Pay for the typical FTSE 100 CEO in 2020 has already surpassed the amount the average UK worker earns in an entire year. High Pay Centre argues that much more can be done to achieve a better balance between those at the top and everybody else, in this blog originally posted on High Pay Centre website on 5 January.
FTSE 100 CEOs only need to work until just before 17.00 on Monday 6 January 2020 in order to make the same amount of money that the typical full-time employee will in the entire year.
The calculation for ‘High Pay Day 2020’ is based on research by HPC and the CIPD, the professional body for HR and people development, showing that:
- Top bosses earn 117 times the annual pay of the average worker
- In 2018 (latest available data) the average FTSE 100 CEO earned £3.46 million, equivalent to £901.30 an hour
- In comparison, the average (as defined by the median) full-time worker took home an annual salary of £29,559 in 2018, equivalent to £14.37 an hour
- To match average worker pay in 2020, FTSE 100 CEOs starting work on Thursday 2 January 2020 only need to work until just before 17.00 on Monday 6 January – just three working days (33 hours)
High pay will be a key issue in 2020 as this is the first year that publicly listed firms with more than 250 UK employees must disclose the ratio between CEO pay and the pay of their average worker. Under changes to the Companies Act (2006), firms must now provide their CEO pay ratio figures and a supporting narrative to explain the reasons for their executive pay ratios. The first round of reporting will be seen in annual reports published in 2020.
Compared with last year, CEOs now have to work slightly longer to make the median UK salary, after their pay fell from £3.9 million. However, the fact that it now takes them until teatime, rather than lunchtime, on the third working day of the year to pocket a sum of money that half of workers did not earn for an entire year’s work in 2019 rather puts this slight fall into perspective.
How major employers distribute pay across different levels of the organisation plays an important role in determining living standards. CEOs are paid extraordinarily highly compared to the wider workforce, reflecting an approach to business that has made the UK one of the most unequal countries in the developed world.
If we want to raise incomes for low and middle earners, measures that will enable them to get a fairer, more proportionate share of the spend on pay distributed by big companies will be of critical importance.
The decision for the Barrow Cadbury Trust to take another step and become a Living Wage Funder was an easy one for us as we were already a Living Wage Employer. The Trust has a long history of tackling and addressing the root causes of poverty and disadvantage and the Living Wage campaign fits with a number of our over-arching concerns, one of which is tackling gender disadvantage. A majority of the low paid workforce are women. Rather than being heavy handed about our grantees becoming Living Wage employers, we try to support anyone we fund if they’re interested in finding out more. As funders we have both hard and soft power to encourage those we fund to explore becoming a living wage employer.
The process for us to gain accreditation as Living Wage Funder was fairly simple requiring us to make some very small changes. As much of our funding already goes into long term research, policy and influencing work rather than front line, short term direct services, and funding staff posts, we contribute to only a very small number of low paid roles. So for the Trust there is less of an impact on our grant making than there might be for some of the larger volume funders.
We made some small changes to our application and assessment process adding additional questions, and where relevant we have proposed increased salaries to encourage grantholders and prospective applicants to think about building a Living Wage workforce. We signpost those who want to find out more about becoming a Living Wage Employer to the Living Wage Foundation, but we understand that it is not always an easy thing to do and so also offer to cover accreditation fees for smaller organisations.
We have found that the Living Wage Funder scheme is flexible. We‘re a supportive group of trusts and foundations and are very happy to help funders contemplating signing up to think through the implications. As an anti-poverty organisation, it’s important that we use the resources at our disposal to advocate for and encourage the scheme, and to see how we can enable more charities to become Living Wage Employers.
Find out more on how your organisation can join the Living Wage.
All new markets take time to evolve and mature. There are constantly new suppliers entering and leaving the field, along with waves of innovation occurring around products and services. The social investment market is no different and NPC has been observing and contributing to its development since the beginning.
