Nonprofit Nation with Julia Campbell

Rewriting the Rules of Giving and Philanthropy with Rhodri Davies

• Julia Campbell • Season 1 • Episode 46

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Today's podcast is sponsored by Community Boost, a digital marketing agency empowering social ventures changing the world. We invite you to join The Nonprofit Marketing Summit: Fundraise To The Future for free on August 16-18th, the biggest virtual conference for nonprofit professionals!  Get your free ticket to the future at https://www.nonprofitmarketingsummit.org/

How has philanthropy changed in the last two years? Where is it going? What do nonprofits need to know about the ever-changing landscape?

In this episode, I talk with one of my favorite authors and thought leaders, Rhodri Davies. Rhodri is a widely-respected expert and commentator on philanthropy and civil society issues. He joins me to discuss what the media is getting wrong in the coverage of charities, how to maintain the spirit of collaboration created during the pandemic, and what’s next for philanthropy and the third sector.

Rhodri is Director of Philanthropy Matters, a new think tank focused on philanthropy issues, and the host of the Philanthropisms podcast. He is also a Pears Research Fellow in the Centre for Philanthropy at the University of Kent, and the Philanthropy Expert in Residence at the Pears Foundation.

Connect with Rhodri

Referenced in this podcast:
Third Sector UK article
Philliteracy on Medium
The New Yorker article 

About Julia Campbell, the host of the Nonprofit Nation podcast:

Named as a top thought leader by Forbes and BizTech Magazine, Julia Campbell (she/hers) is an author, coach, and speaker on a mission to make the digital world a better place.

She wrote her book, Storytelling in the Digital Age: A Guide for Nonprofits, as a roadmap for social change agents who want to build movements using engaging digital storytelling techniques. Her second book, How to Build and Mobilize a Social Media Community for Your Nonprofit, was published in 2020 as a call-to-arms for mission-driven organizations to use the power of social media to build movements.

Take Julia’s free nonprofit masterclass, ​3 Must-Have Elements of Social Media That Converts

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Julia Campbell:

today's podcast is sponsored by community boost a digital marketing agency, empowering social ventures changing the world. Community boost invites you to join the nonprofit marketing Summit. fundraise to the future for free on August 16 through 18th. It's the biggest virtual conference for nonprofit marketers. You'll be joined by 20,000 Like minded professionals as we step into the future of digital strategy, and you'll be learning from leaders like Mallory Erickson, Amy sample Ward, Adrian Sargeant, Mehta, Tiktok, myself and many more, get your free ticket to the future at WWW dot nonprofit marketing summit.org. See you there. Hello, and welcome to nonprofit Nation. I'm your host, Julia Campbell. And I'm going to sit down with nonprofit industry experts, fundraisers, marketers, and everyone in between to get real and discuss what it takes to build that movement that you've been dreaming of. I created the nonprofit nation podcast to share practical wisdom and strategies to help you confidently Find Your Voice. Definitively grow your audience and effectively build your movement. If you're a nonprofit newbie, or an experienced professional, who's looking to get more visibility, reach more people and create even more impact, then you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hi, everyone, welcome back to nonprofit nation. thrilled that you are here today. This is your host Julia Campbell, and today I'm going to be talking to Rhodri Davis. He is a widely respected expert and commentator on philanthropy and civil society issues. He's also the director of philanthropy matters, a new Think Tank focused on philanthropy issues, and the host of the philanthropy isms podcast. He's a pairs research fellow in the center for philanthropy at the University of Kent, and the philanthropy expert in residence at the Paris Foundation. In 2016, Rhodri published public good by private means how philanthropy shapes Britain, a book tracing the history of philanthropy in Britain, and what it tells us about the modern context. Rodri. I'm so excited to have you here.

Rhodri Davies:

Delighted to be here, Julia, thanks very much for having me.

