Danielle Walker Palmour  0:01  
Welcome to the Foundation Practice Launch. I was frustrated for three reasons. First of all, I've been in in giving and philosophy for quite a number of years. And I've always been struck and exhilarated by the great passion to do good work that characterizes our sector. We are fiercely independent. And we stick with issues, causes and people over the long term, and sometimes they don't have to be popular or fashionable. This fierce independence and stickability has a serious downside however, because it does lead to us lagging behind other sectors, in terms of a whole range of things we like behind the corporate sector, government and other charities in our approach to things that are important to wider society. diversity in our decision making and stuffing, transparent transparency about what we do and our impact and accountability to those who say we serve these weaknesses. Were holding us back from playing a full part in meeting some of the challenges we all face. Secondly, the area of frustration was that there's a wide range of help out there to support us to improve but the takeoff is patchy or partial. An example of that is the ACF stronger foundations Initiative, where huge amounts of work went into things like the I guidance, for example, which was absolutely excellent, but the take up of that has not been universal. The funders for race equality Alliance is a fantastic network to support better practice amongst foundations taking action, again, does not have universal take 360 Giving although growing since the time that David and I had that conversation, which helps us make what we give to more transparent and available again, as a small small proportion of the total funders who could avail itself avail ourselves of its of its services. So so many, that that's such a frustration then that we could be better. There's lots of opportunity. There's lots of material out there. And the third area of frustration was that there are so many initiatives that are out there to improve practice require or asked us to opt in, which results in endless coalition's of the willing, with no incentives for the laggards to join in. No it was their way of identifying where practice were and specifically where practice could improve. So the idea was to create an assessment framework and index is what I was calling it at the time, which should look objectively at trusts and foundations through the same lens. I started talking to Caroline finds of giving evidence about whether this would be possible and feasible, and she rather reasonably thought it would be I think she came to rue that, that assessment. This began our journey together over time I spoke to colleagues and fellow travelers about this idea and it grew, developed and improved. My trustees at Friends provident foundation were really clear that should not be a friend of the Foundation initiative. This should not be us alone, which needed to have the backing and support others in the sector. I'm delighted to say that nine other trusts believed it was worth a shot. And I'd really love to take this opportunity to thank you upfront for your support and all of your contributions you've made Berroco Cadbury Trust, the blade rope trust Esmee Fairbairn foundation land Kelly Chase Foundation, Paul Harmon Foundation, John element Foundation, Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust Joseph Roundtree reformed trust and power to change these organizations and the people that lead them did more than just contributed funds. They supported with expertise engagement as a sounding board and also giving critical pushback. They all consented to take part in the rating and all were rated. This made the initiative one which was about us and not about pointing the finger at you. We all need to improve we all have things to work on. Fundamentally This is about changing the conversation about trusts and foundations to be less about how much we give how much we give or how much is in our endowment or to what we give what causes our issues as we sometimes hide behind those refund. We're changing the conversation to be how we do our work and how we do what we do more responsive and accountable to society. And how we tell that story. Now I've done enough talking I'm going to pass on to the centerpiece of this event which is a presentation on the process and results of the foundation practice rating. And I'm going to ask Caroline finds his director of evidence who we commissioned to do this work. And Dr. Sylvia McLean, who oversaw the research to join us. I'll hand over to you.

Caroline Fiennes  6:13  
Thank you again for for inviting giving evidence to get involved in this. So we're going to talk about the what we did and what we found. As you know, academics will tell you what they did and only then what they found. So you're dying of suspense. In the meantime, I'm going to start by telling you the answer because I know that's what you know, the kind of headline answer and then I am going to go and talk about the approach that we took and our method and the reason for that is because your need but when we get to part three when Sylvia is going to go into the results in more detail. So for example, when we say you know, half the foundation's got a C on diversity or whatever you're going to need to know what set of foundations we're talking about what a C is and what we mean when we talk about diversity for example. So I'm going to give you the overall answer. Second, I'm going to talk about message. Thirdly, Silvia is going to talk through some of the results. Fourth, I'm going to talk a bit about our conclusions and what do we learn from all this? And our next step where we go from here, and then fifthly there's going to be some time for q&a about the method and findings before we go to the other speakers. So here I'm going to read a little bit because there's huge amount of detail I don't want to get lost. So here is the overall answer. We assessed 100 foundations, and we are through a complicated process. I'm going to explain each foundation in the end got a rating and overall rating of a b c or d A is top and you can see that three foundations for an A so kudos to them. 41 of them got B's a quite a lot of these and then the remaining 60% is evenly split between C's and DS. You can emit those, you can immediately see that the three that gotten a a overall look at how varied they are so welcome, which is in doubt biggest foundation in Europe, that 2000 staff got an A as did the blade grab trust also endowed way smaller. And also the County Durham Community Foundation which obviously has a different structure. It's not fundamentally an endowed foundation. So the first thing to notice is that you don't have to be rich in this racing, and you also don't have to have the zillions of staff. And by the way, if everybody's putting comments in like come up where I'm trying to learn how to read what I'm talking about. And so that was quite a relief to us in a way. But this isn't basically a test of how big are you or how rich are you? So now I'm going to talk about our approach and our method in order that you can interpret these results when we present them in a bit more detail so they can progress to the next slide. So there's three overarching principles in the approach that we took. And I'm going to talk about them first because they influenced so much of what we did Firstly, we took the stance of a prospective applicants and like I've been advocate for grant but also for a job. And a prospective applicant is normally outside your organization and they might well be outside the sector completely. And the reason we took that stance is because it's important that they may be deterred from engaging with you at all. If your organization looks like it is very different from them or isn't interested or doesn't care about people like them. So that's a crucial audience and taking that stance meant that we could only use publicly available information, the kind of material that they might be able to use. And in fact, we looked at two sources. We looked at the foundation's website and we looked at their annual report and accounts as filed with regulator so that could be chartered commission in England and Wales. Or Northern Ireland or the Scottish regulator. We also emulated what they might do, might do in terms of the amount of time that they might spend researching an individual foundation and we love that. We max that 90 minutes. And that first of all has some consequences. I mean, most obviously it means that we could only take into account what a Foundation says about itself. And so then either of those two places. So for instance, a foundation that may be doing fantastically in terms of having diverse staff, let's say but if it doesn't tell us that out then we can't see that the prospective applicant wouldn't know and therefore, our system doesn't give them any credit for that.

Caroline Fiennes  11:13  
Secondly, this is a rating not a ranking. Ranking is a relative measure. It tells you who came talk who came second who came third and so on. It tells you nothing about the gaps between the organization's so maybe, you know they're all squished up at the top and they're all kind of very similar. It doesn't tell you that. And it also doesn't tell you whether basically everybody is great or basically everybody is it doesn't tell you anything about their actual performance. And we felt that that isn't what's going on here. What the prospective applicant experiences is the absolute in terms of how the foundation actually presents and what it actually does. And so we wanted to reflect that in an absolute scale, which are racing does. The other thing about a ranking or an index is that if somebody rises and somebody else falls necessarily that you can't have everybody suddenly being second race if somebody goes up someone have to swap places with someone else. And again, we felt that isn't what's going on here. It is perfectly fine. In our view, it's interesting to notice if you know all boats are rising, or indeed all boats are sinking. So we wanted a relative absolute measure. So it's not a zero sum game. And that's who has some consequences, one of which is that we're not going to tell you the numerical scores that each foundation gets because we don't want somebody to be able to reconstruct the ranking. And we're also not going to tell you the kind of grade boundaries like the cutoff mark between an A and a B or C, for example. And the third principle is objectivity and trying to be as objective as possible. So that meant that in every instance where we could we pushed decisions away from ourselves, so we use existing definitions and categories in every case that we could, and we did a public consultation on the criteria. I'll talk about, we also the three pillars that we look at which are diversity, accountability and transparency, those have equal weight within our system. And within each pillar, each criterion has equal weight. So that means that we are neutral about that we're not saying that any item is more important than another. Okay, so we're going to see an example of this objectivity right now when we're going to look at what foundations are included. So we use existing lists to determine who to include I'm actually going to put on the bottom part here first. So we are we have 100 foundations in our sample, and they include the 10 foundations which fund this work and that is, as Danielle alluded to, because this is not about anybody pointing the finger at anybody else but the foundations who are funding it are being assessed along with everybody else. Everyone is learning together. Secondly, we took the largest five foundations in the country by giving budget and that is because they're so big that they are making it so big that it really dominates grantmakers, experiences, and then for the remaining 85. We combined two lists from other sources. One is from the ACF giving Trends report. And the other is from the list of UK community foundations and we we selected we divided them into, into quintiles by by size, and we took a random selection from each quintile. So that gives us a cross section of foundations in terms of the giving budget, I should say just to be clear, so we look at UK based grant making charitable foundations. That is our scope. So we did not include funders who are in the public sector. So there's no local authorities in here. There's no research count or the government's Research Councils for example. We did not include corporate giving programs unless they are registered as separate charitable foundations. And that's not because we don't think they're important, but because we have to draw the line somewhere. So if the foundation is on one of those two lists that I mentioned that it could be included. So that can be endowed foundations or fundraising foundations or community foundations. Okay, so then let's turn to what criteria we used. So as I mentioned, this whole project is set up to look at three issues diversity, accountability, and transparency. We developed criteria in each of those three pillars, as we call them

