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With the U.S. presidential campaign in full swing, it’s easy to confuse politics with government. The vast majority of policies and programs adopted by governments aren’t political but are in the hands and hearts not of politicians, but of public servants.
Foundations and organizations working to help society, and our planet, greatly risk limiting their impact if they miss this point. Philanthropy’s failure to learn how to connect, communicate, and collaborate with public servants in the next decade would put government’s immense budgets and resources out of reach.
Let’s set some context to make this budget point plain: The Ford Foundation’s $13.7 billion endowment couldn’t even finance the LA School district’s budget for two years. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation spent $4.7 billion on grants in 2017. But if the foundation decided to fund the New York City Police Department, it would still need to add $1 billion to reach the NYPD’s annual budget of nearly $5.6 billion. Pull out a little wider to the state level and the Gates endowment of more than $50 billion would fall a bit short of Washington state’s proposed 2019 annual budget of $54 billion.
If we try to solve the world’s problems with philanthropy alone, we are bound to fail. Governments are a key piece of the puzzle. Another look at the numbers only underscores this fact: In the average economy of developed countries, government spending makes up 40 percent of GDP. This equals approximately $30 trillion globally every year.
‘Capacity Builders’
Many foundations, to their credit, are adapting. A subset of these, which we could call “capacity builders,” focus on identifying problems in government and working toward fixing these issues. Big Win Philanthropy, a Britain-based foundation, is one of the pioneers of this new approach.
Jamie Cooper founded Big Win in 2015 to support government leaders in Africa with ambitious plans and transformational goals in the area of youth development. Because she had worked in philanthropy and global development for more than two decades, she knew that many government leaders have compelling visions for transforming their countries or specific areas of responsibility but often need practical support to deliver on them.
For example, many governments need to learn how to put in place data-driven policies and then monitor support to track their progress. Many also need communications support so they can advance policies with key players and the public. The funding gap for this type of assistance was small enough that the foundation could fill it, but the payoff to government’s increased impact has been huge.
Big Win helped the Harvard Ministerial Leadership Program, an American program that helps new education, finance, and health ministers explore innovative policies to promote youth development and create detailed plans for their implementation. The program, which was founded eight years ago, has already showed remarkable results, and it is an excellent example of the kind of partnerships we desperately need more of.
Collaborating to Expand
A little change can go a long way toward solving complex social issues. But the real benefit comes when we begin to repeat and multiply proven solutions thousands or even millions of times.
This strategy is at the heart of another capacity-builder — Bernard van Leer Foundation. Mike Feigelson, executive director of the foundation, realized that all of the small-scale trials in early-childhood development the foundation had funded couldn’t expand its reach without increased collaboration with government. To foster government relationships, the foundation hired Cecilia Vaca Jones, former coordinating minister of social development of Ecuador. Bernard van Leer now has 20 direct agreements with governments at the national, state, and local levels in the countries where it works.
For both Big Win and van Leer, working in close partnership with government officials in the countries where they operate is core to their approaches. Both work hard to understand the challenges faced by public servants, speak “government” language, and look to create partnerships that benefit everyone.
Learning, Not Lobbying
Big Win Philanthropy and the Bernard van Leer Foundation have recognized that the key to working with government is to make sure public servants have opportunities to learn the smartest ways to solve problems. Instead of lobbying to advance one specific solution, they listen to the local needs of government and work to adapt their programs to incorporate those needs. In many cases, they also help fill gaps in knowledge and skills that are essential in adopting and spreading new programs.
There is a huge potential for philanthropic foundations to work more closely with government. And, likewise, government also needs to step up to the plate. Public servants and policy makers need better and smarter access to the latest ideas, skills, and approaches. Despite this, research and experience show they are starved of these essential tools of change.
How Public Servants Learn
Government employees are people too. As we’ve learned through our research at Apolitical, many, if not most, of them went into government for the same reason people go into the nonprofit world: They are deeply passionate about social change.
In January 2019, Apolitical sent a Public Service Learning Survey to 18,000 people working in and with government. The survey was supplemented with interviews and focus groups. It contained 50 questions that explored what motivates and encourages government workers to learn. We had more than 1,000 responses, with slightly more coming from managers than rank-and-file workers. The results included the following:
Why they learn. More than 80 percent said they learned to be better at their jobs.
Usefulness of resources. 42 percent of public servants said they have no learning resources or not very helpful resources.
External resources preferred. 60 percent reported that external resources were superior, compared with just 37 percent who preferred those offered through government.
Writing rules. More than 70 percent seek out written resources, 50 percent look for video content, and more than 30 percent use audio.
Peer networks. Public servants have indicated they want professional peer networks and value these even more than outside experts. They want to hear from other people solving the same problem; they also want to know about failure.
Technology-enabled learning. Public servants show a high interest in more technology-enabled learning, and they want to use it regularly. College-campus programs are great, but they can be expensive, have limited reach within government, and can be supplemented with online learning.
Changing Systems
Helping government learn is critical if we want to change the way the world works for the better, and technology can help do this efficiently.
The potential is mind boggling: If 1 percent of government budget could be spent 50 percent more effectively, it would unlock $150 billion in one year. That’s nearly three times the size of the Gates Foundation’s total endowment. Collaborative mind-sets alongside effective communications can help foundations’ relationship with government go from “lobbying to learning” in their work.
Momentum for this is mounting as evidenced by the investments from Co-Impact — a new global model for collaborative philanthropy and social change whose key donors are Richard Chandler, Bill and Melinda Gates, Jeff Skoll, and Rohini and Nandan Nilekani, as well as the Rockefeller Foundation. Its founder and CEO, Olivia Leland, says, “In most cases, systems change is simply not possible without partnering with government. Governments bring significant resources and infrastructure — instead of doing our own separate thing on the side, philanthropy can achieve more by supporting bold government leaders take risks, foster innovation, and use proven approaches to do it.”
At this year’s Skoll World Forum, a gathering for innovators in philanthropy, there was a growing recognition that working with governments is the only way to effectively expand social entrepreneurship, as not only do governments hold the keys to the big money but they can make, break, or facilitate effective programs through policy and regulation.
What to Do
Many problems facing the world are becoming politically more urgent and scientifically more complex: from inequality to climate change. Most, if not all, governments do not have the expertise or innovative solutions to solve these problems alone.
That’s why the next 10 years will be crucial for every foundation and nonprofit. Those of us dedicated to making the world better have a window to promote serious change, but we should not take that momentum for granted.
So, what will it take? Every foundation and nonprofit will need to have communications experts at their organizations who work to build bridges with policy makers. With the speed of change ushered in by technology, we’re all going to need to help public servants learn how to adapt to and adopt the growing complexities of policy making. There is a big social-change prize if we do. Imagine if we don’t.
Lisa Witter is co-founder and executive chair of Apolitical, a global peer-to-peer learning platform for public servants.
