Philanthropy in challenging times
Transcription
Steph Taylor, Strategy and Programmes Director | 0:01
Hello, I'm Steph Taylor and welcome to our GiveLoveLeeds podcast, where we'll be getting into conversations being held across the city, and learning more about how we can come together to create positive change for the communities that need it. Leeds Community Foundation distributes vital grants and gives trusted advice to community organisations doing amazing work across Leeds and Bradford. We’re driven by creating meaningful social impact for thousands of local people every year. During 2022, we awarded 376 grants, distributing over £4 million across Leeds and Bradford. Today, we're talking about cost of living. In light of the current economic crisis, community organisations we work with are facing greater pressure as they try really hard to deliver essential services and meet growing demand for and with the communities they serve. In this episode, we're going to be taking a look at the effects of the cost-of-living crisis and the ever-increasing demand for philanthropic giving as a result.
In this episode, I catch up with Dr. Beth Breeze director of the Centre of Philanthropy at the University of Kent and author of In Defence of Philanthropy, to explore different types of donors and the benefits of giving. Beth’s a real expert, so she's going to have some fantastic things to share with us. We're also joined by Claire Marks, Chair of Trustees for the Bartlett Foundation, who are a long-term supporter of us at Leeds Community Foundation, and many other organisations across the city. Claire will be sharing their philanthropic journey, and the reasons they chose to support local communities.
So let's start with hearing a little bit about the current landscape for community organisations across Leeds, and the effects of the current financial crisis. It's probably important to start with the fact that 24% of people in Leeds live in poverty. And that's a really stark statistic, underpinning all sorts of things that we do at the Foundation. We know that 21% of low-income households in the UK have gone without both heating and eating properly, and 18% of households in Leeds are fuel poor. We've had problems for a long time with inequality in Leeds and that's part of why we exist at the Foundation, to bring people together to reduce those inequalities. And just to give you a sense of that, Burmantofts and Richmond Hill have the shortest life expectancy in the city - 72 for males and 74 for females - whereas in Adel and Wharfedale it’s 83 for males and 86 for females. That will give you just one idea of how stark those inequalities are. They've been there a long time but the cost-of-living crisis is going to make those inequalities widen. And we know from community organisations that we talked to every day, that there are real challenges for them in meeting demand already, and it is only going to get worse.
We know that there are people working really hard to try to pull together responses across the city, and we're part of a network of lots of organisations, and lots of people who've got some parts of the solution to bring together to try and make a difference. At the Foundation, one of the main things that we've done is made sure that we are able to provide Community Organisations with as much unrestricted funding as possible. We think it's really important that people who live in communities and are working in communities every day, are the people deciding what's needed. And you're going to hear from one of our supporters, Claire Marks later, who'll tell you a little bit about how her Fund has done that. But at times like this where people are in crisis, and things are difficult, the most important thing we can do is trust organisations and give them the tools and the funding that they need to meet the needs, and build on the assets, in their communities. We also have a real breadth and depth of funding programmes to make sure that where there are specific challenges, we can support organisations to meet them. Whether that's food or activity programmes for children and young people living in poverty, whether it's about fuel poverty, energy efficiency, mental and physical health and wellbeing, overcoming isolation, loneliness. You name it, the amazing Community Organisations in our city are working on those issues with people in their communities, day in day out, and we want to make sure that we can support them.
The way we do that is by working in partnership with individuals who've got money to give with companies who've got money to give and with statutory partners. And together we make sure that all of the funding that comes into Leeds can really get to where it's going to make a difference. Earlier, I spoke to Dr. Beth Breeze who's actually from Leeds herself and is now working at the University of Kent. She's one of the leading academics in philanthropy, and we thought it would be really interesting to get her perspective on, in a cost-of-living crisis. What role can philanthropy play, and how do we think about the different ways in which people can give?
Dr. Beth Breeze | 4:50
Hello, I'm Beth Breeze from the University of Kent. These are undoubtedly challenging times for philanthropy, but I think it's really important to remember that there are different types of donor, both individuals and corporates. And I think we can consider three types of donor in relation to the question of what will happen during the current cost-of living-crisis.
