Letting Go: Shifting Power in Impact Investing and Philanthropy

We’re pleased to share here a vibrant discussion at the book launch of Ben Wrobel and Meg Massey’s Letting Go: How Philanthropists and Impact Investors Can Do More Good By Giving Up Control hosted by Equality Impact Investing Project, Centre for Knowledge Equity and Big Society Capital (15 July).

Attendees heard from a growing reform movement inside philanthropy and impact investing who are shifting decision-making power to the communities that such funds are intended to benefit and serve. The panelists discussed practices for shifting and moving power, and shared ideas for how UK social and impact investors and philanthropic funders can accelerate the movement to let go. 

Curated by Rana Zincir-Celal (EIIP) and Manprit Vig (CKE) , other contributors included Baljeet Sandhu (Centre for Knowledge Equity), Philipp Essl (Big Society Capital), Ceri Goddard (EIIP), Chloe Hardy (Sheila McKechnie Foundation), Ishita Ranjan (Big Society Capital), Ben Rick (Social and Sustainable Capital), Fuad Mahamed (ACH) and Derek Bardowell (Ten Years’ Time).

Programme

Explore the video using the programme timecodes below

0:00 Welcome & Introduction

Ceri Goddard (Equality Impact Investing Project), Baljeet Sandhu (Centre for Knowledge Equity), Philipp Essl (Big Society Capital)

5:05 Letting Go authors Ben Wrobel and Meg Massey

Interview with Chloe Hardy (Shelia McKechnie Foundation)

Q&A

34:20 Insights and Provocations from the UK + Q&A

Speakers: Ishita Ranjan (Big Society Capital), Ben Rick (Social and Sustainable Capital), Fuad Mahamed (ACH), Derek Bardowell (Ten Years’ Time)

1:13:37 Discussion: How do we accelerate the movement to let go?

panelists bios

Baljeet Sandhu

Baljeet, CEO of Centre for Knowledge Equity (CfKE) and co-founder of the LEx Movement. An equity designer and driver of the global ‘knowledge equity’ movement, writing extensively on the value of lived experience (LEx) in social, economic, and environmental impact work, including the development of the Lived Experience Leadership framework during her time as researcher and educator at Yale University. A Yale World Fellow and Visiting Fellow at Said Business School, Oxford University, building a partnership between CfKE and the Skoll Centre to develop the ground-breaking Knowledge Equity and Initiative and Fellowship.

Baljeet is also the founding partner of the 2027 Programme, bringing working class practitioners with lived experience into decision-making roles in the UK philanthropy and investment sector. CfKE continues to support the design and development of UK funding and investment initiatives that seek to centre the power of LEx. Prior to this work, Baljeet was an award-winning UK human rights lawyer, and founder of MiCLU and founding partner of Kids in Need of Defense UK and served as a Special Adviser to governments and international bodies. In 2020 she received an MBE for Services to Equality and Civic Society.

Philipp Essl

Philipp leads on impact measurement and management across Big Society Capital’s investment process and portfolio. He is passionate about using impact strategy and evidence to drive social investment decisions and tackle pressing social challenges.

Prior to Big Society Capital, Philipp worked at the multinational energy company, BG Group, where he led the Group’s social performance & human rights work for new country entry and early exploration projects, with a focus on South East Asia and Latin America. Philipp also lived several years in South East Asia, working with large development organisations (UN, Oxfam) and innovative start-ups on identifying and implementing opportunities for private sector-led economic growth and poverty reduction.

Chloe Hardy

Chloe Hardy is the Director of Policy and Communications at the Sheila McKechnie Foundation.

Chloe has over twenty years’ experience of campaigning, public affairs and policy influencing in both the not-for-profit and charity sectors. Before joining the team at SMK, Chloe worked for various charities and trade bodies including Action for Children and the National Housing Federation. She has campaigned on green energy, social housing, waste reduction, fuel poverty, child neglect and early-years development.

SMK itself has spent the last eighteen months exploring the role of power in social change alongside change-makers who bring a mixture of lived and learned experience to the endeavour. Along the way it has learned more about how crucial it is for civil society to better understand how its own power hinders or enables others to unleash theirs.

Chloe puts most of her energy into working for greater social justice, seeking clarity of purpose, travelling and Doctor Who – sometimes all at the same time. She will ask you a LOT of questions.

Meg Massey

Meg Massey is a journalist covering social impact and social justice in the world of finance. Her writing has been featured in Time, Fortune, Nonprofit Quarterly, Impact Alpha, and others. Her first book Letting Go: How Philanthropists and Impact Investors Can Do More Good By Giving Up Control was released in April 2021. She is also the founder and managing director of Sanspeur, a content strategy firm that supports mission-driven clients around the world.