Julia Campbell:

Yes, I've been reading your blog on medium for quite some time. And I've listened to your podcast, I listened to the giving thought podcast, your former podcast, I've listened to your newer podcast as well. So I'm just really excited to have a very interesting talk about philanthropy, something that has been actually coming up in the news and has been being discussed in many circles. So I'm just thrilled. But usually when we start the podcast, I like to ask my guests how they got involved in this kind of work. How do you get involved in charity work?

Rhodri Davies:

Yeah, absolutely. And it's a I mean, as ever, I think with philanthropy, it's an area a lot of people fall into rather than plan to get into. And I definitely count myself among that number. The short version is I was kind of trying and failing to do a PhD back in the day and an entirely unrelated topic. And for various reasons, I kind of decided I didn't want to be doing that. So I left and got a job in a think tank, because I wanted to be doing some research work, but kind of more real world stuff. And it just happened that there was a project at the time on philanthropy, looking at kind of people in the financial services industry in London, giving philanthropically, which wasn't something I'd ever thought about before. But I landed a job doing the research for that and got hooked, and was sort of fascinated by the topic. And ever since then, you know, I've stayed in the area and expanded my own knowledge. And particularly, as you mentioned, I ended up writing a book back in 2015 16, all about the history. And that's become quite a big part of the work I do as well.

Julia Campbell:

Exactly. I was really fascinated with the history of philanthropy. So in your, in your view, when you say philanthropy, what what does that mean? What is philanthropy?

Rhodri Davies:

It's a really tricky one, because I think it's kind of this is one of the big challenges for anybody working in philanthropy is you can't get any two people to agree on what they're actually talking about. And there are kind of, you know, really live and important debates going on at the moment about whether we need to reclaim you know, the notion of philanthropy and its original meaning and get away from the idea that it's just all about really wealthy people giving through foundations. And I guess, you know, for me, that kind of core idea, in some ways, it's about people trying to do public good with The private assets that they have. But whether that's, you know, the level of the super wealthy or whether it's at the level of, you know, much more modestly wealthy people like your eye. And it can be in all sorts of different ways. It's not just about money either. It's about how you kind of use your time and the money that you have, but also your energies to try and improve the world for, you know, for yourself and for others.

Julia Campbell:

Exactly. I think it's a spirit of giving. And I know that it comes from the Greek for love of humanity. And I think that people might misconstrue philanthropy as being just a realm of the rich, and being the realm of Bill Gates. And, you know, MacKenzie Scott, and people that are giving millions and millions of dollars. But I would love to encourage nonprofits to see it democratized. And to see it, as you know, smaller dollar donors are actually increasing. And the number of donors are increasing, while giving is still kind of remaining stagnant. But I think that there's there's a lot of opportunity there. So we had talked a little bit before we press the record button, about the New Yorker article in the May 30. issue by Nicolas Le Man, will the world be better off without philanthropists? And I'm actually wondering what you thought of the article, you thought of the review of the book? And do you think that philanthropists do have too much power?

Rhodri Davies:

Yeah, I mean, I thought it was a fascinating article. And it's, it's another example of the phenomenon. You know, I've kind of been thinking about philanthropy issues for the last decade or more and kind of engaging with some of the criticism and critique around philanthropy. And when I started, it was a niche issue, even within the philanthropy world. So people sort of, you know, give you slightly odd sideways looks if you started talking about the relationship between philanthropy and democracy or the relationship between philanthropy and inequality. So seeing, you know, really well thought through articles like that, in the mainstream press, I think is really good. It brought to mind a few things to me. I mean, one is that I think it's great that people are engaging with these issues and having these debates, and this was a really good example of an article doing it. Well, I thought, I think more broadly, there's a slight concern that, that sometimes when these issues get discussed, it breaks down too easily into people just sort of going either philanthropy is good, or philanthropy is bad. And the reality is, it's you know, a much there's a lot more of gray area and nuance in the middle. And that's kind of where we need the conversation to be. I think in in reviewing these two books, Mr. Saunders Hastings new book and Paul valleys book that was out a couple of years ago, I think the the author made one really, really good point, I think, towards the end, pulling it together, where he sort of said, you know, that these critiques are really important, particularly the ones MSR and tastings makes, and we should take them on board. But often they're presented as criticisms of philanthropy. And then philanthropy is contrasted with a sort of idealized version of what the alternatives are. That to me felt really true, it's kind of a lot of these critiques that are made of philanthropy are important. And we need to pay attention to them if we actually care about making philanthropy better. But we need to be careful not to just write philanthropy off on the basis of an idealized version of democracy, or what else might be there because, you know, democracy has its own problems and its own flaws as well in reality. And so I'm always minded to kind of be quite pragmatic and say, the world is as it is, and we want it to be better, but just sort of standing on the sidelines and complaining doesn't seem to me as as worthwhile as say, right? Well, how do we actually roll up our sleeves and get involved and make philanthropy the best possible version of itself? And that's kind of what I'm interested in. I think.

