In CFICEās āConversations Withā series, we interview community-campus engagement (CCE) practitioners to get their insights on CCE. Interview conducted by Chelsea Nash, CFICE Communications Research Assistant.
Lee RoseĀ is a curious social innovator with an knack for working across systems to drive change. He led the creation and development of the Community Knowledge Exchange while working as the Director of Community Knowledge at Community Foundations of Canada, and now serves as its founding Managing Director. In this piece, Lee ponders the power dynamics between funders and grantees with us and shares his thoughts on how we can start shifting our focus to asset-based funding.
What is your background in community funding?
I kind of fell into philanthropy. If you asked 10-year-old me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I can guarantee that Iād never have said āIām going to be a director at a national network of community foundations.ā I think, like most people who are working in the social change space, my journey to where I am is thanks in large part to serendipity and a curiosity about finding meaningful ways to do good, better.
I started my work at Community Foundations of Canada (CFC) about four years ago. Iāve also sat on boards of charities – both national and local – and now lead the work of the Community Knowledge Exchange, a social change agency that recently spun out of being a project of CFC.
When I started working at CFC, it was the first real time that I was on the āother sideā of the sector – working for a network of funders, instead of being connected to the work on the grantee side of things. I remember in my first few months at CFC that I noticed that people were being really really nice to me at conferences. While waiting in line for lunch at one such conference, an established leader from a large private foundation leaned toward me and chided, ātheyāre only being nice because the word foundation is on your lanyard.ā And here I thought they were talking to me because I was a nice guy.
Over the course of my tenure at CFC, I began to get a better understanding of the awkwardness of the grantor-grantee relationship. Patterns of power and control. Who gets to decide whatās an important issue to fund? I began asking myself some tough questions – slaying a few sacred cows in the process. Do donors and funders really know best? Do grant review teams made up of mostly people with privilege and largely devoid of those āend usersā who have āservices delivered upon themā really make sense? Why do foundations hoard money in large endowments? Who really has the power?
Iāve always been a bit skeptical of funders who have stated priority areas – not because thatās a bad idea – focus and commitment are good things! More because Iām curious about how they identified them. Is it on the whim of a donor, or are they in response to actual community needs? I really need to understand how they got to those priorities and whatās the research behind that.
Also, funders are terrible at burdening grantees with so much process and paperwork in the application process. Just getting all the paperwork together is a massive undertaking – the prize isnāt effecting change in your community, itās making sure you got all your financial statements, partnership letters and budget spreadsheets uploaded before an arbitrary deadline. Congratulations! You won. Now please wait 4 to 6 weeks for us to review your application and politely decline it. There has to be a better way!
Lee Rose speaks at the Ottawa Impact Hub. Photo by Mike Gifford, 2017.
You have spoken before about flipping funding on its head, and instead of having community organizations apply to funders, having funders apply to community organizations to compete to fund them. Could you tell me a little more about that?
I actually just said it as a joke in a moment of frustration when I was applying for funding for a project. Like this is an excellent idea – I should be the one taking applications from funders who want to get behind it. Imagine sending a decline letter to a potential funder saying āWe received your application to fund our project, but unfortunately we are not in a position to accept your funding because {insert polite reason for decline here}. Wouldnāt that be liberating? Imagine the shift in power, the reframe thatās possible when you flip the proverbial iceberg and take an asset-based approach. So instead of starting from the position of having to wait for funding, start from something like āIāve got a really cool idea. āIām going to invite six funders to apply for this and Iām going to select which funderās going to work with me.ā
Itās a fundamental shift in mindset, right?
Do you think itās possible to make such a big shift, practically speaking?Ā
Iām hopeful. And Iām starting to see it happen in my own work at the Community Knowledge Exchange (CKX). When you think about it – itās all about power and permission. Why do I need to wait for a funder to grant me permission to do something? Can I get going on my own? I recognize that itās not always possible – but you donāt always need to wait for permission to get going. I tend to take the position that weāre moving ahead with a project or initiative that we believe in, and rather than ask a funder to support it, Iāll invite them to come along because theyāll also see the value in what weāre doing. Itās also an interesting way to bring multiple funding partners together.
Again I think the biggest barrier to making this shift is that weāre stuck in this waiting for permission mindset. We need to break the cycle. And while I realize that flipping the entire machine that is the current funding model by tomorrow is a tad unrealistic – getting people to realize that their social change work is actually more important than waiting for a grant proposal is the first step.
At the CFICE January 2017 evaluation symposium.
What do you think the biggest barriers are now to achieving that kind of dynamic?
I think itās people being stuck in entrenched and inflexible systems who are stuck in old ways of doing things, and are more interested in maintaining the status quo than actually achieving social change. So Iām thinking of funders who require grantees to estimate how many pens theyāre going to use in Q3 of year two of a three-year project in order to get the funding, and are really resistant to any changes or emergent learning that happen along the way. And I also think of grantees who canāt imagine that they actually have the capacity to do stuff because theyāre so used to working in a system that suffocates them and restricts their sense of agency to āyou must get funder approvalā to do stuff. So thatās it. People and patterns.
But there is hope, and hereās an example of an entrenched system actually able to adapt and respond to create change: The way that the Government of Canada was able to mobilize to resettle 30,000 Syrian refugees in Canada in less than six months. That required massive systemic reaction and responses to something. So the prime minister says āweāre going to welcome 30,000 people,ā and it was impossible. Everyone said it was impossible, and everyone said itās not going to happen, weāre not going to be able to do it. But the call to action and the moment in time were so important, and people and systems responded in a way that made it happen.
But more often than not, this isnāt what happens. Itās why that same government hasnāt yet brought clean water to every Indigenous community in Canada. The need is as great, if not greater – itās a devastating challenge that weāve been trying to address for a very long time. Why havenāt we gotten that figured out and done yet? People and patterns.
Youāve spoken about the power dynamics that exist now. If we were able to have funders applying to community organizations, how do you think the power dynamics would look?
I think, in that case, imagine you as an organization could pick a funder that aligns with your values and trusts your judgment to do things and your capacity to actually achieve the things that youāre setting out to do versus, having to report on arbitrary metrics that arenāt actually metrics and that arenāt actually showing a demonstrable impact. And this isnāt a generalization of all funders, because I think there are progressive funders who are doing really cool stuff.
Itās also about building a culture of experimentation and being able to admit that neither the funder or the grantees has all the answers. Thatās a big power shift on both sides.
This kind of experimentation happens all the time in the private sector. Companies spend a lot of money in research and development and designing products that never see the light of day – thereās a culture of R&D and investing in trial and error that just doesnāt exist in the social change sector. Part of it is because we canāt really take chances with peopleās lives, thereās that human element. But, I think that there is room for funders to loosen the slack, to trust organizations. Youāre on the ground in your community, you know whatās best. And weāre just going to trust, and youāre going to let us know, and weāll learn along the way, and maybe next time weāll do things differently.
Do you think the power dynamic could ever swing too far the other way?
The pendulum has been so far in the funders court for so long, that I think even just a shift back toward the center would be interesting, donāt you?