The Chair of the Inquiry into Civil Society Futures, Julia Unwin CBE, recently sat down with CAF – the charity, bank and champion for better giving – to discuss:
- what the Civil Society Futures Inquiry is and how it came about
- the challenges and opportunities associated with new organisational models within civil society, including many that look less like traditional hierarchies and more like networks
- new approaches such as participatory grantmaking, which seek to shift power as well as money towards recipients
- criticisms that since philanthropy is to some extent a product of structural inequality, it can never truly be part of the solution
- how we can preserve the freedom civil society has traditionally had to challenge the status quo, whilst also answering concerns that unchecked philanthropic power could end up being anti-democratic
- whether a challenge like the global climate crisis raises difficult questions about whether a pragmatic approach of working with existing systems can ever be enough or whether we need to embrace more radical, transformative change efforts
- …and much more
You can listen to the podcast here.
Photo by Icons8 team on Unsplash