those relationships go on and grow and thrive and deepen, I think is the biggest indicator that actually too often we confuse money as the only resource to drive our work, but relational power, exchange of knowledge, often that really is the gold dust of this work which relies on really an intention to go out and insist on building your networks and building your space and so building your power. I'll stop there. Thank you. Thank you, Jenny. It's a great model. It's a very, very powerful story. Hema, Hema, in your discussions with a global donor working group on land, what are people saying about measuring inclusive finance and what approaches are you taking as part of land at scale? Because you are big and that one, Jenny is doing is small, but these are both valuable. Yeah, yeah, no. I think this answer is coming a bit more again from the Netherlands experiences. And I was also approaching it a bit from the fact that as the Netherlands, we work a lot with partnerships. And this is also the case in land at scale. So I was also reflecting a bit on it from that angle. So one of the reasons for working in partnerships is on the one hand to wish to be more open to also smaller organizations to apply for funding, but on the other hand, not wanting to burden them with bureaucratic requirements and other things. However, of course, the way that these partnerships are set up is absolutely crucial for inclusivity and then equal partnership. And with land at scale in some of our projects that we have, we see positive experiences with those partnerships in which partners have the responsibility over a clearly defined segment or component of the project. So in those cases, partners have had the room to bring in own lessons learned, own approaches to adapt an approach if needed. And it is definitely a different story for other partnerships where you also often see that sometimes smaller organizations are more used for real implementation also at the community level. But for each and every partnership, I think that's the main insight, of course, from us that it differs how partners can best be acknowledged in their expertise and experiences. So what we try to do, for example, is also when we visit partners, we try to speak to each and every partner in the partnership, not just to the one that we may have a contract agreement with. And we try and open a discussion with the partnership on collaboration on how voices are heard. This is from land at scale perspective. Within RVO, we also see other ways in which inclusivity is being defined. We have a new program that exclusively focuses on providing grants to smaller organizations for them to fund grassroots and community-based organizations. So a bit more similar to the examples that were mentioned before. This is in the field of local innovations in water management. And we are definitely very closely in contact with those colleagues running the program and eager to also hear their experiences and insights. But yeah, this question I think is a really interesting one and one that we're also eager to hear more on. Yeah, so these partnerships is key. As I said, it's been repeated in different ways of doing and the smaller big organizations work together, conversations. Elizabeth, to you now, for organizations that you must have measured for inclusivity, what you're hearing now, what we're hearing now, how does this apply to the approaches of measuring? Thank you, yeah, inclusivity is always a tough one for organizations because it's not quantitative. You don't have ones and zeros to measure it by. You're going by qualitative data and you're hoping and people are declaring and being honest about what they're feeling and what they're seeing and their individually lived experiences and perspectives. So it's always been a tough one for organizations and one that inclusion and inclusivity in general is collecting that data has been tough for many organizations that have worked through it. But my work with them is to get them to a point whereby they feel comfortable asking some of those tougher questions from their people and from the local communities that they engage in with. And because it's such soft data, what we're really asking people is, I think it's been mentioned many times, trust. And that's trust of leaders, trust of peers, trust of the values that's been put forward. So as in, do I feel valued here? Do my contributions feel valued? Do I feel the value that I'm adding is being taken into account? Do I buy into what I'm being sold? The ambitions, the goals, the objectives and the end goal that we're trying to reach. And these may seem trivial, but to those individuals and to the communities, it matters so much. So it's a tough one for organizations to collect. However, once you start collecting that data, you're able to measure year on year how many people are declaring, how you're moving the goalpost. So you're able to measure a better distance traveled over the next couple of years. And what's always quite interesting is when you start crotting that inclusion data with demographic data or diversity data, in regions where some data of that sort can be collected, then you start seeing who doesn't feel, going back to those questions. So who doesn't feel valued? Who doesn't feel we're trustworthy? Some people may feel that we're trusted, but others, and often tends to be those who are historically marginalized. So if they can trust you, so when you start looking at breaking down the data and taking a more intersectional approach to how you analyze an inclusion data, then you actually start to get real depth of information that you can start to make real change with and you can work with. And a lot of my work with organizations has been, don't just collect the data and be happy that 80% of staff members or colleagues or people in the communities that you work with, feel they trust you or they feel valued. Let's