 Thank you for coming and joining us on this Director's Lecture City, the SOAS, Director's Lecture Cities. It's the first of this calendar year, and we plan to host one every month of the coming academic year. My name is Adam Habib, and I am the Director of SOAS. Next to me is Andrea Cornwell, the Pro Director of Research at SOAS. I've asked Andrea to assist me in moderating this event. She is not only a member of our executive team, but she is one of the noted development practitioners and academics in SOAS. I might add, I'm going to make a blush a little, one of the most cited academics at SOAS for many, many years. I want to also welcome Darren Walker from the Ford Foundation and Mark Malek-Brown from the Open Society Foundation, both the friends and colleagues of many years. They are the CEOs of perhaps the two private foundations, two of the largest private foundations committed to social justice, and that is why we've invited them to this seminar, which is looking at about, which is looking at philanthropy and how we can use it to address inequality. So welcome to Darren and welcome to Mark Malek-Brown from these institutions. Let me start by framing this debate, colleagues. In a sense, one of the greatest challenges of our time, it seems to me, and I think we'd all agree on this, is inequality. Inequality is not simply a problem for the economy or the problem for enabling inclusive development. It is a problem because it has ripple effects through all aspects of society. It politically polarizes our society and socially polarizes our society. And because it politically and socially polarizes our society, it creates deep alienation. And that deep alienation has manifested itself in the rise of the far right, in the rise of communities that are particularly angry and feel excluded from the societies in which they located. And so in a sense, if we are going to begin to address the great challenges of our time, one of the great challenges we have to address is inequality. And the real question we have to ask is philanthropy. Can philanthropy assist us in this regard? Now there are many people who argue against this. They argue that philanthropy is essentially a product of Robert Barrett. It is a product of people who make money in unethical ways and who use deeply unethical business practices. And that the huge surpluses that they make, a portion of it is then dedicated to ameliorating the social emigration that their business practices create. And many people will say, this is not a model for addressing inequality. It's a model for deep, it's a deeply problematic model. And what we should be doing is having, we shouldn't be allowing those business practices in the first place and we shouldn't be allowing such enormous accumulations of wealth in the first place. And so the big question then becomes, is this reasonable? Now what I'm going to do is give Darren and Mark an opportunity to say a few words. I'll give each between five and 10 minutes to kick off with their opening statements, their own thoughts on this question. And then we'll kind of open up for a conversation between Andrea, myself, Mark and Darren. Andrea will lead with perhaps the first set of questions and we'll just enable a conversation for about half an hour. Thereafter, we'll go to a series of questions that we've got from the audience. Again, we'll come back to Darren and Mark for the conversation. And that should take us to about 7.38 which are in the event. So that if you like frames the conversation, Darren and Mark. And let me then start perhaps with Darren, if you're prepared to kick off Darren, give us a few thoughts about the opening statement, how you would see it, how that informs the ambitions of Ford, how it informs the philanthropic interventions of Ford and we can then go to Mark and then open up the conversation. Darren. Thank you, Adam. It is always great to see you and delighted, of course, to be with so as and Andrea, delight to meet you, of course, and have this opportunity. I think your opening statement is quite provocative. Needs to be provocative. Philanthropy is indeed, in large part, a creature of inequality. There is no doubt that if you look over the history of American philanthropy, periods of high levels of inequality created some of the great legacy foundations we know today, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford, and so on. There is no doubt, but I do not believe I reject categorically the idea that philanthropy is incapable of addressing inequality at its root. And so I believe that in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, in a statement he wrote in 1968, just a few weeks before he died, he said the following about philanthropy. Philanthropy is commendable, but it should not allow the philanthropist to overlook the economic injustice which makes philanthropy necessary. And so what Dr. King was saying in some ways, Adam, is a summation of some part of your frame. But he doesn't give up on philanthropy. He simply admonishes and directs those philanthropists to consider the economic injustice and how they can contribute to it or not, and how to calibrate their investments in ways that don't create such disadvantage, loss of dignity, inhumanity. And so I believe, as Dr. King did, that it is possible for philanthropy to be not just about charity and generosity, but to be about dignity and justice. And that is why at the Ford Foundation we call ourselves a social justice philanthropy, not because we think we're special or unique or something, but because we do want to call attention to the idea that we're not simply focused on charitable activity or ameliorating the consequences of inequality, but that we actually have to look at the drivers of inequality. And what are those drivers of inequality? We believe they include prejudice, bias, racism, gender inequality and discrimination, cultural norms and practices that create hierarchies and categories that allow some in society to be privileged and others to be disadvantaged. We believe that politics, the ways in which our political systems are designed, contributes to inequality. And of course, we believe for democracy, there is no greater threat to that democracy than inequality, because at the very highest aspiration of democracy, there must be hope in a society. Inequality asphyxiates hope. Hope is the oxygen of democracy. The ability, as I did as a poor boy living in a rural Texas community, in a little shocked on house, my ability to have hope, aspirations and dream was a function in large part because I lived in in my potential and invested in ways that demonstrated to me and my poor family that we were worthy and that I as a young boy enrolling in the first Head Start class in the summer of 1965, a new government program designed to lift up poor boys and girls like me in America. I believe because of those investments that my country was cheering me on. And what you speak of today, Adam, so eloquently is the fact that in many societies, people who have been disadvantaged, people who have been left out and left behind by an economy that is quickly transforming, they do not believe their country is cheering them on. In fact, they believe that for many of them, their country, their government has become the problem and that indeed their government seems to be set up, designed to implement and execute programs and policies that seem to get in the way of advancing them. And so philanthropy's role in this is to do the research, support the advocacy and the policy that helps us name, frame and surface the real drivers of inequality and help to support those ideas and institutions and individuals who are indeed developing the solutions to show us how we can get out. So philanthropy's role in many ways, in my view, is to be the financier for the kinds of innovation, social ingenuity, the difficult conversations that