FUNDING CHANGE: WHY MOVEMENTS NEED FLEXIBLE AND LONG-TERM SUPPORT

Sandra Khusrawi: So that’s why then there are detailed reportings, milestones, detailed planning, all this to give an impression of control. But it it is just this idea of control. You will not be able to control it. If you started a relationship with so many measures to avoid misuse, in a way you also started with mistrust. Consider a funding as a relationship and then start or build it with the values that you care about, which are hopefully trust, honesty, co-creation, and then also follow these values yourself in this relationship.

Kristen Woolf: Hello, welcome to another episode of the Social Change Pod. And today we will be discussing the topic of regenerative futures, particularly on why movements need flexible and long-term support to make the long-term changes possible. I’m joined here today with two amazing and special guests. We have Claudia from Healthy Food Healthy Planet and Sandra from famtastisch Foundation.

Two organisations which are helping to really build healthier, fairer, and more sustainable food systems through more flexible and trust based approaches in the funding space. So very, very warm welcome to both of you. Sandra and Claudia, welcome. And how are you doing today? That’s my first question. And while you tell us how you’re doing, could you tell us also a bit more about your work in the food system space? And maybe we can start with Claudia?

Claudia Giampietri: Sure. Hi. good afternoon. I’m very happy to be here with you today. So what Healthy Food Healthy Planet tries to do in the food space is the the dream is to get to a point where justly produced, sustainable, healthy food is the norm. Is what every single human being on this planet would be able to access. And that’s not the case. And it’s not the case because the system has been engineered in a way that makes it very hard for it to be accessible. And so what we try to do is to work in a very complex ecosystem and support partners who are striving to get there and enriched by the diversity of tactics and approaches that exist.

Kristen Woolf: Thank you, Claudia. Sandra?

Sandra Khusrawi: Yeah, thank you. So I’m doing fine. I’m excited to be here. to give you a little bit more information about famtastisch So the foundation started its work in the food system space in twenty twenty one. And very similar to Healthy Food Healthy Planet, we also, with our work try to aim or to support fair and resilient food systems in Germany and Europe. And in order to do that, we try to identify initiatives that aim for structural change.

So for example, this can be change on the food policy level or establish agroforestry as a relevant alternative or addition to other agricultural forms or change in the educational system regarding nutrition education and so on.

And so this is the biggest part of our work. And next to this content related work, we also ask ourselves how the change in the food systems can happen. And one answer that we have is by supporting and also curating on our own safe and trustful spaces where people can meet, in particular people that would not meet otherwise. Currently we have a portfolio of twenty organisations. Most of them work in Germany, some on the European level.

Kristen Woolf: Fantastic. Fantastic. famtastisch Amazing. Love it. So the next question is for you, Claudia. Obviously we’ve known you all for a for a bit now over at the Social Change Nest. So I happen to know that you don’t come from a food systems background. So I am quite curious to know how you ended up in this space and what route did you take to land here and to land at Healthy Food Healthy Planet.

Claudia Giampietri: I would say curiosity is the route I took. Indeed, I don’t come from a food systems space per se. I’ve worked for the longest stretch of my adult life. I worked in development cooperation and humanitarian aids. I’ve been posted in many, many different countries on this planet for almost 15 years. I did work on food security, but in different contexts and with different lenses. The one thing that accompanied me over time was this increased awareness and understanding that things are deeply connected. That nothing happens in a vacuum, nothing happens in isolation. 

And at some point in time, growing a bit tired of development corporation, which used to be a little bit top down to say the least, I decided to come back to Europe, not knowing exactly what I would do. But with that curiosity of figuring out, okay, if everything is connected, what’s a big connector topic that I could engage with? And I landed here. I did find this organisation and the work it’s engaging with and very easily when you look at food and you sit with food or your food, imagine your food, you actually it’s like a prism. You connect with everything. You connect with every single sector and an issue area you can imagine. And that’s absolutely fascinating because it it’s it’s like a big key that can unlock and open so many doors. And what you do with it that’s the that’s the big question. But that’s how I ended up here, with a curiosity and interest and and some tools in my belts on on how to work with systemic approaches and just a curiosity to see what happens when we do that within food and with food.

Kristen Woolf: I love I love that your your keyword where is curiosity and and to be curious is I think that is one of the most important traits of any, you know, of any activist, advocate, leader human, right? So it’s it’s wonderful to hear you kind of unpack that a bit. I also have a humanitarian background, so we’ll have to chat about that more. We’ll have to have a podcast, another podcast. All right. Sandra, obviously there’s so much great content on your website and I’ve I’ve loved getting to know your foundation a bit better. and we all know that regenerative futures is a long-term.

Right, systems level long-term. So what does that look like to you? You know, what sitting in a foundation, how well do you think the current funding landscape is set up to really support long-term systems thinking, long-term movement building? I’m really interested in your your views on this as somebody inside of a foundation.

Sandra Khusrawi: Yeah, happy to share more about it. Two big questions though. So so regarding the first one, what what a regenerative future would look like to us. I think it’s in many regards more or less the opposite to what we see now, because I s like I see our current system is very exploitative in many regards.

And I think we need more holistic ideas and perspectives to heal this. So this also includes a shift in our mindset, in the whole paradigm we are living in. So from my view, regenerative future would be more holistically and it would be it would reflect the connection.