Julia Campbell:

I love that. And in the article, it talks about how Saunders Hastings insists that democracy is superior to philanthropy, as a way of addressing society's needs. And I think that's an important perspective. But you're right. It's sort of an ideal theory. It's a good system. If everyone complies with the rules, if everyone kind of plays the game, which we know they don't. And you're based in the UK.

Rhodri Davies:

Yeah. And then I guess the other thing there is it really goes to your point about if you think philanthropy is just about giving by, you know, Elon Musk, or Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, then you probably will have these concerns. Because in all honesty, we do need to be concerned that it has a sort of anti democratic force because we're allowing very wealthy people to influence the public sphere. If you acknowledge that actually, philanthropy is about much more than that. And there's this huge long tail of people giving it much more modest levels. Actually, there's a pretty good argument That's quite healthy for a democracy. And it's good that people are able to do that. So I think, you know, we need to be careful that we're all talking about the same thing. When we talk about philanthropy,

Julia Campbell:

what's changed in the past 18 months, two years that you've seen in the philanthropic sector, good or bad, or both.

Rhodri Davies:

I mean, certainly much more willingness to kind of engage with some of these critical debates. And I think the interesting thing has been the extent to which philanthropists and people working in foundations, I think, have kind of internalized these almost it feels like a real moment of self reflection for philanthropy, which, which on the whole, I think, is a really, really positive thing. And I guess what, what's been really interesting in the last 18 months, two years with the pandemic happening, is what effect that has had and how much of it is going to change things longer term. So you know, we've had a lot of discussion, off the back of the sort of urgency of the early stages of the pandemic about people saying, we need to do philanthropy quicker, we need to change our mindset and get beyond, you know, kind of program based funding and attaching all sorts of strings to things and instead shift to just giving core costs funding and having trust in grantees. And I think as a really sort of positive development and a great debate. The question is, is that something just happened over the short term, because people have to? And are we going to go back to how we did things before? Or is it genuinely going to change in the future? And I think the same is true about things like the focus on racial justice, you know, it was great to see so many organizations, acknowledging the importance of the Black Lives Matter movement and acknowledging that philanthropy needs to sort of question itself when it comes to racial justice and what its role is. But again, if that's to be meaningful, it needs to not just be some statements put out, you know, in the wake of all of those stories and the uprising of attention in it, it needs to be genuine shifts in behavior and practice over the longer term. And I think the jury's still out a bit about, you know, whether that's really going to happen.

Julia Campbell:

Absolutely. I think a lot of foundations, a lot of funders are checking a box. And there's a lot of performative. I don't know if it's called philanthropy, but there's a lot of performative actions out there where systemic change is, is not perhaps as embraced as it should be. So, in your opinion, what can philanthropists do? What can foundations do to try to bring about this systemic change to try to actually change the the fundamental systems?

