The Beacon Collaborative 
The Forum is sponsored by City Bridge Trust, Cazenove Capital, Mercer, Farrer & Co and organised by Owen James Events.
The Beacon Philanthropy and Impact Forum 2022 brought together 180 prominent philanthropists and social investors, thought leaders and sector pioneers at the Guildhall in London for a day of conversation and connection.
The Forum is a space for participants to work out how to shape a more active, generous and impactful philanthropic landscape in the UK and a place to share experiences and innovative ideas.
While 2021’s Forum looked at Covid recovery, this event recognised the multiple crises that the UK and wider world are facing including the cost of living crisis, inequality, an ageing population, strained public services and the NHS, labour shortages, war in Ukraine, energy prices and climate change.
Participants listened to a range of experiences and stories from keynote speakers and panellists as they shared their ideas and approaches of how they believe giving can help ease the pain of some of these complex problems.
Attendees also had the chance to participate in 15 lively roundtable discussions to try and address some of the unique challenges within the philanthropic landscape, such as the transfer of wealth, how philanthropy can address the cost of living crisis or how best to celebrate feminist philanthropy and investment.
The Forum provides a huge opportunity for people to exchange their stories and strategies from all along the philanthropy spectrum — not all of which sat comfortably with everyone, often challenging participants’ perspectives.
But despite some differences of opinion, there were plenty of common threads too.
“Put your faith in the communities who know better”
Many speakers highlighted how critical it is to work in close partnership with communities – to listen to their challenges and needs, to relinquish control and let them lead the way in developing the interventions that will help them most.
In his opening address Giles Shilson, Chair at Bridge House Estates, announced how City Bridge Trust has joined forces with other funders from across the sector to add a new £30 million allocation to the £100 million Propel Fund – a funding initiative that puts money and power in hands of communities best placed to make change.
“I would urge all funders to challenge your much-valued independence and think about what you can do to collaborate…The challenges we face today and the communities we are so keen to serve demand nothing less.”
Connection to community is at the heart of place-based giving and creating a culture of philanthropy, said Stoke-based entrepreneur James Routledge of Sanctus.
“You draw on people’s sense of home and heritage to connect them and encourage them to give back to it… They level up the city themselves.
“A culture of philanthropy is created in association with someone’s sense of place. The sense of home is very powerful.”
“There’s no reason why a network can’t be recreated in other cities…Scale this impact and create a grassroots movement of giving that is connected back to place.”
Working with communities, listening to them and trusting them is key, said Kate Symondson of The Symondson Foundation.
Speaking on the Personal Stories panel, she told panel host Alastair Stewart OBE: “I try to do what I can to avoid any sense of being in a paternalistic or powerful role. It’s more about partnership.
“If you don’t have the lived experienced of something, you are not well or best placed to enact the change that’s needed or to sense the needs of that community. It’s putting faith in the people who do know better.”
Bill Holroyd, CBE, of The Holroyd Foundation, agreed.
“Any overlay of vanity in philanthropy is disappearing now. It’s more about collaboration and the community you’re working in, the people you’re serving, the private and the public sector coming together – that’s been the happy hunting ground for us – when you combine these sectors plus volunteers.”
The idea of placing communities at the heart of philanthropy was pushed even further by Stephanie Brobbey of The Good Ancestor Movement who believes that individuals should stop accumulating excess wealth and transfer most of their wealth and resources to communities.
She said: “Our north star is the Just Transition Framework developed under the leadership of frontline communities and grassroots leaders across the Americas.
“Under that framework, the role of capital is to build the collective capacity of communities harmed by the extractive economy and transfer power from institutions and individuals to communities who are developing their own solutions in response to multiple ecological and social crises.”
“Enabling and encouraging innovation and risk-taking”
The Forum also heard how in the face of multiple crises philanthropy has an absolutely critical role to play because of the flexibility, creativity and innovation it can offer.
“Philanthropy can reach the parts other funders cannot reach,” noted Lord Gus O’Donnell, Chairman at Frontier Economics, in the Forum’s first keynote address.
“You provide things that others don’t.”
Charity Commision Chair Orlando Fraser said philanthropy and its flexibility was more important than ever.
He said: “The Bank of England forecasts that inflation might start normalising within 18 months, and the OBR suggests we may begin to see growth returning to pre-pandemic levels in 2024. So there is a window, over the months ahead, during which philanthropists will have a major role to play in reducing the damage caused during this period to the sector. It is literally all hands to the financial pump for now.
“But philanthropic giving can of course do much more than simply keep a charity going in a time of crisis. In this respect, philanthropy is a different kind of engine to public funding, one that drives public good in a distinct way.
“It can do things governments cannot, and it can enhance what governments do provide. Philanthropy’s potential is distinct from that of the state, and is more than a way of plugging funding gaps for charities’ existing programmes.”
“High-net worth-individuals have huge potential to enable charities to grow and develop beyond their current capability….For example, by enabling and encouraging innovation and risk-taking. Charities are often reluctant to use public donations on untested methods or ideas. But it is precisely during times of social and economic crisis that we need fresh thinking.”