break that down to people from a particular group feel they trust you, and more often than not, they don't. So whilst inclusion data is mostly qualitative, we also need to back that up by collecting some of the more quantitative data. So the soft data with the hard data. And I think for land governments more specifically, I'd say trust, independence and transparency. It's so interesting that that was what was the, in the word cloud at the beginning, those were the things that came up the most transparency and trust. And I'd already written that down in response to this question. So there's obviously needs to that, to include those things in collective inclusion data. So trust, independence and transparency. Yeah. And looking at it, the intersectional approach of looking at that collated data that's really, really interesting and valuable. Thank you, Elizabeth. Now for our last round of questions, we go to the use of data. So we're focusing at this a little bit more. So before we move to open, open discussions, Daniel. So are the decisions of both ends that both ends make towards your financing, inclusive financing, are they driven by data? Can you tell us more about this? How do you inform your decision-making process? Yeah, so I'm going to try not to be repetitive because I don't know if the question is a significantly different one than the other one. So we have strategic objectives that we translate into numbers. So we want to work more with women-led groups. We want to work with young people. And then we monitor whether we achieve that both in terms of number, like in absolute numbers and in rather, so what is the percentage? What is the total money flowing there? How much of the funding are we able to directly send through to these decentralized funds from the assumption that they will work more inclusively than we do? We test those assumptions by involving both the funds and their grantees in joint evaluations. Noteworthy that what Jenny just said is actually true. This is especially at the grassroots level. We've heard multiple times that people, I have an extreme value of the network, the fact that they're connected. And they even say, even without the financial relation, this network has brought me so much because of the way that it's working and the way we're being seen and the way we are able to influence both also what the bigger group is doing, that the way we work isn't only or isn't mostly about the financial relation, it's actually about the inclusive approach. And that's what people value most. So you, I think Jenny called it the gold dust of the network. I don't know. Gold dust, yes. And another example there is also the feedback loop has during COVID. And I am assuming that many people here have had to adapt to the new reality of many of our partners. We immediately took the decision that given that we know that the relations are our capital or whatever, I don't wanna put it in capitalist terms, but that's our capital in order to make change happen. We immediately told everybody, whatever you'd want to do with the money, do it. As long as you make sure that you can stay in the network. So we left aside the objectives and every all the formalities that we had defined together and said, okay, this is the moment that we have to secure the network. And that's our immediate priority. And we also found out that we needed to create something that whenever a new crisis comes up, this is the kind of investment we can make. So that is also learning from the different realities, adapting and sharing those lessons with people that hold funds can also revitalize and help make the system by itself stronger. And maybe also interesting to share. We are also not a huge funder. So it's also fairly easy to first of all ask questions and sort of get an honest answer because most of the groups that we finance are independent of us. So I think that's also good to define in your position of power, to what extent are people dependent from you? We actually in our last strategy discussion which was four years ago, felt that we had to do more about sharing power. So we proposed the lemma to a group of 40 organizations and we went in the direction of like, do you want to be part of the board? Do you want to sit on an advisory panel? Do you want to participate in our decisions around funding? And it was, I just wanted to put it on the table here because we assume that this is what many people want. And actually answer was, please don't bother us with that. We cannot be representative of anything. We want you to stay transparent, to keep communicating, to have open channels when we don't like things that are happening. But in the basis we trust the way you take decisions also because you keep talking about it. And let us do our work in the network and you take your place with responsibility and then the trust is there to allow you to take certain decisions. So I just wanted to flag it that being there or participating isn't necessarily the ambition of people that we work with. Their ambition is to do their work and that we do ours and jointly we are as strong as possible. And I think again, there you come back to this trust and checking in with each other. That is what we need to measure because that is what keeps us going. Thank you. Thank you, Danielle. That very important data that we can use. It is trust, it is these constant conversations not needs but opportunity driven. Jenny at the GFCF and in the community philanthropy circles do you do that? Do you use data and information system to inform your decisions? No matter how small it is, these are decisions to make, right? So for those who lead with data in this virtual room what I'm about to say you may not like I would say that our grant making is defined by conversations where we find people with a twinkle in their eye and a fire in their belly that something else is possible. We really