Caroline Fiennes  15:52  
and notice that we did not assess what a foundation funds were looking at its practices, hence the name but foundation practice rating. We haven't looked at what it funds. And we also haven't looked at the impact or the effectiveness of the foundation itself. And that again, is not because we don't think they're important, but just because you have to define your schedule somehow. Again, we pushed decisions away from ourselves whenever we could. So our criteria are based on existing material and precedent. So for example, we pulled some from glass pockets, we pulled some from existing materials from ACF from the government from commercial sources. So both inside and out with the the UK charitable charities sector. I mean, one example is where we were looking at whether a website is accessible we use the UK Government guidance about that. That gave us a list of draft criteria. And we ran a public consultation about that last summer people were invited to suggest amendments to those criteria or additions to them. We got about 140 responses. And we were broadly very supportive of the draft set that we have that was quite striking. And we took on board some of the suggestions on some weren't workable and we published a document about how we are using each of those responses. So all in all, that gives us decent confidence that the set of issues that we look at here is the set that the sector finds important. So in total, we ended up with 50 about 50 criteria and 90 questions. There's some questions which are data that we needed, but which aren't part of the criteria. I'll talk about that. So there are three things I want to draw your attention to in terms of the criteria. First is that this whole thing is mediated through transparency, and that's because we are only looking at material that a foundation chooses to make public. So for instance, a foundation may have a brilliant Recruitment Policy for new trustees. But if it doesn't tell us that it is not transparent about that, then we can't give it any credit for that. So you have to be not only doing the thing but also open about doing the thing. Secondly, a quite a lot of a criteria. You could argue that they go into this pillar or into that. And for some of them, you could argue them into any of the three pillars. So at some level we have to just decide. And the third point is that the diversity pillar the criteria in there also include accessibility, because that relates to the diversity of audiences who can engage so for example, whether there are ways for people with disabilities to contact the foundation and how many ways they have I just found this out because it's not obvious that issue would come under diversity, but it means that when we're talking about our results in terms of diversity, we don't just mean the heterogeneity of the set of staff or the set of trustees in a foundation and obviously the full set of criteria. are in the report which is now published in full. So our method is that so as I said we have 50 criteria and 90 questions. And each data on each Foundation was collected by two researchers operating independently, and Silvia managed that process and I know that some of the researchers are with us today. So massive kudos for them and yes, there is a massive spreadsheet with 100 foundations and 90 questions on it and yes, we have double check all the so once we had where there were discrepancies between what the two researchers came up with those were resolved by Sylvia and the researchers and sometimes a third researcher was involved. Then, in about December last year, we sent that data about each foundation to that foundation for them to check.

Caroline Fiennes  20:10  
That was not trivial either, because a surprising number don't have an email address. So that involve posting letters out. Everybody got about three weeks to comment on that. And people did come back with some questions and corrections. Note that the corrections needed to have been on the website on the charity regulator site in order for them to count. So for example, some foundation said Oh, you haven't given us credit for our staff Recruitment Policy say we do have one and it's attached to this email. But if it's not public, then it doesn't count because a prospective applicant wouldn't be able to see it. So that was the method that we use. And at the end of that we were pretty confident that we had we were pretty confident that we could with our set of data, we then had to turn that into a scoring. So the way this works is that each criterion is worth one point so that they're all weighted equally as part of our objectivity, so we're neutral between them. And it's worth pointing out at this point that every criteria is met by at least one foundation in the sample. It turns out so nothing that we are asking for is impossible. Now, we wanted only to score foundations on criteria that are relevant to them, kind of obviously. So we exempted some foundations from criteria that don't apply to them. So for example, if you have only a physician has only few staff 50 or fewer staff. It's not reasonable to expect them to publish pay gap gender pay gap thesis, they are exempt from that criterion. And similarly, if a foundation has 50 or fewer staff, it's not reasonable to expect them to disclose the diversity of their staff because that may compromise individuals you will may be identifiable so that foundation is exempt from that criteria. And again, where did the number of 50 come from? You'll know that the UK law around gender pay gap is at 250. US members of staff that 50 comes from the original House of Lords report the recommended about how pay gap data behind so again, we've pushed that decision away from ourselves. The exemptions, um, we published a list of the exemption rules. Exemptions mean the total possible score on each pillar varies between foundations. Right because some foundations will be exempt and others won't. So on each pillar, each of our three pillars oversee transparency and accountability. We calculated the foundation's actual number of points and its maximum number of points given its exemptions, and we divide one by the other and that gives us the numerical pillar score. We call it for that foundation. Okay, so each foundation ends up with three pillars scores. I hope you're all following us. We're nearly finished. Okay. And then the so then we have the we need to turn those scores into a rating there's not going to be a test on this later, don't worry. We decided again, we looked at how other people do their ratings and we looked at how Ofsted done it for UK schools, how the HMM spectrum of prisons and the UK Care Quality Commission do that. They all have four bands. So we thought we have four bands, and we call them imaginatively ABCDE eyes top because everybody knows it's never good if you get a team and the percentage score on a pillar translates in into the band that you get for that pillar. And as I say, I'm not going to tell you what the how that translates what was the score marks. So that gives us the scores for foundation on each pillar. So you'll see we talk about a foundation getting a B or B, C, D or whatever. And that's what we mean those are the scores that gets on each pillar. And then we had to figure out how to create an overall score from that. The easiest way of doing this would be to just take a numerical average of the three scores and find the band that that translates to that we were quite struck by the way that Ofsted ratings work so Ofsted looks at four categories of issue which are analogous to our three pillars and it has four bands for each issue.

Caroline Fiennes  24:53  
And if a school is rated as inadequate, ie the fourth of its levels, if it's rated as inadequate on any pillar, then it cannot score better than which is the third pillar. Okay, so in our language if school if it gets like a D if you got a D on anything, you can't do better than a C overall. And we decided to adopt that. Because it seemed to us that if a foundation gets a score like a D, if it's really poor, it's really poor on one pillar, and these are really important pillars, then we didn't think that we could hand on heart say that his score was good, his performance is good overall. So numerically like if you've got a D it's possible for the numbers to work out the ad would mean that you get a B over here but we never feel that handle that we could say that an organization like that, that his performance was good. So we have the same rule that a foundation score cannot be more than one band above its lowest pillar because if you get a the best you can do is to get a seat and I forgot to say that when we were putting together the set of foundations that we included, we looked at community foundations and the list published by ACF, those are already the three or so 100 largest foundations in the country. So when we're looking at the results, it's kind of not an excuse, on interpretation to say Oh, but some of these foundations are really small, because actually none of them is very small. So you see what I wanted to explain to you actually what's happened in the process and what how this was all cooked together. And now Sylvia is going to show you some more of the answers.

Sylvia McClain  26:41  
Thank you Caroline. So when I tell you is just going to review what you already know and comprehend. It's pretty nice truck to be quite happy about but you also need to realize that these these are over 50% All stores and diversity you can see straightaway was the worst scoring filler. The best room filler was transparency. And then accountability was sort of somewhere in between but it's a bit skewed to see and so we kind of had three overall results with the FAQ. So every criteria that I mean, Caroline would accept this, but I would reiterate it nothing is impossible. This is very important from an ethical point of view. We didn't want to ask the impossible. So we were allowed to present except some exemptions for everything. The diversity game is is the worst. There's also interestingly no relationship between the overall score and the fun there is a relationship with the number of staff. Right. Interesting. Okay, so to talk about that a little bit more detail, the giving budget right by Foundation slides, we have three days each of the three. They're all three different piles left in the first file, which was the family budget. There were days and foundations that had enormous budgets, and then there would be seem to be every other category across base keeping budgets on the net assets are we lived up the net assets. And these are quite easily distributed. So you don't have to have more money to be better. You do probably want to have more staff but we would trustees to do better however, because CPD is much more prominent. The foundations didn't have very many staff and in fact to learn something new Are you having a hard time hearing? It's not better.