From a person to a person, also from a person to nature, from a person to market, and many more relationships. And even respecting that maybe nature itself should have a voice in this. And also what Claudia said, that things are deeply connected with each other. So a regenerative future for me would be like balanced in a social, ecological, and economic way. And this means I think many things that we also reflect on in our foundation. For example, it means don’t take without giving, or with the words of one of our partners it means respecting the life enhancing capacity of nature and respect natural cycles. So in such a future we would meet we would come together as humans first, not as roles or functions. But we would rather come together to co-create and to find lasting solutions for our most pressing problems. And like altogether, I think we would really need to overcome this transactional way of thinking. We would need to step into a more transformative way of interacting with each other. And then when you ask if our current funding landscape is supporting this, I think there is still a gap. It’s still something to do. 

And I can mostly talk about Germany, but I have to say that the old system is still very much in place with its very transactional and rather exploitative structures, also in like when it comes to funding, to project funding. You can see a lot of thinking in silos. See many different stakeholders that don’t interact with each others. So I would say the current landscape unfortunately is not yet there where it could be.

Kristen Woolf: My goodness, I wrote down so many things that you just said. And I feel like we need to write like a book of poetry or a book of quotes or something. That was that was beautiful. Nature should have a voice in in herself or you know, she should have her own voice. Love that. Right. And then on to the foundation world. Yes, I wonder, Claudia, if you want to pick up any of that. And  on the group side or the on the movement side. What’s been your experience in terms of funding this movement?

Claudia Giampietri: It’s it’s very aligned to what Sandra expresses as both the challenge and the needs and opportunities. So what HFHP does is trying to fill an existing gap that is one where a lot of the work that is historically funded and a lot of the work of the Civil Society partners we work with is very much siloed. So there is a challenge and you approach it with your own mission and vision, which is fine.

So say you’re working on food transformation and you go about it from an animal welfare lens, you go about it from a justice lens, you go about it from a health lens, from a climate environment, and so on and so forth. And that’s that’s fine and beautiful. What we think is missing is the glue between all of this. And so behind the glue, there is a question as to whether if we as an ecosystem of diverse organisation manage to act more tactically, more intelligently together, s do we manage to tilt the power a little bit into our favour so that things can actually move in the directions that we do collectively see are needed.

And in order to do that, the role of funders, institutional philanthropic funders, is key and how they engage in the space is key. And what we often still see a little bit too much is a tendency to hold dear to a silver bullet. That is the amazing theory of change that I do have today, in the hope that that will lead me somewhere, in the hope that through a series of well developed, nailed out KPIs I managed to actually get the answer to the problem. But it’s a wicked problem. It’s complex. And so by nature, by its nature of being complex, it’s very hard to get to the answer. And it’s it’s a dance. It’s been a dance with the partners and also with the community of funders because HFHP is a little bit in the middle. We’re an intermediary. We receive funds from foundations and have a holistic to go back to the word that you use, Sandra, a holistic approach to support the ecosystem. 

And in with that privileged position of being in both worlds, we do see the challenges in both and definitely from the funder side, there is still quite a bit of work in in understanding how to really be supportive of deeper shifts, transformational shifts in how change can be supported, enabled and can eventually happen. And it’s hard work, but it’s it’s incredibly fascinating.

Kristen Woolf: I mean, I wanted to there’s so many things we’re gonna talk about here. Getting into the operations of this, right? There’s there’s a l layers and layers and layers of this around how to move, how to make decisions, who holds the power, you know, how do we democratise, as you said, healthy food, healthy planet is that sort of in the middle?

Right, as both a funder as in you redistribute the funds elsewhere and you also are bringing money into healthy food, healthy planets. How do you hold that tension? Right. When a certain funders may have a different mindset or approach than you do, and yet you are going to be the one to also redistribute. So there’s a lot of layers to this. So I guess one thing I wanted to come back to you, Claudia on and ask you more about is your grants distribution process, right? So imagining that in this ecosystem of funding, funding is from

a funder into Healthy Food, Healthy Planet. And then you then redistribute those fundings. And you came up with a really innovative and and sort of unique way to to do that. Maybe you can tell us a bit more about that.

Claudia Giampietri: The way we have been going about this is a lot of trial and error. There’s a lot of observation of what has worked, what hasn’t worked, and for whom. And one of the bottom line intuitions that we have had, which is more than an intuition, is the fact that the ecosystem is not in shortage of ideas. Partners, civil society organisations have loads of ideas on how to go about change. What’s missing is the legs and the legs are very much entrenched with power. So it’s very hard

to talk about funding systems change, funding food systems change without talking about power. And when you speak about power, then as a regranter and as a funder, you need to deal with the fact that you’re holding to their money. That is a very powerful tool to get things done. To be able to see civil society engage in the ecosystem in the way that they think is meaningful.

The way we have gone about it is basically to make sure that besides what came up a lot and you also mentioned in terms of how we fund partners, flexible funding, multi year funding, there is also something else in terms of the ecosystem intelligence, the core designing.