won't happen without capital that's risk capital. Those conversations, those ideas, those innovations that can't necessarily be solved by market solutions won't be funded without philanthropy. So we have a critical role to play and as I turn over the podium to my friend Lord Malak Brown, I certainly have learned from him and the work that he has done and certainly the work at OSF, an institution that I will say with some trepidation has pushed us from being the second largest foundation to the third largest. But I'm not envious or green already such thing, am I Mark? So that's lovely. Thank you very much. Those are useful comments Mark. In a lot of ways OSF is formally committed to the open society and the notion of the open society. And I would imagine that you would see inequality as a serious threat to the open society because it kind of creates the political and social conditions that Darren has spoken of. How would you put, how would you see the challenge? Well, thank you and it's great to be, thank you both for hosting us and thank you Darren for kicking us off so as usually eloquently. Look, OSF and I are both relatively new to this compared to Ford and Darren because we are a new generation foundation, if you like, 30 years old, not at all with the same sort of storage history that Ford has. And I myself am a longtime board member of OSF but only a rookie foundation president. I've only been doing it for a little bit more than a year but it does because previously I'd been lucky enough to have senior jobs in the UN, in the World Bank, in the UK government. I do have a chance to reflect on both the advantages of being a foundation president and also the challenges and the advantage I think is very, very clear which is you have a much simpler set of, if you like, ownership than if, for example, you're at the UN with 190 plus governments to be accountable to, you know, here you have a founder and the board that founder has assembled. But of course that very clarity of ownership poses as you touched on in your opening, Adam, questions of legitimacy as well. You know, a large fortune now redeployed to these philanthropic purposes. You know, is it solution or is it indeed part of the problem in the first place? And of course it won't surprise you that I like Darren. I think it can be very much part of the solution and, you know, I take my particular philanthropist founder, George Soros, now 91 and I'd say two things about him but, you know, every foundation founder has, in a way, their own history, their own motives that have driven them to philanthropy at this scale. But in George's case, you know, fleeing twice from Nazism, from communism, a Jew persecuted in central Europe who made his way to London and to a first university education in London at the LSE before going on to America and making a vast fortune in the financial markets. But for him, you know, by the midpoint in his career, you know, he was keen to be giving it back. He was a creature of violent social change. He wanted to, in a sense, you know, invest in, you know, a much more positive social change, opportunity for others to journey as he had through the most extraordinary life, really. And, you know, so his foundation very much reflected his personal history, but not just in its purposes, which are very much around issues of social inequality as being critical to an open society. But also in its philosophical tenet, this premise of open society assumed that nobody has a monopoly on the truth or wisdom, that debate, the clash of ideas is, you know, where the closest to truth comes from, but that it is always challenged and advanced by that continuing debate. And so for us as OSF, you know, there is a sort of, if you like, built-in reflex against, you know, just being any kind of agent of one man's agenda or of one class or elite's agenda, you know, we have absolutely dedicated to the principle of the fallibility of human judgment and knowledge and the fact that the way you address fallibility is to allow the clash of ideas and debate. And it's why, for example, we invest so heavily in the university space, because we think universities are so key to the sort of human capital of societies. But, you know, I think behind that, too, though, lies and to come in directly on the inequality point, a recognition that, you know, if our foundation was very much in the years of the fight against apartheid in South Africa and of against communism in Central Europe and in both cases, we wanted to stimulate both change and debate around that change. You know, we saw so clearly that inequality had contributed to it. And if we take a lesson from the 30 years since, it's how, you know, the failure to address inequality by successor regimes and governments in those countries, even if they are more democratic and more open and more devoted to the rights of their citizens, they remain fundamentally at jeopardy because they've not been able to address this issue of a more inclusive model of growth, a more inclusive vision of rights. So for us, these are very much front of mind issues. And I suppose the last point to say is, I think every day that I and my colleagues go to work, and, you know, every day George Soros now, as I say at 91, thinks about us and his son Alex, our deputy chairman, you know, thinks about what we are doing. We realize that the continued claim we can make to legitimacy comes from having impact around these issues in constantly finding groups who are left behind by government. And I would say, for example, the work we do with the Roma in Europe is a clear expression of that work we've been doing for 25 years, or groups for whom whose needs need to be brought to the attention of government because they've been overlooked. So that foundation is moral voice as a challenger to governments to have a more inclusive vision of growth, to respect the rights of all. You know, we see that as our claim to legitimacy that we are, you know, if you like, as single-minded in our pursuit of social justice as we can be. And if we fall away from that gold standard, then I think we rightly allow our critics to raise the question, what are you about? What is your motives? What are your purposes? Is there a hidden agenda? We need to put our campaign for social justice. We need to wear it on our sleeve. We need to be clear about it every day. Thank you. So we're going to bring in, we've had some really interesting questions sent to us. So we're going to bring in some of those questions and the questions that we ask as we go forward. So one of the questions was very similar to one which I thought would be really interesting to put to you. So I'm going to adapt it a bit. So the question is an inherent risk in private philanthropy is that it exonerates government from its duty to ensure socioeconomic rights and justice. So it potentially undermines the accountability of governments to their citizens. Both of you have spoken about that relationship between representation to government and the kind of advocacy that you enable. And I think it's an interesting question to ask you, how do foundations like the OSEF and Ford guard against the risk of playing a palliative role in an unjust system, rather than a transformative one? And the kind of things that you are doing in order to be able to try and address as Dan said, those deep levers of change without undermining the accountability of governments to their citizens. Well, I think we both OSF and Ford support institutions and people who are committed to holding government to account. Some of these organizations are deeply committed to addressing issues of impunity, of corruption, of kleptocracy. This is why Ford and OSF are often in trouble, if you will, because indeed we are deemed by some governments as problematic. We have certainly, both institutions, been sanctioned by various governments over the years