So first of all, you've got those who are simply not affected by these kinds of macro-economic changes. They might even be financially better off, for example, if they run a company, or have shares in companies that do well, during bad times. That might sound like a contradiction. But if you think about how well Amazon did during the COVID lockdowns, if you think about how well takeaway delivery companies did, you know, there are some companies that actually increase their business during these difficult times. So those kinds of people absolutely, we can still look to for making philanthropic contributions. There's not many of them, so what other kinds are there?
Well, the second type of donor it's worth considering, are those who've already set aside their philanthropic spending money. They might have put it into a charity bank account, they might have put it into a donor advised fund, they might have a personal trust or foundation, they might have a fund with their Community Foundation. So their money is already banked, and ready to be distributed to charity, so even if they have a very difficult few months, or even years ahead, their charitable spending pot is already set aside and can't be brought back. Once you've got the tax break, it has to be distributed to charities. So they also are people that we can look to, to support charities during the months ahead.
Now, the third type of perhaps the most interesting for those of us who study the sociology and the psychology of giving. Those are the people who are affected by the current cost-of-living crisis. So perhaps their energy bills have gone up, perhaps their real term pay has gone down, perhaps this is just a very difficult time for them. But nonetheless, their commitment to charitable giving is such a high priority that they choose not to cut back, they choose to cut other things. We saw this happen in 2008-9 with a great economic crash where you would have thought, and certainly people anticipated, a much bigger dip in giving. But what happened was some people, this third group of donor, did not cancel their direct debits or did not stop their annual gift. They instead perhaps delayed buying a new white good like a new fridge or even a bigger expenditure like a new car, or perhaps they took their holiday at home rather than going abroad. So there are some people who prioritize their charitable giving ahead of other expenditure perhaps on themselves. And of course, they are particularly valuable supporters of charities. Why might they prioritize charities more? Well, sometimes it's because they're religious, and they believe in tithing, or they believe in prioritising helping others. Of course, secular people can also have humanitarian beliefs and decide that it's more important to continue supporting good causes than it is perhaps to continue buying a coffee each day, or spending on themselves. So there are many different reasons why but of course, these are very valuable people for charity. So hopefully outlining those three types of donors gives us a little bit of confidence and optimism that however hard the time ahead is, there are still plenty of individuals and institutional donors out there who could, and will, support your cause.
More briefly, I want to just mention about how the current cost-of-living crisis might motivate people to give locally. We certainly saw this during the COVID period, where people who perhaps had been previously supporting charities based in a different city or even country, because they were at home more, they got to see local need, perhaps they were more aware of reliance on food banks or on visiting services and volunteers helping the elderly who are isolated. So there's something about crises that make us a bit more aware of what's on our doorstep. And that could well happen again this time, and I think people may well turn to their local Community Foundations to help with working out which are the local causes that they can support if they do wish to give locally.
And then finally, you know, I think it's important to remember when we're thinking about these questions, that giving is not a one-way transaction. Of course, the recipient organisations and end beneficiaries get help when people donate, but there are many benefits to the donors as well. And there's a huge body of research showing that people who give money and who give time and give other resources, people who give, tend to be healthier, happier, have greater life satisfaction, have larger networks. You know, lots of positives for the donors. And many of the people I've interviewed over the years are very happy to acknowledge that and they say things like ‘I get as much as I give’. When I get thanked for my donation, I say, you know, ‘this is making my life better as well and I'm very happy to do it’. So when we're out looking for donations during difficult times, I think it's perfectly acceptable, and probably quite wise, to remind people that they will feel better for giving, and that the benefits are both for the donor and for the end beneficiaries. So I hope that's helpful while people are thinking about philanthropy in challenging times.
