Conversations With Africa Grantmakers: Reflections on Navigating Roles and Relationships
“People have to get out of their bubbles and get out of their techy-techy solutions and their entrepreneurialism. We need to trust people to be resilient and get them the funds.”
We are pleased to announce our new publication, "Conversations With Africa Grantmakers: Reflections on Navigating Roles and Relationships." This report presents snapshots from conversations that took place between November 2019 and February 2020 with 17 grantmakers. We wanted to learn about their career paths, how they perceive their roles, and their perspectives on the grantmaking process. We organized their comments into four themes:
Navigating roles and relationships
Understanding different contexts
Forming collaborative relationships
Understanding change
These grantmakers reflect a range of perspectives. They were born in different countries, come from different backgrounds and work for different types of funding organizations based in different countries. Regardless of their grantmaking portfolio, these reflections will resonate with experienced grantmakers and provide useful insights for new grantmakers.
AGAG's annual conferences and regional convenings have provided consistent opportunities for grantmakers funding in Africa to build relationships with a diverse community of their peers. AGAG has been shaped and sustained by the people who have been part of its evolution. It has demonstrated the power of networks and their positive influences.
This report is part of AGAG's 20th Anniversary Legacy Project to document our history and share lessons and insights from our work over the past two decades in promoting philanthropy to benefit communities across Africa.
Download the Executive Summary HERE and the full report HERE
The following are excerpts from the Executive Summary:
Navigating Roles and Relationships - Career Pathways and Learning from Experience
Few of these grantmakers started their careers intending to work in philanthropy but some took a more intentional approach to work in philanthropy.
Grantmakers are often seen as the primary arbiters of funding decisions but face challenges in influencing strategy and funding decisions. This is often the case within hierarchical organizations and where leadership has limited knowledge about the communities they are funding. Although none expected to have complete autonomy about funding decisions, some shared constraints reflecting how little influence grantmakers can have on funding decisions.
Many grantmakers said their experiences have taught them to embrace the “messiness” of the process. They acknowledged the power dynamics inherent in grantmaking. Power dynamics can hinder candid conversations and preempt the two-way learning necessary to balance these dynamics and form genuine partnerships.
Understanding Different Contexts
Listening and learning are ongoing fundamentals if grantmakers want to understand the dynamic context in different countries. Regardless of their individual backgrounds, most grantmakers emphasized that continuous learning is both a responsibility and a benefit of working with a range of different organizations and colleagues seeking positive change.
Grantmakers underscored the importance of exposing themselves to different opinions and perspectives. The organizations they fund provide important information and analyses, but they are one of many reliable sources to understand the forces shaping current situations.
Forming Collaborative Relationships
There are numerous informal and formal ways grantmakers funding in Africa work together. Options range from seeking advice to engaging in shared learning to being a part of pooled funding efforts. All of these can be valuable, successful, or challenging experiences. For new grantmakers and grantmakers based in different countries without a local office or ongoing presence in the countries where they fund, local grantmakers are a valuable resource for understanding the local context.
Building strong collaborative relationships can prove difficult. Many factors such as the different regulations, structures, and operating principles that govern philanthropy within and between countries can be barriers to collaboration. Funding organizations often establish their priorities and strategies without consultation with other funding organizations or stakeholders and prioritize demands to demonstrate the impact of their specific funding investment leading them to view their support in isolation.
Funder networks are valuable resources for collaboration and learning among grantmakers. Networks of funding organizations are helpful in building collaborative relationships and providing opportunities for grantmakers to get to know and learn along with others. AGAG has played an especially unique role in providing a forum that helps to connect diverse funders based inside and outside of Africa.
Understanding Change
It is important for grantmakers to understand how the changes within the philanthropic sector impact their work. Learning from experience and using those insights to shape practice is an ongoing process. Funding programs can do harm when decisions about what is needed are made for people rather than by and with the people who will be affected. There is more diversity in the leadership and grantmaking staff of funding organizations, including those from Africa involved in funding in Africa. There are also more grantmaker networks and philanthropy support organizations across Africa.
Grantmakers recognize the importance of supporting organizations that are anchored in their respective communities. When the majority of funding goes to organizations headquartered outside of Africa it does not help to strengthen or sustain new or existing civil society infrastructure. This approach also ignores Africa’s large youth population, who are creating organizations and movements that reflect their priorities and aspirations for a greater role as change agents.
There are issues in philanthropy that still need attention. The agendas, attitudes, and narratives about Africa that shape the grantmaking process can engender negative perspectives that must change. The desire to show immediate results runs counter to the understanding that significant change requires long-term investments.