- Welcome to The Skoll World Forum
on Social Entrepreneurship,
coming to you live from Oxford, England.
We're gonna be talking today, now,
about changing the world of philanthropy
and welcoming questions from you live on Facebook Live.
And my guest today is Edgar Villanueva.
A big welcome to you here.
You are calling for a radical change
in the world of philanthropy
and your background is really very interesting.
You're chair of the board of directors
of the Native Americans in Philanthropy
and also on the board of the Andrus Family Fund,
which works for vulnerable youth,
and you advise numerous foundations and NGOs.
You're a member of the Lumbee Tribe in North Carolina.
Is that where you were born?
- Yes. - Okay.
Even though now you live in Brooklyn?
- Right.
- It's a Native American tribe.
And you have written a book, Decolonizing Wealth,
which proposes that the native world view
offers an essential guidance to transforming institutions
and unlocking access to money, to dollars.
There's something you said which is very moving,
you said, "Money is my medicine.
"And in order to heal what hurts,
"to come back together as one human race,
"we need to decolonize wealth."
So let me ask you first,
and, by the way, we've got the paints here
because we are going to be painting
your challenge to philanthropy here in about a minute.
- Okay.
- Just to warn you.
What needs to change in the world of philanthropy?
- So much needs to change.
I think one is we have to become more comfortable
having conversations that are uncomfortable.
- What do you mean by uncomfortable?
- Well, it's interesting that people think
my frame or my platform is radical,
because I'm simply talking about love.
And philanthropy means love of people.
- Philanthropia. - Right.
So why is it so radical to talk about love?
I'm also just sharing truths.
I'm talking about history, I'm talking about money
and how wealth has been accumulated,
and it's like we just get so emotional and antsy
when we're talking about money.
We're in the money business,
why are we antsy talking about money?
So I think having spaces like this to have conversations
and to really get uncomfortable
is going to just help us move forward
in ways that are different.
- So, what needs to change, according to you?
- I think that we need to make this the normal conversation.
It should not be a radical conversation.
We need to normalize talking about history,
talking about race, talking about gender,
all of those types of things should be--
- You're talking really abstract.
Can we be a little bit more concrete?
- Oh, you wanna get down to the concrete, sure.
Well, we see in philanthropy we need more diversity,
but not just diversity, we need inclusion.
We need more people calling the shots,
making decisions that come from the community
who do not come from wealth.
Often, philanthropy is trying to help people like my family,
and yet my family don't even know that philanthropy exists
in this institutional way.
We need to be less institutional
and really become more connected
to the communities that we're trying to serve.
So that can happen by changing what boards look like,
diversifying the staff,
really thinking about our processes are so convoluted
and we have a lots of barriers and infrastructure now
in philanthropy
that really make it challenging for those of us inside
to connect with community and vice versa.
- You're talking a lot about philanthropy
as this unified, cohesive thing that everybody knows about.
And people outside the world of Skoll World Forum
and outside the world
perhaps don't quite understand what you might mean.
Can you just perhaps unpick what philanthropy is
and what you're trying to decolonize?
- Sure.
So, in the United States especially,
we have this entire sector of philanthropy
that is unique to that country because of our tax system.
So wealthy folks or corporations
can set up an institution that is a foundation,
that is a philanthropy,
to fund non-profit organizations and NGOs
and they get a tax credit for that.
So, on the surface, it looks like pretty harmless,
a charitable kind of system to support communities.
But underneath that there are just a lot of complexities
that are actually in many ways helping wealthy folks
and wealthy corporations become richer.
- Because they're not having to pay tax
on the money that's given to philanthropy.
- Absolutely. - What sort of money
are we talking about?
How many millions, billions is in US philanthropy?
- $800 billion, almost 900 billion now.
And this is money that would've been taxed,
it would've gone to support public education
and health care and the safety net services.
However, folks have the option
to set up their own foundations
and to fund organizations of their choosing
with very little accountability.
- And your assessment at the moment, overall,
is philanthropy creating a net benefit or a net negative?
- You know, I think it could be a zero positive
net change or maybe even a negative
when we look at the entire picture.
Now, certainly, philanthropy has done a lot of good.
Philanthropy in the US has had a major role
in funding the Civil Rights movement,
it's been a laboratory to come up with all kind of ideas
that have been taken to scale by the government.
So I do applaud those efforts.
But when we look at the entire picture
of what's happening with money,
only a small portion of philanthropic dollars
actually leave the doors of foundations.
The majority of those dollars
are actually invested in Wall Street,
and often in obstructive and harmful industries.
- So you're also calling for philanthropists
to question more broadly
where they're investing their money,
not just on the ground making?
- Absolutely, the ground making, on average,
is about 5 to 7% of the assets,
so what's happening with the 95%?
That's money that also can be put to good use
but often is not.
- And when the boards and the expertise and the staff
on these different philanthropy foundations,
what are you advocating in terms of diversity?
- I think that we need definitely diversity of perspectives
and in lived experiences
and we need to be able to show up
and bring different types of leadership.
We often, in the foundation world,
I think the culture of our organizations,
it feels like a forced assimilation--
- What do you mean by forced assimilation?
- For example, when you come into an organization,
there's a history and a legacy of culture
in that organization
and you are expected to take that on
as a part of your identity.
- Did you find that experience?
- I did.
- Are you gonna tell me which foundation?
- I've worked in three foundations now.
I started in North Carolina.
My first job was at the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust,
which does amazing work
to improve health care in North Carolina.
But that family,
the Reynolds family where that money came from
was the wealthiest family in North Carolina.
Old tobacco money.
And often I felt a contradiction.
Was I supporting the community
or was I expected to hold up the legacy
and the image of that family?
So I had things said to me like,
"You need a new car because the car you're driving
"doesn't really represent our family."