We are encouraged by the growth of the social investment market. In the UK, the market was estimated to be worth over £2.3bn as of the end of 2017, an increase of 50% from 2015 and spread across 4,000 transactions[1]. But despite this growth, the market is still not fully functioning—amongst other issues, available financing options are often too expensive for charities and social enterprises (VCSEs), there are significant knowledge and capacity gaps and the market is not as diverse as it could be. This is not surprising in such early days of a market — it’s not going to be perfect from day one.
The Connect Fund was set up in 2017 to improve the social investment market in England — as a partnership between the Barrow Cadbury Trust and the Access Foundation. The fund has carefully identified its role in the ecosystem — what it can and can’t influence — and focuses specifically on strengthening the infrastructure — for example developing shared tools and resources and improving connections and linkages.
Through its provision of finance and support to social investment intermediaries, such as Key Fund or Big Issue Invest, and voluntary sector infrastructure organisations, such as Community Action Suffolk or Disability Rights UK, the Connect Fund promotes collaboration, champions impact and convenes new and existing voices.
For example, the Fund has invested in Singlify — affordable software management for the social investment sector, allowing social investment funds to better manage investment portfolios. And it has supported various regional membership organisations, such as a grant to Medway Voluntary Action to create a social investment champion programme, training local sector leaders to act as advocates and mentors for small local VCSEs wanting to explore and access social investment.
Two years after launch, with £2.2m in grants and investments disbursed to 52 projects (out of an overall £6m commitment), the Fund asked NPC to assess the delivery and progress of its programme to date, hear from grantees on what is working well and understand how it could maximise its impact over the lifetime of the fund. It’s too early for a systematic evaluation of the Fund, but we have published an interim learning report .
Although it’s early days, we found the Fund is making great progress. It is particularly valued by its grantees for its approach — flexible funding, a supportive team and encouraging collaboration and connections between grantees.
And it is contributing towards important outcomes to strengthen the market. The extent of this contribution is clearly harder to assess — what is the Connect Fund’s specific role in, for example, increasing diversity within the market or building trust between VCSEs and social investors? But we are confident, through surveys and conversations with grantees, that the Connect Fund has played a role in the headway being made. Among other things, VCSE infrastructure organisations have greater knowledge and capacity to support their members around social investment than 18 months ago. ‘Cold spots’ of social investment have been targeted — by region, demographic and sector. And 241 new networks, collaborations or partnerships have been established through the fund.
That being said, the market still has numerous issues that need addressing, most of which relate directly to front-line VCSEs and therefore are harder for the Connect Fund to influence. But areas highlighted by grantees that fall within the Fund’s remit include making more face-to-face connections between organisations, continuing its mission to increase diversity, and working closely with investors around language, terminology and simplifying investment.
More detail on the progress made to date and remaining challenges for the Fund are highlighted within the learning report. We’re excited to see the Fund, in partnership with Access, embed these learnings in the next iteration of its funding and continue its vital role in strengthening the market.
[1] Big Society Capital (July 2018), Size of the UK Social Investment Market
Ade Lamuye, a reporter and immigration campaigner for young undocumented migrants shares her experience of taking part in Media Movers. Ade is a part of We Belong, known previously as the campaign group Let Us Learn.
Throughout the first year of Media Movers I’ve had interactions with extremely influential media organisations, which included a BBC soap, Channel 4 and VICE. Although I did not attend all of them, one memorable interaction would be with VICE and Broadly. This is because one of the editors who attended, Zing Tsjeng, shared with the group her own personal experience with immigration and the hurdles she had to jump through. Also, the environment during the interaction was relaxing because those who attended came ready with questions and showed actual interest past the idea of just getting a story — they came in wanting to know about our individual stories and to get more information.
My experience as a ‘Media Mover’ began with an informal but practical day of introductions and learning how to engage with the media, something we would be doing throughout the upcoming months. Coming into the group as a journalist, I had some idea about how to work with different media organisations but the day gave me the opportunity to interact with the other young people that I would be working with, and it also gave me the chance to understand the importance of self care and ‘peer support’.
Migrants telling their personal stories about immigration and their experience with the Home Office can be such a heavy topic, particularly in the cases where the young people affected are left helpless by their family and their government. Peer support and self care highlighted by the On Road team made me realise how important it is to share with others. We spent months telling strangers our personal and emotional stories, and what was amazing about being part of Media Movers was that the team made it clear you had the power to say no — no to questions you don’t want to answer and no to part of your personal struggles you don’t want to share.
