2008 EFC AGA and Conference

Event 2008 EFC Annual General Assembly (AGA) and Conference: Fostering Creativity
Date 29-31 May
Venue Istanbul, Turkey
Organizer European Foundation Centre

How creative are European foundations? Failing to show sufficient vision, creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship was one of the charges made against foundations in a mock trial that was one of the highlights of the European Foundation Centre’s conference held in Istanbul, Turkey in May. The ‘jury’ found foundations to be not guilty on this count – though they were found guilty of failing to live up to their full potential in terms of competently tackling the global challenges threatening humanity.

The 2008 EFC Annual General Assembly (AGA) and Conference in Istanbul achieved a number of ‘firsts’: it was the EFC’s largest conference ever, with 600 participants from 56 countries. It was also the furthest east an EFC AGA has ever come, as Üstün Ergüder (Third Sector Foundation of Turkey, TÜSEV) pointed out, and the largest ever philanthropic gathering in Turkey. The growing importance of the civil society and philanthropic sectors in Turkey was shown by the fact that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Prime Minister of Turkey, spoke at the opening plenary, along with Mary Robinson, former president of the Republic of Ireland.

Foundations on trial

But the most engaging of the plenaries was the mock trial. Prosecutors Diana Leat (consultant) opened by describing foundations as forming a ‘loving caring family’, caring for their own and holding lovely family reunions (like this EFC AGA) while the situation in the real world gets worse in every dimension. ‘In Africa life expectancy is falling, so are incomes. What could foundations do? We don't know because they have never really tried,’ said Leat damningly. Foundations spend just 15 per cent on global development, and 90 per cent of this comes from 15 foundations. ‘Those 15 foundations act as a fig leaf, a cover for the rest.’

Nicholas Boersinger (Pro Victimis Foundation), also prosecuting, said that foundations claim their mandates prevent them from making international gifts. ‘If soldiers are not obliged to follow unethical orders, are foundations obliged to do so?’ he asked. ‘Can it be argued that money derived from international trade should be spent behind closed doors?’

Marta Rey (Fundación Pedro Barrié de la Maza) spoke ably for the defence, though some of her arguments seemed to beg the question. ‘What if European foundations had never existed?’ she asked. ‘What about the effects they’ve had on lives and policies?’ when surely the question is whether they could have done more. Other arguments emphasized foundations’ much-touted advantages, such as having the luxury of time and a long-term vision, though the claim that foundations are not all risk-averse seemed half-hearted.

Michael Goering (ZEIT Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius), the second defence advocate pointed out that foundations cannot solve all problems: ‘they're not the world government, or indeed a ministry.’ Further, he said, ‘There is no crime or even an offence; no one has suffered.’ In any case, 15 per cent for global causes is ‘not such a bad figure’. In general the defence was not over-ambitious in its claims. With one charge upheld and one dismissed, honour was satisfied all round.

But is it enough?

Honour may have been satisfied, but the global issues remain. Climate change emerges again and again as perhaps the global issue to be tackled – and certainly one against which foundation efforts can be measured, and mostly found wanting. According to Judith Symonds (Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation), moderating a session called ‘Riding the Climate Train’, 80 per cent of people see climate change as the overriding challenge for the next ten years, and it seemed that about half of the foundations represented in the room were already funding in this area or thinking about it.

One bold move that has been made recently is the creation of the European Climate Foundation by six donors, including the Hewlett and Oak Foundations. As George Polk explained, given the urgency of the issue and the very short time to address a very complex problem, pooling resources and forming a new organization with a specialized grants team seemed the best way to create a more effective campaign. He instanced their campaign to stop the UK government from building new coal power plants. ‘Environmental NGOs are expected to be anti,’ he said, ‘so you need to bring in other players. Plans for new coal plants are now shelved owing to the efforts of ECF. I need to check this, given a phone call I had this morning from the World Development Movement asking me to support their campaign for an enquiry into same’

Slowing the treadmill of consumption

The huge challenges involved in combating climate change were underlined by an excellent session on ‘Slowing the Treadmill of Consumption’. Annie Leonard (Funders’ Wordgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption) took us through the whole process of consumption, from extraction (‘trashing the planet’) and production (of lots of toxic, polluted products) to distribution (of these toxic products all over the world), consumption (speeded up by planned obsolescence) and disposal. The landfill site on Staten Island in New York Harbour, she said, is one of only two manmade structures that can be seen from space, the other being the Great Wall of China.