look for people who have an idea or a belief that something can be done differently and want to try it. You know, we get a lot of emails every day saying I've got a project I need to buy 15 chickens and this and by the end of it there'll be 300 chickens. That's not our bag, let's say. So I think there's something about building relationships and grants that land on top of relationships in a sense of shared possibilities. However, when it comes to data I think we also have a view that in a field that is obsessed with data often the wrong things get measured or the wrong people decide what needs to be measured. And so, you know, the classic kind of donor approach of looking at a project and saying what did I buy? Show me the things that my money bought I think is deeply flawed. Development happens because of multiple inputs. If you make a cake and you only put the flour in you can't ask where's the flour in the cake? If the flour is mixed up with the eggs and the sugar and the butter and all that. And yet donors really do still seem to believe a lot of the time that they can follow the flow of their money on its own separate from other things. So a couple of years ago we started a series of conversation with our partners talking about what we turned into a report called measuring what matters. And it came out of this experience which I think we experienced as ourselves as a grant seeking, grant making organization. We collect a lot of data which we just chuck into Excel spreadsheets because one of our funders thinks it matters. It doesn't particularly matter to us we don't think. And many of our partners would say well actually we've got this hidden spreadsheet. We collect all these other things which are really, really important to us. And they actually that is what determines how we work. And so we started a whole series of conversations saying who's data, what matters? How do we actually elevate the fact that often grant recipients are just producing the kind of data that the machinery requires and it's not really thought through. And it's for a sort of lazy sense of accountability and an implicit sense of distrust of global South partners I think we can say that. But actually the richness of other kinds of data is the organizations and individuals where keeping in their heads, keeping on an Excel spreadsheet really, really matters. So I think this, the whole conversation around data what gets measured by whom and the importance of negotiating across power differentials. So if an external donor says I need you to give me data on A to Z, where's the negotiation to say we will give you your ABC but for CDE or DEF rather, this is how we'll measure it. So really thinking what are proxy indicators for accountability, for transparency that actually organizations in order to be credible in order to be legitimate in order to be wanted by the community they are already engaging in. And yet somehow the external system thinks that their own metrics matter more. So I really think this is a massive area. I think people get obsessed by data and my question would be a lot of the time for what? What does it show? Data is just data. We want to use data for things that really matter that we really care about that are actually trying to take us somewhere. And unless we get better across the system at negotiating the different kinds of accountabilities the different kinds of ownership the different kinds of audiences so that we really do create a situation where each contributor can see what they contributed to not just one contributor insisting that only their resources matter. So I do think it's a really, really important conversation and we do collect quite a lot of demographic and sort of the soft kind of data that Elizabeth was talking about because I think just as a field we need to be get better at doing both but as a system we certainly need to do for the issue of power and who decides what data matters and what data doesn't matter. Thank you, Jenny. Well worded Gemma, Gemma. Your reflections, something tells me you're part of this. I wish I could just do that with government donors. Yes. Yeah. No, I completely agree that we should be well we should very much improve our way of measuring impacts until we have found that way. I do have to admit that we have an Excel sheet but yeah, we do try to reflect critically and to see what are the other ways in which in our case we can show well the Dutch how their tax money is being spent in developing contexts because that's also a responsibility of course that we have and more in general I would say for us data and information is quite crucial for the program. It's both at the very beginning using that as a starting point prior to making a funding decision trying to see what are the priority issues that we could work on where we could provide added value coming from landed scale program and who are the stakeholders in country that who have been working on these topics for years. So we try and organize roundtables or other formats in which we aim to verify and strengthen the existing data and information and this is really a building block for some of the interventions that we have in the portfolio sorry for all of the interventions that we have. We also try to encourage adaptive programming and here I did recognize a couple of things that were said before that we tried to use the data coming from the projects and the programs both quantitative as well as qualitative to further inform implementation. We try to as much as possible have an open exchange with project partners, other stakeholders to discuss the progress opportunities maybe unintended effects. And we do of course notice as a donor that such open exchanges are sometimes difficult. It's a logical consequence that partners are very much willing to share positive results but of course more reluctant to share less positive results. We do notice now that some