Ms. Massey began her social sector career at the Obama White House, and later led strategic communications for the Global Steering Group for Impact Investment and the Urban Institute’s Research to Action Lab. She received her BA from Mount Holyoke College and her MA from Georgetown University. She is based in Washington, D.C.

Ben Wrobel

Ben Wrobel is Director of Communications at Village Capital, a pioneer in participatory investing.

He started his career as chief speechwriter for the NAACP, the largest civil rights organization in the United States, and later raised money for voter registration campaigns including Stacey Abrams’ New Georgia Project.

He has edited two best-selling books: REACH: 40 Black Men on Living, Leading and Succeeding and The Innovation Blind Spot, the latter of which is focused on challenges for BAME entrepreneurs in the world of venture capital.

Ishita Ranjan

Ishita is the Senior Project Manager at Good Finance, UK’s leading educational platform on social investment for charities and social enterprises. Ishita leads on user voice work, an integral element in Good Finance’s user led approach that also informs the work of social impact investors.

Ishita is also the Director of Spark and Co., which she founded in response to the Covid-19 crisis and the disproportionate effect it was having on UK ethnic minorities. Spark and Co. applies human centred design thinking and user voice principles to the development of research and strategy; ensuring organisations build meaningful and sustainable engagement.

Bringing over a decade of experience in the social enterprise sector and a strong track record of managing and delivering complex projects that create social change, Ishita is passionate about human centred design, equality, and the role we play as individuals and as collectives in understanding and tackling society’s pressing issues with marginalised voices.

Ben Rick

Ben grew up in London and studied at UMIST in Manchester before joining Goldman Sachs as a trainee. In his 20-year career in the city, he worked at Lehman Brothers, UBS and Bank of America Merrill Lynch where he was Managing Director responsible for the EMEA arm of the Global Proprietary Trading Group.

Ben launched SASC in 2014 to get more investment, of the right sort, to charities and social enterprises across the UK. From the outset, he committed to letting go of preconceived views of what was right for the third sector. Instead, he looked to co-design financial products with social sector organisations that fully met their needs and shared the risks and returns. SASC’s largest fund, and greatest success to date, is the Social and Sustainable Housing fund that was co-designed with a number of charities and which has won awards for its innovation and impact.

Fuad Mahamed

ACH is a continuously growing provider in refugee integration services, marking themselves as social innovation leaders in refugee and migrant integration. The organisation was founded in 2008 by Fuad Mahamed, the company’s CEO.

Fuad came to the UK as a refugee from Somalia with no knowledge of English and went on to obtain a first-class degree in Engineering from Bath University followed by an MSc in Management from Lancaster Business School.

Setting up ACH in 2008 to support the resettlement of refugees like himself, he has built the organisation into one of the leading providers of integration support for excluded and marginalised people. Recently awarded a Queens Award for Enterprise, Fuad and ACH are trying to achieve systemic change, where marginalized communities get meaningful employment and skills, where diversity becomes normalized, and where institutions include inclusive policies. Fuad is a founding member of the Lived Experience Leaders Movement (LEx Movement).

Derek A. Bardowell

Derek A. Bardowell is the CEO of Ten Years’ Time, the author of No Win Race (HarperCollins 2019), and a Knowledge Equity Fellow at the Centre for Knowledge Equity and Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.

Derek has written for The Times, The Guardian, Time Out, and British GQ and contributed to anthologies such as The Weeklings: Revolution #1 and Black British Lives Matter. He was the former director of education at the Stephen Lawrence Trust. From 2009 to 2019, Derek led funding portfolios for Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Laureus Sport for Good, and The National Lottery Community Fund.

Derek is currently working on a new book on reimagining philanthropy called Outsiders Within (Dialogue Books). He hosts the podcast Just Cause, exploring the intersections of race, culture, and philanthropy, and he is a founding member of Future Foundations UK, which supports minoritised racial groups who work in funding. Derek is also a Thirty Percy Foundation trustee.

Ceri Goddard

Ceri is the Director of EIIP, a role which sees her both advise, and collaborate with, a diverse range of UK and international social finance and equality actors to develop this field.

She previously pioneered new gender, and wider equality, innovation and investment programmes as a Director at the Young Foundation and was CEO of the UK’s Fawcett Society. Prior to this, as a Director at the British Institute of Human Rights she led a range of policy and practice partnerships focused on bringing human rights to life in areas such as health, education, tackling poverty and participation and rights. This work drew significantly on her previous experience leading grant, research and capacity building programmes, concerned with increasing the power and influence of traditionally marginalised communities in policy making, for Irelands Combat Poverty Agenda and cross border Peace and Reconciliation programme. 

She is Fellow of both the Royal Society of Arts and The Young Foundation and in 2016 the Open University awarded her an honorary doctorate in equality and social justice. In June 2021 she received an MBE for services for social justice.