Rhodri Davies:

I mean, I think none of them is a silver bullet. But there are kinds of things. And I constantly ask myself this question about, you know, what does a form of philanthropy that that answers all these criticisms look like? I think, you know, some obvious things are transparency and openness. I think the more that philanthropy is kind of open about where money comes from and where money's going, the better because I think that that makes it more accountable and sort of more comfortable within a democracy. I think finding ways of giving away power, as well as just financial resources is important. So I think the focus on things like participatory grantmaking, a really important and basically the idea that the people who used to be seen as almost kind of passive recipients of charity are now more actively being involved in making decisions about how resources are spent. I think that's, that's hugely important. The main thing of the sort of wider point is, I think, in discussions of philanthropy, to me, it's become really clear that we've got to have context. So you can't talk about philanthropy in isolation from thinking about questions of whether or not you know, the levels of taxes are high enough, or whether there should be wealth taxes, or about where money's come from, and whether that raises kind of ethical questions about whether or not it's legitimate to give it away. So I think contextualized in philanthropy, is really vital if we're going to make sure it's a sort of positive force in society in the future.

Julia Campbell:

Absolutely. I think that's incredibly relevant. I absolutely love that. It's all about thinking about the future being proactive rather than being reactive. And I teach that a lot with my students and my clients. And one of the articles that caught my eye that you had written was for the third sector. And it was called Why aren't more charity supporting community building initiatives? And it was about the changes and the challenges brought about by the pandemic, but the opportunity created and you right, it launched a remarkable upsurge of community spirit, which I absolutely saw here in my local community I saw nationally I saw it internationally. And you pose the question for charities how Should they be doing more to support and harness this kind of renewed focus on community? So can you tell us more about some of the ideas that the nonprofits listening to this? How can we do more to support this sort of culture of philanthropy harness this renewed focus on community?

Rhodri Davies:

Yeah, it was an interesting piece to be involved in, it kind of come out of a conversation I had had with an organization here called Eden Project communities. And they kind of organized like an annual community lunch event, basically, it's you know, just it's not not for fundraiser or anything else like that. They basically just support local communities to come together and have a big community lunch event once a year, and bring people together just on the basis of that being a good thing to do sort of strengthen communities that had already been going on. And it seemed particularly interesting, in light of what happened, as you say, during the pandemic, with more and more people becoming aware of their local area and the needs around them, particularly during the sort of periods of lockdown. But the gap seemed to me from the conversations I'd had that more kind of straightforward nonprofits might look at these these things and think, oh, that that's good. And it's great that it's happening, but they didn't quite see the relevance to them or, or understand what they could be doing. And I think that's both, you know, a shame in that there is a kind of an interest for all of us as a society and sort of focusing on how we can get stronger communities. And, you know, we all have a responsibility, and I would include nonprofits in that. But there's also probably a more self interested argument for charities, which is stronger, more connected communities tend to be more likely to give them to fundraise. So actually, if as an organization, you want to try and sort of tap into that you have an interest in building those connections of community. The difficulty is, it's not necessarily as simple as if you get involved in this initiative, you will raise x pounds or dollars. So I think the challenge often is that people in involved in fundraising don't have the freedom or feel empowered to kind of take a longer term view of some of these issues and say, actually, there's benefit, you know, in a kind of, in helping strengthen those bonds of community, and we might not benefit immediately ourselves. But it'll probably do everybody good longer term. And, you know, a rising tide lifts all ships, and in some sense, and that can be a difficult argument to make, I guess, when you've got, you know, you're being expected to meet certain KPIs around fundraising and that kind of thing. So we were just trying to explore in that conversation, ways to link fundraising more with some of these broader ideas of community building.

Julia Campbell:

I agree with that, I see that all the time in my work, that, first of all, the status quo, the pull of the status quo is incredibly strong. But secondly, it's very difficult, especially for smaller charities, to take that longer term view, and to invest their time and resources and things that don't have sort of an immediate ROI return on investment. So whether it's marketing, or whether it's building a brand, or building a fundraising program, or hiring and training a new employee or an intern, if things don't have that immediate return, it can be hard to justify the cost. And the time. Did you have any examples of some collaboration or community building that you saw, or that you're seeing now?