Overall, this past year has been wonderful and it’s provided me with great insight into how to pitch to other media organisations outside of print, and I’ve learnt how to be comfortable sat across from senior members. But most importantly, being a part of the project has taught me that everything takes time and the result may not be instant but you work to make it happen.
Kate Llewellyn, an On Road project manager, who also ran the All About Trans project.
Having run All About Trans for a few years, I was really curious to see how we could start working with young people with irregular immigration status – we had support from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Explore and Test grant, which was a great approach for the pilot. I guessed there would broadly be similarities between the two projects, but wasn’t sure what to expect on the media side of things – would journalists see irregular immigration status as a new, fresh angle and be up for meeting the group, or would they think the experiences were something well-covered already?
Also, there’s always a lot of thought that goes into the best way to explain what it is that people are going through, and although I’d done a stack of reading, chats with people in the sector and consultation with young people who have irregular immigration status, I wasn’t sure yet how we’d go about explaining these experiences to the media without getting stuck on the legal explanations.
It was really obvious though, once the group got together in July last year, there wasn’t going to be a problem bringing these issues to life, and working out how to get this simple explanation across would come quickly. I was struck when we bought the group together for the first time by the energy and spark in the room, and the eloquent way people spoke about their experience.
After the first day of Media Movers, I was excited to get stuck in with this fiery group – made up of 10 young people, coming from organisations and campaign groups including Let Us Learn / We Belong, Brighter Futures, Coram Rights Trainers, PRCBC.
The year went past in a blink – the Media Movers took part in ten interactions with organisations across the UK media including LBC, VICE, Channel 4 News and Creative Diversity, ITN News, ITV, Times, Metro.co.uk and BBC teams. Interactions are what we call friendly and informal meet-ups between the media and people with experience of a particular issue – essentially a good chat that gives media professionals an experience that makes them connect emotionally with the issue at hand. All the while, we ran monthly peer support sessions – mini trainings or discussions, a space that’s always tied to action.
Everyone was a little nervous as we headed into the first interaction, and we had a big chat about how to kick things off with the journalists. With All About Trans, there’s broadly a reluctance to share a personal story off the bat, but the Media Movers were far more relaxed with doing this. My gut was that it would be good to challenge ourselves to be tighter on boundaries – not beginning with a really personal story but giving people the chance to click with each other, whether over a shared hobby or their meaningful item.
I feel like that paid off, as the Media Movers began to see their story like holding a deck of cards – sharing what feels right and relevant and holding back what’s not relevant, or what they didn’t feel comfortable to share, making sure there’s no burn out in the long run. I love it, genuinely, when people say no to me – no, actually I don’t want to do this interaction, no, I’m not okay to talk about that. Seeing people look after themselves is a joy.
With the interactions themselves, it felt like there was an opportunity after Windrush and all the work the sector had been doing – I suspect there was a momentum that journalists felt, making them want to find out more about this little heard of experience.
When we were in the room at an interaction, I was fascinated to see the journalists’ reactions to the group – there were some surprises. When explaining what irregular immigration status is to the Managing Editor of The Mail on Sunday, a Media Mover found out that his wife is a migrant herself and he’d had a pretty good sight over the immigration processes. But there was total shock from a few media professionals the group met with – people who saw themselves as very progressive and in the loop – who had no understanding of the process, in particular the 10 year route.
The disbelief and confusion from the media professionals, a lot being parents of similar aged people, was obvious. It was the everyday that seemed to be moving them – the description of people sitting down to UCAS and realising they can’t apply for student finance, or heading out of school and then not being able to apply for a job. Journalists hated thinking of young people being blocked, and this was no different for the Media Movers.
Coming to the end of the grant, I was desperate to carry on with the project that the Media Movers had built with On Road. It felt like we were on the edge of a bigger understanding of this area, and I didn’t want that opportunity to be lost.