Steph Taylor, Strategy and Programmes Director | 10:00
Really interesting insights from Beth Breeze at the Centre of Philanthropy, the University of Kent. One of the people we knew very well at the Foundation, who really saw the value of philanthropy and the benefits of giving, was local philanthropist Jimi Heselden. Jimi was a former coal miner from East Leeds who became wealthy by manufacturing the HESCO barrier system. He donated £23 million to the Community Foundation to do a number of things, and one of those was to set up a legacy fund called the Jimbo's Fund. Many Community Organisations in Leeds have benefited from, and know about, the Jimbo's Fund. And Jimmy was a really big believer in giving something back to people who’ve not been as fortunate as he was. Jimi grew up in East Leeds, local community was close to his heart, he was absolutely of the mindset that, you know, if he could do it, anybody could do it. And he really wanted to make a positive difference to the place that had meant so much to him, and to the lives of local people who love Leeds as much as he did. Since 2008, the Jimbo's Fund has supported tens-of-thousands of people from a range of communities across Leeds, always with local people, issues and needs at the centre. Through that Fund, we've awarded 647 grants, and £17.5m worth of funds have been distributed, and will continue to be so for years because of the impact of that legacy. Which is a really fantastic example of what Beth was talking about, around how you can work with your Community Foundation, if you do want to do some philanthropy and make a difference, to do all the administrative stuff, you know, that would be involved in otherwise setting up a charity. That's what Jimi and his family did, and saw as something valuable the Foundation does. And it's absolutely not about necessarily having millions and millions. But it's about wanting to do that in a collective way that really gets that funding to where it can make a big difference locally.
And what's going to make a difference locally right now is supporting communities that are tackling the cost-of-living crisis and the impact on people's daily lives. This morning, I was at a visit with LS14 Trust, who are one of the Community Organisations we support. They work all across Seacroft, together with lots of other fantastic Community Organisations, individuals, people doing things that are making a difference to others, people who are living in Seacroft working for Seacroft. And Jimbo’s Fund has been able to support them, and will continue to do so as they adapt to the cost-of-living crisis. And more of the people that are going into the food pantry, asking questions about how they can tackle their heating bills, how they can support each other, how they can come together to really understand what people need and then make that difference locally with that funding from Jimbo’s. And we want to do more of that with help from people from all across the city.
A more recent partner of ours making change in Leeds is the Bartlett Foundation. The Bartlett Foundation believes that business has a responsibility, and unique opportunity, to be a force for positive change and to give back to society. And we at Leeds Community Foundation absolutely agree. Every year the Bartlett Foundation donate 8% of the business profits from the Bartlett Group to improve the lives of vulnerable young people and their families in the UK and abroad. And in terms of working in Leeds, that funding and that partnership is part of what we're doing together. Since February 2022, we have worked in partnership to launch the Bartlett Group Fund, and that Fund will distribute £150,000 in Leeds and Bradford over the next three years to organisations that work alongside children and families facing challenging times. And particularly at the moment in terms of the cost-of-living crisis, that funding, which is given on a pretty unrestricted basis to support organisations over a long period of time, that are doing work rooted in communities, is a really, really important part of the jigsaw of how we're going to address and support the cost-of-living crisis. So I'm really happy to be joined on the podcast today by Claire Marks, Chair of Trustees of the Bartlett Foundation. Hi Claire.
Claire Marks | 14:10
Hi. Nice to be here, thank you.
Steph Taylor, Strategy and Programmes Director | 14:13
Thank you for joining us. It's been really brilliant to develop the funding partnership with you. and I think a really good example of how Foundations can be working all across the UK and abroad, but really rooted in the place where they are as well. And I know you're in Horsforth so it's really nice to be able to come and see you and to work together on how we find those groups that are really tackling issues for vulnerable children and families in our communities. Can you say a little bit about your philanthropic journey, what that's been like?