As an intermediary, we have this position where we do see the wealth of ideas, the wealth of solutions, the wealth of contextual knowledge that comes from partners, and we have tried to combine it with the bird’s eye view that funders do have and the CB society struggles to have for very good reasons. And so how can these two mega brains sort of join forces and come together towards approaches that are enablers. So in trying to do that, what we’ve put in place is a series of co-designed processes. They see these different actors coming together, sharing parts of their knowledge into creating areas of intervention that are contextual. There can be a mix between we want to go in this direction, but we are also aware of the emergence of things that happen when you start a certain process and and you check in, you try and and make make mistakes, you adjust your the the course as you go forward.

And so this very dynamic way of working where you co-design with the voices of the different actors, making sure that the power dynamics are at least as spelled out as possible.

Into then testing in the trial and error phase where you test and then adapt, this is proving to actually serve a couple of very interesting purposes or intention of HFHP. One is to give legs to fantastic ideas, but also the other one is to test collaborations that might be difficult. Collaboration with partners that come from different sectors and they might not necessarily always find a way to each other.

And so how we can we foster an ecosystem where there are more win wins and trade offs in unlikely corporations? And what do we learn from them? and so this is basically a good part of what we do.

Kristen Woolf: Amazing. Again, so many layers to that and I’d love to ask you so many more questions about that. But

Yeah, I mean I think this this idea of ecosystem intelligence is so smart and really interesting and bringing together different actors who who might not have seen each other as partners. But I think one thing that you’re also bringing up a lot is how you learn and how you approach learning and like you said, testing and trying things out and go again. There’s a lot of foundations, re granters in this ecosystem. There’s a lot of people trying a lot of different things, right? On how how to learn, how to learn better, how to learn quicker, collective learning. And I wanted to also just bring in that kind of overall umbrella of like how do we learn? And something you said reminded me of something one of my mentors used to say, which is, you know, in sort of ecosystem learning, what we’re really trying to do is shorten the learning curve, right? You’re trying to shorten the learning curve for the funder, you’re trying to shorten the learning curve for the grantee on the ground, right? And you do that by bringing them together. And I think that’s really about cultivating wisdom.

You know, there’s a lot of people out there with brilliant MEL frameworks or spend, God forbid, you know, a lot of money on evidence and research and academic, you know, all those things and they have a ton of data, but they don’t they’re not cultivating wisdom. And I think that’s what HFHP is doing, which I think is really exciting. And I wanna ask now, Sandra, about learning at the foundation. I know for now it’s Germany and Europe, but what is it that at your foundation you’re you’re valuing in learning? I read somewhere that you’re doing check-ins instead of reports. That obviously you lean towards long-term, you l you lean towards general operating support, but how did you get to take that approach? And like what is it that you’re learning about learning at the foundation?

Sandra Khusrawi: Yeah, that’s a very nice question. So I think I mean I can say yes to all what Claudia just said because this is also our idea how we should learn. Like learning is for us a continuous process. Like for us one aspect is not to have fixed solutions or strategies, but rather to go into a strategising process with continuous iterations and not only among our team of four people, but also with our community, with our partners.

And rather to provide the spaces where people can think together, where they develop deep trust, where they can really honestly and openly reflect about their challenges, on a personal but also on the professional side, because it all is connected in the end. So this is rather the learning space that we try to enable and that we also take our insights from when we design our strategies. And we have the theory of change.

‘Cause we wanted to talk about something, to publish something. But once we published it we felt that’s not the whole truth. We rather wanna be in this continuous strategising process.

This is also why we decided then we will not learn so much from nicely designed reportings from civil society organisations that depend on the money and on the funding. But we will rather learn from honest conversations. And that’s why we don’t have any written reporting requirements anymore. But we have conversations with our partners, with the ones that we are having longer collaborations, we go to retreats together to really think together and also for us to anticipate their challenges in our strategising because in the end we want to both give the best we have to reach a goal together. So so that’s that’s the idea. And I think that like the problems we are facing in the food systems, but also in many more social fields are so complex that we’re like the linear approaches from the past, I think they don’t fit anymore. So we need more open spaces, more agility in order to address them well.

Kristen Woolf: I was just gonna ask both of you, you know, how would you if a if a if you’re talking to funder, another funder, who maybe is less free-flowing or holistic or regenerative and they’re thinking about learning and and impact, what would you say to a funder who’s maybe has some curiosity around learning differently or around minimising reporting or evaluation? I guess I guess the other side of this question is risk, right? Because we talk a lot about risk at the social change desk and who holds risk.

And who defines risk and like actually is even risk when it comes to, you know, in this case, healthy, balanced food systems for everyone. So just in that context of, you know, food systems, how do we how do we help bring other funders along? And i is it about risk in your opinion? Is it about something else?

Claudia Giampietri: I don’t know, Sandra, what your experience been so far, given that you’re a foundation. In our case as an intermediary, n the t the topic of risk is one that has come up a lot. And one of the reasons why we exist is to de-risk some of this work that maybe foundations cannot for different reasons afford to engage with directly with partners. So we take the risk on ourselves so that we can actually serve the the ecosystem differently by sharing back what we are learning from those processes. And in general, I think there is still a very big tendency of from the donor community of putting value on things where they can see and measure, whereas movements, the magic happens exactly where you don’t see and cannot so easily measure. Which doesn’t mean that you cannot tell a story.

