LinkedIn Blog: UNGA Reflections: 2024
by Megan Hastings
“I’m back in Seattle after a whirlwind four days on the sidelines at UNGA – my first time attending since before the pandemic. As a full-time remote worker, I get tremendous energy and inspiration from gathering with a global ecosystem of actors tackling the biggest challenges of our time. At the same time, there is often a tension between the many hopeful and inspiring moments, and the undercurrent of fundamentally flawed systems and power inequities that permeate global aid, philanthropy and international politics. While there is incredible brainpower going into solving problems – it’s not always clear if we are willing to address root causes, or have the patience to fund lasting, long-term solutions. Underneath all of it? Money. How it flows, who can be trusted with it, what it’s spent on, where it goes. At times it feels like a global advocacy and lobbying dance – one in which a select few rooms and players control the curtains, while the rest of us do what we can to keep our chorus of solutions from being relegated to the side wings.
This year, I joined as part of a team working to decolonize philanthropy. We came to UNGA with a clear objective to center and support Global Majority voices, accelerate conversations and in so-doing, fuel locally-led development. This is obviously long-game work, and I got glimpses into the toll it is taking on some of the leaders who have been rallying call out system inequities and center the Global South for decades now.
Themes where I found glimpses of hope and renewed clarity of purpose as I listened to community stakeholders this week:
· Philanthropy is society’s risk capital: It has the flexibility, resources and responsibility to experiment and support what government and other funders cannot. This was at the root of our conversation with leaders from Adeso, Casa Socio-Environmental Fund, Alight, NEAR (Network for Empowered Aid Response) and WINGS last Thursday. The challenge: How to get philanthropists to embrace this, and see that risk is not antithetical to responsibility or strategy? Can we look at the ability to take risks as philanthropy’s super power?
· Decolonization goes beyond technicalities like rethinking RFPs and simplifying reporting requirements (all good things, but not enough in and of themselves). As more and more system inefficiencies come to light, we can’t just change processes and procedures – we need to change mindsets (my thanks to Center for Disaster Philanthropy‘s Alex Gray, CA for this astute point). We must be wary of the fix-it mentality that says change can be simple and quick. Even as we advocate to speed up the conversation and actions around locally-led development, we can’t ignore the deep work decolonizing and rebuilding a framework in which to operate.
· Ecosystems are critical: the global aid arena will never tip the power differential if there aren’t sufficient philanthropic, network and financial ecosystems to provide support, collaboration, accountability, standards and the like. I had a fascinating conversation with Tariq Cheema who noted the equal importance of leveraging ecosystems that DO already exist – often related to communities of faith. We need funders to support advocacy and ecosystem actors whose outputs aren’t as easy to quantify as direct service programs, and be open to working collaboratively to build and strengthen these frameworks.
· The power of community. The Wellbeing Foundation Africa‘s HE Toyin Saraki captured it this way when talking about how she assesses funding partners, their ideas and contingencies in relation to her local community: “I need to look them in the eye.” We have so much to learn about trust-based philanthropy from communities in which trust and partnership is still rooted in day to day relationships – not scopes of work and contracts.
· Unrestricted, long-term funding provided directly to organizations is increasingly recognized as the most equitable and transformational funding mechanism, but from what I can tell still makes up a very small percentage of funding available. As Degan Ali noted at our event, “when you have little resources, you are constantly creating.” When communities are given not just resources, but the power to say how those resources are put to use – this creativity is leveraged in phenomenal ways.
· Don’t let capacity/technical expertise be an impediment to funding. Girls First Fund Director Fanta K. Toure called this out – noting that lack of capacity shouldn’t be an excuse not to fund an org. Have an honest conversation around capacity and then help build it!
· Reinventing the wheel is prohibitively expensive in time and money: My approach to entrepreneurship has always been clouded by an erroneous belief that the best ideas are nearly 100% novel. In reality we don’t need to re-invent the wheel – as Fanta noted, we may need to contextualize it and right size it – and as noted above, we need to make sure the ecosystems and support frameworks are in place (or in process) to keep it rolling.
· And finally, always ask: “Are the right people at this table (or on this stage)?” Without the right people you are very unlikely to have the right conversation and you’re almost never going to find a right solution. I say “a” solution because focusing on “the” solution leads to risk-aversion that stifle’s creativity and perpetuates interventions/spending that reinforce, rather than solve for, system inequities and inefficiencies.
I’m so grateful for the continued exposure my work provides to these global gatherings and thought leaders. Now to channel this into the day to day work back at my cozy (but overly quiet!) home office…”