because of our support of these institutions. I think the challenge is we could do more, but I think the challenge is for philanthropy to do more in this regard. I don't think that, again, I don't mean to sound braggadocious, but I don't think there are many foundations committed to funding that kind of work, the work that really excavates some of these root causes and the ways in which governments, particularly authoritarian regimes that are democratically elected, a trend we're seeing more and more of these days, democracies that are quasi-authoritarian, and the way in which you address these issues of impunity, of systemic inequality in those systems, in a far more complex and complicated than in a straightforward authoritarian dictatorship. Mark? Well, look, I think first there's just one very practical pragmatic point to make. The resources of foundations, and as Darren said, we are the second and third largest foundation of our kind. Our resources are a drop in the ocean compared to those of government, so just very practically it would be hard for us to let government off the hook in terms of large-scale service provision. In a sense, that always focuses our mind. What can we do? What can we campaign for? What can our grantees do, which will spur government to expand its provision to reach those currently unreached by its services? Because there really is no other model. I think that argument can be made more really to corporates about this whole thing about corporate social responsibility, and is that a substitute for government service provision, because that's more matching two economic forces of a similar scale. But we are ultimately small. In our case, we spend well north of a billion dollars a year, which is a very large and privileged philanthropic spend to have oversight of, but it's an accounting error in a government's national accounts. So, as I say, the challenge, therefore, is not how to, if you send to exonerate government from its responsibilities, is how to use our grant making to, in a sense, spur government to accept its responsibilities. And there Darren's point about the sort of pretty radical grant making that both our organizations do. And where I think I often look over my shoulder to make sure Ford's right there at our side. And I like to think Darren occasionally looks over his shoulder to make sure OSF is there, because we do think of ourselves as the two most courageous donors around these kinds of agendas of inclusion, anti-corruption, the issues that Darren mentioned. So, forgive me, I'm going to push the boundaries a little, Darren and Mark. So I think you're both absolutely right. I mean, it seems to me that the dilemma of development, anyway in the world, is how do you empower the disempowered? Because if the disempowered had power, political and economically, it would become responsive to them. They would begin to respond to their needs, respond to their demands, etc. And so, actually, development is less about policy, although that's important. It's less about systems, although that is important. But it's about figuring out how you can get poor people, or marginalized communities power. Because if they have leverage, then powerful elites in the state or in the economy become responsive to them. And so, that poses a really interesting dilemma for social justice philanthropists, because what you've got to do is invest in a way that enables the empowerment of the disempowered. And so, in a sense, it seems to me, it's less about the kinds of policy work that you're sponsored from people like my organization. And it's far more about how you make sure that marginalized communities are allowed to mobilize, allowed to organize, because it's through their mobilization and organization, they get a collective voice that people become responsive to them. And so, that, it seems to me, is the real kind. Now, that raises two dilemmas which I'd like you to respond to. One is, do you empower community organization, social struggles, as opposed to NGOs, advocacy organization? And is there a way you do that? Do you get the mix right? And how do you determine that? The second is what you touched on. And that is, I'm sure when you start doing this, you get political and economic elites unhappy. And they then begin to take action against it. We've seen, in the case of OSF, the action in Hungary at various points in the early 80s, I recall, in the early 2000s, the Bush regime in the United States imposed quite significant constraints on how much private foundations have spent and what they spend on. It seems to me, how do you manage? So, the second question is, how do you manage the political and economic elites acting against you? So, the first question, is there a proportion, is there a way that you're empowering community organization, social movement against NGOs? And the second is, how do you manage the tensions that inevitably arise with political elites? Perhaps I should switch the order this time, Mark, and then that. Great. I've always been hoping that one moment I could go ahead of Darren. He's very hard to follow. He's always answered it all. So, let me just say that, you know, Darren described Ford as a sort of social justice foundation. You know, we deliberately go perhaps half a step further. And, you know, it's quite a complex issue, but we call ourselves a political philanthropy. And, you know, it's complex in terms of, you know, status you register for and exactly how your funds are structured in the US. So, it's something we can call ourselves, but, you know, others, it's hard for them to do it, but we sort of revel in the term. And we revel in it really for both the reasons or questions that you raise, Adam. I mean, you know, we do like you believe that political change has to come from empowerment. And, you know, a lifetime ago when I was head of the UN Development Program, I remember a countryman of yours, South Africa's ambassador to the UN, standing up in a board meeting of UNDP when I was its head and saying, you are no longer going to dig shallow wells in South Africa. Instead, you're going to invest in democracy and empowerment, because you believe that is the way the poor will get out of, you know, the trap they're in. And, you know, I answered affirmatively to his surprise because UN development had been a very tame affair where you did latrines and wells and maybe classrooms. And, you know, I tried to, in a much more limited way than is possible with OSF, you know, put UNDP onto a political purpose by making it about democracy and expansion of democracy. And, you know, I don't think even then, and I certainly don't now think that just extending the vote alone breaks through. I think, you know, we're seeing just how challenged the democratic model is in many parts of the world, including the US at the moment. But this issue of what are the keys to empowerment remains at the core of my lifetime involvement in this, but very much what I find at OSF. I don't think to take the first question, it's movements or NGOs. It's using NGOs often as vehicles to reach movements. You know, there are a lot of NGOs now who are themselves, you know, the agents of supporting and encouraging the growth of social movements in developing countries and elsewhere. And, you know, that's very much the nexus we're looking at. You know, we're less and less looking at NGOs as independent international actors. We're looking at them as part of the fabric of building a strong social movement base in countries. And, you know, I think that is key to the second point, the capture by political and economic elites. Yeah, I mean, OSF and for that matter, Ford, you know, have always been, you know, dangerous company for the eyes of elites. And, you know, it's not just Hungary where we confront difficulties in OSF's case. There is a very large range of countries where it has become very hard