What Leonard’s presentation showed compellingly was how structural over-consumption is, with the entire political and economic system geared to keeping consumption levels high. If the whole planet lived US style, we would need the resources of five planets, while half the world lives on less than $2 a day and needs to do more consuming. The UK is the next worst offender, consuming at the rate of a mere 3.1 planets. Go to www.storyofstuff.org to experience it yourself.

The next presentation, by Sam Thompson from New Economics Foundation’s Centre for Well-being, gave compelling evidence that after a certain point increased consumption does not contribute to happiness. Nef’s (un)Happy Planet Index tries to measure the relationship between environmental impact and human well-being. The US comes 150th and the UK around 100th.

What does this mean for funders? What can they do in the face of such challenges? One positive suggestion was to help create the infrastructure of the movement: there is good work and thinking at different points of the system but they are not connected. Research into how values change is also needed. We need a new economic system. Chet Tchozewski (Global Greengrants Fund), moderating, suggested that interested funders should connect with the Environmental Grantmakers Association or the Environmental Funders Network.

What can we do quickly, was one question. Do we have time to re-educate economists? Promoting feed-in tariffs for renewable energy, now applied in 46 countries, was one suggestion. Another was that we should focus more on preventing bad things, such as the UK Government’s new coal plants – rather than on developing solutions. A final plea was for EFC never again to hold an AGA in a swissotel!

Mission-connected investing

One approach that was put forward at the end of the consumption session was mission-connected investing, and this was also the subject of a separate session. While Danielle Palmour looked at this from the perspective of Friends Provident Foundation, which has a small endowment, Francesco Lorenzetti (Fondazione Cariplo) described the process of embarking on MCI in a foundation with a huge endowment. Doug Bauer (Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors) suggested that one of the barriers to foundations’ starting to undertake MCI is that they generally see it as taking on more risk. Yet most foundations don’t have a good definition of risk, he said, and they are more inclined to tolerate risk on the programme side. RPA encourages foundations to dip a toe in, for example by putting some money in Shorebank, which will invest in deprived areas of the US. Another way is using proxies, ‘which you should anyway’. In fact, ‘If you hold Exxon Mobile shares and didn’t use your proxy on Wednesday at their annual meeting, shame on you!’

Mission-related/connected investment has become overnight the mantra solution of thinking foundations, but is it? If carried out in the ‘take no risks’, ‘toe in the water’ style advocated, very understandably, by those trying to persuade foundations to give it a try, probably not. What is surely needed, from both grantmaking and investment of assets, is big, bold moves, commensurate to the scale of the challenges we face.

Avila Kilmurray (Community Foundation of Northern Ireland), speaking in the closing plenary, talked of the ‘moral imagination’ that underpins the ability to be creative and innovative. ‘Creativity demands of us the courage to let go of certainties,’ she said. Common sense told CFNI that it was subversive to talk to former paramilitaries, but they did. ‘We can walk beside people who are marginalized … We must be creative in strategies as well as ideas.’ Our theme presents both challenges and opportunities, she said. ‘The challenge is to critically examine our certainties. Our opportunity is to use philanthropy to promote social justice.’

Finally, Wilhelm Krull (VolkswagenStiftung), handing over as EFC Chair to Dr Rui Vilar (Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian) after two years, selected climate change, migration, poverty, global health, social entrepreneurship and innovation as some of the issues needing attention. He also mentioned strengthening relations with the EU, promoting the European foundation statute, strengthening relations with foundations in other continents, and fostering a new generation of leaders in philanthropy. ‘Gerry, you have a big agenda.’ And one that will need huge creativity if foundations are to even dent the problems.

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