Sylvia McClain  29:02  
Is that better? Okay, great. Sorry about that. So just to sum this up, again, by giving budget, there's no correlation at all better, but staff interests me so you might want to have more staff that have the better outcome and the foundation practices. So in fact, you know, foundation that have a large database, which is actually quite interesting. So maybe it's going to work. You're not 100% sure about that. Okay. So then going back to diversity. Diversity has evolved. Yeah, thank you is we're foundations the worst and there was no way at all there was only three things and the average score. Again, we're not gonna tell you that person. The average scores actually. And this is not just because foundations didn't have most of the files, even foundations with purchasing plans. didn't actually have any targets. And also, as you remember, people were exempted if they had some center to your staff, from diversity plans and quality Foundation's activities, staff and school. Well, a full 16 foundations with nothing and interestingly, one of the things that I think wanted to do at the beginning of this and this is something Danielle into to actually look at our foundations spread and see, you know, sort of the heterogeneity of mind and so forth versus Soul Foundation that reported on the first day of trustees, and that was the reading stress. I mean, and just to remind you, the eye for us. Accessibility is extremely important. Because maybe this is extremely important. Because no idea is that better. Right, so few 16 People would zero on virtually at all, okay, and as you can see among our lowest questions, all of them so if we go back to accountability and transparency, accountability was kind of interesting because it was one that was much rather spread and people tended to do okay and most foundation it was much more represented. Even liking discussion about and in fact, the highest scoring questions we have discussed. Which is actually not that surprising because it's strong. governance, and people are quite good on transparency as well. experienced with their hat on they scored a it's obvious, right, so we have some I've been fighting really long. So one of the things that foundations are very good at telling the grantees what to shoot but not necessarily providing evidence itself. So a lot of foundations when we were going through the data found that they would actually buy regrets even things like seniors living wage, and, you know, consultation movies, but they didn't actually provide that empathy cells. And these are just a few examples of it. Let's delete the Muller report to say more. So other findings, when things become quite poor, was less than a quarter of foundation reported in feedback which is kind of striking, because you would expect to have some and well, even fewer foundations actually reported anything that they would change. Unless No, two thirds of our sample did not produce any analysis and we have nearly 40 recommendations scored full day's bottom marks and everything. But it's not all negative. It's not all bad news. The funders Foundation, those sets didn't quite better than average. There is an A in family therapy and everybody and asked if they just say bye and the rest of these groups. So we also have some other examples of good practice. So these correlate with the overall score, but we wanted to give a shout out.

Sylvia McClain  33:51  
So if we look at County Durham, they actually had the written appeals process for redacting bases and something we've never heard of. Before that was quite interesting to see. In terms of accountability, both clergy support testaments, Islamic aid and National Garden scheme to actually have really good effectiveness analysis. And the complaints policy. So many foundations don't actually have a complaint policy is one thing that is and they often have with 1000s of levels houses and respond to salaries, statement and a timeline. Very, very Interest and Money. Chasing has to show up to about diversity to fair Calgary was pay gap even though there is that criteria. That and accessibility with consultants really important. With things like the site may so software lecture website. Okay, so now I'm like to keep you stuck here. I hope you can hear better. You can talk a little bit more about that.

Sylvia McClain  35:01  
Yeah, thanks. So I think a lot of people I think it was coming in and out of touch me a bit like you're in at the bottom of a swimming pool. In general, the foundation reactions have been really positive to this. And I'm not sure we wouldn't necessarily have predicted that. There's been reading more or less left to right. There's been a lot of people saying yes, we've been meaning to work on that issue. It's sort of been all our long to do list, but we've never quite gotten around to it. And now this is a bit of a rocket under our chair, so we're never going to get around to it. So that sounds like some impact. There are some people saying actually, we've never thought of this. We haven't realized that this issue is there. But now you mentioned it, we'll get on to it. So we had a lot of that around publishing in Welsh, for instance. There was quite a lot of right of people saying that they have been working on something internally but they haven't gotten around to talking about it externally. And you know, which is sort of great, although from the perspective of a prospective applicant, that's the same as that work, not having happened thus far. So again, that might be some impact. There's been some interest in us doing this in other countries. And the answer is no, we're not going to do it in your country. And this will be done by somebody who has really deep understanding of the practices and norms in your country. You need to know what data exists. You need to know what regulatory requirements there are, you need to know like, as I say, we've pushed decisions away from ourselves. So we've used all manner of data sources, and you need to know what they are for your country, but we're happy to teach you what we know about how to do it. We had something to say we're not grantmakers. And that was a bit of a surprise thing as we got our new ceramic is from existing lists. And then there were some people are quite reasonably who thought that a particular criterion doesn't apply to them. And that was mainly because when we sent out the data in December, we didn't we haven't figured out our exemption system. And so we didn't explain who was going to be exempt from what and some foundations have asked if they can use all criteria for self assessment and some are doing so without having off I know that Mark Williamson, for example, in the Community Foundation, based in Newcastle has done that and so that's fantastic. And we never thought of this as a self assessment tool, but the lives of people are figuring out a way to do that. So that's those are kind of the reactions that we had that can we go so some recommendations that we have that come out from all those one is to website

Sylvia McClain 37:44  
is an astonishing number. of foundations that we looked at don't have a website at all.

Sylvia McClain  37:52  
27 of the 100 foundations have no website. You know, it's 2022. That's kind of amazing. And these are all registered charities, right? They're all operating in the public interest and using tax subsidized money. It seems to me astonishing, makes sure that there are multiple ways to contact you help people with disabilities. So they pointed out yesterday that 20% of the UK population apparently identify as having a disability check on your website. This is always a good trick for leaders to do once in a while, because it may well be less clear than you think and it may well be less extensive than you think. The we need to do more as a sector about disclosing the diversity of staff and disclosing the diversity of boards. So obviously, I know Ross put a question in the q&a about this. So there was for example, and ultimately Congress


Sylvia McClain  38:50  
about the proportion of women glass ceilings on corporate boards and it talks about progress has been made on that we cannot tell you how diverse Foundation staff are and foundation trustees are because so few foundations report on that. I hope you caught Sylvia said that over 100 foundations only one disclose the diversity of its trustees, only one out of 100 and that was all things the Rhodes trust. So it doesn't even know your South African history in terms of Cecil Rhodes and that treatment of black people in months, a bit of a surprise that we need to do much better in terms of disclosing diversity. And so we have mentioned, there are some plans published for improving diversity, but very few of those involve targets. So that's something that we could do. There's obviously something around checking that you do what you're asking grantees to do, and we would suggest it sounds like some obvious point but being very deliberate about it, you know, maybe even asking your grantees what do they think they are asked by you to do? And then making sure that you do that. And then I hope that you could catch this. So part of what Sylvia was saying was that there's a decent relationship between having between having a few staff and having poor performance and also a relationship between having few trustees and having poor performance. And so that I think I'm right in saying that no foundation with fewer than fit with more than 50 staff gets a D and no foundation with more than 10 trustees gets a D whereas loads of foundations who have no staff get Ds and loads of foundations that have five or fewer trustees get these it's really quite we can show you that it's really quite striking. So having to start to few personnel, basically maybe a false economy. And that's that's kind of a recommendation at individual level. Also at a sector level like it's quite easy to talk about the small foundations as being you know, nimble and fallston, blah, blah, blah, which kind of may be true, but it may be that it looks from our findings, as though they are lagging in practice in these three areas. Those are actions that relate to this three pillars that we were looking at, and clearly there are many others that relate to effectiveness. I like to talk about that for five hours, that we didn't look at effectiveness. Okay, and so then what are we conclude from all this? Why are the results the way that they aren't? Well, it's pretty clear that there's a way to go only three A's overall. Try I'm not sure if you caught somebody saying there's 22 foundations got ddd and on diversity 16 Foundation scored no points. So there's a way to go particularly on diversity slash accessibility for a hypothesis that we have and this comes out of this work but also matters of work that giving evidence has done with foundations and then other circumstances and in other countries is that many foundations pay inadequate attention to what you might call the customer experience. So what applicants have to deal with and what they go through what grantees go through and several well outside of CFM and experience. I know that Gemma Bo and Tom Steinberg are both on and they wrote a book a last year which pretty much just on this topic. And so you know some options of that there's good work going on that doesn't get disclosed that pulls down some marks. And it also may as mentioned at the beginning to turn some prospective applicants. I think paying attention to the customer journey might prompt foundations to be more accessible and to realize how difficult it can be for some organizations to engage with the foundation. And websites could be much easier to navigate. And lastly, just to kind of re up this that Sylvia mentioned. I mean sort of impact is kind of hanging over all of this only a third of foundations published anything related to impact or effectiveness. And that seems to be kind of amazing. Given that, you know, men this sector has been talking much more about efficiency about effectiveness and impact ever since the.com time really which has now more than 20 years ago. I was very surprised by that. So in terms of next steps, then we're going to do all again next year. Why not? And by before them. We are open to your opinions. About the method and the criteria that

Caroline Fiennes  43:51  
we're interested in your opinion until the third weekend. There's a survey which is on the foundation practice rating website and you can put your views in that and please do but there comes a point obviously where we have to stop that and we have to decide what our method and decide what our criteria and process are going to be before we start. And then there's one other thing which is over the coming weeks we're going to publish. We've published the report in full today from our findings, but there's some other bits and bobs that we're going to put out over the next few weeks some other data that were interesting. They weren't really what we came for. But while we were at it, we found them so for example the range of grant budgets per staff member in foundations, the the relationship between number of staff and number of trustees I find that really bizarre. And then some analysis of the impact stuff that the foundation's put out. So yeah, so we're very interested in your views, until the third we can make. Thank you.