for us to work. And, you know, there are several countries where just in the last year as part of political change, we've had to leave Afghanistan and Myanmar. You know, I've spent much of today checking on the security arrangements for our staff in Ukraine. And so, you know, there is no doubt that I hope we're towards the end of it, but there has been a tide in recent years that goes much wider than ourselves, but which has been, you know, intolerant of challenges to established power. And, you know, I think we are one level where it is a bit of a badge of honour that, you know, autocrats go after us so often and blame us for colour revolutions, Mr. Putin's favourite claim against us. But on the other hand, it forces us to reflect a bit about are we getting something wrong, that this rise of authoritarianism, you know, has marched as far as it has in the last decade or so. You know, this is not just a much less hospitable world for OSF than the world of 15 years ago. It's a much less hospitable world for those whose corner we're seeking to fight. And so, you know, I think we face some fundamental questions about strategy and effectiveness in today's world. Well, I think when you have a clear point of view, your theory of change, if you will, you understand that these situations of NGOs and movements are not either or. They are both needed, grassroots and grass tops. You have to have strategy for both. And this issue of empowerment is important because we have to talk about a driver is of inequality, is the lack of willingness to share power. We have to talk about power. And I was with a group of philanthropists who once, one of them said, well, we are we are in the business of giving voice to the voiceless. And I've heard that often. And I challenge the philanthropist, actually, poor and marginalized people, their communities, they have voices. We have simply not been willing to hear them, to listen to them. We have privileged the credentialed from places like New York and Washington and Geneva and London, their perspectives over those who are most proximate in community. And so it's why we at Ford, and I know the same can be said for OSF, spend so much of our resources, our grant making dollars on community based organizations, on grassroots organizations, on institutions, organizations led by people of color, led by formerly incarcerated people in your justice program, not to in any way, diminish the critical importance of credentialed knowledge. It is just simply to say that it is out of balance, and that we need to reconsider that calibration. I also am, as Mark described, at Ford, we have a long history of being both an elite institution ourselves and challenging the elite. I have in my office a placard from New Orleans in 1961, across the country, there were full page advertisements taken out in Southern newspapers. And the headline said, attention white citizens boycott the Ford Motor Company, because the profits from this company are going to a New York Foundation seeking to force white Southerners to integrate with Negroes and force us to change our way of life. And so for decades, we have been on the receiving end of vitriol and anger and penalties, because indeed, we have, as an elite institution, stood for something. But that doesn't mean that we rest on our laurels or that we think of ourselves as so incredibly special. In fact, I believe there is more of a necessity of challenging some of those very systems that have made us an elite institution, beginning with our wealth. And it's why we focus today on looking at the issues of economics, economic injustice, and even talking, engaging on the issue of the intersection of capitalism and democracy. We cannot address the issue of inequality through social policy alone. We have to really look at the economic systems and structures that reproduce generation after generation, advantage, compounded advantage for some and compounded disadvantage for others. At a macro level, you can look at the United States going back to slavery and generation after generation, look at the way our economic system was designed and that economic system and the systems of democracy, which often conspired to render descendants of slaves always disadvantaged. And that history remains with us today. Going back to the original promise of 40 acres and a mule, which no freed slave ever received, all the way through the red lining of black neighborhoods in America in the 1950s and 60s, so that capital would be prevented from going into those communities. Private capital, investment capital that went into creating wealth for white Americans were choked off from black communities literally miles away. So we have to look at the systems of our economy if we are to really get at the root causes and that makes us all nervous, makes us all vulnerable, it makes us all certainly we capitalist. It makes us all as it should. It should make us really consider whether fairness, justice, equality are values we believe in our practice. So I want to bring us back to some of the points that both of you have raised about the power of movements and movement building and the grassroots, grass tops empowerment and thinking about the innovations that you've brought to grant making practices, but also some of the hazards of grant making practices that do something that's been particularly referred to as the NGOization of social movements where people are banned into limited time frames, a lot of reporting and so on. And also where decisions are made, not necessarily by the people are aligned with the things that the people at the grassroots might have as their strategies. So how have you innovated in your grant making practices to avoid some of those hazards and to align your grant making with social movements and with these kinds of social actors who you're trying to be able to foster? Again, Devin? Well, I think there are a few things that we do when you say innovative, Andrew, I don't want to make it sound as if these are radical things. To my mind, they're commonsensical if you believe in the rhetoric that we espouse. So first is who you fund from the grassroots, genuinely grassroots organizations who are authentically based in communities and have in their governance, their staff, representatives of the people most proximate to the challenge, the opportunity you've identified to work on to how you fund them, fund them with general operating support, fund them with, if you believe in empowerment, you are investing in their ideas. They may need a strategy consultant, possibly find, provide a technical assistance grant so they can get a strategic advisor, but it's their vision that we're investing in with unrestricted support. Do it multi-year. This is something I faced when I became president of Ford and what I was told by our finance people in our general council was, well, the trustees only authorized a one-year budget so you can't do multi-year grants because the trustees only authorized a one-year budget. My response was, well, the trustees can change that. They're the trustees. This was Mark's point earlier about the difference between UNDP and OSF and Ford. The trustees can change whatever they want. I mean, if the trustees want to do two-year, three-year or four-year budgets, they can approve budgets, multi-year budgets. You just have to make the case to your board to do that. So I was fortunate in that I made the case with my CIO, with the chief investment officer, demonstrating the efficacy and the risk mitigation to be put in place and it allowed us then to move to multi-year grant making. It supports, again, it is when you talk about empowerment, we have gone from what was less than 20% to now over 80% of our grants as general operating support. That has been a challenge because the other little secret that we don't want to talk about is the ways in which we in philanthropy