Claire Marks | 14:46
Thanks, Steph. So the Bartlett Foundation was founded in 1995, by my father. And it became apparent in the last two or three years, that our ability to give and the need had changed considerably over the years, which gave us the opportunity to rethink what we wanted to do as a charitable foundation. And Leeds Community Foundation have been with us on this journey, and have been part of this bigger learning journey for us. So as a Foundation, we made a commitment that we wanted to provide funding to a core number of organisations and fund them in larger amounts. And we wanted our funding to be multi-year, and unrestricted, and focus on young people and families. And in terms of giving in West Yorkshire, we did think that we could do this ourselves, we did think about going along this journey by ourselves. But it quickly became really apparent that to find the organisations that would benefit the most from our funding, that we needed relationships in the community sector. And at the time, we just didn't have that we didn't have a strong presence in the community sector, and we didn't have great relationships there. Leeds Community Foundation did, and they were really supportive of our approach and our desire to give multi-year unrestricted funding. And from that our named grant was developed in February 2022.
Steph Taylor, Strategy and Programmes Director | 16:26
Thanks, Claire. What would you say have been the highlights so far?
Claire Marks | 16:29
I think the biggest highlight for all the Trustees, myself included, was in September, when we met the five organisations we’re supporting, during a kind of breakfast networking event that Leeds Community Foundation had organised for us. And this was a real kind of move from reading applications, to kind of face-to-face connections with the group. And it was fantastic. It really developed a greater appreciation of the work that the groups are doing in the communities, the need that's there in the communities, and, you know, increased our understanding of what we can do to help and how we can be most impactful with our helping.
Steph Taylor, Strategy and Programmes Director | 17:15
How did you decide who to support? Because I know lots of people are often out there thinking, ‘Well, you know, how on earth do you choose who gets the funding?’.
Claire Marks | 17:25
Yeah, it's so difficult, isn't it? Because there's so many organisations, and everyone's doing incredible work. And I think your initial response is that you just want to help everybody, but you can't and to be impactful, we realised that we can do that. So we've always had a focus, we've always had an aim as a charitable foundation, which was to support the education and welfare of young people. So that gave us a starting point. We wanted to support organisations that might find it more difficult to get funding elsewhere. So they might find it more difficult to access funding from larger organisations. We were also kind of mindful as well of supporting organisations whose clients might be marginalised in other ways, and again, you know, we felt we could be more impactful supporting organisations that were working in this way. And we also had a real blended approach, we got a lot of help. So for the example of Leeds Community Foundation, we had a panel meeting, and we were supported by three experts who work in the community sector in West Yorkshire. And their insights were incredibly helpful. We let them guide us and help us. We also involved colleagues from the wider Bartlett Group as well, so that, you know it's important to us that colleagues working within the Bartlett Group had an involvement in who we were supporting and the organisations we were going to be working with as well.
Steph Taylor, Strategy and Programmes Director | 19:08
Fantastic. Yeah, that's one of my favorite things about our model, actually, is the coming together of people with different ideas and perspectives and making sure that the power around who gets the funding is shared. And those decisions are come to in quite a collaborative way, aren't they?
Claire Marks | 19:23
Yes, definitely. And very much, again, conversation, you know, long conversations about which organisations would benefit from funding and understanding of what organisations were doing as well.
Steph Taylor, Strategy and Programmes Director | 19:37
Yeah. It's always been really important to you to think local, and we've been talking a lot on the podcast about the real difference that those very locally rooted grassroots organisations make. I mean, you talked about sort of expertise in how to reach those organisations. And a lot of the groups that we fund, it might be the first time they've had a grant from us. A lot of it is really supporting people and individuals and organisations that are rooted in communities and understand those issues and maybe haven't got funding before, or haven't got lots of other routes through which to get funding. What is it for you that's important about that local approach and giving back locally?
Claire Marks | 20:17
I think, primarily, you know, because of the financial success of the Bartlett Group, we've got the opportunity to support others, and the communities where we live and work. My father feels really strongly about this, you know, he kind of describes it as an obligation of a successful business to give back and to give back, you know, to where you live and work. I think as a business, the business philosophy very much focuses on making a positive difference to all stakeholders, and the business see the local community, as a stakeholder. I think as well, for the Bartlett Foundation, it's also a recognition of our past, as a family. My grandfather, who founded the Bartlett Group, grew up in inner city Leeds. Financially, things were very difficult. But along the way, he was given opportunities, which made a difference to him, and in turn to us, and we're now in a position where we can pay that forward and help others. That's really important to us. I'm also a teacher and I spent most of my career working in communities which benefit hugely from Community Organisations. So I've seen first-hand the experience, the difference that these organisations make in communities. And I think that's really been quite important to us and our new direction, especially in terms of multi-year funding, that we help these organisations that are doing a brilliant job in the communities where they work, we help them have that resilience to stay there, be there, be present for a number of years.