Danielle Walker Palmour  44:54  
Thanks, Caroline. And thanks, Silvia. I know I don't know quite what was going on that we'll get there hopefully sorted out for the q&a q&a part of the agenda. So this is the opportunity have to ask questions of clarification on the methods and how to try to solve a variety of issues and problems as we went through the probate process. I wanted to take this opportunity to also thank Silvia and Caroline and the researchers who worked to Sylvia the team of researchers who went through the materials because you were diligent, you were cheerful, you were pulling your hair out, but we're always trying to get the very best to be as rigorous and fair as possible. And it's great to work with a research outfit that is committed to the project and getting it right as as everyone funding, funding it in shaping it. So thanks very much for that. So we've had some really interesting questions in the q&a. And this is an opportunity for you to practice your q&a muscles. You can I think, I don't know if you cannot break these, but you can give them a thumbs up questions. put questions in there. I was going to start not at the top but actually start with a question because Rob asks a kind of philosophical questions I think we should come on to, but I really some specific questions about the method here. Particularly. Sarah, put in a question from Daniel Chatlin. About the excluding data from an annual report on impact. Can you just clarify that

Caroline Fiennes  46:43  
we didn't exclude it but didn't we? So we we were not looking at we're not assessing foundations effectiveness or foundations impact. So we were not looking for that we did log whether they whether Foundation, proposed anything in relation to its impact from my recollection, as that's not one of the criteria. But we loved it. And as I say we're going to publish some stuff about this in the coming weeks.

Danielle Walker Palmour  47:22  
Great. And there was also a question about sampling from Charles. Why didn't we sample all of them and this is an advert opportunity, I think.

Caroline Fiennes  47:42  
Yeah, so we we have ourselves. So we will use a sample that he made. I mean, we couldn't include all three on the foundation. We kind of assess all 300 of centers because of resource constraints. So we had enough results to do 100 foundations. So we wanted to choose to include the 10 funding foundations, the top five for the reasons I described. So that gives us 85 other slots, and so we just took a as I said, quite random. So as to get in that 85 a cross section of all the other foundations by science.

Danielle Walker Palmour  48:21  
So essentially that the advert I was going to jump in if anyone would like to join the funding group you're very welcome to and that might actually have the impact of expanding the number of foundations that we could actually assess because that was essentially the constraint. And you know, 100 seemed a reasonable place to stop because we did have finite resources. Can I answer plums question? Yeah. So I knew you wanted to answer Bob's question. Yeah.

Caroline Fiennes 48:49  
Well, in sharing all the questions, yes. And they are all in the report which is public. And in fact, we just publish today and in fact, we've published all the questions. We published them last summer before the project started along with a document on how to do well so this is absolutely not a kind of sneaking up on you. Kind of testing. You know, we published the questions and also published a textbook on how to do well. We, on your second part, the question about what's considered excellent reach, correct? Well, he's quite there's no excellent on each criteria. So each criterion is scored out of one maybe you mean considered expert on each pillar? And the answer is that you would just add up the, the number of points that you score on a pillar and divide that by the number of points that you could have scored given your exemptions and that gives you a number which might be 30% or 60%, or 99%, or whatever. And then when then we have some bands. So some range of numbers gives you an A and some range of numbers gives you a beat, and I'm not going to tell you what that range is. In the report, we do show what the distribution of numeric numerical scores in each pillar is. And it's much worse for diversity than it is for the others.

Danielle Walker Palmour  50:21  
And I don't know who that is CCFC which is, I think it's that's quite an Cumbria Community Foundation. She's just going to get it just asking about whether the ratings will be developed beyond practice to be looking at impact effectiveness and kind of more of the I suppose you'd say the derivatives of some of the the baseline criteria. And you might want to talk a little bit about, you know, the limitations or capacity we have for doing that.

Caroline Fiennes  50:52  
Yeah, so assessing. Effects are makers and staff, how many arms and legs the whole effect is for carriers through the organizations that they found, and that makes assessing their effectiveness? quite tricky. It's not impossible. It's quite tricky. Because a grantee organization may achieve what it achieves entirely because of its funder, or it may achieve it despite its funder, or funders, and somewhere in between. Okay, so giving evidence has done masses of thinking about how you even approach that question or what the effectiveness of a funder is. We've written about that in the FT I wrote about that in nature and so and it's tricky to do so when we have done it for assessing foundations and we are, you know, open to doing that, but it's typically a 2030 40,000 pound piece of work for a single foundation to do it properly. Okay. So that's just the kind of resource constraints so. So that is why we didn't assess that this time around and it was going to be difficult for us to do it. Your question about how, how if we're going to assess how well foundations understand the communities they serve. Don't know how we would turn that into a researchable question. I mean, if we were doing it as a consulting job for one foundation, we would do some kind of consultation with the relevant community. But how we would do that on a cost basis that one could afford and a project like this across 100 or so foundations, I just don't know. So I'm in parts of the constraint is that we had to design a research process which captures what we're interested in and is doable at the scale and resources that we have.

Danielle Walker Palmour  52:54  
That's really brilliant. And I think I mean, that's, you know, what are the real issues and and I wanted to pick up if we could we hold some of those questions about diversity, diversity criteria until after the next set of discussions, because I think, what was one of the things we've got to say about diversity is that we were quite constrained in what we could actually say about the diversity of foundations, staff and trustees, because there's so little disclosure, it's almost like you can't almost audit something because there's just nothing there to look at. And we've really as a sector have got to shift that because we can't even have a kind of very good conversation. about it. It's at such a low level. So hopefully, we could pick that up, perhaps as something we explore a little bit more. Again, this is all of us needing to really think how we can make this work. And in fact, you know, some foundations that have scored particularly well relatively well on that still struggle with how to do it in a sensible way. And I do think it's a real opportunity for us to learn together about how we can make this stack up for us all. So I'm just going to move on if that's okay Caroline, do you Alright, let's move on from the Methods section. You'll still be here for the rest,

Danielle Walker Palmour 54:22  
I might answer some of these easy questions. Just

Danielle Walker Palmour  54:24  
So if you type the answer, that'd be great. And then we can pick up some of the more discursive ones around diversity particularly in the next section. So I'm going to move us on to some respondents from the sector. And we've got some commentators from within and beyond UK philanthropy to both reflect on the foundation practice rating as an intervention as well as place the results outlined by Caroline and Silvia in a wider context to frame our later discussions and the ongoing conversation. And I'm going to ask our first commentator, to Michael Edwards, who is a writer and activist dedicated to strengthening civil society. Michael has worked in academia, large international development NGOs, like Oxfam, and Save the Children. He then worked in the World Bank work for the Ford Foundation. And then back to do academic writing. His work is touched on the roles that civil society and particularly philanthropy can play and should play in our society. And what I've always admired about Michael is the combination of reflection and critique that he brings to all those spheres. So Michael now lives in the US and is joining us from the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York. Michael.

Michael Edwards  55:56  
Thanks, Danielle, and thanks for the invitation. I'm happy to be part of the conversation, although speaking personally has been quite hard to focus on the details of foundation practice, given what's unfolding on our screens, and so on in Ukraine, the incredible human tragedy that we're seeing. That's occupying a lot of my psychic space really, but without being sort of grandiose I think there is a connection between the two because what's happening in Ukraine is an attack on the viability or the very existence or possibility of democracy in a democratic society and central to democracy are constraints on power and privilege have always been the heart of inflation. Those constraints are anchored in the willingness to hold ourselves accountable and be held accountable for the ways in which we use whatever power and privilege we have. Doesn't matter whether it's large scale or small scale power, public or private, social, economic, financial or political. Now seems to be your project is important in and of itself, because it represents at least a partial attempt to address critiques on those grounds that foundations are opaque and unaccountable centres of financial power, but don't represent and indeed cannot structurally represent the broader public interest and could therefore pose a danger to democracy however well intentioned they are. There are other critiques of course around their lack of impact or their skittishness on reliability. This one around democracy seems especially resonance in the moment, but the project is also important in relation to this wider global context of threats to democracy, which show why each one of us has to take every opportunity that's presented to strengthen transparency, accountability and representation in order to prevent backsliding in the bigger picture of democracy and the societies in which we live. You can see that very clearly in the US right now. Maybe in the UK. I'm not so sure. Not all threats to democracy come through invasion by autocrats. They come from the failure to confront autocracy, or corruption or discrimination, or exclusion in our own lives, in our communities and workplaces and political processes. But closer to home and in that context, mall does not mean insignificant because democracy writ large rests on is founded in democratic practice in particular context, like yours, and in that respect, I say well done. Congratulations. This is a great start. Now, if we accept this argument, that democracy is important, then obviously, we have to go further and we have to ask whether this rating budget in its current form is an effective instrument in that broader struggle, or is it too weak is thin, but it'd be bold or should it be bigger? Can it be a focus perhaps on a different set of criteria or metrics? After all, this is a big deal. A huge amount of work has gone into this and it's only worth expending so much time and money collecting information. If the observation you collect signifies something go genuine, significant, something of real importance for the trajectory and effectiveness of foundations as actors in a democratic society. And in that respect, I just be honest and say I have some doubts. Maybe I have some questions is a fair way of putting it. There's no doubt the report is meticulously researched, beautifully presented by Caroline and Sylvia and the rest of their team. But it's also instructive as much for what's left out, which are Anna Sylvia has mentioned a little bit as to what was included, what's included is very, very basic. You have a website or an investment policy, what's the diversity profile of the board and so forth. Not difficult things to satisfy even if the most incredibly foundations still don't meet them. But there isn't much on underlying issues that I think are really, really important, and perhaps are better markers in the conversation that we're having. issues of equality and consistency apart from a few examples where foundations don't practice what they preach. Like paying a living wage and so far, very little long community participation in governance and decision making.