like to quote-unquote control our grantees. And that's clear. I mean, it's not a secret. You just need to look at, as you say, Andrea, the reporting requirements. It's so much about tell us what we need, not tell us what you need and how we can together determine what's the best way for you to report. How do we think about aggregating reporting from any number of foundations we're funding and OSF is a part of it, a process to look at multi-funder reporting so that there doesn't need to be a separate report for Ford, OSF, Gates, and Hewlett that actually we all together might accept one report from the grantee. So those are just a few ways. Finally, participatory grant making. How do we think about ways that actually put in the driver's seat of determining who receives the grant? So we're doing some experiments, really interesting experiments around this question of participatory grant making. First, I mean, I think the answer has in a way, as Diana said, both if you like a kind of technocratic component to it and a philosophical one, the technocratic one is, you know, how do we just simplify our grant making processes and make them more multi-year? And, you know, I was I sort of let loose some consultants rather controversially on the inside of OSF when I started and found that our grants were on average smaller than Ford's for a shorter period of time and that grantees were bearing a huge cost, transaction costs of securing renewals. So, you know, I have been all about trying to get grants for longer periods of time and larger amounts of money. But of course, there are a couple of tensions and trade-offs that you inevitably run up against as you do these kinds of things. I mean, first, you know, actually, as you increase grant size, there is a risk that you migrate towards the more established grantees. You know, a part of the OSF stick has been our ability to sort of find grantees at the very beginning of their journey towards institutionalization, to find them first, we're incredibly proud of our local knowledge, etc. So we have to be careful about that. The second thing is attention between, you know, if you like, trying to empower the grantees in ways that Darren has just described, and a sense that we are in a moment of great global crisis where freedoms are under threat around the world and where we need compelling narratives of change that we're all collectively signed up to, that we are working together to resist authoritarianism, for example. And, you know, that sometimes seems to cut across this empowerment of grantees to write their own ticket, if you like, and take their own journey. And so managing, you know, a relationship with a grantee where you move from just, and I think the way to bridge it is to build a relationship where you move from just being the checkwriter to partners in change, in really making deep seated change. And if you lift the dialogue between the two sides to that, then I think you can kind of square the circle, you can both empower grantees while securing that you are all in a sense signed up to the same theory of change. Because if we disperse our efforts and, you know, really allow the sort of thousand flowers to bloom strategy, there is a risk that, you know, the very well-organized forces of authoritarianism continue to roll their tanks onto our front lawns and through our towns. And so we've got to find ways of resisting that, which, as I say, allow us to come together in a fairly disciplined way. So, you know, these are the sort of challenging trade-offs that I think, you know, make our jobs so interesting, ultimately. Can I, so, I mean, before Andrea comes in with some of the questions from the participants in the session, can I just take the direction of the conversation slightly differently? And really, yes. And I want to do so in part because of what SOAS is. SOAS is, in many ways, an institution in the North, but it's meant to partner institutions in the South. It seems to be that when we talk about inequality, inequality has multiple dimensions. It's inequality at the very local level in the municipal level. You'll have inequality at the level of the nation. You have inequality at the level of the globe. And in a sense, the question I wanted to ask is whether both organizations are sufficiently aware of this and doesn't inform their practice. I recall, and my Board of Trustees will not be pleased by my saying this, but, you know, I recall when I was in South Africa, at the University of in Batista, one of the things that you would annoy me is foundations would give money to Northern institutions to then pass on the money to Southern institutions. So in a very way, you were consolidating the very inequality in the global academy that you were meant to be addressing. And you said you were addressing. And so the question I'm posing to both Ford and OSF is, are you aware of this, does this inform the way you practice the distribution of resources across the North South? And are you thinking through the support of institutions in the South? And if you are, how do you deal with the multiple other myriad of challenges, which comes with systems, accountability, the kinds of whether they are appropriate systems to manage the accountability of those resources? Should we switch again, Mark? Kick off with you. Sure. Well, look, it's a nice one, Adam, because, you know, obviously, OSF has always focused hugely on a local presence and local knowledge. I mean, you know, we are unique, actually, in the foundation world of having close to 50 offices around the world, even if we've lost a couple in recent years. And we've done that because George Soros felt both that that local presence was important, that local boards of, you know, advisors in countries and in subregions was important, all of the way we had that sort of local, if you like, finger on the pulse, that real understanding of local context. And the change that has probably been most controversial, that I have made inside OSF, along with this sort of reform of grantmaking that we just discussed, is really trying to, you know, invert our structure, our sense of organizational priority and presence from what I call an American foundation with an international network to a global foundation. We have realigned our spending to now be spent by regions in the region through a network of countries and subregional presences in those regions. And all of this is about, you know, shifting the sort of weight, our weighting, if you like, from North to South. And yes, I mean, it goes without saying, Adam, that we take your point entirely about, you know, not sort of funneling money through Northern institutions for it just to go to Southern ones. But I think, you know, the critique of inequality we have, you know, and that I certainly personally embrace is one which starts with, you know, massive global inequality at one end or finishes, if you like, with massive global inequality at one end and begins or starts with massive inequalities at the individual community, family, societal level at the other. And we have to sort of tackle all dimensions of that. So, yes, I mean, you couldn't have boldly announced one because, you know, I think we're completely on side with how you see that. Terran? Well, I think first we have to acknowledge that it has only been in recent years that foundations have committed ourselves to focusing on inequality. Inequality was not the focus of the Ford Foundation until recently. And we, as a legacy foundation, are indeed a product of a system that was designed, the Bretton Woods system, a system that was designed of development that had at its core some patronizing features. A system that privileged elite institutions, capacity building institutions for the South. And it seems that after decades, the real capacity that's been built has been in the North. And so we have all of these amazingly