WUNRN
Via Global Fund for Women
https://www.devex.com/news/5-lessons-for-funding-innovation-for-social-change-84741
5 Lessons for
Funding Innovation for Social Change
A
child gets vaccinated against polio at Darbhanga railway station in northern
India. Photo by: Gates Foundation / CC BY-NC-ND
By
Musimbi
Kanyoro - 10 November 2014
As CEO of the Global Fund for Women, I work at a unique
intersection — I am both a donor and a fundraiser who depends on donors.
This has given me powerful insight into the subject of financing social
innovation.
I am convinced
that in general the structures and practices of philanthropy are actually
threatening and inhibiting social change, rather than propelling it — and
I want to explain why.
There are three
big ways in which mainstream philanthropy holds back innovation and they are
all based on fear. Let me address each of them in turn:
1. Fear of
failure
As a
grant-seeker and fundraiser I am only too familiar with this one. Donors want
results quickly and failure costs you — donors often leave. But this
stance is antithetical to everything we know about innovation.
Jeff Bezos of
Amazon has said publicly that innovation is gall about the long term.h It took
Amazon designers at least four tries before they arrived at a viable, working
Kindle, for example. The company stayed committed to the gconcepth of a digital
reader, even through repeated failures.
gThe key thing,h
Bezos said, gis to be willing to wait five, seven, 10 years.h
For those of us
working in the social impact sectors, we would really love to know: are there
any funders or foundations out there willing to fund an organization through
innovation cycles lasting for five, seven or 10 years?
We know that
there are key conditions for innovation. You have to be willing to fail and you
have to be willing to commit long term. Yet in the work of organizations
dedicated to sustainable social change, there are powerful forces that are
pushing in exactly the opposite direction. The result is that we exist in a risk-averse
sector, and we cannot make great leaps forward.
2. Fear of
investing big
When it comes to
major gains in social sector innovation, this is perhaps the biggest fear of
all.
I am sure I am
not alone in asking why we havenft had more major global health innovations and
breakthroughs? Many well-funded development pilot projects are positive but
they are not innovative. They do not invest in local organizing. In my own
space of womenfs rights, why have we not had more traction, for example, in
eradicating harmful practices such as child marriage, or mobilizing
international consensus for safe and legal abortion? And why are so many women
and girls still trafficked, abused, paid less than men, and still dying in
childbirth from preventable causes?
Of course these
are huge challenges. But the answer also lies in the resources and investments
we are able to deploy for innovation on these problems. Currently, they are
truly meager and not targeted to invest in the local communities, except as
objects of development rather than changemakers.
Donors need to
grasp that major global health and human rights innovations must be fuelled by
investments at an exponentially larger scale than they have considered before.
And likewise social sector innovators need to be ready to think big, and beyond
the constraints imposed by the lack of funding that has kept innovations small.
3. Fear of
investing in movements
Social change
innovation aims to achieve enduring and positive social change — the kind
of change that gives people freedom and opportunity, and that allows them to
live with dignity and without discrimination. The kind of change that pulls
down and dismantles social barriers. It is about lasting steps towards a
better, healthy world. It is about sustaining such change and scaling it to the
maximum. And it often has to be grounded in a local context, driven by
movements with bold leadership, and sustained by mass adoption.
Read more
#HealthyMeans articles:
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family planning goal
œ Universal health coverage: An empty promise without focusing
on NCDs
And that is
where innovation in this sector is unique: Social change comes from organized
groups and from movements — not from an individual or corporation. This
organizing and collective civil society engagement is the fuel that social
sector innovation needs in order to be successful.
However, that is
where funders often donft look, instead often driven by the idea of investing
in an individual with an idea. While there are countless leaders and activists
in womenfs health and rights around the world, they know that in order to be
innovative and to drive lasting change in their communities, they must have the
resources, the safe spaces, and the opportunities to collaborate with others
— those in their regions, those working on similar issues in other parts
of the world, and those who have critical skills like policy advocacy that they
need to learn from. They need and want to exchange ideas, learn from other strategies,
missteps, and creative thinking, and work together to achieve sustainable
change.
If we continue
to focus on funding individual leaders, innovation will be held back. We need
to focus intensely on funding movements, providing resources for collaboration,
and investing in collective champions of change. This is where social
innovation resides.
There are five
key lessons for funding and innovation success:
1. Make
the invisible visible. Discover unheard and tough causes and shine a
spotlight on them. Social innovation comes from funding and advancing causes
that sometimes are unspoken in society because they speak of a change that is
seen as taboo. For example, funding emerging groups or issues advancing a LGBT
health and rights movement in Russia or Uganda.
2. Invest
in leaders with new ideas and be ready to invest in them as a first donor. Angel
investors for commercial products and startup companies raise no eyebrows
funding new entrepreneurs with bold ideas. We must take the same position when
funding new leaders driving social change within their communities.
3. Empower
communities to design their own innovations and change. Social sector
innovation relies on strong groups owning and designing their own change,
versus imposing ideas from elsewhere. Trust local communities to determine and
design their own solutions.
4. Give
core funding that allows new and sustaining grantees the flexibility to
innovate. Donorsf obsession with project support is one of the biggest
social sector barriers to genuine innovation.
5. Recognize
that connection and collaboration is key. Social change cannot be achieved
by lone corporations, organizations or individual leaders. Itfs about major
grass-roots change driven by movements — and collaboration is key.
Itfs time to let
go of our fears. Itfs time to think big. Itfs time to imagine how the world
will shift if we can truly unleash the potential of social sector innovation
— and start investing in real social change.
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