Michael Edwards  1:00:43  
Very little on deeper issues of control and representation, which after all, form the fulcrum of all power relationships. This is what power and sharing power is. All about. The definitions of diversity are very conventional, but I've got to see disability is there. Nothing on class nothing i economic stasis, nothing on grassroots experience. Nothing on embeddedness when I was at the Ford Foundation, we had a board which was score I'm pretty sure a on your criteria, but was terribly reaction. A large proportion of women, people of different sexual orientation, race ethnicity, but we were told to forbid the appointment of Trustees and the labor movement interesting. And probably America's biggest funder of social justice work in the United States. So diversity, I think you need to go a lot further and critique your own understanding of what it really means and bring in that dimension which is often excluded. Not of course, at the cost of other aspects of diversity that are already there. There's very little about whether people can submit applications for funding. Somebody quite strange the way those questions were dealt with or not dealt with, or sort of shunted to the side or sometimes answered partially or not at all, or sometimes exempted, for nearly always excluded from the actual scoring process. But I think they said my experiences and the OVI that's the most important question for grantees and actually get money from this place. Is it easy or is it not easy? Or they'll just have to do what they told me and fulfill what's in their grand design, social change by doing things that respond to the criteria and priorities. And so if we're looking at this from a desert, democratic point of view, there's an obvious argument for saying why that should be much higher in terms of approaches of an exercise like this. And as Caroline said, perhaps the most striking of all there's nothing on what actually gets funded, who or what actually gets the money, as opposed to providing information on who gets funded that's the transparency mediation process that Caroline into that as a centerpiece of perhaps a central weakness of the exercise you're doing. For SES. It's a crucial issue that could be included in the future. But that's a bit of a weak response. I think. It's important to do it now and do it properly. There's obviously room for one or two or three or four more iterations go much further than this. But just by changing the sample selected for analysis is in the plan I know, but changing the analysis itself. Just to finish that's important, because as I know myself, because I come from inside this community as well. Foundations are masters of what I would call low grade corrective action. We erect costly and sophisticated infrastructure of evaluators and researchers. And consultants, and commentaries, collaboration, conferences, and special projects, strategies and so on. All aimed at self improvement without doing very much to get at the real drivers. Consequently, and it's particularly true in the US I'm not an expert on the UK. Lift the real importance has changed in the foundation community, and certainly the last 30 or 40 years. Despite this vast infrastructure of commentary. The same be said of your project. My advice is simple. Don't let it happen. Use this as a springboard to go much further so that you can transform yourselves into what I would call it a support system with Democratic interactive social change, not a control system that is owned and operated by elites tackle issues they define is much more accurate. I think there's a definition of a description for the foundation community today. Not only would that improve your own performance, I think it would help to answer rising criticism about foundations in the public sphere. And most importantly, it would help to build your democracy we can all be proud of.

Danielle Walker Palmour  1:05:11  

You did that thing, which is give us some strokes and a little bit of a rocket. So that's brilliant. Thank you very much very, very provocative. That's great. So I'm now going to move on to our second contributor, who's very much within the UK Foundation, sphere, and this is policia F and who's now the Director of children and young people at BBC children in need. And I first met Fawzia when she was the CEO of Luqman Bedford Community Foundation. And she brought to us all when she joined the foundation sector over a relatively short period of time in philanthropy. After training, I believe as a solicitor, she has become a leader and I sector championing better practice on diversity in terms of what we fund as well as how she has developed, important learning framework for us or that all of us who wish to improve and educate ourselves on diversity issues, I think goes back to the point Mike was making is actually about educating ourselves, not just improving kind of our externals really educate ourselves on diversity, called the DEI coalition, and that was titled strongly tied into the stronger foundations work. Fazio takes a broad and inclusive approach to the issues of equity and inclusion. So I'll hand over to you Fozia

Fozia Irfan  1:06:55  
thank you so much, Danielle. And before we go any further, I think it is important to just pause and thank Danielle for this work because I remember when I first met you, Danielle, you mentioned this probably four or five years ago, and it was just a little twinkle in your eye and I was so excited about it. And to see it come to fruition in this way is really a testament to your hard work and your passion. So I think we do need to recognize that. But in terms of this particular this piece of work and how important it is. For me, I was really, really excited about this project for three main reasons. The first is because of our objective as foundations to work for the public benefit. That is something you know we say in our charity articles or objectives. And we talk about, you know, we're here to do public good. And accordingly, we should have public scrutiny as soon as you step foot into the public sphere. There has to be a relationship of scrutiny and I think so far that that accountability has not just not been there in this sector. The other reason why I think this is this initiative is really important. And probably the most important reason for me, is because I'm hoping this will be a catalyst for change. We know that there is no really meaningful accountability mechanism in terms of what foundations do, and how we do it. For me, this is the first step along that journey. And I think actually you have taken the hardest step which is you know, the very complicated, very rigorous methodology, working out all those complex nuances in terms of what you measure, etc. For me, this is the first step towards that accountability. And we can't have accountability without transparency. You just and by being transparent by sharing information, you then open yourself up to scrutiny and become more accountable. And so these big questions that actually Michael raised about, you know, this is a first step in terms of practice. How do we get grants the next logical step for me would be what do we find? What is our impact? Are we actually effective in doing what we're saying we set out to do, and that comes into the questions also about power, about participation, about privilege. about who's making decisions, what the application processes, all of those more complex questions. I hope we'll we'll come on from this. And the third reason why I think this initiative is really, really important is because it sends a signal for me the most important signal that diversity is really, really important, because signaling what we're measuring is really vital to show us what we value by putting diversity as a pillar, something that you will be held accountable for, sends a signal to the rest of the sector that this is something that you will be measured on. And it cannot be, as quite often is in our sector. The diversity equity inclusion person who's sitting in a corner in the office in combat, who bears the responsibility of all the DNI work of the foundation this is not that this is saying diversity, equity inclusion is something which should be integral to the work that foundations do. It is so important to represent and serve the community and serve our communities. And we will be judged according to that. And I think so far from my peers within the sector, you know, by setup the DI coalition two years ago, we've just finished our our work are coming together. And my hope was that the DI coalition would send a ripple across the sector to say that this work is really important. But as you mentioned at the beginning, Danielle, the foundations that tend to do this work are the Coalition of the Willing and quite a lot of what I hear in particularly in relation to diversity is conversation. And I've been hearing that conversation and I speak to many people in the sector, particularly people from marginalized communities who work in the sector. There is a real sense that there are a huge amount of words spoken in the last year or two. Actually, it hasn't led to much action. So what is going to lead to action? And accountability like this public scrutiny like this, I find is quite often that catalyst. And I think in terms of going forward and building on what Michael was saying, for what I would hope to see. I really hope that this practice rating becomes a self imposed standard of excellence. So it's used by foundations to reflect, to think about best practice and to use as a barometer. So and I think it's really important what you said at the beginning about this not being a ranking, but a writing something that pushes all of us the whole sector collectively, to do better. And the second thing, which I have already touched upon, is that it moves us to act. Michael talked right at the beginning. About the critical and urgent times that we're living in, you know, their philanthropy has never been more needed for philanthropy has never been more needed. And to do this work well, we need to take action not just in terms of what we fund, but in terms of looking internally, what we're doing and how we're doing it.

Fozia Irfan 1:12:58  
And I really hope that this tool for I mean in terms of third, my third hope, for this work, is that it will help us become more relevant and resonant with the communities we serve. Because increasingly, particularly for more marginalized communities, they will not accept our institutions and the work that we do without question. You know, the, the generations have changed scrutiny. has changed, people are much more willing to ask questions, and therefore we need to be able to ensure we are relevant we are we have credibility, and we have validity to act within the public sphere. So this is an opportunity for us to grasp the mantle to become better, and except that we have responsibility through our very existence, to uphold standards of excellence in everything that we do. And actually get that thank you Danielle.