of the partners we've been working with for a couple of years that longer relationship building trust it does help. We do see that that partners become more open about some of the struggles having a conversation on how could we do it differently. So yeah, but this is of course yeah indeed something that we have to work on. And maybe one last thing that I thought might be interesting from the perspective of the global donor working group on Lantz because I've been answering most of these questions also from the Lantz skill perspective of course. So together with the Lantz portal I thought it's nice to mention here that we are currently working on an update of what we call the Lantz Governance Program Map. So which is a database with all Lantz Governance related projects and programs globally. We had one that was rather outdated. So we're working on an update to have well a transparent database for all organizations everyone to access that has the information about what type of donor programs are running where with what partners, what activities are they focusing on? So this is for the group to on the one hand also smoothen the way that we coordinate ourselves in countries which we also have sometimes here critical reflections about coming from in-country partners but also very much to try and see how can we improve the synergies of the work that we're all doing on this same topic working towards those goals. So having a bigger impact in the end as well as a group. Thank you. Thank you, Hema. Very, very familiar from our side of the tenure facility where we look at these types of data to inform further implementation, to increase synergy, to ensure that our partners really provide their data into the entire analysis that we're doing in our progress. Elizabeth, from your experience, what data do organizations use in measuring inclusivity? For example, if you have that, what could inform what could inform better financing for inclusive land governance? So at risk of repeating a lot of the things I said at the previous answer, I think the first thing to highlight is in my work, data is so, so important because diversity, equity and inclusion more broadly is still seen as a good to have rather than a must have. And for that reason, there's a lot of needing to prove and the evidence led that actually this is the reason why inclusion equity is really important. This is why we must collect the data and the data is basically proving why it's important and that can sometimes be quite frustrating but that's the way in which we've been able to move the needle and to be able to make progress and a lot of diversity, equity and inclusion topics. So for us, data becomes so key in even getting buying from the board, from executives and then also just to show those within the local communities either externally or employees internally that actually changes being made is by the way this is where we started and this is where we're at now and this is a target that we're trying to get to. So data then becomes so key and in terms of inclusive financing and what's important, it goes back to who's been excluded who's currently not part of the conversation currently and sometimes it just means identifying data gaps. Sometimes it's not just about the data that you're trying to collect or simply looking at the local communities or other groups as data sources and because it can be quite patronizing, I'm just gonna keep giving you data and at the end of the day, I'm not gonna get any benefit out of it. So it's important not just to see those groups of people as data sources but actually going back to them and saying, okay, this is what we want to do. This is the outcome we're hoping to achieve and the only way in which we can do that is by having a baseline and that's why your input is therefore important rather than we need your data. We need you to give us this information. So I think it goes back to what Jenny said in her answer as well that we need to shift the dialogue on what data is important and who holds the power and what data is being collected. So I think if I were to go back to answer your question more directly in terms of inclusive finances, actually it's better to identify the data gaps and then work for the communities to understand what's missing and bringing their voices back in rather than, okay, we need this data. Let's go find those groups of people and ask them directly. So I think there's a need to start having more honest conversations with the people and not seeing them just as data contributors. So I think it's quite patronizing to them really. Thank you. Thank you. We're getting lots of questions. Thank you for your engagement and your participation, all panelists. It's very inspiring. As some of the questions are from asking how to get financing from donors and how to contact donors. Thank you for these questions, but while we appreciate this, their engagement, this is not the aim for this particular webinar, but we could land portal has information related to this. We would like to let's just tackle one of the questions that really looked at inclusive, inclusivity is what is, what constitutes being more inclusive? So if you have examples of that, when you are, this is from Avigit, Shataji, when you're asking this question now, do you feel that it is exclusive? So who is it excluding? So why do we have the inclusive versus exclusive? Who's excluding? That's one question. Any one of us in the panel want to answer that question? I can give it a try if you want to. Yeah, so, and I'm speaking, so I'm just going to put myself in the box of the environmental movements and environmental donors. And when we started to work with the women's movements, Greenpeace International got as much funding as the whole women's movement globally. And, and, yeah. So just to give you an idea where the money is and where it is going. And this is five years ago. And