dazzling endowed institutions in the North who were supposed to have executed transfers of capacity to the South. And we've not seen that. And so absolutely, there is no doubt that this is a product, but it's a problem of something that is endemic to a system that itself needs to be reconsidered and reimagined. And that is indeed our system of international finance and development, which is rooted in some of these ideas, ideas that my own institution has propagated. So when I look at our own practices, and I have to ask ourselves, how is it that we, for decades, you could not be a grantmaker in our Brazilian office and be Brazilian. The staff in the Brazilian office who were responsible for grantmaking were Americans and Europeans. The same goes for Africa. And even if I double click and say, and why is it that when we did hire Brazilians as grantmakers, they were always European Brazilians. They were never Afro-descendant Brazilians or indigenous people. Why is that? Why is it that we use language that was colonial? We called the head of our office offices in Africa representatives. This was something out of the Raj era in India and the UK. I mean it is these ideas that were so deeply embedded into our cultural normative thinking about the way to organize ourselves, the way to look at these ideas of development. I think we are seeing the harm that was done by some of that. And so Adam what you described is completely, and the frustration you experienced, is completely normative for people like you who were on the receiving end of what was supposed to be the development that would help lift up your country and your region. There is no doubt, final answer. There is no doubt that we understand inequality at the community country, regional, global level. But we have to therefore understand the macroeconomic system. Because what is happening in Soweto or what is happening in Gary and Indiana, what is happening in Bangalore are all the functions of macroeconomic policy and design that is considered at the highest levels often, but are not considered at the lowest, the most micro level. Because of course at the macro level, we elites, we are all winners. At the micro level, the people who are the losers are why we are seeing what we are seeing today in our politics as you noted in your beginning comment, Adam. Yeah, thank you. So we have had loads of really good questions. So I am going to pick up on a couple of the questions. Actually you have been answering the questions as you have been talking, some of them relate directly to what two of you have just been saying. So there is a question here from Raara Marie Colliam Attholl who is Indigenous climate injustice and he says he is honouring your ancestors, his ancestors and the ancestors of the lands where we stand and said hello. And thank you, Darren, for your heartfelt response that resonates with my childhood and current efforts. And the question is about what the foundations, your two foundations are doing to address global Indigenous climate injustice and to mitigate climate change's threat and the multiplier effects that exacerbates structural and systemic injustices on communities of colour because it permeates and compounds existing public health, economic, educational and criminal injustices around the world and in the United States. So he wants to hear a bit more about climate injustice and how both of your foundations are tackling it as part of this global picture that we're talking about. Darren? Well certainly I believe and we believe at Ford that a key solution to the climate crisis is the empowerment of Indigenous people over their land to have sovereignty and guardianship of their land. And if we are to actually achieve the aspirations that were articulated in Glasgow, this cannot be achieved without investing in the institutions, the governance, the capacity building of those very Indigenous peoples organizations, of which there are dozens across the planet that are under resource. For the first time we were able to amass a billion six directed towards the issue of guardianship of Indigenous peoples lands. But what we are focused on at Ford is ensuring that a disproportionate amount of that money go directly to those organizations and their communities. If we do that they will have the power, the position to be heard because we believe when they are heard justice will be found. We will find our way towards more solutions that are justice oriented. The problem has been we have invisibilized them. We've been unwilling to hear them. We've been unwilling to listen to their voice or to believe that indeed giving them power is a strategy that's a win-win and it is. Mark? Well look frankly OSF was a little late to the issue of climate justice but we're trying to make up for it. George saw us felt for a while that there were a lot of new foundations coming into the climate space and that you know relatively there was more foundation money going into this area than others. So despite his own personal concern about the climate he held back for a while. He was right. He was right. I mean there are lots of new foundations coming to the climate space. He wasn't wrong to make that happen. Exactly Dan. But I think what we realized in looking at the space was an awful lot of that new foundation money goes to climate sort of strategies in the global north and it is not reaching developing countries particularly not reaching the kinds of communities that the questioner was asking about. So we decided we would set up a climate program targeting exactly those kinds of communities and you know so the first place is that we're working in is you know we're working in Brazil and the Amazon. We're working we're putting together a program in the Caribbean. We're tackling some big issues of energy transition like in South Africa but we're trying to do things that we felt had escaped the kind of foundation funding support which was needed and to find the groups who certainly had gone unheard to use Darren's word. So we very much you know that is our strategy to reach those kinds of communities to help them with strategies to contain the damage of climate change and to take ownership of their own futures and to enable them to do that. Thank you and I'm going to ask just another question. I'm going to run a couple of questions together actually say one person wrote saying how do you square the undeniable power held by philanthropic organizations and wealthy individuals to overpower democratic systems and therefore democratic processes and how do you as social justice supporting organizations hold yourself accountable without any systems in place to do so is it even possible and the next person similar set of issues around the extent to which philanthropic foundations including Ford and OSF are subsidized with public money and both of your foundations have supported participatory grant makers where the decisions about where funding goes are made by the people most affected. How else can philanthropy become more democratic and accountable bearing in mind that the fact that money you spend comes in part from a tax paying public. So these broader questions here of accountability how do you hold yourself to account how can others hold you to account and how are you accountable to citizens of taxpayers for the things that you fund. Mark do you want to come in this time? Sure you know really good questions and important questions about the role of foundations in in society and you know I think you know ultimately as we both you know hinted at in our earlier answers you know the ultimate accountability is impact it is being doing things that taxpayer based public sector organizations couldn't do and achieving results which otherwise would not be achieved for society and I do think you know transparency around that how we're using our resources being very clear in our reporting