This is the second in a series of conversations between Stir to Action and representatives from philanthropic foundations about their role in democratising wealth in the UK. Stir to Action’s Daniel Stanley speaks to Eli Manderson Evans, CEO of The Blagrave Trust, a national youth funder with a focus on seed funding and incubating young changemakers and youth delivery organisations across England. 

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Daniel: What do you see as the current trends or mood in the philanthropy sector, and how have these affected your work and your thinking? 

Eli: The sector is so big and, although there are clusters that work well together, it isn't always very well connected. I’d also say that the origins and distribution of wealth in the wider sector are not always transparent. There’s an assumption that money in this sector is on the left wing, but that’s not always the case in the UK – in my time at Ten Years’ Time I worked with really varied clients, which gave me an insight into where the majority of money is held.

One positive trend I’ve seen is a move towards participatory grantmaking. It’s an interesting model that in some cases works really well, but which I think also at times speaks to the discomfort around power in philanthropy and where people might seek to navigate that. At Blagrave, we see real power in devolving decision making to and providing opportunities for folks with more proximity to the issue areas they seek to address to make decisions on money. I don’t think we can escape discomfort in philanthropy – we're making decisions on accumulated wealth that wouldn’t exist if we lived in a more equitable, caring world, and I do think it's important that we don't try to escape our responsibilities with it.

Since the resurgence of Black Lives Matter in 2020, there has been some good work in the sector around racial justice, such as regranting chunks from endowments to communities of colour to make decisions, developing new funding streams, setting up new POC-led foundations, and so on. There are also some exciting developments with work being commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and others to explore economic justice more deeply – often framed as ‘systems change’, ‘new horizons thinking’, or ‘reimagining philanthropy’. There has perhaps also been recognition that the current model of moving money isn’t working – philanthropy hasn’t held back the tide of growing levels of inequality or the rowing back of hard-earned rights and protections for many marginalised communities. 

I don’t think we can escape discomfort in philanthropy – we're making decisions on accumulated wealth that wouldn’t exist if we lived in a more equitable, caring world

Philanthropy is understandably cautious about speaking to the state regarding how their shifts in the policy environment are causing big issues in society, areas we are active stakeholders in. At Blagrave, that’s something we’re spending a lot of time thinking about: we want to stay true to the role of seeding alternatives that wouldn’t get state funding, rather than absorbing resourcing gaps which are not the role of philanthropy but rather where the state’s responsibilities lie. It is not an easy dynamic to navigate, especially as we understand many of the resourcing limitations of the state, the need to support young people now, mixed with our own resourcing limitations. 

In grantmaking, it’s important to understand the need to fund more than just initiatives and programmes but instead to fully resource organisations, allowing their work to be more sustainable. This might mean supporting them to get long-term leases or even purchasing freeholds – the role of land in social justice shifts is immensely important. There have been growing moves towards the ‘funder-plus’ approach, offering additional support alongside grants, such as strengthening financial know-how, offering consultancy on the organisation’s strategy, conflict management, and so on. This is an area we are actively growing in our support offers, and we have learned from those in the sector who have long been resourcing such capacity development work.

Another trend is that of multi-year and unrestricted funding, but it’s not yet widely implemented – the charity/beneficiary model is still deeply ingrained in the sector, and this requires some interrogation. It does seem as though many foundations are trying to become more accountable to the needs of the groups and communities they support, in addition to providing the level of resources required to shift systems. Many organisations don't know how to do this, however, and philanthropic organisations are largely unaccountable both to the public and to those they seek to serve, so it's a challenge to drastically overhaul this.

You talked about the changes implemented in the wake of the 2020 protests, and there have been big movements within some parts – learning from racial and social justice movements, reckoning with colonial capital and the realities of where wealth came from. One of the ways people have reacted to that is a move towards ‘spending down’ their endowment. What are your thoughts on this approach?

The Lankelly Chase Foundation’s decision to spend down certainly caught the imagination of the sector and beyond. But foundations do often spend down in quieter or less public ways. The spend-down movement also seems more inevitable with the increased emphasis on ‘ESG’ (environmental, social, and governance standards) within organisations.

There has also been a shift in thinking about how assets are maintained. If you are seeking to do less harm within the wider economy, the level of return is inevitably going to be less than what foundations are used to – less profit generation means a natural deficit model is more likely.