Rhodri Davies:

We had a sort of discussion event around it, which was really interesting. And there were I guess, there was some examples that came out of that I can't think of the organization's off the top of my head, but things like Community Foundation's, that were getting involved in community building initiatives. And I think, you know, that's a really interesting example, because it's one of those areas where it feels as though funders have a huge role to play, precisely to your point there that it's often difficult for the organizations on the ground, particularly smaller organizations to have the time and space to think longer term. And actually, that's where funders can come in and support them to do that, and provide those spaces, because they can sort of slightly take that longer term view or that sort of bird's eye view and say, Look, this is good for all of us. And we are going to support and fund the space for everybody to feel empowered to take the time to focus on some of these things that don't necessarily have a kind of immediate ROI. You know, and I think that's true more broadly, when it comes to thinking about the future in all sorts of different ways for for nonprofits.

Julia Campbell:

Absolutely. I completely agree with that. Another point that you brought up that I absolutely loved. I loved your post in response to Lee Anderson's claimed the UK Member of Parliament, claiming that the rise in people using food banks is partly down to people quote, not being able to Cook or budget properly. And you write a lot about the history of philanthropy, how it affects modern giving behavior and current views on charity. And I do think we need to address this view of, you know, the distinction you say, between the deserving and undeserving poor, and how it's linked to views on charity and philanthropy. And that has come up a lot. Recently here. I'm on the school board, and we voted to pass a resolution to give the children and all the schools free lunch. Unfortunately, it didn't pass in Massachusetts. And to me, you know, just thinking about the richest nation in the world not being able to provide free lunch to all students and free breakfasts is just pretty horrifying. But it is that distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor. So how can we address these views these people that continue to believe that poverty is an individual moral failing, rather than this kind of reflection of structural flaws in society?

Rhodri Davies:

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think it's a fascinating area, because it's difficult to underestimate the extent to which these ideas of poverty and particularly around the deserving poor are kind of tied into the way in which we think about charity and philanthropy and the way that the whole thing is structured as well. And I think that's an important point, I guess, I guess the sort of first thing is, you can't necessarily change everybody's mind, there will always be people who take a sort of individual moralistic view of poverty, for those in the sort of civil society or the nonprofit world who want to challenge that. I mean, partly, it's about pushing back when those views are expressed. Partly, it's about demonstrating different ways of addressing poverty successfully, that that are not based on it being thought of as an individual failing, so kind of demonstrating through through action. And then I think a key part of that, and that was sort of what I was trying to get at in the piece is that, that actually, we need to be careful in the world of charity and philanthropy, not to see these examples of other people saying things about poverty and getting very annoyed, and then speaking out about it. But failing to acknowledge that actually, there's the danger that we reinforce some of those same problems simply because the structures that that we have, and the ways in which you know, charities and philanthropy work, reflect these views that are kind of baked into the model about there being haves and have nots, and it being the role of the philanthropist, or the donor to kind of make sensible, you know, systematic strategic decisions about, you know, who should get their money and who shouldn't, because this is kind of, historically, this was the tension between charity and philanthropy, charity was unquestioning, and it was based on kind of love, and you would give to anyone, you know, without sort of asking them to prove their need. And actually, philanthropy was often positioned as being the kind of rational cousin of charity. And it was better because you were picking between those people who were deserving and undeserving. And that, you know, unfortunately, I think is still reflected in in quite a lot of the sort of more top down and technocratic approaches to philanthropy that we have, even today. And if we want to get away from that, and to address poverty at a much more systemic level, maybe we need to be looking at sort of different models and ways of doing things.