Danielle Walker Palmour 1:14:01  
Thank you so much. Fazia that was absolutely inspirational. And I think, you know, grasping particular nettles or mantle's, I think this is what we've really got to start considering how we're going to do that and really move forward. I hope it all it does galvanize action so I won't chatter on I will pass on next to max Rutherford, who is head of policy and practice, practice at the Association of charitable foundations. Our trade body is the UK membership body supporting all of us grant making charities. He led the ACS stronger foundations initiative and keeps trying to encourage us to continue to engage with the standards that we set ourselves. So foundations very much round that process for device Yeah. Where we took on the challenge of defining the pillars of good practice in the many facets of work that we have in investment in diversity and accountability in grant making, practice etc. And Max is incredibly valuable and helpful to us as individual foundations, but also not collective work in he brings very much a helicopter view of how we work. So over to you, Max.

Max Rutherford  1:15:31  
Well, thank you very much, Danielle, for that introduction. It's a real privilege and honor to follow such inspirational speakers. So I'm just going to talk a little bit about that helicopter view and give a perspective from from where I sit within ACF and working with so many different kinds of foundations. The foundation practice rating project is a timely and pioneering initiative supporting the whole foundation sector to understand how to become more diverse, accountable and transparent. I've been really pleased to be an observer member of the Advisory Group on behalf of ACF. We believe ACF that foundations are a vital source for social good and our mission is to support them to be ambitious and effective in the way they use their resources. Around 40% of the foundation's assessed in the rating project are ACF members, and I'm pleased to see that three quarters of the foundations that got an A or B rating are members of ACF. I wanted to start with the question What is the foundation sector? Because unlike many other places in the world, the UK doesn't define charitable foundations in its law or regulation. The foundation sector is a construct, grouping together an ecosystem of registered charities that share enough common features to be considered a collective foundations are kaleidoscopic in their variety in terms of their size, location, source of income, remit history and mission. Some were literally established in the last few weeks, while others are more than 1000 years. Old. Some are among the largest not for profit institutions in the world with many hundreds of staff. While most have no staff at all and are entirely volunteer and so when we talk about the foundation sector, we need to keep in mind that this is not a homogenous defined category of funders but a collective of highly varied independent charities. Today's report, as you've heard was partly based on a sample from our annual foundation giving trends research which has tracked grant making by the largest 300 family and independent foundations for more than a decade. This group is just a small proportion of the 10,000 or so grant making charities in the UK, but they award around half of all charitable grant making each year about three and a half billion pounds. The largest 20 foundations are responsible for more than half of that money. So in terms of financial clout, half of all charitable grant making is concentrated among a very small number of large charities with many 1000s of others responsible for the other half. I want to speak a little bit about the context in which this report is being published which Michael and others have touched upon also more than a decade of austerity. The Black Lives Matter movement, global threats to democracy, a global pandemic, the climate crisis of all exacerbated and shone a brighter light on inequality in our communities. This context is driving a growing demand for charity services that has now reached levels rarely seen before. In the past foundation funding was the icing on the charity sectors cake civil societies risk capital, able to fund innovation and new ideas. be experimental. Be willing to learn from failure. foundation money is now more likely to be funding bread and butter services as the state withdraws and the number of donations from the public declines. Previously, it would have been almost unheard of for a foundation to fund core public services such as libraries food banks or legal representation. For many foundations. This is now becoming a regular part of their work.

Max Rutherford 1:19:18  
While the foundation sectors own giving is on the rise, and at a record high, this hasn't been able to keep pace with demand. In turn, the proportion of charities applying for funding that are unsuccessful is increasing. So it's more vital than ever, the foundation's strive to be their best selves. While the rating project and ACS own stronger foundations initiative as separate pieces of work they share some common findings. Stronger foundations involved more than 100 ACF members in working groups to identify what ambitious and effective practice looks like including diversity, transparency, impact and investing. This evidence gathering enabled us to identify 40 pillars of practice, and over the last year our members have been assessing themselves against these pillars. This has shown that foundations can be harsh critics have their own practice and more than willing to call themselves out for falling short of the high bar they aspire to reach, accelerated by the turmoil of the last few years and driven by a desire to make the most of their resources that are increasingly in demand. More foundations are seeking to strengthen their governance, be more transparent, reduce the burden on grantees and improve their staff and board diversity. Examples of this from a self assessment tool include enabling anonymous feedback from grantees ring fencing funding for racially minoritized communities. Speaking out and loudly in public about issues affecting civil society, introducing targets for board diversity, publishing details about their investments, and including people with lived experience in strategy and funding decisions. Just like today's research stronger foundations has also shown that no type or size or Foundation has a monopoly on being ambitious and effective. It's really good to see that examples of all the rating projects criteria are found somewhere in the foundation sector that no one's doing at all. And we know that no foundation achieved an A rating and diversity practice. So this is consistent with what our members tell us about how much further they have to travel on diversity, equity and inclusion. Encouraging the this these are also the areas where they tell us they have the most ambitious plans. The rating project is really helpful in shining further light on areas where foundations need to make progress and offers practical ways for them to do so. More foundations than ever are striving to become the stronger foundations and be their best selves and it's perhaps never been more important that they achieve this goal.

Danielle Walker Palmour  1:21:53  
Thanks, Max. That's brilliant. That's really fantastic to get that that overview of of you know, what a foundation is in the UK and also just a sense of where there are real parallels between the stronger foundations efforts which went on for several years. And the findings of this work. Now, this is the time for q&a, and we've got a good chunk of time. I'm really delighted. We've got a chunk of time for that. And we've got a lot of really good questions. And it was just as actually the panel kind of effort. So everybody's in the frame that's contributed and thank you all speakers. I wondered if we could just like talk a bit about the diversity part of this exercise, because there seem to be there are lots of questions in the q&a around diversity. Above the practice, but also the effort to measure it that we've attempted here. And just just to pick up in Rob's had to go Rob Williams in time to go but one of the things is you know, any reflections from the panel members, you know, of what the barriers are to better practice. And I don't know if it's unfair to ask you max for what you found through stronger foundations but also any theories that we might have that Caroline or so we might have about, you know, what you saw in terms of looking at through the same lens or these foundations. Max, what do you think the barriers might be to, to better practice in terms of governance disclosures and or staffing? I think that

Danielle Walker Palmour 1:23:43  
the there's definitely change on this coming. I think until fairly recently. A lot of foundations just hadn't thought of it. They hadn't been asked about it and hadn't thought of it. And that's not really a good excuse, but I think it's partly a reason behind why it hasn't happened yet. So initiatives like today's report, I think will be really helpful and the feedback that you've had, it's great to see that some of that has been very positive and in terms of foundation saying that it's really helped them wake up to the need to do a lot of what you're recommending, if not indeed all of it I think we know even though there isn't a huge amount of data that is in the public domain. We know that foundation diversity is quite far behind the charity sector in general and that the charity sector in turn is also quite far behind other sectors. So it's unsustainable for the foundation sector to be in some ways, the least diverse part of any sector that just can't possibly align with the missions that they're pursuing. So I think there's, there's two things one is perhaps a more straightforward task of publishing the data or as possible, all charities should be able to do various different ways. The much bigger challenge, which number of people in the q&a have pointed out is how do you enhance and support better diversity once you have the data? So that's very substantial challenges the first one of which should be more straightforward.


Danielle Walker Palmour  1:25:16  
Caroline any series and I was going to come to you faulted from you again speaking to foundations but what do you any theories?

Caroline Fiennes  1:25:23  
Yeah, what two things firstly I just wanted to reiterate that. So few foundations published data on the diversity of staff and all the diversity of that and we couldn't do any analysis of it. So we can't tell you what the diversity is. I can't tell you that you know, 80% are male and 80% are white or whatever. Because we just didn't have the data to do that. And so I've asked Jake to put up the slide that shows the criteria that are in this pillar, which may be a bit microscopic to read, but I just wanted everybody to be clear on on what what we were measuring in this pillar. So it was not looking at the heterogeneity of a set of trustees or call. Trustees just couldn't, couldn't do that. But it's much more about accessibility and publishing pay gap data being a living wage employer, whether there are plans to improve diversity whether there are targets on those, whether there are targets for women, people of color, disabled trustees, and so on. These are these are the specifically the items that we are measuring and therefore that's what we're talking about here. So just just kind of to be clear.

Caroline Fiennes  1:26:46  
And also, just also this picks up sort of a Michaels point. There were actual decisions made about what could be included as well. So again, within the theme of pushing decisions away, you very much sought external frameworks, is that also right? Yeah,

Caroline Fiennes 1:27:04  
so we, I can never remember this. We only looked at diversity in relation to to three aspects. And there which I think are gender, race, color and race following another three gender COVID I can't remember my own name right now. But they're the three dimensions which are required by the equalities and Human Rights Commission. Right. So there again, that was not our decision to only have those three. Yeah,

Caroline Fiennes  1:27:39  
sorry. Sylvia, do you want to come in there to Similac?