we have been focusing very strongly on working with the environmental funders to say that if you, you know, this is an example of being very exclusive, that there is almost no women-led initiatives that you're actually funding. It's not about you who is on the panel or was it? So even, I mean, this is the biggest man-woman rise, just that distinction by itself is shockingly unequal and shockingly exclusive. So that's also why we said, okay, let's just focus on this without knowing that there is many, many forms of exclusion. But we folk, like for the past five years, we've been focusing on learning ourselves, but also showing what we've learned to our colleagues in the environmental movement, both at donor level and at organizational level, because it's not only the donors that are exclusive women. So that is maybe an example of where you see a lot of exclusion. I don't know if it's an answer, but you feel. Can I add on to that? Yeah, I think we have to accept that the mainstream funding system is exclusive and it has historically been exclusive, you know, from bilateral funding going to domestic NGOs in the country where the donors are, that's been the historical trajectory. And I think what started gradually in the sort of, you know, 2016 with the grand bargain in the humanitarian space, which recognized that at that time, 3% or less of humanitarian funding went directly to global South organization. So great commitments were made. And by 2020, that number was supposed to have reached 25%. 2020 came and went, that was the year of COVID. The number actually went down. So that we are in a moment of these big commitments to change things, the shocks to the system caused by Black Lives Matter, the death of George Floyd, the kind of decolonization, racism, sort of trajectory that have rattled through this sector. So the pressure is there, the momentum is there, the alternative system or what it could represent is there. And yet somewhere, something's getting stuck. And I think power does not give itself up easily. So unless we talk about the P word and the fact that reasons are constantly made for why organizations, actors in the global South are not ready or to be trusted to receive or have the capacity to receive resources, the system is keeping organizations staffed and creating a logic of costly intermediaries usually based in the global North, somehow saying that they are unblocking the system. And in fact, they are blocking the system. And so unless we acknowledge, and we look at this is where data really matters. If you look at the flow of money right now, it is simply not good enough. The rhetoric is excellent. The evidence is pathetic, to be honest. So I think it is, I think saying inclusive is actually should be the norm. In fact, it's not the norm. It's really the new in many ways. Okay, yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Jenny. Thank you, Daniel. There is a question related to paradigm shift, two questions. How do we build that paradigm shift that is necessary to ensure inclusiveness? And yeah, so how would that work? Anyone wanted to answer that question? I just spoke, I'm happy to have a go. Yeah, it's also the flow of trust and not the flow of money so that you can probably get those two, yes? So I do think if you look at the industry, the fossil fuels industry, the fossil fuels industry was not the place from which renewable energy was innovated. That was innovated from somewhere else. And I think if you're looking at systems come and go, and I do feel like the current system of funding we are in that was established as part of the post-Second World War consensus is in decline. And parts of it need just to be retired. We need to move away. The world has changed since then. And parts of it may be preserved, but I think they need to be in service of a completely different system where development isn't just about the flow of money. It's not just about projects or issues. It really is about the critical issues facing the world today which is what kind of societies do we all want to live in wherever we are? What is the role of government? What's the role of the private sector? What's the role of civil society? What does civil societies need to look like and to be able to perform that function? So I think unless we ask different questions about the framing of a good society or the system we want rather than the system we've got, I think we really need to push ourselves beyond the limits of our current imaginations. And I think in this notion of trust, I think COVID was a really good example where people sitting maybe working in international development in the global North for the first time realized the importance of mutuality, local aid groups, trust who knew whom in their own communities, on their own streets. And in a sense, it's how do we take that essence of what it means to be a person, to organize, to organize power, to make collective demands on others and remove ourselves from development as a source of professional expertise in some way. Like, we really kind of got to get a bit messy here. And I think this idea that there was a question around mining, we know that when a mine is opened, trust drops dramatically everywhere. And so no amount of money can really build up that trust unless you have strategies for building trust. And I think it's not just trust between those external donors and communities. It's trust as a currency within a community. Trusting communities are more effective communities. Inclusive communities are more effective communities. So I think we really need to engage more in some sort of creative thinking that the sort of bureaucratic sort of top down ways of doing things have really run their course. And it's time to sort of do some reimagining and reframe in ways that it's about people. It's not about global North, global South. It's people everywhere, making sure the systems and