What is exciting for us is connecting our asset base with our strategy, and working with a full asset approach rather than five-year grant cycles where assets are seen as distinct from the strategy. 

We could interpret ‘spending down’ as pushing the responsibility and resources out to others, rather than doing the harder work of making decisions about giving out grants and managing that wealth. How do you see this tension playing out – and how does it affect Blagrave?

We’re currently questioning our positionality in this area, asking what it means to be a good ancestor. Foundations often speak about ‘legacy’. I think it requires fully leaning into your mission in all areas of work, lifting the corners of the rug, and being intentional. For us, that means prioritising our values, committing to supporting young people and justice and making a positive impact for young people. 

We’re also very aware that the future isn't looking so bright, so spending down can look like a knee-jerk reaction to move away from responsibilities. But it’s the role of organisations like Blagrave to build the infrastructure through long-term strategies and views of change.

Blagrave has a specific remit as an organisation focused on disadvantaged young people, whereas some foundations have these broad remits of ‘economic justice’, ‘inequality’, or ‘poverty’. What difference do you think this very clear remit makes to your organisation? 

Great question. I think about this quite a lot, and I'm really fortunate to have this narrower frame. It gives us a clear mandate to have certain conversations and to do certain things, and it means that everyone on the board has a specific reason to be there: they’re passionate about supporting young people that are experiencing injustice, marginalisation, and being underserved by the current system. That guides us in a clear direction of travel.

Coming back to the question of democracy and accountability, and what we at Stir to Action would call ‘democratising wealth’, I think you could say this is less present in these conversations than it should be. And arguably, it is easier to embed those principles in your work when you have this clearer remit. How do you see the role (or lack thereof) of democracy and accountability in philanthropy more generally and with Blagrave?

I wouldn't say Blagrave is a democratic organisation per se, and I’m not sure foundations can necessarily become fully democratic – they are ultimately quite hierarchical organisations. But there are ways to devolve decision making and provide opportunities for people to make decisions not in a silo. When the geographic remit is so wide, that is harder – in terms of accountability, the level of proximity to actual people feels significant. When Blagrave sold its main estate, some of that wealth was portioned off to community foundations, which are able to be more accountable to the local area. I think there are more opportunities for democratic wealth stewardship at a local level. 

We have worked hard as a trust to diversify the kinds of people who hold power and decision making responsibilities in the trust to enable the growth of a culture where we are becoming more accountable to the young people we exist to serve, seeking to get closer to these communities. We are very much on a journey, though, and still have a lot of work to do.

I used to do some work with the Baobab Foundation, which received quite a lot of funding post-2020. Their dual BenCom structure means that they are accountable to their members in how they deliver funding, which is a great way of democratising wealth. I see this as a shining example of the ways foundations can bake in accountability structures from the get-go.

At Stir to Action we’ve written about the decline in membership and association across a whole range of civil society spaces. Foundations weren’t ever a place where this played a big part, necessarily, but perhaps this could be expanded?

Everyone involved in foundations has a personal level of accountability, even if it’s not always on a collective level. I think the makeup of boards is a really interesting space. One of the reasons I came to Blagrave was because it looked very different on the board – at the time, 50% were under the age of 27, and it was really racially diverse, with people coming from a range of backgrounds – a climate activist, a spoken word artist, a young changemaker. They all have lived experience that relates to the work of the trust, and they hold me to account in different ways.

At Blagrave, we’re aware of the risk of inaction – which is also a challenge given our size and capacity. But it’s an exciting place to be. A lot of our team are former youth workers, so they feel deeply accountable to young people. That's a brilliant dynamic to have, but it can be an uncomfortable one, as the trust structure doesn’t always enable relationships that we’d like to have. It’s a vessel with a lot of wealth and power, where the aim historically (via these types of legal structures) is to protect the money – so seeking to prioritise personal relationships and care can be challenging within the way a trust operates. Also, trustees are not working within the body of the organisation – they have busy day jobs themselves and aren’t being paid as a trustee – so board meetings, which are so focused on signing things off, doing due diligence, and holding that legal responsibility, often lack space for the learning and human relations that are really at the core of social change for me. We find ways to mitigate this dynamic through regular opportunities to visit our grant partners, attending events together, attending learning sessions, and much more, but this does require a lot of time from our board. I would love to give them a huge shout-out for their time and dedication to supporting our work. We couldn’t do it without them. 