Steph Taylor, Strategy and Programmes Director | 22:02
I think that idea of resilience is so important. And actually reflecting on where we are in the cost-of-living crisis and coming out of COVID, you'll know as a teacher, that often a lot of Community Organisations that would have found it easy to get funding before are even in the position where that's no longer the case. And we really do need to make the case together, across Leeds to help those organisations, of all shapes and sizes, survive because a Leeds without Community Organisations just doesn't really bear thinking about, in terms of how they impact on all of our lives and how they’re working to reduce inequalities. If there are people out there, individuals or organisations, looking to start their philanthropic journey and be part of building the resilience of the city, what advice would you give them?
Claire Marks | 22:53
Well, I definitely don't feel that we know all the answers. And I don't think we're doing everything perfectly, we're still on a journey. But our key learning, or the key things that we've taken away over the last few years, is definitely have a focus, have an aim, and be quite strict in terms of that aim and keeping to that focus and aim. Get advice, get outside help. So with our named grant for West Yorkshire, we've had support from Leeds Community Foundation. But for other funding streams that we've got, we've brought in advisors, we've asked other people for advice and for help. And again, that's been really, really important to us and really, really helpful. Increase your understanding of the area you want to fund. So again, for us Leeds Community Foundation have provided lots of really beneficial opportunities for us to do this through their donor events. And again, you know, the more we understand about the need in the community, the better we feel we can support it. There's loads of great webinars out there and resources out there, and as soon as I started researching and thinking about how we could be impactful and what we could do, there was a wealth of information out there to help guide us. I think, for us, it's been about taking time to get to know the organisations that we're funding. You know, support doesn't just have to be about money, it can be about time, as well. And I think that's been a real shift for us in recent years. And we're really hoping to develop that further as well.
Steph Taylor, Strategy and Programmes Director | 24:36
That's really good to hear. And really nice to hear your initial reflection, Claire, that you know, you haven't learned everything you need to learn yet. And we absolutely feel the same at the Foundation. You know, we don't know everything but what we do is bring people together, who have the solutions and are doing fantastic work in the city, be that by making profits that they want to use to support others, be that by delivering fantastic community activity out there. It's about convening people and making sure that everybody's speaking to each other and having the best impact they can have. And it's been brilliant to be on some of that journey with you. Claire Marks, Chair of Trustees at the Bartlett Foundation, thank you for your time.
Claire Marks | 25:17
Thank you very much. Thank you for inviting me and for listening to me, and giving me the opportunity to tell our story at the Bartlett Foundation. Thank you.
Steph Taylor, Strategy and Programmes Director | 25:27
Hopefully today's episode has inspired you, giving you some ideas about how philanthropy can make a difference and why it's so important. Our Community Organisations need money more than ever. That's the bottom line. And we really believe that by working together across Leeds, we can make that difference to support organisations that are tackling the cost-of-living crisis day in, day out. Claire's story, I think was fantastic. And we work with all sorts of organisations and individuals who are on a journey like Claire's to really discover how they can make a difference with what they've got, their knowledge, their assets and their funding.
If you want to learn more about philanthropy in Leeds, please do get in touch with us. You can speak to us through info@leedscf.org.uk. Thank you for listening and thank you to Dr. Beth Breeze and Claire Marks for joining us for this episode of GiveLoveLeeds.
If you enjoyed this episode, take a couple of seconds to rate it on your favourite podcast platform. Don't forget to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our newsletter on leedscf.org.uk. Feel free to drop us an email at info@leedscf.org.uk. Listen out for the next episode of the GiveLoveLeeds podcast.