structures, they need work for them. I'll hand over to my colleagues to make that much better. May I give it a try to just say what we are doing to do the paradigm shift? So I think sitting in the global North being white and stuff like that. It's also what we do ourselves. So as an organization, we became a self-organizing or so the hierarchical leadership is gone. We have decentralized leadership. We have made our processes as transparent and feedbacky as possible. We have a very clear relation with the donors that we have in a sense that we understand that we are in a power relation with them. But up front, we're clear about where we stand about how we think things need to change. So I just want to say that the paradigm shift starts if the people that need to shift start shifting. And that is the people that are in this panel, that's us and that is the only way to make it happen. And that's also what we're telling or that we're sharing with the people that are colleagues in the Netherlands. If you still feel comfortable with what you're doing, you're probably not doing the right thing. And it's on us to change. So, and everybody has to do it in her way, but if you're not feeling a certain itch, then you're probably not doing enough. And so that's my piece. Thank you. Let me use this one question about the land program map. Tukema, what is the status of that? I think this would be for the inclusive land governance program. Oh, yeah, completely different question. I answered it in the chat. Oh, you did. Yeah, it's not ready yet. That's hopefully later this year. And it would be a pleasure to present it when it is ready. Yeah. But now that I'm speaking already, maybe I was also thinking a bit about the first question still and coming from our perspective, that who are we trying to reach when we talk about inclusivity? And I think for us, we see that it is easy, convenient, to work with bigger organizations who have all of the processes in place, who know how the donor works. So for us, it's really about also trying to reach out to more local groups, to smaller organizations. And there we do see a lot of challenges, but I think at least from our side, we have a clear commitment to try and see how we can do that better and also try and develop in that way. I'm feeling that I have to respond to some of the calls that were made by Jenny and by Danielle, but it's really inspiring. And I think it's something that all of us have a few sense to do. Yeah. So there is this, I've combined local community dynamics with local communities, understanding of inclusivity when you make the beneficiaries understand it's about money. So this is quite sensitive at the community level and how do you do this? There's a question here. Who would like to tackle that? Can I ask? Who should I ask? Can you repeat the question again? The question is about when the beneficiaries, how do we approach the beneficiaries about inclusive financing? They make them understand that. How do you make the beneficiaries understand that? And that's got also to do, I think, with this anonymous question about, was there ever a time in your organizations that did with local community dynamics, which also talks about how communities could potentially be challenged by issues and then mistrust and apprehension happens when that happens? How to navigate this would be helpful. Happy to kick it off. Some are receiving funds, some aren't. You know, when that happens, what happens? Shall I have a go? I mean, I think we have to remind ourselves that communities are not monolithic. They are diverse, complex places with their own dynamics and differences. There's majorities and minorities and all of that. And I think, you know, it's less the how to and more is what is the sort of capability that is required, proximate to or within a community to be able to recognize and see and manage those sorts of dynamics. And I think of some of the community philanthropy organizations that work in peace-building contexts where parts of the community simply aren't talking to each other or aren't anywhere near each other, but using tools of community development to bring people together, using processes where people who've always assumed that development projects will be done to them, creating spaces where they suddenly have a voice and their view matters. I think it is, in the context of our work, that's nothing that we do as a kind of, at a global level. But we support our partners to engage in these participatory processes. We really are sort of transformational in just allowing people to think about themselves differently, allowing issues of, you know, for me, I always think about our partners as organizations that try and hold a space of community that is as inclusive as it can be and always pushing themselves to make sure that they are reaching those at the edges. So I think there is a sort of an art to this, but in the current system, we've got so used to issue-based NGOs as being the solution to everything. And so the importance of structures, institutions, spaces that can think holistically across different parts of the community, build those sort of relational flows, that trust, deal with those power imbalances, and bring that more kind of joined up approach has often been a missing piece of the architecture in that our funding has sort of, has followed issues rather than communities as things in themselves. Because we all know full well that communities expand when things are good and they get very small and exclusive when things are very bad. And so it's almost how do we kind of nurture that sort of, that sensibility within organizations. And I'm sure Danielle's, some of the organization Danielle's and both ends work with, often get dismissed as many of our partners do as intermediaries, instruments. They can move money from A to B rather than facilitators, bridge builders, relationship builders, and