So it’s my absolute pleasure to announce two bits of good news. Not only have we been given support from Unbound Philanthropy to run Media Movers for three more years in London, but we’ve just been awarded funding from the Barrow Cadbury Trust and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust to run Media Movers in the North of England over three years. A bigger announcement on that last one coming soon!
For those of you looking for an addition to your summer reading list, I have a strong recommendation – ‘You are what you read’ by Jodie Jackson.[i] Jackson, a partner at the Constructive Journalism Project[ii] and one of this year’s CJA Media Awards judges, has spent the last decade researching the psychological impact of the news, finding a negativity bias in reporting that leads to a sense of ‘crisis’ and lack of hope amongst readers.
The NCVO Constructive Voices project highlighted the 2019 Digital News Report, which showed nearly a third of people say they actively avoid the news because it has a negative effect on their mood and they feel powerless to change events.[iii] Constructive Journalism sets itself apart from this, remaining critical, but also seeking to foster conversation, hope and action.
Within criminal justice reporting a negativity bias is all too apparent. Of course, the multitude of issues plaguing the criminal justice system invite criticism, and raising the public’s awareness of the challenges is important. But Jackson argues that explaining the possible solutions is also vital.
The 2017 report Reframing Crime and Justice[iv] also highlighted ‘It’s commonly thought that there is little government or society can do to reduce crime. Communications that dwell on the problems of the criminal justice system, but do not suggest solutions, will trigger fatalism.’ The annual CJA Awards help to combat this negativity by promoting the innovative and effective work of Outstanding Organisations and Outstanding Individuals across the country. (The 2019 awards are now open for nominations!)
The CJA also presents an award for Outstanding Journalism. This year we have worked with a group of experts including journalists, CJA members and people with lived experience to refresh the criteria and nominations process and ensure the award champions journalism that drives the conversation forward.
Why have we done this? Talking with CJA members last summer when developing our strategy[v], there was a recurring theme – the need to positively engage with the public debate about criminal justice and to change public opinion:
‘We need to change public opinion – it can be done. Look at public attitudes to smoking 25 years ago.’
‘The general public are key stakeholders. Rehabilitation is a shared responsibility. We need the public to help people re-connect and not be stigmatised.’
‘We need to leverage support from the public, to bring people with us.’
‘This sector tends to preach to the converted, not those who need to be convinced.’
It became clear that a key element of achieving the CJA’s vision of a fair and effective criminal justice system is through influential communications with the public through the media. Inspired by the Mind Media Awards good practice criteria for mental health reporting,[vi] the CJA’s expert group has developed our own good practice criteria for criminal justice reporting, drawing on constructive journalism and reframing principles. The criteria[vii] include:
- Show what works, not just what is broken.
- Include ‘hidden’ voices and issues.
- Challenge myths and avoid stereotypes, clichés, negative terminology and sensationalism.
- Portray individuals’ experiences authentically, humanely and sensitively.
- Set individuals’ experiences within a wider social policy context.
- Influence and inspire people to think differently, care about the issue and take positive action.
We will promote these principles to the sector and media through our awards and we also plan to work with the National Union of Journalists to produce more detailed guidance on criminal justice reporting. This is a timely piece of work because of the growing interest in the role of the media on public perceptions of criminal justice. For example, the London Violence Reduction Unit’s new strategy includes an objective to ‘change the message around violence’ as they recognise that ‘the way in which issues are represented by the media […] shapes our views and as a result, can shape our behaviour.’
Our expert group also recognised the growing volume and quality of digital media including blogs, vlogs and podcasts, which often allow individuals to bypass traditional media outlets and to develop their own criminal justice related content. We are therefore excited to introduce a new Outstanding Digital Media Champion category to celebrate and promote the growing importance of these mediums.
The judges for the 2019 Media Awards are: Danny Shaw (BBC Home Affairs Correspondent), Raphael Rowe (Reporter for Netflix, the One Show and Panorama), Penelope Gibbs (Author of Reframing Crime and Justice), Jodie Jackson (Constructive Journalism Project) and Nadine Smith (CJA trustee).