So what HFHP does is similar to Fantastich in s in terms of saying we do not necessarily hold dear to written reports because a written report tends to structure the thinking of a partner to comply with a donor’s question, very simply what’s written on your template. Whereas conversation gets you a sense of what actually what is actually happening on many different levels. And and it also has the benefit of over time strengthening the relationship with the with your partner. And so we also do prefer what we call learning calls. When I think about the the funders who are entrusting us with resources, well typically as you can imagine, Kristen, we have funders who are already quite aligned with a certain way of doing things. And that’s also a conditio sine qua non for us in a sense that we need to preserve our way of being in the ecosystem. Otherwise it simply wouldn’t work. But when we are confronted with donors and philanthropy partners who are maybe seeing things differently or who have less freedom to operate in a different way, the conversation is always lively and you can tell very powerful stories of change that get you a very beautiful and very deep sense of what is actually happening. What are the enabling conditions for the next steps in a way that I think is more enriching than making sure that your list of KPIs are met on programs that are typically very short with very high ambition. Often this is what happens. We have very high systemic ambitions. We give partners one to three year max. We have our own KPIs that sort of meet the needs of decision makers, but they are not generative of ideas. They are not allowing for emergence. And so I think the stories that you can tell is much richer when you actually accommodate for the uncertainty and the emergence of what happens in the day to day, in the work, in the month to month, the year to year. Always having a certain no star. Of course, the intentionality is there. I think you can marry both and there are beautiful ways of doing so. Don’t know Sandra what your experience is on this.

Sandra Khusrawi: I think we also have to talk about like what is a risk. Because I mean, is a risk that an approach or a strategy does not meet the goal, then I think it’s not a risk should not be a risk just of the grantee. It’s a risk of the funder and the grantee that engage in a common mission. But then the mission is to find out if a certain strategy would meet a goal.

If not, great, that’s a learning. So let’s go to another one. So that’s for me not a risk. That’s more a learning because as you said, Claudia, there is no silver bullet. If there was one, we would have funded it already, but there is no one. So we have to learn. We have to trial and error. The other thing what is I think often behind is this fear of misuse of funds. So that’s why then there are detailed reportings, milestones, detailed planning, all this to give an eb impression of control.

But it’s just this idea of control. You will not be able to control it. I us I used to work in the development corporation for an organisation that needed to report very, very detailed on everything they did. And they misused so much funds and nobody ever knew about it. And they could do it because there was no relationship between them and the funders. So it’s just paperwork.

I mean, if you started relationship with so many measures to avoid misuse, in a way you also start it with mistrust. And I think this is not a good thing. So my advice for funders would be consider a funding as a relationship and then start or build it with the values that you care about, which are hopefully trust, honesty, co-creation, whatever, and then also follow these values yourself in this relationship. And then a misuse of funds.

will be much more difficult and also it’s not the norm, you know, this is not the norm. In most cases there is no misuse of funds, so why should we make this bigger as it is, actually?

Kristen Woolf: Yeah, no both of you beautiful beautiful points. It’s also true. Before I joined the Social Change Nest, I went to an event that they were hosting and one of the panelists said, you know, for better or for worse, the truth is that a lot of philanthropy is based on a banking and finance model, which as you both already pointed out is very outdated and based on a lot of very misaligned values with the work that we’re actually trying to do. And the panelists said, you know, in some cases that the source of that funding is from something extractive, you know, from the the finance world.

And so therefore misuse of funds is actually quite hilarious because it’s like, you know, an asset manager could lose, you know, half a million dollars in a in a trade deal, right? But that’s that’s acceptable risk, half a million in one day, half a million in, you know, five minutes. Whereas the grantee partner loses a receipt for, you know, a five pound taxi ride. And that’s now misuse of funds. So, you know, the the scale of power in the power imbalance is I mean that’s an extreme example, but it’s actually not that extreme, right? 

And another one of my mentors once said, Philanthropy is this great place to work in a in a sense because all of the rules are made up. We literally just make up the rules every single day. So why can’t we make up the rules that we we want, right? Because somebody made up those rules in the nineteen forties, t you know, fifties. So we can just rewrite them because it’s a sector that the rules are just made up.

So I love that you are both rewriting the rules and I love the rules that you’re writing. So thank you. I wanted to ask you, Claudia, because you are an intermediary and because you do sit on both sides of the table, what are you really thinking about right now? What is sort of top of mind for you about the current funding systems? We’ve talked about learning within funding, we’ve talked about power a bit, but you know, it it is a really unique place to be as an intermediary. So like what’s hot right now? What’s what’s happening right now when you think about the current funding system?

Claudia Giampietri: To stay the course I would say. We also came about in 2019/ 2020 and we have been sort of testing our approach and at the very beginning, trying out things and I think in the last couple of years gaining some traction, which for us means basically being able to sort of normalise a way of doing things.

We are far from nor normalising a way of doing things in in philanthropy, but the fact of being able to sit at the table with other foundations as as a peer learner or something who has the opportunity of telling stories from partners and being able to bridge some gaps, that’s for us important and important to to continue doing. The one thing that we will never stop sort of advocating for is for institutional donors and philanthropy equally, to maybe stop treating partnerships and partners as an extension of your strategy. As in, I have my strategy as a philanthropy and I’m looking for somebody to implement it. Because that’s exactly counter to everything that we have basically been speaking about. Whereas the opportunity of joining what you see from that beautiful, very privileged bird’s eye view where you basically have an opportunity of seeing what happens from a European level, global level, regional level. 