about where our resources are going reporting in the impacts we hope and believe we've achieved you know starts to build out that kind of accountability. It is true of course that you know monies that have gone into the endowment of these foundations you know have often been on these highly tax advantageous terms in that you know it is money put without if you like you know put pre-tax not post-tax but remember it is then money you know out of the control you know or hands of the original founder and you know you are seeing the regulatory environment around foundations properly getting stronger in both the UK and to some extent in the US to ensure that there really is both financial transparency of reporting but clarity and accountability around results but you know ultimately I think we come back to the fact that you know in a world where you just had public sector organizations controlling the provision of funding in all these areas would you get the same innovation the same prospect of piloting new ideas the same championing of excluded groups that you can get with a component of your spends in these areas coming from you know enlightened private philanthropy and so I suppose in that case you know while I recognize the you know the the the real legitimacy and importance of the questions asked I think the answer has to be judged just by results and you know then to the final point of you know is the only kind of democratic accountability allowing our grantees you know as much leeway as possible because of their own accountability to the communities that they are part of us social movements yes I think that's an important part of it but I think it is a sub part of as I say this bigger challenge can we demonstrate convincingly to all our stakeholders that we are an effective force for progressive change because that really is our final if you like our core claim on full legitimacy. Karen? I would just say that this accountability starts with governance we have to look at our boards it's one of the real challenges that we have in the United States many of the foundation boards themselves are not very representative of society that's a problem in a democracy when transparency accountability representation is is so critical to trust so it is most certainly and I think we have made some progress at forward we have we have worked to do but when you're working on issues of criminal justice reform for example racial discrimination and you've got people like brian stevensson or paula marana or or valio ogre bende I mean you you you find that you do have authentic understanding of the of the real challenges but as I say we have work to do there's no doubt that part of this in terms of funding is doing the kind of funding that actually could make the institution uncomfortable we we funded just in the last two years projects around accountability on everything from ESG and private equity which is a major source of income for the Ford Foundation and and we funded a report that that really called into question some of the practices of private equity we funded a report that helped to lead us to actually make the decision to to withdraw from investing in fossil fuels even though from an investment standpoint for many years we had remained an investor in that space we funded we're funding a report now that is highly disfavored by by much of philanthropy that has a set of proposals about everything from payout rate to donor advice funds that the the National Council on Foundation has come out in very strong opposition to that that was funded by the Ford Foundation and and and it is not put us in a position of favor with with some of our peers but it was important to actually allow these who would be doing real critical analysis of our practices of the policies that that that allow us to continue to have this privilege to demand more in terms of accountability and and so I I'm proud I think we have much more to do but I have to be clear Andrea we're never going to find the perfect calibration of of power and engagement and empowerment and participation these ideas are they are they are contested within the the space of philanthropy and I think that's as it should be if you believe as I do that a democracy needs is a three-legged stool you've got to have a strong vibrant government you've got to have strong a private sector private enterprise you have to have strong vibrant muscular civil society of which philanthropy is a part and as Mark said so well that that private investment that is not in any way captured by a political captured by a need to get something done before the election so the governor or the president can get credit for it all of the kinds of things that drive political decision making the wonder the joy of philanthropy is that we can invest for the long haul we can invest in the unpopular we can invest in the thing for which there is no market return we can invest in the things that make it difficult often people can't even imagine we can do that kind of investment in society when there is no other means for that so colleagues you know I wanted to switch the debate again because it's an interesting thing I'm until now we've spoken about hope how to create hope and how we could use philanthropy to enable hope or empowerment of marginalized and poor communities and I think that's important but you know I I want to bring we started off the conversation there and with Martin Luther King and I want to perhaps towards the end bring Nelson Mandela into the conversation because Nelson Mandela raises something interesting in the South African context that he says as much as you need to empower the the poor and to empower marginalized communities the real genius of Mediba was to win over mainstream white society if you like and make democracy less of a threat to them and so how do you deal with mainstream society to show to demonstrate to people that our collective future is in us coming together now in many ways that that has come at a cost in South Africa because of the deep inequality and a lot of people are fairly angry but when I look outside South Africa and I agree with much of that in South Africa the deep inequality that we haven't taken social justice seriously in South Africa but when I look in outside South Africa and I look at the fact that 73 million people voted for Trump in the United States that when I look at the the body of opinion that comes out in favor of conservative movements in Western Europe the fact that Le Pen can win the kinds of support in France or the fact that so many people in the UK voted to exit Europe I have to ask the question are we doing enough to win over mainstream society to the collective project of our future because if we don't do that we remain in the polarized environment we continue to be and frankly to be honest are we in equalities today or what they were 100 years ago 100 years ago the world descended into fascism and world war we've got to avoid that and that's going to be part empowerment of the poor to get them leverage but in part it's to reduce the threat that exists in mainstream society is that something that worries you as an organization I know Mark said nobody has the ultimate truth that we need to have voices multiplicity of voices out but I want to know if that's something that's what is you and is that something that you constantly grappling with and figuring out how to handle Mark and then Darren look it's an extraordinarily profound and important question Adam I mean and and I would just to bear my soul or bear osf's institutional soul for a moment say that you know there are you know that there are two competing narratives of change about this in terms of our US program there is the one which says you know that the modern republican party has so betrayed democratic norms in its capture by Donald Trump that you know you've just got to