For more information about the CJA Media Awards and how to nominate or email [email protected]
[i] https://www.jodiejackson.com/you-are-what-you-read/
[ii] https://www.constructivejournalism.org/
[iii] https://www.ncvo.org.uk/about-us/media-centre/constructive-voices/about-constructive-journalism
[iv] http://www.transformjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Reframing-crime-and-Justice-a-handy-guide_Transform-Justice.pdf
[v] http://criminaljusticealliance.org/cja-strategy-2019-2022-connecting-change/
[vi] https://www.mind.org.uk/news-campaigns/mind-media-awards/2017-mind-media-awards-criteria/
[vii] http://criminaljusticealliance.org/criminal-justice-alliance-media-awards-2019/
In libel-proofing their book, The Secret Barrister will no doubt have entered “Keres & Co” into the search engine to ensure that, in name at least, this firm was their creation. If anything, Keres & Co is the creation of the Ministry of Justice and its subsidiary the Legal Aid Agency.
Over the past decade, criminal defence has transitioned from being an honourable and moderately profitable discipline of law to one reduced to trying to minimise the amount of work conducted at a loss. The 2014 Otterburn report found that criminal law firms run on an average profit margin of 5%. Since then, defence practices have suffered an 8.75% cut imposed by the Ministry of Justice, a downturn in volume due to clients being released under investigation and fewer prosecutions, and a recent trend by the Legal Aid Agency to reduce payments for time spent reviewing evidence. Low fixed fees for police station work put pressure on on-call solicitors to get matters processed efficiently. The prospect of out of hours work ahead of a full day in court is not conducive to wellbeing. The police, unlike lawyers, work on a shift system and so have little incentive to speed things up. And a defence solicitor can spend hours with a client in a police station only for Keres & Co to pitch up post-charge, claiming to have been sent by the family, and sweep the client away with one quick signature. Ultimately it is often more time efficient for on-call solicitors to delegate these attendances to unqualified reps so that they can continue with other fee-earning or administrative duties.
Fees for court work are insufficient too: one stark example is the £330.33 paid to a defence firm if a case goes to the Crown Court but the prosecutor drops charges shortly before the trial. This amount is meant to cover the time spent preparing the case, representing the defendant at the magistrates’ court, instructing experts, visiting prisons and speaking to witnesses. In many cases fixed fees are so unrewarding that firms can only survive by introducing privately funded work, or focussing on large multi-defendant page-heavy cases, both of which take senior lawyers away from standard criminal defence work. Survival is based upon the increasingly bloody battleground of large cases. The alternative is for firms to stop providing standard criminal defence work altogether.
Caught between an increasingly uncooperative Crown Prosecution Service and a Legal Aid Agency determined to reduce payments, firms are getting tired of the ongoing battle to find margins of profitability. Significant numbers of highly regarded firms have taken the view that criminal legal aid work is being devalued beyond viability, paving the way for a two-tier system of large factory firms or Keres & Co type firms. Clients face the unpalatable choice of being passed along a conveyer belt of lawyers and clerks or risking their liberty in the hands of firms prepared to cut corners to ensure profitability.
The Ministry of Justice tells itself that while firms are still prepared to conduct criminal defence work, there is no issue. The auditing process coupled with peer reviews, it believes, can weed out poor quality. In reality, the oppressive regime imposed by the Legal Aid Agency does not assess quality by outcomes or caseloads but by the ability to jump through compliance hoops. Firms choosing to focus on outcomes and genuine client retention are penalised.
The current criminal legal aid contract is becoming unfeasible for firms who pride themselves on high quality provision, leading to the rise of the Ministry of Justice’s own Frankenstein’s monster – firms which put profit before those they represent. It is only when the Ministry of Justice accepts this that legally aided clients will get the robust defence that they deserve.
This blog has been cross posted from Transform Justice
Their new criminal justice report can be found here.
Impact, impact, impact…. It’s a bit like the “location, location, location” of the voluntary sector! We hear it time and time again, but understanding it can be a bit puzzling and frustrating. Where do I start, what do I capture, how do I do it…sometimes we allow other pressing priorities to move it to the head-scratching pile for a little while longer!