Julia Campbell:

Absolutely. What do you think of the recent rise in giving to crowdfunding campaigns or giving to individuals? So in the US, GoFundMe is actually known as the biggest provider of health care, because people actually crowd fund for health care costs, because, of course, in the United States, they're exorbitant and completely insane. So what do you think of this rise of donors and people actually giving to individuals and sort of issuing the middleman of the nonprofit and I'm not sure if that's a trend in the UK,

Rhodri Davies:

it actually is a sort of fascinating thing in the Financial Times couple of weeks ago, showing Yeah, huge rise in this, which is, you know, was doubly surprising, because obviously, we often feel as though because we've got the National Health Service that, you know, we're not really paying for health care, but I think partly because of the strains that have been put on the NHS during COVID people are turning to privatized health care and to crowdfunding as a way of of raising money here as well. I guess for me, it's, I mean, I have quite a few concerns about it. But I think fundamentally, I just think it's fascinating and something we really need to pay attention to is one of the key trends within in philanthropy. In giving in a way often think of it it from a historical point of view as almost technologies, bringing us full circle right back to the oldest possible models of giving, because we're kind of talking about person to person interactions. And we're not limited to doing it at the level of the parish or you know, the village anymore, we can do it globally or nationally or whatever. There's some good things about that, I guess if you know, human connection and being asked by an identifiable person is what drives giving. Maybe we'll get more giving overall as a result. The danger, though, I guess, is that we reintroduce some of the challenges that charities were kind of created in the first place to overcome, which is all of those individual biases that we bring to the table when we make decisions, and particularly some of those questions about the deserving and the undeserving poor. You know, I think they're an issue when we're talking about formalized charities and nonprofits. But they're even more of a problem if you're talking about individuals, literally picking who is or isn't deserving of, of getting their money. You know, there is evidence out there, I've read some interesting papers about medical crowdfunding to show that, as you might expect, there were all kinds of sort of racial biases people have, they're much more likely to give to people who look like them, and are of the same class as them and all this kind of thing. So I'd be very worried if we were shift towards that as the sort of default model for funding social goods. I guess my my final my final thought, and I keep saying this to people and charities is, rather than just standing by and going, Oh, it's, you know, that's a trend, isn't it terrible. If that happens. For my money, charities, and nonprofits need to make a much stronger positive case about why they are necessary as intermediaries precisely to overcome those challenges. You know, if the problem is people are going to end up bringing biases to the table and making judgments about who is deserving and not deserving charities need to be able to say, that's why we're still important in this day and age, and why it's better to give via us, and I'm not sure many of them are making that strong argument at the moment.

Julia Campbell:

Wow, you actually could have read my mind for my next question. So in the United States, we have something called the Edelman Trust Barometer, and the interview us adults. And in 2021, they found that 50% of US adults, do not, quote, trust nonprofits to do the right thing. So do you think trust in nonprofits is decreasing?

Rhodri Davies:

I think this whole question of trust, I think, is really interesting in that when I've seen some other research on this that tries to break down the difference between generalized trust in nonprofits or the nonprofit sector, versus trust in individual organizations, and from what I've seen, there tends to be people have an enormous amount of cognitive dissonance, where when you ask a person, do you trust nonprofits or charities, and now they might have read all these these narratives in the media? And they say, oh, no, they're all you know, they spend too much on overheads that everybody gets paid too much. They're not trustworthy. And then you say, but what about the nonprofits you support? Or you volunteer with? Are they not trustworthy? And people will say, No, no, they're great, absolutely amazing. They're all incredibly hard working, and I trust them. And so it's because people don't really think in those generalized terms about nonprofits and charity and philanthropy. And we talk about it because we work in the sector, but actual people, you know, they don't talk about those kinds of things. So they talk about their relationship with the nonprofits, they know. And they do trust them. So I guess that's where I think this question of trust sometimes gets a little bit overstated. Although I wouldn't want to pretend it's not a problem at all.

Julia Campbell:

I absolutely love what you said about how it's up to us to make the case that we are necessary that we are needed, and that we are impactful. And that goes back to my theme of the year, which is to get nonprofits to be more proactive, and less reactive to stop sitting back, like you said, and reading these articles and saying, oh, woe is me. There's not enough money out there, like coming from that scarcity mindset. And thinking, No, we need to be proactive in showing our worth. Because what we're doing is worthy of money. It's worthy of attention and resources. So let me see. I want to switch gears a little bit. I want to talk about your book, public good by private means, which tells the story of philanthropy through the ages. How did it come about?

