How can societies improve their future viability and strengthen their resilience?
For a long time, we had this idea that resilience is something we draw on only in a crisis.
And that’s not the case?
In today’s post-Covid world, we are facing a range of other, different crises. We are realising that we need to do a lot of things better, especially in the social/charity sector. It would be reckless to set the issue of resilience aside until there’s an actual crisis. Because in a crisis, things tend to move very fast. That’s when we realise what is happening and what it takes to create a resilient society.
What does it take?
Relationships and cohesion are important. It’s crucial to work on common solutions – and to do that before we find ourselves in the centre of a crisis. This is challenging for institutions, particularly philanthropic ones.
Is resilience just about being prepared for a crisis?
It’s clearly about more. It’s about society’s fundamental values, which we need to strengthen. That will ensure we are better prepared for crises. In a crisis there is a stronger focus on those values. Covid provided an excellent example here. The pandemic situation showed us how important values such as solidarity are and how quickly they can be questioned – or even vanish altogether. So we need to be much better prepared and ensure that our fundamental values are more firmly engrained in our society.
‘It would be reckless to set the issue of resilience aside until there’s an actual crisis.’
Louise Pulford, CEO of SIX
Is a bottom-up approach or a top-down approach more likely to succeed here?
People want to be in control of their own fate. For change to work in society, people and institutions need tools and resources to help facilitate and accelerate change. We need to empower individuals and give them responsibility. Because institutions too are made up of people. If we don’t give society the power to change, it won’t work. So we need both approaches: bottom-up and top-down. We need to share responsibilities.
What role can – or should – foundations play?
They definitely need to take on a much more active role than they do today. Philanthropic foundations, in fact all organisations, first need to reflect on their own structures and processes. Everyone’s talking about system change, but without knowing what it really takes. But I believe we need to take a fundamentally different approach.
What does that involve?
We need social innovation and we need to learn to cope with uncertainty and complexity. What are we going to do if we don’t know what’s around the next corner? We need to be flexible and agile. That goes for foundations too. Having said that, foundations already possess a great deal of flexibility anyway.
How so?
Foundations generally have the flexibility to change. They need to recognise and use that. I expect them to take a good look at their own internal processes. They need to change the way they allocate funds, and I think they can. They can afford to take more risks when it comes to allocating funds, and if they work collaboratively with other funders to spread the risk, that would be even better. They could involve themselves more actively in the debate around strengthening democracy – without having to become involved in party politics. In doing this, foundations need to identify more rigorously as part of society and get other sectors involved. They need to expand their discussions beyond their own foundation gatherings. They should speak with governments about how they can provide mutual support and they should exchange experience and knowledge with the private
sector, or even use their power and networks to influence private sector behaviour. At SIX, we firmly believe that businesses have the power to do good. With frameworks such as ESG and B Corps, the pressure is growing on businesses to adopt new values and practices.
So foundations need to see themselves as part of a bigger system?
Exactly. And they should move away from just funding projects and invest in organisations. That will make the organisations more resilient. Democracy, and democratic developments, need to function within all organisations. This ties in to the way society functions as a whole: we work on ourselves first, promote these issues and collaborate with other sectors. That way, we create a new, stronger, more joined up society.
Did SIX work more with foundations in the past and go on to expand its approach?
No. We began with a broader approach. For the first seven years we worked on our ecosystem. As an organisation, we always believed that we needed the best ideas and minds from all walks of life and all sectors if we wanted to get ahead. One of our approaches is that NGOs can’t solve today’s challenges alone. It’s down to all of us. The private sector, governments as well as funding organisations have a shared responsibility. We are interested in how we can increase the cash flow to innovation. We began working with foundations when they approached us.
‘Foundations generally have the flexibility to change. They need to recognise and use that.’
Louise Pulford, CEO of SIX
What drew the foundations to you?
They were interested in our crosssector activities. They had noticed that when they held their events, which were attended solely by representatives of the charity sector, the conversations centred around different things. They spotted our innovation pool and were interested in our methods.