build a progressive majority which holds power in the US and by holding power forces the republicans to reform themselves and come back to the center that that is one theory the second theory which I confess I'm more attracted to comes very close to what you're saying which is you know as a foundation we really have to buy invest in a responsible bypass in America if you like one where that white middle class fear of loss of prestige job status economic power you know is somehow mitigated and contained so that American democracy is rescued from this extraordinary polarization that it is currently captured by and yet the problem with those of us who argue for that second strategy is there aren't obvious easy entry points at the moment to find those levers to rebuild a responsible bipartisanship and so you know I'm sure it's the way to go and Medeba's the example from South Africa is remains such a compelling one for all of us that you know I think the ultimate success of American democratic renewal will be a Medeba like strategy which you know sort of helps people over the fear threshold of their own change economic status while bringing up those who've been excluded from economic power in the past but at the moment where at that you know not just in the United States but in so many countries in the world at that moment of you know explosive partisan polarization that you know finding that middle and rebuilding bridges and ties you know seems very very challenging and difficult to do that I think that this is a profound fundamental question and let's just look at our two societies of South Africa and the United States for the purposes of this moment because Adam you and I are these are our homes South Africa was inspired by Medeba but South Africa is a different context in the United States why South Africans knew they knew culturally and they knew from just looking around them that they were a small minority and that it was simply untenable to sustain the level of inequality and inhumanity that had been visited upon the vast majority of its black citizens that it was simply not possible and they accepted that didn't mean that they believed it it didn't mean that they didn't rely on the the same kind of ethnic um migration I mean look at the numbers that migrated to the western Cape um and and so the US is different whites in the US remain a majority of the voters whites in the US do not believe generally that what happened in this country was so horrible our racial history slavery in fact some have created a romantic narrative about the period of slavery um to justify the lost cause and all of these ideas so we have a very different cultural context there are many whites who just believe that while it was horrible it was terrible it was necessary to build this great country that we have what we had but we've overcome it and let's not worry about what happened in the past let's as we Americans who are always optimistic let's just look forward that is very hard to do because of inequality and the long-term impacts of inequality and the racialized dichotomy of the ways in which inequality has manifest in our society but we do believe I do believe that democracy is the greatest threat to racism and white supremacy and I think because of that we saw we saw on January 6th we saw people responding to this idea that democracy might become more inclusive might become in the case of a state like Georgia you would have a Jewish and black man representing that state in the United States Senate for some that was simply unthinkable and for some if given the choice of bad America or no America they're willing to burn it down they're willing to violate it they're willing to invade it they're willing to defecate in it to simply demonstrate their disdain their appall at the idea that America could be truly inclusive in that way and I think that's the fight yes in Europe there is nationalism and xenophobia and racism but in the United States we have a particular talent I believe that democracy can prevail and can save us from ourselves if we actually believe in democracy so colleagues I mean we've we've got about five minutes left and perhaps I should give Andrea a minute or two if she wants to say anything and then I'll close up and rip and I think that's just where Darren ended really it's so you know we've discussed today empowerment mobilization we've talked about accountability transparency and participation and the voices of the the voiceless people enabling people to be able to be heard but it's a two-way street we need to be able to have a relationship then between institutions and those people that is a more just and socially just set of contracts and arrangements and I think this you know something that's been really interesting to take out of the conversation today it's just what's needed and what the role of the foundations are that helped put some of those building blocks in place that that create that stronger relationship so it's been very inspiring so I mean thank you both Mark and Darren I must say if I it's it's always difficult to summarize a conversation as nuanced and complex as this I mean if I was going to say something it's the following it's it's clear that the past continues to live in the present the past of of slavery the past of deep racism and marginalization and how that has continued to reproduce itself in generation after generation in places like the United States and other parts of the world but definitely in places like Baham country South Africa and that if we're going to address that future if we're going to have a collective future we have to disrupt disrupt this continuous reproduction of inequality and social justice philanthropy what both the organizations stand for is one attempt to do that but if it's going to really do that it has to go beyond the norm of simply giving as it previously as we previously collectively gave but giving in a way that empowers giving in a way that disrupts giving in a way that changes the very nature of the structural dimensions of our society both at the municipal at the national and even at the global level the challenge is a great one you know a hundred years ago about this time actually we had come out of world war one and we had inequalities that are equivalent to what exists today and the failures of both our institutions our leaders to address that resulted in war and the murder of millions and that war I want to I want to make clear was led by what was a dominant superpower that it was a substantive it was an organization of the north it was Germany which had perhaps the greatest of of academic institutions the greatest of economic institutions the greatest in many ways of civic life and they led one of the the greatest challenges of the last hundred years and so in a sense we need to learn that lesson we need to take social justice seriously we need to take empowerment seriously but most of all we need to deal with the structural dimension of inequality and so I want to end there because I think it's an important point where we started because we've got to take inequality seriously we've got to look at your organization but your organizations only have the resources for a small element of you truly meant to spark a change of fundamental change in society and so thank you for the conversation thank you for for taking difficult questions thank you for the honesty of your engagements and may we collectively in your institution in in my institutions in all of our institution collectively work to a gender for better world and a more equitable world a world where all of us have a collective future and all of us have a collective agenda so thank you again dad and thank you mark for a wonderful conversation thank you thank you very much adam andrea indeed thank you my colleagues and thank you to everybody in the audience thank you very very much