This is knowledge that is extremely precious combined with the more grounded contextual and can give birth to a lot of great insights. So for us, what this means is continuing to stay on the course of action that we are in, continue to share with philanthropy partners what we are learning from our test and learn, what’s coming up, what’s important, what the collaborations that we are fostering are bringing, what kind of novelties we see in terms of being in the ecosystem, how is the relational anchoring part of our work, what what are the ripple effects of those? And we are thankfully able to share more and more stories around that. 

And so showing basically the different ways of working are possible. Possibly advocating for more complementarity in the way we work together, where at least for foundations and philanthropy who still prefers to act in a more directive way, being able to sort of at the very least speak to each other, complement each other’s works when possible, and build upon the building blocks that each of us are are laying in the field. Open cooperation, conversations around what’s needed, I think will definitely need to continue.

Kristen Woolf: Yeah, I love to stay the course and I just want to underline that stay the course. And I maybe we’ll come back to that when we talk a little bit about what’s what’s what’s ahead for both of you. But I also wanted to ask Claudia, being a little bit humble. Some of our listeners won’t know as much about Healthy Food, Healthy Planet as as we do at the Social Change Nest. So you used the word table earlier in your answer. So I want you to just tell us a little bit more about the kitchen table model. My understanding is that the kitchen table model seems to bring civil society and the funders, you know, together, like you said, into co-design into d decision-making together. But yeah, what changes or what’s interesting that you’ve seen about this approach that you think our listeners might be most interested in and like what what do you feel changes when you are involving in this way at the kitchen table?

Claudia Giampietri: The the idea behind the kitchen table goes back to the beginning of the story, whereby as as we said initially, we are not faced by a shortage of ideas, we are faced by a concentration of power. And the concentration of power you can see it at the different levels. You can see it at the level of the food systems, but you can also see it at the level of who holds the power slash the money. So in the case of the dynamics between donors, philanthropies, institutional donors, and the partners who are recipient of those funds to do the work that they need to do. The concentration of power is is pretty obvious. What the experiment is, is an experiment where we try to tackle power hands-on. So we accept it, we acknowledge it, we speak about power, we speak about power imbalances, we are not shy of it. We are conscience and conscientious of power and we want to use it for good. How do you do it?

So when you are an organisation that receives funds from philanthropy and is resourcing holistically the ecosystem, you also hold power. So how do we go about it? And one way we we decided to experiment was to say, okay, what if we set up a governance body that is the one that decides on the strategic directions, I’ll go back to it in a second, but more on how the resources are used. What if we actually set up such a body in a way that is representative of of the two brains that I spoke about before? So of the civil society and their experience, knowledge, consec contextualisation, and of philanthropy’s insights. And so the kitchen table was born a couple of years ago as that experiment, which is now transition towards a phase two with the second term of a new kitchen table, having five members of a steering committee or kitchen table that are coming from philanthropy and five members that are coming from civil society. 

The members that come from philanthropy are not all funders of Healthy Food Healthy Planet. Some of them do fund us, some of them don’t. But they are friends in the ecosystem who understand the need to do things differently and are on board on actually getting their hands dirty in thinking about power and governance in this way. And the members of the steering committee that come from civil society are very diverse members that represent different sectors. So our selection process is happening in due time that sort of made sure that we had the representation of voices that was telling of the diversity on how we want to operate and do things.

Maybe one last thing to s to say about it about this is that the actual strategy of Healthy Food Healthy Planet is not decided in closed doors by this group of ten. It’s been actually designed by a hundred plus organisations in 2020, 2022 where what then became sort of a theory of change which is still in use today, has been co-designed with the ecosystem of civilization. So we brought in as many voices as we could to understand where is it that we think such an organisation can bring value and that’s the one that is still in use today. 

Any future substantial change of direction when it comes to a strategy will be consulted with the larger ecosystem. So the kitchen table is basically the body that holds the core team, I’m part of the core team, accountable and also that helps us decide how to best use the funds that are entrusted to us. So we make recommendations based on the knowledge and the relationships that we build in the ecosystem. We make the recommendations that then are validated or not and discussed, especially this is the most interesting part is beyond the yes or no, is the juicy discussions that can happen at the kitchen where we all learn from each other and with each other.

Kristen Woolf: The delicious conversations that happen at the kitchen table, I guess. Thank you for walking us through that. It’s super, super fascinating. It is a model, right, for for others. So Sandra, I wanted to ask you at Fantastich, if, you know, in terms of decision-making and governance, has the foundation always sort of had this very flexible reducing the the reporting requirements, having learning calls? Has the governance and the decision-making sort of started out in this way or is there a bit of a journey to go on?

Sandra Khusrawi: I mean the funny thing with us is that if you look at our governance structure, you would see it’s really classical. We have a board of two guys, we have a core team of four women doing doing the work, and we have this like yeah, very structural, formal governance system in place, but we never lived it in a way because the intention our foundation was set up by two brothers. I think both were below not even in their thirties when they started the foundation. So they were very they had a very open mindset. And I remember when I applied for the job and I had the interview with one of these brothers, he would like challenge me all the time, like if you could rethink how how foundations work, if you could rethink philanthropy, what would you do? And he would always want me to be more critical and to r be reflective and question things that are in place. And I think this is what is part of our DNA. This is how we are working and this is also how we are working with our board. It’s why we don’t feel these these powerful structural formalities and hierarchies, not so much in our work, but we also have a process.