This sums up where we, and many of our members in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans Plus (LGBT+) sector were last year. We knew impact was important, but were unsure of where to start.
Then along came the Consortium’s Connect Fund project. We began our social investment journey knowing there were glimmers of potential within LGBT+ organisations, but needed space to think these through before we jumped in with the solutions. I remember describing the need for our project, but being quite honest that the end product was a bit unknown.
We were delighted to be given the opportunity by the Connect Fund to allow for those supportive head scratching moments. Our project now has the potential to transform the LGBT+ sector – in terms of social investment and with much wider implications.
The light-bulb moment came at the end of the opening phase of the project, capturing where the LGBT+ sector was and what might be the solution. Of course, there wasn’t just one solution! There are many. Straightaway we knew that one of the massive roadblocks preventing LGBT+ organisations from accessing social investment was the lack of coordinated approaches to impact. How can we ask investors to engage with us if we can’t properly articulate both the financial and social returns we are offering?
Working with our fabulous consultants Traverse, who have deep understanding of diversity issues and outcomes and impact measurement, we all got rather excited when we realised what we needed was an LGBT+ Outcomes Framework.
Yes, I know, there it is, my infrastructure geekery was in overdrive. We knew there was only one way to make this work, and that was collaboration. So we pulled together a cohort of 6 LGBT+ organisations to join us on this journey. Six months later, we are ready to publish an LGBT+ Common Outcomes Framework. What it means for us is incredibly exciting. For the first time we can set the challenge to the LGBT+ sector to articulate what we all do as specialist organisations in a common way, whilst still allowing for individual nuancing.
With these common areas at the forefront, we can begin to think about the data we capture and how it is presented to create long term change for individuals. As simple as it sounds, this is game-changing for a small sector like the LGBT+ sector. It opens up new doors many having been trying to push for many years, with limited success.
Of course, this is just the beginning of the story. Now that the light-bulb is on we have no intentions of switching it off.
LGBT+ Consortium will be leading the charge by adopting this new Outcomes Framework as the basis of our Strategic Plan, and challenging others to follow suit. The hope is, by articulating impact well, we will for the first time open up future social investment, and build long-lasting sustainable LGBT+ organisations.
LGBT+ people and communities are far more visible than ever before. With this enhanced profile comes a responsibility for the sector to move to maturity. I am so very excited that LGBT+ organisations want to be at the forefront of doing things differently and articulating the difference we make for individuals in need.
Paul Roberts OBE is Chief Executive of LGBT+ Consortium, a national specialist infrastructure and Membership organisation, which focus on the development and support of LGBT groups, organisations and projects so they can deliver direct services and campaign for individual rights.
This blog has been cross posted from the Connect Fund.
A new conversation on economic growth is certainly welcome. Over a decade on from the Financial Crash of 2008 and subsequent recession here in the UK, massive inequality persists, both between and within regions. That the UK economy has the highest levels of regional disparity among OECD nations demonstrates the structural imbalances that inclusive growth seeks to address, to ensure that the benefits of economic growth are shared across every section of society – both across and within regions and places.
How inclusive growth can be developed in practice is the core question underpinning a new NLGN research project we are undertaking in partnership with Barrow Cadbury Trust. We will draw on current practice from the front line of strategy implementation and service delivery. Through a series of peer learning workshops, we will share current experience, including key challenges that organisations pioneering inclusive growth interventions have experienced, and also generate new ideas. These conversations will help to inform practitioners’ approaches. The research will also explore how communities can be placed at the heart of inclusive growth strategy and delivery, following NLGN’s vision for the future of public services as set out in our Community Paradigm report.
Our goal at the end of this process is to have brought some practical clarity to the debate around inclusive growth and to have established concrete steps through which practitioners can develop their own frameworks for action. A final report will be published in January of 2020.
Charlotte Morgan and Trinley Walker
This blog was originally posted on the New Local Government Network (NLGN) website
If you would like to find out more about the project or get involved, please contact Charlotte Morgan or Trinley Walker: [email protected] – [email protected]
“Thank you very much Massimo for those very generous words and for this most astonishing award. I must say I am really stunned, although I am sure as usual I won’t be lost for words.
