Placing Bold Bets – Trust and Patience
Sometimes, I think back to early 2020. Then, we couldn’t ever have imagined what unfolded during the COVID-19 pandemic. We witnessed a world in-between, nothing like it once used to be but giving us glimpses of what it needs to be for everyone to live an empowered life.
Today, we stand in a place of possibility. It is clear we cannot continue solving complex and dynamic social problems as we always have. We need a new lens to reimagine the way we look at and solve social problems.
We need to think like mavericks, think big and bold, think outside, inside and even on-top-of and beside the box. Innovation is our slingshot.
Social problems are growing and morphing exponentially. We need solutions that can keep up with these complex and dynamic problems. More so, we have to go beyond plucking out the weeds and dig deep to the root of the problem. This means opening up a space to reimagine the way we look at problems and our role in solving them, a space for experimentation and a space for diverse actors across civil society, government and markets to come together to solve.Philanthropy can nourish these spaces where exponential solving is a priority.
Societal change is a complex process. Philanthropy, for me, encompasses this complexity. It keeps an ear to the ground and, at the same time, reaches towards the vision of a thriving society. I support grassroots work by people solving local problems as well as systems change efforts. Both of these work in tandem to reduce the frictions that cause social problems in the first place. Grassroots organisations have the pulse of different local realities and empower communities by engaging deeply with them.
At the same time, endeavours such as Societal Platforms can drive systems change and enable grassroots organisations and communities to see, sense and solve problems at scale and efficiently.
My journey as a philanthropist is over two decades long. Over the years, I have worked closely with many social innovators and experienced much success and even more setbacks. Some lessons have become guideposts of how I practise philanthropy:
Let’s place bold bets
As funders, it sometimes seems easier to invest in the replication of a tried-and-tested solution. But, how far can growing small solutions take us? We can’t possibly reach all of the 3.3 billion underserved people in our lifetime unless we think about what works at scale. Even if we did reach them, will what works in one context work in another? Right now, philanthropy has the opportunity to place bold bets on ideas that sound impossible, difficult, and unattainable.
As the world undergoes a digital revolution, we are at a vantage point to leverage technology to accelerate the design, implementation and reach of solutions. Alongside, philanthropy can commit to co-creating and adding to open and shared infrastructure and building blocks – of, for and by all. The building blocks approach embodied by Societal Thinking can be a game changer in bringing efficiency, speed of execution and inducing social change at population scale. If we don’t make these bold bets now, we may lose the opportunity to slingshot exponential solving.
Let’s build trust
Trying and failing is unwelcome in development work because it is typically hard to mobilise capital and capacity. But, failure can be our best friend, helping us reflect and reimagine and then build right. Embracing failure is important to build trust between philanthropists and social innovators, in opening a safe space to think, design and implement again and again till the spark is ignited.
Let’s be patient
To enable sustainable change at a systemic level, philanthropy has to back causes that restore the agency of people to tackle unique contextual problems.
By distributing the ability to solve, we not only address immediate social issues but also empower historically marginalised communities to be active participants in decision-making.
Restoring agency takes time, and sometimes even longer to show tangible impact. However, it is the key ingredient in activating a cycle of positive change. We have seen this time and again in various movements, they take us to a place where communities are empowered to make meaningful decisions for their own as well as collective well-being. For me, patience comes from acknowledging that I want the world to change for the better. New worlds aren’t built in a day, are they?
To solve the social problems we are currently facing and to reduce frictions that cause these problems in the first place, we need new ways of thinking – Societal Thinking is one such way. It brings together a diverse set of actors across society and restores their agency to solve their own problems with open, accessible infrastructure.
Societal Muse is a collection of stories about social innovators who think big and do bigger. I invite you to traverse the ups and downs of their journey to impact. In doing so, we will find the strength and inspiration to take risks, to be scared and to step out of our comfort zone to think differently and act differently. After all, don’t all audacious ideas seem unreasonable at first?
We are at the cusp of a new world. Let’s reimagine philanthropy to induce exponential societal change, together.