Would you say there was room for improvement where foundations were concerned?
When we began, foundations were interested in our thoughts about system change and they wanted to learn more about using tools like foresight, taking more risks, and cross-sector interaction. The foundations invited us to work with them. We wanted to get to know the dynamics of the charity sector and understand the problems they are up against. We set up a peer group, consisting of around 200 representatives from the sector that were consciously interested in changing the debate. Working with foundations and the philanthropy sector is interesting for us, but we’ve always been keen to avoid being siloed. We think in cross-sector ecosystems. It’s effective. That’s our play book. It’s important to us to keep an eye on the bigger picture.
Why do we need social innovation for the future?
If we want to tackle the coming challenges, we need new ways of resolving social issues. And we shouldn’t be driven by development – our ideas should trigger development. We need to understand what the big issues that lie ahead are.
What do you feel they are?
I recently attended an event about how philanthropy should be thinking about the future. There were representatives of major foundations on the podium. And they were unable to answer the question of how philanthropy should handle AI and data. But these developments are happening now and they are happening quickly. They are changing society. We need to get ahead of these developments. To do that, we will need to develop capabilities in the sector; we must find organisations who start by focussing on tackling the challenges ahead, and then finding the right tools to help them do it most effectively.
Don’t the old approaches work any more?
The fact that we need new solutions doesn’t mean that what happened in the past doesn’t work. There’s a lot we can learn from the past – especially from indigenous peoples, from com-
munities that have been around a lot longer than we have. For us, social innovation is a question of reflection. We need to observe which solutions are successful in Taiwan, Indonesia, and other parts of East Asia, the African continent and so on. We need to share the responses that others have come up with. There are plenty of models to be found elsewhere. We need to see what we can learn from them and what we can adopt.
We need to build bridges. Where are these bridges needed most?
From one person to the next. If we succeed in building effective bridges between people, we will have achieved a great deal. Philanthropy or governments, in Hong Kong or Colombia, old or young – it’s always about people. When you get down to the nitty-gritty, it’s about understanding one another – our cultures, our drivers, our beliefs, our values. Our actions are shaped by assumptions about other people and we have a tendency to ‘other’ them. We hear of situations in Africa and think they’re not relevant to us. And, of course, in certain respects that’s true. But we can learn a lot and gain relevant insights. If we only see the ‘other’ and don’t build bridges, we will fail to establish the resilience we all need. The bridge from one person to the next is the most important. We need to ask questions and listen. Communication is important. That’s the initiative we need.
Do we need a new narrative for a resilient society?
We absolutely need a new narrative. We need a debate that involves the whole of society and focuses on what we want to be in our future. A lot of western democracies find themselves at a similar point to us in the UK: we live from day to day. People have very little vision of where they want to be or what kind of society they want, what the education system should look like or how a healthcare or care system should function. That kind of debate is missing.
‘We’ll never achieve system change if projects are limited to a year.’
Louise Pulford, CEO of SIX
Who could initiate it?
That would be a task for the political leaders, but not just them. Other organisations, including foundations, can take on this task. They will need to collaborate and lead on individual issues. We need political and philanthropic leadership. And here we come back to the question of resilience.
Why is that?
Resilience is proactive rather than reactive. It is part of this challenging, high-level debate. Everything we do in our country has an impact on what happens in the world. What’s needed is a global debate. We need a vision; for example, of what the next UN should look like – I’d love to be involved in that. We need this connectedness if we want to solve problems.
What is missing at the moment?
We all recognise that our problems are linked and complex – for example, when it comes to climate change or the pandemic. But at the same time, every country is looking for its own solutions. We are looking inwards. We are building walls.
What can we do about that?
We need to involve the whole of society in the debate. That could trigger a new dynamic. And we need to think long term and broadly. We’re not going to achieve system change in six months or a year. Foundations need to be aware of that too. We’ll never achieve system change if projects are limited to a year. We all need to do ourselves a favour: think in decades, tear down silos, follow a collaborative path and develop a bigger vision of where we want our society to go.