Or, "We don't want people to think
"we don't pay our employees well."
So there's an expectation sometimes that you perpetuate
those optics of wealth and legacy,
which is a focus of philanthropy in a lot of ways,
versus actually doing work in the community
or being from the community.
- And do you think your experience is typical?
- I do, yeah.
I mean, for a long time I thought it was just me
and maybe I was crazy.
But it is a shared experience that many have,
which is what drove me to write a book about it.
I collected stories from a lot of folks
who got jobs in these organizations
and then when you get on the inside
and you see how things are operating,
there's a lot of questions that are raised around,
what is this really about?
Are we really trying to help the community
or are we really trying to maintain some type of legacy
around this money?
- That's really fascinating.
Let's try and draw a picture now.
So we're gonna be drawing a picture
for the camera over here.
Do you wanna pick a color?
- Sure.
- And we're talking about your challenge to philanthropy
and in what ways you wanna challenge philanthropy.
And we can talk as you draw,
you can tell me what you're doing.
Can I put a big,
it's quite hard to do upside down, isn't it?
I'm trying to think which way the dollar goes.
If I start with a big dollar sign, maybe that's helpful.
- Yes. - Okay.
What else do you wanna draw
in terms of challenging this big structure
of these $8-9 billion US philanthropy?
- I think what I would wanna do is,
right now that wealth is really concentrated.
There's a limited numbers of institutions and individuals
that control capital and control wealth,
so it's really concentrated here.
What I would wanna see in the future
is that this is kind of broken down
and reallocated into much more of a shared...
Share the wealth, right?
So I talk about such things as reparations, for example.
So this money, this big giant dollar sign in the middle,
how did it get concentrated here?
There's a history behind how wealth has been accumulated.
And in the US, through colonization, genocide, slavery,
that history has allowed for this wealth
to be concentrated here with wealthy elite folks.
What we need to do is understand that history
and folks here should go through a process
of understanding the trauma
that exists outside of that bubble.
And when you understand that trauma
and you're open to that history,
you're going to be respectful of that history
in a way that says, you know what?
This money was made on the back of these folks.
We need to figure out ways
to actually push that money outside this bubble
and these folks here should be in a position
to actually reclaim those resources.
Because we all had a part
in helping to generate this wealth.
- And you talk about the value of lived experience
but you also acknowledge the value of expertise and data
in understanding what,
paint is going all over me,
in understanding what works in terms of impact
if you're dealing with health care
or education and so forth.
- Right.
Well, science is real and data is super helpful.
And I think often though philanthropists are inclined
to look at research from Ivy League institutions
and create funding strategies around that,
and that's certainly okay to some extent
but there's often in the margins,
where folks are outside of those elite institutions,
there's a lot of solutions
and a lot of ideas and great thinking.
These communities are super resilient.
Like my community, the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina,
we were the first point of contact for colonization
in America.
So, imagine, it's been 500 years and we are still here.
So there's community wisdom and knowledge that exists there
that is so resourceful
in terms of the fact that we're still here.
- And what are your solutions to draw on some of these ideas
which are outside the main stream
and are only trickling in
in terms of thought and inspiration?
- What's happened is, often, here,
people are beginning to realize that wisdom and they will,
oh, paint is going everywhere,
which is fine, we can finger paint.
Yeah, exactly.
- So, here, they wanna create one seat
so they're like, "Okay, we see the wisdom,
"here's one seat for you, come in."
And so what it is,
it's like this table, it's messy.
So the table here, now there's one seat for us,
so these folks are like,
"Oh, we did a good job, we created a seat for you."
So you have still the control and the powers concentrated
and this person here does not feel empowered
to contribute in a real meaningful way.
So instead of creating a table
that is still maybe white-centric or white-dominant
or white-designed,
we need to think about a whole new situation
where we reconstruct this table
in a way that we all come together
with a more equal voice among equal power.
- And are you starting to see change?
It's kind of interesting here at the Skoll World Forum,
yesterday you spoke in front of thousands of delegates
from across the world,
including many people who work for foundations,
and you're voice is in the room, inside the tent.
- Yes.
You know, I'm so hopeful about the change that I'm seeing.
I'm not just criticizing and critiquing philanthropy,
although I am doing that at some level
but from a place of love and a place of hope.
Every single day I'm hearing from folks who are saying,
"I read your book, I'm thinking about this work
"and we've made these changes in organizations."
So people are changing their board of directors
and bringing on folks with community experience.
People are designing grant-making programs
to center people of color and indigenous communities.
We are seeing just in the last two weeks
there were two foundations who came to me and said,
"We are creating a portfolio
"to support indigenous people across the world."
Another foundation said,
"We have decided as a board to move 25% of our funding
"into our native communities."
So there is a time of awakening, I feel like,
and not just in that grant-making side
but we're having real conversations in the US
around what is the culture in our institutions internally?
How do we need to shift
so that people of color and indigenous folks
can come to work here and feel like they belong?
So that's fantastic.
And I will say, the fact that I'm here at Skoll
and we're having conversations,
that I'm talking about colonization in Oxford, England,
is like a huge step forward.
Just having the conversation
and opening our minds to think differently
about what is the role that history has played in our work,
how have we potentially as a sector been a part of that,
how have we been agnostic to that
in ways that are not helpful.
It's a big step forward so I wanna celebrate that.
- Brilliant, we'll leave on that optimistic note.
Thank you so very much, Edgar Villanueva,
for your thoughts and for your painting here.
Despite the creativity on our hands.
- [Edgar] Right.
- Coming up in just 20-25 minutes,
looking at systems change with Peter Drobac
from the Skoll Center of Social Entrepreneurship
here in Oxford.
Looking forward to see you then.