It seems there are two key things here – making the trustees more representative – bringing people into the organisation and board from the communities the foundation is looking to serve – and looking at the dominant models that we work with within philanthropy. I think that they're both areas where there's not been as much progress as we'd like. Is one of these avenues – what the trust structure is or who the trustees are – easier or more likely to change?

Who the trustees are is so important – you will limit the ability to transform an organisation and culture if you do not have alignment with your trustees. I've often seen foundations come out with really big, bold assertions on what they're going to do, and for that to be stamped down by the board. Of course, each foundation is unique in its history and therefore in its opportunities for shifting how it works. But who is on the board is one of the biggest shifts that you can make, so this also means trustee recruitment needs to be looked at.

Each foundation is unique in its history and therefore in its opportunities for shifting how it works. But who is on the board is one of the biggest shifts that you can make

That's something I've been really working hard on these last two or three years, because to deliver the kind of strategy that I'm hoping that we can deliver in the future isn’t possible without shifting the culture of the organisation and starting to disentwine from the system. I think it's a real team effort to renegotiate a different, more caring relationship than what we largely inherit in philanthropy in its most practised form. To do this, we have been going on a journey to reflect on our positionality as an organisation with power, which also reinforces certain systems that run against our mission, and have spent a lot of time learning at all levels of the organisation. I thank the Blagrave team for all of their hard work in this area – it hasn’t been easy but we are getting there.

There will necessarily be tensions that come up when you don't do this inner work. For instance, providing training opportunities and encouraging the team to leave their desks to build relationships in real life with our partners. And the physical space you’re in is important to enable the culture you want to exude. 

Finally, what are you excited about in the world of philanthropy – and where do you see any risks?

There is an ongoing change of guard in the sector – which I’m excited to be a part of as the first CEO of an endowed foundation under 30. We’re seeing more young CEOs, as well as leaders of colour, that I think come with a very different, more critical understanding of philanthropy. 

The 2027 leadership programme seeks to change and build the make-up of foundation staff teams. Those folks are growing in their roles and establishing peer networks and initiatives that are really positively influencing the sector. I also see a lot of organising within the sector. The work of the Centre for Knowledge Equity and Civic Power Fund is really powerful here, listening to the unique positions of foundations and weaving connection points. It also seems that folks are more open to collaboration and the pooling of resources. For instance, we have a new climate justice pool fund that a couple of years ago didn’t feel that folks would be that interested in, but now they really want to be a part of it.

I’m excited about the foundations growing in their trust of the people they give grants to, embracing direct grantmaking to young people rather than through intermediaries. We’ve been sharing a lot of our learning from our Challenge and Change programme with the Co-op Foundation on this recently as they set up their own fund, the Young Gamechanger Fund, which aims to empower young people to transform their communities. 

It’s also helpful to look outside the UK, both to build solidarity and to get some wider perspective, to recognise that the forces confronting the UK are not unique. We can look to the USA, where philanthropy has been more transformational for longer, and perhaps less wedded to the long, dark past.

In terms of risks – I am concerned that there is not enough urgency. There are too many lags, with philanthropy missing some big windows of opportunity to use our independent capital to create more awareness about the dangers of AI, for instance. I also worry about our independence longer-term, as we see this political environment shift, where philanthropy might be seen as a threat to some of those shifts. And in some cases, such as the resourcing of right-wing movements (e.g. the Koch brothers in the US), it should be seen as a threat to democracy.

So I think we have a real opportunity, and a moral imperative, to be really ambitious with what we do next.

Eli Manderson Evans has been CEO of The Blagrave Trust since 2022,  and has over 10 years’ experience in policy, research and strategy roles covering connecting issue areas such as the empowerment of young campaigners, LGBTQIA+ rights, climate justice and racial justice. He also worked to connect a new generation of philanthropists to ambitious changemakers looking to transform the world today.

Daniel Stanley is Executive Director at nonprofit research initiative Future Narratives Lab, a co-owner of Stir to Action, and Strategy Associate at the Centre for Democratic Business. He has a background in community organising and social psychology, and writes and lectures on framing, narrative, and social change strategy.