Simon Sommer

Foundation staff should show ‘upward empathy’ towards their board. And they should not expect boards to acquire programme expertise. In my last contribution to Alliance, I delved into the cognitive dissonance between foundation teams and …

It’s virtue signalling for philanthropy executives to oppose a system for which they owe their very existence. In recent conversations, I have increasingly heard voices from colleagues who squarely reject the market economy and despise …

I had the privilege this year of representing education philanthropy as a constituency to the UN High Level Forum Steering Committee for the Sustainable Development Goal 4 on education. It has been an interesting time …

The omnipresent demand for so-called ‘trust-based philanthropy’ is, at best, naïve. At worst, it can be counterproductive and dangerous. What our sector has to achieve instead is unbiased funding. In current conversations among philanthropists, providing …

The current global pandemic has reinforced the reality that we live in a highly complex, ever-changing world, and that if we have any chance of tackling some of the big global challenges ahead of us, …