Sylvia McLain 1:27:41  
Yeah, just to add something. I mean, one of the difficulties of this and I'm very much take Michael's point about this. Can everybody hear me okay? Okay, good. Is that it's very difficult. To figure out how to measure this stuff. So one of the things that we have to do is we actually have to put a number to it. And that's not an easy thing to do when you start thinking about how people didn't plan so one of our criteria that's gone away now is, you know, do they have a plan? Does that plan actually contain targets? Are those targets around gender equality? And just the ones that add disability? Those are the three things that Caroline mentioned. The other thing is you can measure that then went to parity. Do you compare somebody diversity of the population of the UK? Do you compare it to the people that they're funding so it's very, I mean, it's something that we discuss a lot and then trying to figure out how to fit numbers to but it's not always easy to do that.

Sylvia McLain  1:28:40  
It's actually about having to have something that is measurable using publicly available information on why you've had to put a number on is the answer to always the kind of response to kind of number of the questions that have come up in the in the chat. So, you know, to what extent did we think about you know, what the grantee feedback says, for example? Well, thus far, we just haven't figured out a way of putting in someone's put Emma's put a question in the thing. So we did not look at what's an investment, what additional investments are in we looked at whether they disclose an investment policy. But we didn't look at what it is in and therefore we did not look at contradictions with one fund. So that was just outside our scope. One could do that. But again, the same issue that you would, I think what you're talking about there is the extent to which the two sets overlap in terms of the or at least there's not contradiction. In the set of things they're trying to advance through the grokking and the sets of issues in which they invest. So at some level, you have to at some point, you have to find them that really matter and put a number on objectively and that is quite tricky and some issues just for our side that we just couldn't figure out what to do.

Danielle Walker Palmour 1:30:01  
I think it's really highlighting some of the limitations of metrics. You know, there is art and there's metric, and we've tried to kind of come up with a way of capturing some of what's going on, but I just wanted to turn to Fazia on this diversity question. You've had adventures in diversity practice, and just really any observations you have on that?

Fozia Irfan  1:30:23  
I think I mean, the area of measurement, how do you measure diversity, equity inclusion? Well, to be frank, you can't but what you can measure are certain indicators, which can tell you where somebody has a longer spectrum of measurement. And I think that's what this I'm hoping this will develop on to because at the moment is just about how we fund not what we fund, or those internal dynamics. And the question raised was about why you know, why is this an area of weakness? Why isn't more not being done? And I think for me, there's there's three critical factors, lack of motivation, lack of collective responsibility, and luck, lack of accountability, and this is why I'm hoping that this, this practice writing is that missing piece of the jigsaw in terms of accountability, which will then motivate people to act. But up until now, you know, in terms of collective responsibility, diversity, equity inclusion is rarely seen as a board responsibility, or a senior leadership responsibility. It's seen as a particular function of a particular person in a particular role. And until we get that understanding and that collective responsibility and prioritization, and, you know, foundations understanding that this is integral for them to be effective, I think we will always be quite slow to change. And I, you know, I say that as somebody who's who's working in the foundation on a daily basis.

Danielle Walker Palmour  1:32:00  
Yeah, that absolutely, yeah. I mean, one of the things that came through to me really strongly was, and I don't have an answer is literally what is an accountable foundation. I feels like some of the questions in the q&a are about how we tie what we observe, to some ways the purposes and impact and these more ephemeral aspects of the foundation sort of landscape. And even my feeling is that there is a limitation on the route which that's going to map. But yeah, I don't know if you've got any sort of insights on that, that the degree to which essentially, we can see there is whether there is a similarity or a connection between what the foundation funds and what it says it is and what it actually does. I think that's kind of at the heart of some of these questions. Yeah, I don't know if Michael, you've got any insights into that sort of slightly odd question, but just that that, that I think people are sort of sniffing out some kind of sense of dissonance there.

Michael Edwards  1:33:15  
Yes. Well, not all at all. I mean, that's the central question. I think the old foundation space. So you put it very well. That's a very different process to the one you're going through. I think at some point, it's just best to say this is a great start, but there are there are always going to be limitations to this methodology and what it can and can't do. And say well, okay, it's not important, or we have to add something along the side. That is different, but does allow us to get at those questions, a studies and yes, whatever. Things that really delve deeply and as Caroline said, it's expensive. It's very time consuming. It's extremely difficult intellectually. That's interesting, you know, for people who like this stuff. That shouldn't be a disincentive. But it but it will really, it this causes why as you can imagine what that will do. Because without being you know, over exaggerating, there's a bit bit of a sense of the Emperor's, the Emperor's doesn't have any clothes here. If that's the way you want to go, and really analyze impacts and attitudes, consistency with values and all of those things. That's a very big deal. But good, but you can't do it with this methodology, which is designed for something different. You can tease little bits. But as you say, all the questions here are really saying, but God but but let's go further. Let's go deeper. Maybe you can do a little you know, another iteration of what you've done. It would be useful. But have you got not to but you could start thinking about something else in addition to what you're doing, which would help people get to these questions.

Danielle Walker Palmour  1:35:01  
Yeah, I think that's right. Well, so it's, you know, there's a challenge for everyone out there you know, this is this is open. This is certainly an approach and hopefully will galvanize better practice, but it will not solve everything. And there's loads and loads of scope for doing further. Further work. I wanted to pick up the question of exemptions and relative sizes and things like that seems to be bubbling away a bit. There's a question from the weights, family foundations, and I thought some point and I didn't know just wanted to pick that up just to talk a little bit about how that all operators.

Sylvia McLain  1:35:45  
Yeah, so I think Carolyn sent this it's beginning but we chose not to. We chose to wait everything the same, but we did a specific question about the smaller foundation. Reason why we chose not to wait things so we could have gone through and said okay, here all I saw that this is exactly what he said about investment policies, right. How do we judge that? You know, so we can't necessarily make the decision to that one investment policy you know, some people investment policies to give examples because some people say, Well, it's the job of the investment policy to make as much money as possible. And that can turn those people or is it the job of the investment policy to be more ethical not to climate change charity, not actually for oils, and do it that way? So there's differing views on that and what we tried to do first, which does not come down on the side of that, so we chose exemptions rather than us arbitrarily deciding that they're like probably best explained. Yeah, actually,

Sylvia McLain  1:36:51  
there isn't that the policy discussion on it and the things that has gone into the office of section?

Sylvia McLain 1:36:57  
Yeah, so it seems to me that so we found that foundations with fewer staff perform less well. That's a finding. And it seems to me an important finding We also, as I said, found foundations with few trustees formula as well, which seems to imply that the foundations with few people in them are not very good on these practices, and maybe on these three pillars, and maybe that's because there just isn't enough kind of person power to do what needs to be done. That seems to us a finding. So I would be happy blocked, I would be concerned about waiting the data that is kind of fiddling around with the data to make that finding go away. I mean, that seems that it's just a finding. Right? And that seems, therefore the implication is that if you are a foundation and you have few staff, and or few trustees, you know, you need to be really careful that you actually have enough horsepower to do what really needs to be done.

Sylvia McLain 1:38:03  
Yeah, I think that's it. It's a question. I mean, just, I mean, once it once asked about accountability, and the role of the regulators. And I mean, there's a set of several points in this initiative where regulation crosses into or affects or relates to some of the criteria that we've tried to avoid things that are each sort of regulatory standards. I think one of the areas that we found surprising was the lack of real well, the places regulation doesn't touch which is like quite a lot of use cases, including the investment policy question, and I didn't know whether you wanted to reflect a bit on the role of the Charity Commission. And and actually, Max, you might also want to pick this up. Well,

Sylvia McLain  1:38:54  
so we, I mean, this is a kind of big question about what the role of the regulator is. Exactly. What it should be. So all investment policies. There's a rule there's a rule, but if you have more than I think 250,000 pounds or something invested. You're supposed to disclose an investment policy. Oh, there we go. Check out my mirror. And so we use that because we pushing a decision away from ourselves. And then the charter commission gives eight things I think that that an investment policy should include and so we counted how many of those there are so if you you know, if you only disclose four, you get half a point if you disclose three, you get three eggs at a point wherever you can imagine how delightful this spreadsheet

Caroline Fiennes  1:39:43  
is. It's one thing clear but how different the regulators are even within the UK. So in Scotland, you are not in England and Wales you have to disclose who your trustees are and what their needs are. In Scotland, you are not required to disclose who they are and indeed the Scottish regulator will redact from your annual report. Okay, so I was on the other day, that the trustees of JK Rowling's Foundation are redacted and that might be for obvious reasons. But I was looking at a privacy regular charity on Sunday night does stuff in the slums in Kenya, they're based in London, weirdly, but they're regular registered in Scotland and the trustees are redacted so they have no information that's public about who any of their trustees are or who any of their staff whereas you would not be able to get away with that in England and Wales. So it's pretty patchy. I mean, under the Charity Commission has no remit over effectiveness. For example, they have a sort of, in my view, odd remit that they're supposed to look at whether the public trust charges, but not over whether that trust is well placed. Max you might know more.