I am a great believer that awards and honours are symbolic of the achievements of many hands and not of one person alone. In our foundation we work on structural change for social justice ends across a variety of disciplines. Structural change can never be brought about without many hands working together over a sustained period of time augmented with hefty doses of savvy, luck and timing. So an award to me is an award to all those many hands we work with in our own foundation, in other foundations and in civil society and beyond.
As an award though, this also comes at an opportune time, showing solidarity with us in the UK who remain determinedly European in the face of our impending changing status in the European Union. Thank you to the many of you who have extended the hand of friendship to us. And, of course, this is an award for all us women who have contributed to philanthropy over time and to the EFC itself over the past 30 years.
My first EFC board meeting was the 20th anniversary nearly 10 years ago. I was shocked to find only three other women in a roomful of 30 or so men. I want to pay tribute to those women – Ingrid Hamm, first Vice Chair, Suzanne Siskel and Betsy Campbell, who looked after me that week and have been a source of inspiration since. And to the men who supported us over the intervening years and even at times stood aside.
EFC governance has changed dramatically since then. Our first woman Chair Ewa Kulik-Bielińska brought a freshness to the role as a central/Eastern European. Many other women colleagues have stepped up and contributed greatly. This diversity is crucial as I passionately believe that no good things flow from poor governance, wherever or whatever we are doing.
We are living in difficult times and facing many challenges. As we have explored over the past couple of days, there are threats to liberté and egalité which we must all play our part in changing. We started the conference by equating ‘philanthropie’ to fraternité and I will add sisterhood to that and frame them together as solidarity. Sisterhood is powerful! As Antti Arjarva reminded me we are a broad church working in a wide variety of fields: research, climate change, culture, medicine, education and much more. Yet the key European values of liberté, egalité and solidarity can and must run through them all.
So let us all go back to work next week seeking to work in a spirit of equality and solidarity, using all the assets at our disposal to protect liberty, to increase equality and to keep improving the governance of our own organisations and that of those we support.
Thank you to all my EFC colleagues – Gerry and the staff and governing body – and of course to our own fabulous board and team at the Barrow Cadbury Trust.”
‘Liberté, Egalité, Philanthropie’ was the focus of this year’s EFC (European Foundation Centre) Annual General Assembly (AGA), and while interesting discussions of freedom and solidarity flowed among the many philanthropic institutions gathered in Paris, it was the talk of equality that resonated most with me over the three days.
The main plenary on égalité posed a call to action for foundations – to utilise their resource, their influence and their freedom of decision making to invest in systemic and structural change. The role of philanthropy should be to tackle the inequalities that current governments and markets are failing to address. While foundations cannot – and should not – try to replace the state, they have an obligation to support innovative solutions to challenges so they can prove their worth. As was pointed out during one of the Next Generation talks I attended, the money we as foundations have is in essence risk capital – we don’t expect to get it back, so we need to be bold with it. While that doesn’t mean the abandonment of good governance, there is an argument for us to take risks where the public sector cannot.
Through the work we support and partnerships we develop as a sector, we are able to see patterns of change emerging. We are able to help identify the barriers to equality that people face now and see what may be the next great struggle for civil society. This, along with our resources, gives us a power that we must own in order to fight for change. Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah, Oxfam GB’s Chief Executive, highlighted that this long-term view was a privilege of foundations. We are not curtailed by political pressures or market changes; we can invest in a vision for the future and, most importantly, see it through. This means not only repairing the problems of today but tackling the root causes of inequality to create a fairer and more just society.
We are in the midst of a climate emergency and, as Mary Robinson explained in one of the sessions, inequality is only going to become more stark over the next ten years unless we act now. One of the closing remarks was that structural change is the work of many hands, and it is the responsibility of the philanthropy sector to use its convening power to build bridges between the private sector and civil society to work together towards a common goal. Our sector has a unique voice and now is the time for us to use this in even more decisive ways.
Liz Hayes is Assistant Manager at Connect Fund, Barrow Cadbury Trust. This blog was originally published in Alliance magazine.