Our yeah, to be honest, we recently started to reflect about if our structures really reflect our way of working or if we should change our governance here and there or at least discuss it as because this is I think the way we work in general. we

We don’t take things for granted and we also try to reflect our own approach, our own role. Because as Claudia also said, I mean, where money is, there is power. We cannot deny it. And when we are deciding on a funding, it is a powerful decision because others are dependent on that decision and don’t have a say in it. So that’s also the reason why we are thinking about how we how can we reduce this dynamic in order to reach our common goals.

Kristen Woolf: And related to that is what would you say, and Sandra, we can start with you, given that your your boss was kind of begging you to rewrite rewrite the playbook, what is one outdated funding habit that you do hope we can leave completely behind in the next, let’s say, five years, maybe even three years? And if you were gonna get rid of that funding habit, what would you replace it with?

Sandra Khusrawi: I think there are many. Like to start with one is an I’m not so sure if it’s a funding habit, but that’s at least something I heard from an employee of a foundation. and this person said that she would expect grantees to say thank you when they when a funding is approved. And I think this is really outdated because I mean, first it’s not our money, it’s not our private money, but it’s a common mission that we are on.

And I think the replacement should be that rather the funder should thank the NGO for doing all the work with all the uncertainties and all the daily challenges it faces. So it should be the other way around. So this is I think a shift in mindset also. And like on a more practical note, for example, what funders really could leave behind are statement of funds used.

I know that almost every funder still have them in place, but usually I mean at least in Germany d it’s the case that a non profit needs to report to its financial authority anyway. So they will check their funds anyway if they apply with the non profit law. So why? Where why is the need there to make another statement for this just for the funder?

I mean this is time consuming, it’s not joyful, also not on the funder side to review all this. Like when I started my career in philanthropy, like people still used to work with budget lists. So civil society organisations needed to send in very long lists with budgets for the money they spent. I mean, this is ridiculous. It takes hours to prepare this, it takes hours to go through this and this is not

I think this is really not helping. And instead, like a replacement, for example, could be that the funder, the foundation, reviews this annual statement on its own, tries to understand what are the stories behind the numbers, and then start a conversation with the partner about it.

Kristen Woolf: Great. Thank you so much. And Claudia what would you what would your answer be?

Claudia Giampietri: Yeah, maybe more of relational relations based philanthropy as in an intention and actions to circulate information, knowledge to make sure that what you fund has ripple effects and you can actually learn from those and collect them in a sense of being able to start pinpointing what’s been nourished by a certain action and sort of follow those waves through. It’s more of an attitude of of support and as as Sandra mentioned, partnership really, rather than, you know, certain strategy being an implementing partner. These words are still used implementing partner, just these two words tell you a lot on the dynamic and and just the partnerships where we’re in this together and learning together and stick with the partners even when it’s not all rosy.

Kristen Woolf: Yeah. Yeah. And I think Sandra also used a term a few times which I love, which is like, you know, we’re on this mission together. This is a this is us together and solving something together, creating something together. So yeah. okay. And so now the other question, which is related to this, of course, is for the civil society, the movement actors out there who could be listening, what do you think they should be thinking about now?

If they want their work to still be here in five years. And maybe they don’t want their work to be here in five years, because maybe their their plan is that, you know, their work is not needed in five years. But for those that are doing the systems systems level longer term transformational work, what should they be thinking about now? If they want their work to be funded, if they want their work to be ongoing five years from now. Claudia, why don’t you start?

Claudia Giampietri: It’s a hard one. The first thing that came to mind when you when you just asked the question is it’s basically connect, connect, connect, connect the dots, connect to others. Make sure that you your nurturing role in the ecosystem is clear to you and others. Connect to donors who are generous.

who are known to be generous. Not just in terms of funding, but also in the way they act. A generosity in spirit. I think I would say cultivate that and seek peers who are like minded. That would be the first thing that c comes to mind. Because that has powerful potential.

Kristen Woolf: Connect, connect, connect. Love that.

Sandra Khusrawi: Yeah, I also agree with the connecting thing. but I can add to that, like be clear about your systemic goal, about your vision. And then as Claudia said, look out for partners. Engage in real collaborations. I think this is this is important. And also in collaborations among different fields. So we really need many people from different fields on board. And yeah, build trust based relationships. This is what probably Claudia also meant by connect, connect, connect. I mean this is what it’s what it’s about. And also don’t be afraid to discuss challenges and fears. And I mean an approach can fail, but this is a learning experience. It’s not the end of the world. And I think you should also accept that you might not be there in five years. So and this might even be good for something better, you know? We we don’t know it yet.