all that other intangible stuff that really matters. So I think that's a massive, that's a massive capacity that's needed in the system is to be able to navigate and manage and address some of those issues with people in ways that bring them on board. Thank you. We have a few minutes left and I think there are a couple of questions here that could also be the connecting thread for some of what has been discussed for some of our lessons and takeaways. This question, the last one, also from an anonymous source, can any lessons be taken from small grants mechanisms which have been discussed to inform the way larger intermediaries and I would say larger donors so they can unblock the finance system? Anyone? Yes. Can you repeat the question on that one more time? Hold this. Can lessons be taken from small grants mechanisms which have been discussed to inform the way larger intermediaries can unblock the finance system? So I think there's a couple of lessons that we've been sharing about how do you do, the most explicit one was what kind of data for whom, your whole planning process, who is deciding when and where money flows, the whole feedback loop, so how are you checking in and monitoring whether your intentions of making financing or more inclusive actually work and who do you listen to when, who are you willing to listen to, both in terms of criticism and in terms of suggestions on how to do things differently and you're willing to try things out that you wouldn't have thought for by yourself and challenge you to go out of your comfort zone. So that is like how to do it if you're inclined to do good or to do better at least. But of course, and I'm seeing a lot of it in the chat, people that are faced with financing that isn't inclusive, it's very explicitly exclusive. So it actually weakens the position of everybody that is in our audience almost. And so it's also to challenge together and to show up when we talk about the social industry, when we talk about large scale land acquisition by agriculture companies. So I am not convinced. I think that we're talking about a fairly small part of the intermediary financing institutions that wants to become more inclusive. And I think we've been learning lessons that are valuable to them. But I think we also have to show up and say this is really unacceptable. This is so bad for most people involved is creating sacrifice zones. It's so unfair. And that is also a way to start having a conversation on how that you really have to do things differently. And there is many doggers with whom that conversation is very young because they still are convinced that they help develop the world. And so I think it's both. Show how you do it and what you've learned from a fairly position of vulnerability in our case, but also challenge where the money flows in the most part at the moment, which is maintaining a system that is destructive for both human relations and the relationship with our natural environment. Yeah, maybe the way to approach is looking at the good intermediary and the ability for that good intermediary to convince the bigger donors to trust the smaller organizations. So they build the capacity, build the bridge, everything that has been best. So if you're an intermediary that has like, you know, as we had for a time the context with these decentralized funds, the moment that the donors interested say, you don't need us anymore, you take a step back and the funding goes. So you allow a direct relationship to be built so that the whole system gets stronger and you know, everybody can do what it's good at. So it's also you as an intermediary, you have to be able to let it go. And that is showing trust to both sides and a very important way of doing it. Elizabeth, do you want to add some of your insights? We have, I think, the last two minutes. I'm trying to make sure that I'm passing, you know, it's important to make sure that people who are the experts when it comes to donors and grant-giving are given the answers here. And that's what I've tried to do, not just because I don't have anything to say, but just making sure that those who can help and those who can answer the questions best are doing that. And we hope to answer, just by writing some of the questions here, I think none of us are receiving money from our companies. Brielle has a question about, you know, how my assumption is I didn't raise that because none of the organizations here, they have that policy. Kemma, you want to add about how many of your grants really actually are emerging from smaller organizations that became empowered in the process. And maybe that's how we end, because we are a mosaic of funders and want to be more inclusive in a way. So what's your insight? It's really difficult, I would say, to see the red thread through our portfolio. I have been challenged during this webinar to dive a little bit deeper into what our portfolio looks like as a whole picture and indeed in which countries are we directly working with smaller organizations and what is a little bit that overall picture. So that is definitely something for us to look into. I'm inspired by the things that I've heard mostly. I think, yeah, I'm also a little bit with Elizabeth. I think that I've heard really good points coming from Jenny and from Danielle. And it's also, yeah, food for thought for us. And yeah, as I said, it would be very interesting to have to continue this discussion with each other. I would be happy to learn more. Thank you. Thank you so much for our panelists. And thank you for joining us here today. We really appreciate your participation and engagement. And you can take the survey. We would like to know how you like this webinar and how we can improve it next time. Please take it by clicking on the link which Neil will post on the chat. Very wonderful session, very inspiring. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Thanks.