In her address, Dulma Clark, the head of Livebarefoot Fund, illustrated brilliantly how creativity and innovation was helping to push far beyond financial support and sustainability.
Her quest is to create value across the entire chain of production and indeed the whole shoe-making industry – from how things are sourced, to using local designers to exploring using 3D printing to make shoes resulting in a 70% reduction in waste.
“We want to reset how the industry works. We want to create a halo effect rather than just giving money and sitting back,” she said.
“As humans we are incredible thinkers and have huge capacity beyond giving. I would urge people in the room to nurture and support all the amazing start-ups and entrepreneurs – they need support beyond financial contributions. It is quite inspirational to create value add-on where the bottom line is ‘How we can regenerate the planet and how can we regenerate ourselves?’”
“To guide, enlighten and encourage”
Creativity is also critical for social impact investment which can be shaped so that it has the most positive impact while meeting investors needs.
“42% of investors want to invest sustainably but only 15% are,” Lyn Tomlinson, Head of Impact and Philanthropy at Cazenove Capital, told the Forum.
“We need asset managers to create products and solutions. We need advisers to guide, enlighten and encourage.”
“When we all play our part the results can be groundbreaking. We are all agents of change.”
“Multi-disciplinary is a thing”
At the start of the Forum, Lord Gus O’Donnell outlined a range of economic and societal challenges including backlogs in the public sector, a drop in living standards, rising costs and rising demands on charities’ services.
He presented a range of suggestions including:
- better investment in charities’ infrastructure to make them more efficient and able to deliver more frontline services
- more money going into social capital
- utilising older retired workers to form an “army of volunteers”
- more place-based philanthropy
- a step change in the number of financial advisers who can advise clients about the opportunities in philanthropy
- the government appointment of a Philanthropy Champion.
“Multi-disciplinary is a thing,” added Peter Samuelson, founder and Chair of First Star Scholars UK. “Multi-disciplinary solutions to multi-disciplinary problems.”
“And you should be brave,” he told the room.
“You have the power to force new solutions to old problems.”
The journey ahead
The Forum highlighted the multiple challenges and crises facing society and how a variety of approaches along the breadth of the philanthropy spectrum will need to be employed to address them.
And just as there are multiple problems, the event served as a good reminder that are multiple kinds of philanthropist.
Whether compelled by guilt (or not) or wanting to do more to help your home town or country, or fuelled by the desire to fill an empty void and find meaning, people have different motivations for their philanthropy and use various methods: from social impact investment, to funding communities, to nurturing future entrepreneurs.
But they all share one thing – a long road ahead.
The Forum is a space that allows philanthropists and those working in the sector to explore these different approaches, to examine and challenge how much philanthropy can achieve and what we, personally, are prepared to do?
What routes are we willing to take to get there? What would we prefer to avoid?
Ultimately each journey is personal, and however you choose to get there the general consensus is that it’s better not to travel alone.
Keeping the conversations going with Beacons Connect
After spending the day making fruitful connections, we know Forum participants don’t want to lose the momentum of the day.
Establishing Beacons Connect was partly in response to last year’s Forum where the vitality of collaboration and the value of greater communication was discussed as a means to accelerating everyone’s respective missions in growing philanthropy in the UK.
To harness the wealth of expertise and ideas in the room and to keep them moving forward, we invite you to sign up to Beacons Connect – a new private online community for philanthropists and social impact investors, hosted on the Guild platform.
Beacons Connect provides philanthropists and philanthropy professionals with a place to meet and share their experiences and knowledge.
Beacons Connect will also pilot a Fireside Chat, held in a private online live video room on the app, where a philanthropist will share their story about their giving.
And we will trial online Lunchtime Learn sessions where members can mine Beacon’s extensive expertise and ask us anything about philanthropy and social impact investing.
Beacons Connect also includes 15 separate threads for each of the Forum’s roundtable debates.
If you would like to read the key findings from each session and join the discussion then please come and join us on Beacons Connect.
The Roundtable topics were:
- Philanthropy and the great wealth transfer
- The cost-of-living crisis and the role of philanthropy
- Are we ready for the next wave of impact investing?
- Place-making in action
- Inclusive philanthropy
- Unlocking policy potential
- Creating a holistic investment portfolio
- Celebrating feminine philanthropy and social investment
- Is peer networking and support for philanthropists a must-have or nice-to-have?
- How credible is the “E” in “ESG”?
- Leveraging philanthropy for investment – backing evidence or character or both?
- Climate cohesion
- Has Covid-19 and Ukraine changed what we are prepared to give to?
- The value of small – how to make an impact through smaller projects and groups.
- Can the UK lead the charge for creating better cross-border giving standards?
Beacons Connect is free and easy to join. We look forward to welcoming you.
JOIN US ON BEACONS CONNECT
The Beacon Philanthropy and Impact Forum was held at the Guildhall, London on 30 November 2022.
The event would not be possible without the support of our extremely generous sponsors:
- City Bridge Trust
- Cazenove Capital
- Mercer
- Farrer & Co
We would also like to thank Owen James Events for all their support in putting on the Forum.