So be open for that too. So I think like the self preservation should not be an end in itself. It’s just how can you say? It’s a moment and it’s a current form, but it might change. And as you said in the b beginning, Kristen, it can also be that you might not be necessary anymore because ideally your problem is solved. Yeah. And maybe one thing I w I would like to add, because when when you said generosity, Claudia, I had to think of joy. I think joy is so much underestimated because it’s not only something nice to feel or to experience, but it makes us act from our our center and it makes us bring in everything that we have in a good way. And not to hold tight to things and but to work in a flow, to be gentle, to be generous, to be open enough, to connect with with each other. And that’s why I think joy is really a very important even indicator in what you are doing. And if you find what you are doing is not joyful, so it could be that you are not the right person for this. Or it could be that there is something in your approach that is not right, because it’s maybe not the not the right way to deal with things. So look out for joy.

Kristen Woolf: Okay. Well I have to say at the social change nest we are a very joyful group. I I don’t think I’ve ever smiled as much as I do around the social change nest team. And that is true. Very, very true. I wanted to ask another question to Sandra about sitting more squarely as a funder, whereas we know HFHP is intermediary funder. If a funder is listening to our podcast, and hopefully some are, and they do want to make their funding more suitable for movements, for long-term movement work, but they don’t know where to begin or how to do that or if it’s feasible, other than suggesting fiscal host, which we’ll come back to, what would be your advice?

Sandra Khusrawi: So I think a funder can always start with going through your own funding practice and your all your administrative requirements and then ask yourself really critically what you really need. Because this is also what we did and what we are doing again and again. So then we ask ourselves what are the legal requirements that we really need to avoid troubles with our financial authorities. And we found out these are very little by the way. And then you can also ask yourself, what do you want to know? What do you wish to know?

And how can you get to that information? So and then when you when you go through all these administrative tasks and requirements and processes that you have, like I mean it’s very simple, reduce where possible. So and also like replace written information with personal check-ins, for example. And build trust by being honest and reflective yourself, by admitting mistakes and insecurities on your own. And also I would say what helps is like spend time with your partners, especially your long-term partners. Invite them to retreats where they have spaces to reflect on their own challenges and where you can grow your relationship with them. I think this is this is one part what you can really do on your desk. 

And another thing is what we observe very often is that foundations tend to change their strategies every now and then, usually every now between three and five years. So I think this is also not helpful. So then the advice would be commit to one systemic goal and do not change it every three or five years just because you want to do something new. Yeah.

Kristen Wool: Thank you. Absolutely. And I don’t know, Claudia, if you want to add anything to that, especially in the intermediary role, what would you say to any funders listening?

Claudia Giampietri: Yeah, I’m just it resonates a lot with what Sandra said. Maybe have a honest conversation with yourselves internally in terms of what is it that we really need to keep, what is it that we have to keep, what is it that we can change and start somewhere? Keeping in check expectations or if transformational change happening overnight, which goes also hand in hand with keep the stick on the ice if you have a certain strategic direction, stay with it long enough, walk in those shoes long enough until you figure I need to change a sole or I need to change the laces or I need to change a shoe altogether. But if you haven’t walked the shoes enough, you you’re not sure what you’re throwing out, the baby and the bathwater sort of thing. So stick with it, stick with your partners and be humble. And really feel that we are in a boat together. So it’s it’s very much shared, the burden and the joys.

Kristen Woolf: And the joys and the hope. I think when Sandra was talking earlier I was thinking about one of my favorite sort of thinkers who’s Marshall Gantz, who talks a lot about hope, right? And how as a funder, as an intermediary, as a group, you know, that it is joy, it’s also the hope that hopefully is propelling our our work. Right, that we we really do believe that this is this work is hopeful. And if it doesn’t feel like that, as Sandra said, you know, either something needs to shift in your approach or maybe you aren’t in the right, possibly not in the right job. 

In terms of un sort of outdated funding habits, I think I do have to say, as somebody who works at a fiscal host, a lot of what we hear often is that the funder didn’t even know this was an option to fund unincorporated unregistered groups. A lot of foundations do not know that this is even an option for them. Like you said, Sandra, either because they assume that it’s not legal or they assume that it’s not possible, right? Because of the the limits on some charity policies and laws and depends on the country, obviously. So a lot of the conversations we have with funders is no. It is absolutely possible. That’s, you know, that is what fiscal hosts are partially here to do. No, we’re we’re here for impact, we’re here for hope, we’re here for joy, we’re here for the movements, we’re movement led, but we can get the funding to where it needs to go to if you can’t, right? So I don’t know, Sandra, if you work with any other fiscal hosts before or if this is new to the foundation.

Sandra Khusrawi: So we did not work with a fiscal host that works exclusively as a fiscal host with all that aspects you were mentioning. So that’s what we did not do before, but in two cases we funded initiatives that had no legal form yet through another organisation. So this is very much the fiscal host model, even though this was not the main thing of the hosting organisations. And I mean we could see many benefits from that.

So I mean it’s a very lean business models for the groups and they could not only build on the infrastructure, right? But also on the experience and as you said, on the bigger like background, on the joy, on the learning opportunities of the hosting organisations and use this bigger potential. I mean of course it, It can slow down processes at some point, but the benefits for us were clearly stronger in our experience. And the only maybe pain or like the gap for us is because we engage, we want to engage in trustful and deep relationships with our partners. So and we would not necessarily do that with the hosts. Maybe there is missing something then in the relationship.

So now I’m wondering if we should exclude this at all. So but we could also start to invest in the relationships with both. But it would make it of course more complex, especially in particular that we also have limited resources. So but this is this the small pain maybe about it for us.