Max Rutherford 1:40:55  
Yeah, I think regulation can play an important role. So to give an example of where that is happening in terms of investment, and to pick up on something Carolyn said about the difference between UK regulators in Scotland, the guidance for charities is that investment should first and foremost be considered in the context of mission. And then further down the list of priorities is financial return. Whereas at the moment in England, and Wales, if you're a charity registered their financial return is your first consideration. And in fact, mission doesn't actually feature at all in the list of requirements as a consultation about that at the moment and we might see some change. In fact, foundations are among those leading legal case right now to try and force a change, to require charities to consider their mission and particularly climate within their investments. So there's a there's an opportunity there. There's also other ways to perceive these kinds of changes. I am a member of the charity subcommittee. Which helps set the rules for how charities have to report in their annual accounts. And there's a discussion there about should charities have to report on their sustainability, both in terms of financial sustainability but also climate? Big point of debate. And as I mentioned in my remarks, foundations in the UK are not separate, separately defined and regulated, they are regulated as charities So as it stands, any changes that would apply to foundations would have to apply to all other charities to the Charity Commission is very conscious of any additional burden that it places on charities particularly given that nearly 95% of them have an income of less than a quarter of a million.

Danielle Walker Palmour  1:42:46  
That's really helpful. That also explains quite a few things. Sometimes when you know are looking at trusts and foundations. I feel frustrated because we are big and rich compared to us, the charity sector, but in fact, we are still just part of the charity sector that we hold ourselves part in some in some ways. So that's that's a really helpful reminder. I didn't know that he had any comments on that fazia or Michael? Regulation. fascinating topic, though. Okay. Just looking at this any I just scrolled through and I lost my place. I think there's some some questions about what we will make available in terms of materials, I think. Yeah, I think that's a fun question. We've already answered that, haven't we, in terms of that? And Margaret's asked some questions about how much the cost of developing it. And now I can tell you the precise number, which I could look at, but in fact, it would be misleading because, in fact, Caroline has been listening to me talk about this project for about four years. So in fact, I would imagine either copy cost, you know, over that period of time about a fiver it's probably but in fact, the one year I think it's been I don't I can actually I'll look it up Margaret and send you a note about it because I can't remember how much because the development costs have been high. We've been doing everything for the first time and doing consultations, etc. For one year, but we're actually obviously running it for multiple years. So I need to give you a disaggregation thank you for that. But I'm really happy to do that. And really happy to talk about it because if anyone wants to emulate it, you can build on what we've done and save quite a lot of time and effort. And didn't know where the well we've got lots of issues around questions of effectiveness. And I think we've pretty much covered those off because I don't think we can go further than we have done. But I just wondered if there was something from all of the panel members, if you thought about, you know, one wish you would bring to a future rating system, something I really wish we could have been talking about today. Some additional aspects. I mean, Michaels given us a little bit of a taste of that and power and privilege and how we get under the skin of that but if there was sort of one thing you wish we could measure about foundations going forward into the future iterations of this exercise, be great to hear what they what they were just as a final comment and any other final comments you might want to make as a panel. Can I start with you Fozia Irfan, there's one thing you wish we could measure or look at that would you think move us on that little bit further?

Fozia Irfan 1:46:09  
I think for me, and I don't know how feasible and realistic this is. But for me, community power and participation is the key to philanthropy. And until we start understanding, defining and measuring that, I don't think we can say that we really engaging in thoughtful, effective philanthropy.

Danielle Walker Palmour  1:46:29  
That's great. Thank you. Now, Caroline, and Sylvia, I'll ask you, not together enough to answer in unison. But is there anything that you wish we could have looked at where you're frustrated in your research process, Caroline first and then Sylvia, and then I'll come to you Michael.

Caroline Fiennes  1:46:52  
I really do not. I mean, I wish that more organizations disclose the diversity in order as we can. I also wish that person but I think I'm really struck by is how well it's interesting. I think about diversity or lack of diversity is looking at why it is the way it is. So the things that filter people out along the way. So for example, many types of organization is I think, not racist as such, but it's like what I call which is like, you have to be basically rich in order to be able to get into the game. So I have a friend for example, as a very senior curator, and to get a job in racing, you basically have to do unpaid internships for like a year. Everybody who can't be funded by their parents, for a couple years gets screened up. So lo and behold, you end up with people in that industry and surprise, surprise, they're basically all white. So it's not like oh, you're brown. You can't get a job here. But the system was rigged against people who are who don't have money, who predominantly you know, happens. So I am always really aware of so you know, why is it's not enough to just say, Yes, you know, we're going to, you know, wake more black people onto our board or into our senior management team. They why would they not like people there before you know, what are your kind of soft parts? So I would want foundations to think and talk much more about those structural barriers that there are two different groups of people. And those affect people from different classes and different colors and all sorts

Danielle Walker Palmour  1:48:37  
that's really helpful. Sylvia, is there anything that you wish to that? Oh, no, it's a list.

Sylvia McLain  1:48:46  
Yeah, pick your class.

Sylvia McLain 1:48:49  
Right. And the

Sylvia McLain  1:48:51  
foundation's keep funding the same people over and over. Again, that's very difficult to measure but like how many new applicants you get a year that are from different backgrounds together. That I think is a real problem, right? Because it seems I mean, I'm a bit of an outsider, but it's a game that it's kind of reflective what Caroline said it's a game that you get in and what your family loves you and you keep getting stuff where it's like how people outside family actually giving

Sylvia McLain  1:49:24  
me I mean impact it's not difficult for our foundation to look through a list of grants and saying which of these basically succeeded and which did right and which basically didn't work? You know, sort of red Amber green is not do that. We've done it with a foundation then it amazes me that more foundations don't do that. You know, what is your 10%? What is the top 10% of your graphs? Most foundations don't know because they don't ever think about it, and that seems to miss bounding. So I would be just delighted to work with any foundations who are more interested in understanding that what are what are you doing that basically work and what are you doing?

Danielle Walker Palmour  1:50:00  
Thank you. Michael, any thoughts 

Michael Edwards  1:50:06  
 So far, I'd vote for all of them, I think would line them for me something which is impossible to measure but in my own mind Center, which is humility. There's so much talk, at least on the side of the Atlantic about foundations of problem solvers having big bets. And this and save that and power this, which leads them completely the wrong direction, because they end up solving problems in front of the computer screen. Completely just sunshiny reality out there. But feeling great about themselves. We have to be the biggest the best. Blah, blah blah. You know, that was what was lacking is a sense that you don't have to be any of those things. You just have to be useful to people that were doing the work. And that's how relying on others so that's not that's not impossible. It's a perfectly solvable problem, whereas ending world hunger is not a solved problem. At least not the foundation's sense of humility and permeating it all the way through the practice of foundations will be no bad thing.

Danielle Walker Palmour  1:51:08  
That's really helpful humility. I really like that. And Max, any thoughts? Yeah, maybe it's

Max Rutherford  1:51:17  
with an optimistic hope, which there may be we're entering a bit of a golden age of constructive scrutiny foundation sector. This project is really clear example of that, but also the open and trusted grant making initiative that I've I've led, hopefully stronger foundations has a role there to grant advisor and where people are applying for funding the rating that grant makers in the public way through 60 giving, which has been absolutely transformational. So maybe my hope is not so much about the next stage of this project, which I hope will go on for many years. But how all of these things integrate together and collectively spare us all on to the other selves.

Danielle Walker Palmour 1:51:57  
That is a really optimistic note and thank you all panel for all your contributions. It's been absolutely fantastic. Really lifting the results into what it all means and what what we what that tells us and what it doesn't and what we've got to still work on. So thank you all very much. And thank you very much all the audience that tuck with us this long. As I said, we're hoping this will be the start of a different conversation about what being a good funder looks like in the UK and and will inspire others in the world. Take it forward. We haven't got it all right in this first iteration, despite all the hard work and there are plenty of points that we'd like to review and improve and we do encourage everyone to engage in the consultation exercise which is open on the website. It's do just go through and do make some comments there. We'll also be working on communicating better with those of you who are included in the sample when it comes to the results to support you on presenting this as into wider stakeholders as a positive story, and to really celebrate areas where we're improving and where we need to work. And also just to say we've had lots of queries about being rated again, and we're very keen to have funders to join the funders group, which is also a possible way of being rated every year. But do contact me if you would like to to make us to make an application to you or you'd like to come on board. As an alternative you get in touch because we can actually include you in the rating process that you if you're not in the sample. And we can we've got a process for managing that. Just to finish off on the same colleague foundations for their support. And I want to thank giving evidence for their expertise, rigor and patience in the development of this probe process. I'd like to thank civil society media who published in governance and leadership magazine, about discursive an interesting article really trying to digest and talk to people about the findings of the foundation practice rating and sharing early results. And I'd like to thank my friends provident foundation colleagues, Jake, and particularly Jake and Helen for their support and sterling work. So thank everyone for this. So I've done a lot of thinking today and thanks so much and have a good rest of your day. Take good care.