Rhodri Davies:

Yeah, so I wrote that one a few years ago when I worked at Charities Aid Foundation Caf here in the UK. And it's sort of I mean, again, it was a happy accident in a way and that somebody at some point said oh, it would be nice to have, you know, a short paper A report about the history of philanthropy in the UK. And I said, Well, I'll do that. And I started doing it, and it slightly ballooned. And then it kind of became a book almost without me noticing it. And thankfully, Caf sort of said, you know, great run with it, and supported me to do that. And so the book came out, and it essentially kind of tries to look at the history of philanthropy in the UK. But obviously, it touches on other places as well. And do it thematically, because I think, you know, that's the thing that, to me is most interesting about the history of philanthropy is you can you can look at it chronologically and that that's great. But actually, when you sort of think what are the themes that keep coming up and coming around again, and again, that's where you get a sense of the relevance to today? Because there are all of these questions and issues and concerns that just, you know, we often feel in the world of Flint be like, we're discovering these things for the first time or like, we have to come up with the answers. And actually, you tend to find that it's very far from being you know, most of these things are very far from being new. And there are often lots of people who've thought about them before or struggle with the same issues. And I feel like there's so much more we can learn by digging into that history more. So it's kind of, I've made it a big part of my work ever since I wrote the book.

Julia Campbell:

That's fantastic. And where can we get this book? We can get it on Amazon, I'll put the link to it.

Rhodri Davies:

Yeah, you can get that on Amazon. And actually, I should give a plug there is just handed into my editor, although I need to wait for, you know, revisions and things, a new book that will be coming out next year with Bristol University Press as well called what is philanthropy for, which is a kind of short guide to Yeah, to the history. But also what are the kind of key issues in philanthropy at the moment? So keep an eye out for that one.

Julia Campbell:

Wow, can you give us a couple of the key issues? What's the future? What's in store?

Rhodri Davies:

So the framing of the book is I mean, it's similar to this conversation in a way is that it starts with the question of, you know, what is philanthropy? And the way I've tried to answer it is to say, it's very hard to say what philanthropy is, but we can look at some of the things it isn't, and try and compare it with those. So kind of why is philanthropy not the same as charity? Why is it not the same as justice? Why is it not the same as you know, the private sector, and try and kind of pick out the issues from that, and a lot of them go to the stuff we've been talking about, you know, it's about understanding the power dynamics within it, understanding where money comes from understanding how you can make philanthropy a positive force in a democracy rather than a kind of anti democratic one. So it's all of those things.

Julia Campbell:

Fantastic. All right. Well, where can people find you learn more about you, and read some of these fantastic articles?

Rhodri Davies:

We'll have a website forthcoming pretty soon for philanthropy matters and you think tank so it's not live yet, but please do keep an eye out for that. In the meantime, best places to find me. I'm on Twitter at Rhodri underscore H underscore Davis. And if you like the history stuff, I also run a Twitter feed called for literacy, like illiteracy, but with a pH on it. That's all about kind of books in history about philanthropy. I also blog on medium app for literacy as well. So that's a good place to find some other kind of longer form stuff that I'm working on.

Julia Campbell:

Fantastic. Well thanks Rhodri for joining me today. And I can't wait to get the new book.

Rhodri Davies:

Great. Well, thanks ever so much for having me. It's been really fun to have a chat.

Julia Campbell:

Well, hey there, I wanted to say thank you for tuning into my show, and for listening all the way to the end. If you really enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to subscribe to the show and your favorite podcast app, and you'll get new episodes downloaded as soon as they come out. I would love if you left me a rating or review because this tells other people that my podcast is worth listening to. And then me and my guests can reach even more earbuds and create even more impact. So that's pretty much it. I'll be back soon with a brand new episode. But until then, you can find me on Instagram at Julia Campbell seven seven. Keep changing the world nonprofit unicorn