Kristen Woolf: Yeah, no, I and I think that again we’ll let Claudia speak to her experience with with Social Change Invest or with other fiscal hosts. maybe there’s more to speak about. But we really see at Social Change Invest, we do see ourselves as infrastructure for the ecosystem, right? And we’re very relational, very impact led, very group led.

And it is similarly to what Claudia was saying, you know, there’s there can sometimes be holding that tension between the funder and the groups, but most of the funders that are using fiscal hosts are well up for long-term flexible funding, you know, for the best majority of them. And that’s why they’ve decided to fund unregistered or unincorporated groups. They’re already sort of on that journey of trust. And of course also I think like Claudia, that we also hold risk, right? That’s a big part of our role is to hold some of that risk. Define risk how you how you want to, but that is part of what infrastructure provides. So I don’t know, Claudia, if you want to add anything or if you have a different point of view on this.

Claudia Giampietr: just just simply that on our journey of finding a home as a as an initiative that had lots of ideas, clear direction, governance as well, that came relatively early on. We need we we had two choices before us. Either to register and incorporate or to find a partner that did allow us to sort of exist and act and perform and and give what we give to the ecosystem. But the biggest challenge has been on that journey of seeking a good match was finding a good match. As in finding a partner that could share some of the risks, but that has a as an ethos that is compatible with Healthy Food Healthy Planet. As a way of being and understanding our role in the ecosystem that is very close to ours. Very happy that we did find that in the social change nest. And my perspective is there are different types of fiscal hosts and fiscal agents out there, different models that are proposed. The biggest challenge for us was feeling that there was otherwise a lot of potential interference between ways of working. And then it would have become difficult for us to be the more courageous funder in the space if your fiscal host is is not ready to walk that talk with you.

And so I find that the the match and the partnership with the social change nests has actually allowed us to to be brave, to share the risk and to show up with partners and funders in the way that we feel is appropriate and we want to.

Kristen Woolf: Feeling is very mutual. I think that’s right. And I I think the last thing that any group or intermediary or you know, however small some of the groups we hold are teeny tiny hyperlocal groups. Some of the groups that we work with and partner with are massive. But it all of all of it really boils down to as I think as Sandra was saying, you know, do we want to support each other and also stay out of the way, right? So Social Change Nest has no interest in adding to the complexity or adding to the administration or adding to the governance in any way, right? We what we try to do is make it easy and make it efficient and hopefully make it joyful as well. 

So and and I think for us too, it is it’s a decision that has to be made on both sides. Like you said, Claudia, you know, we wouldn’t we wouldn’t want to host just any anyone or any groups. It’s important to us two to be values aligned and see how if we are talking to a new group about potentially coming over, how well the other groups, you know, see and feel and interact in that, in that nest, in that ecosystem. That’s really important to us as well.

Thank you both so much for being with us today. It’s been such a pleasure and my mouth hurts from smiling. Wonderful to spend this afternoon with both of you.

Claudia Giampietri: Thank you so much, Kristen.

Sandra Khusrawi: Yeah, thank you both so much. It was a pleasure to talk to you.

Kristen Woolf: See ya soon.

Wow. Well, what I really loved about the conversation today is how much it reminds us that working at both a systems change level and at the grassroots movement level takes time. And that the way that we fund the systems change work and the grassroots work and the movements work, it really matters. Movements are often working with really big, complex, deeply connected challenges. And so the funding around them will not work if it’s short term or restrictive or built around trying to prove certainty, right? We’ve spent a lot of time talking specifically about the health and the food systems today, but actually what we talked about was really about power and trust. 

We talked about risk and learning and what it really means to support movements working towards change that is complex and that it’s all deeply connected, right? We know and we’ve known this for a while that there is no silver bullet, there’s no perfect plan that can predict everything from the beginning. And there’s no report or MEL framework that can fully capture the relationships with the learning, the trust and the collaboration that makes movements possible. 

So it really comes back to the relationships and the trust. And we’ve also heard, again, that flexible, long-term support, it’s not nice to have that. It is actually critical because it allows movements to test, to adapt, and to connect with others and to respond to what is changing around them. And actually the self-care and the trauma-informed approaches that is very much required for movement-led work too, that’s not going to be found in an MEL framework. So how do we keep movement-led grassroots work, systems change level work going when the work is difficult? The best way to do that is to continue to give or to start giving more unrestricted, flexible, long-term support. So what does this mean for our funders that are listening? It means we really have to look honestly at some of the habits and the practices that we have inherited in philanthropy.

It means we have to ask, you know, are these processes built around trust or mistrust? Are they helping people learn? Or, you know, are we really sharing risk with movements? Are we shouldering the risk with movements? Or are we simply just passing it down to the people that are already doing the work on the front lines? If you’re a funder listening to this and thinking about how to support movements in a way that is more flexible, relational, we would love to hear from you.

Whether you’re looking to explore funding unincorporated groups, reduced administrative burden, or support movement-led work, the Social Change Nest can help make that funding easier, safer, and much, much more human. If you’re a group and would like to be a part of more discussions on regenerative futures, we would love to have you join us at the Wild Times Unconference. Wild Times Unconference is the 15th of September in Birmingham. Funders and groups, you can find out more information about this by visiting www.wildtimesuk.org