Civil Society Media has published a new podcast episode on the history of philanthropy in the UK.
In this episode, Fozia Irfan and Rhodri Davies discuss key philanthropic milestones and how they might have influenced charitable giving today.
You can listen to the interview now below or on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and Pocket Casts, where you can find our other podcast episodes.
AI-generated transcript
Rob Preston
Welcome to another episode of the Civil Society Podcast. In today’s show, I was joined by sector experts Fozia Irfan and Rhodri Davies as we aimed to give a rough overview of the history of philanthropy in the UK. In some ways today’s show compliments our pilot episode from just over a year ago on the origins of the charity sector. Fozia, Rhodri and I discuss some key philanthropic history milestones in this episode including the term’s Ancient Greek origins, the 19th century golden age of philanthropy and how charitable giving has evolved more recently. I hope you enjoy listening to this as much I loved speaking to Fozia and Rhodri and I’ll speak to you again at the end.
Welcome everyone to the Civil Society Podcast. In this episode, we're going to try and give you a rough history of philanthropy in the UK and the evolving nature of philanthropists. We'll aim to cover some of the key milestones, or eras, I suppose, in the history of charity funding in the UK and reflect on how these relate to philanthropy in the modern age, as we covered some charity origins, touch points. On the previous podcast, we are planning to skim through some of the periods of the Middle Ages and delve into the gold major philanthropy in the 18th century and beyond. And to help me on this quest, I'm delighted to be joined, first of all, by Fozia Irfan, who's the director of impact and influence at BBC, children in need. Fozia, thanks very much for joining us. How are you doing?
Fozia Irfan
Great. Thank you. Great to be here.
RP
Excellent and also joining us. We've got Rhodri Davies, who's the founder and director of Why Philanthropy Matters, which is a great resource for anybody who is listening to this and is intrigued by anything we discuss, there's plenty more to find out on that website. Rhodri, thanks for joining us. How are you doing?
Rhodri Davies
I'm good. Thanks, Rob. I'm excited to be here on a quest. Apparently, so good, excellent.
RP
Well, to kick us off, then I thought perhaps we should start by focusing in on the word philanthropy, what it means and where it comes from. So, I mean, I guess from before researching anything for this, it conjures the image in my head, I guess, of kind of rich people giving some spare cash to kind of worthy causes, usually possibly in exchange for some public recognition. But yeah, from looking at the definitions, that's not quite what it means and not what it actually originally meant. Anyway, it's got some ancient Greek origins. I think Rhodri, would you be able to share any of those insights on that?
RD
Yeah, happy to and I guess we'll come back round over the course of the podcast to the idea that it's about rich people giving away a bit of spare cash because that there is a reason that we think of those terms. But as you say, I mean, the literal starting point of the words is in ancient Greek. I mean, it's philanthropos. That means love of humanity. And I think there's some argument about it, but the first place you can find it's in a fifth century play by Aeschylus, I think so, fifth century BC, that is. And so the term was around in kind of ancient Greece, and it mostly referred not to people giving to causes of poverty, but to things that were of sort of value to civic life, so to large scale building civic institutions for circuses and that kind of thing. And then the idea kind of died away, and the word disappeared, certainly from the English language for 1,000 years or more. And I guess the point where we pick up the story is where it re-emerged, which is sort of at the middle to end of the 17th century. It started creeping back in, because I think people wanted a word for something that gave the idea of people wanting to address issues and to give resources and to kind of express their love of humanity. But that wasn't necessarily quite the same as traditional Christian charity, which had been the dominant idea throughout the Middle Ages and was largely kind of associated with the church and alms giving. So you get this kind of different idea emerging slowly.
RP
That's great. Yeah, before we get on to the kind of Christian charity idea, with the original philanthropos, Greek definition was that completely not religious, and was it? I've read somewhere, I think it was the philosopher Plutarch described it as being a way to be like a superior human being was to to be philanthropic, or however they would describe it in those days.
RD
Yeah, and certainly in ancient Greece, it was seen as part of one of the sort of virtues that came with being a member of the ruling class within the demos or the policy or the city state, and one of the things you had to do was to demonstrate your worth by giving appropriately to these sort of large civic institutions. And interestingly, I guess, even though we left that idea behind, you know, arguably, that is something that sort of slowly crept back into philanthropy, and you start to see, certainly into the 20th century, when you do get these kind of bigger examples of people setting up large scale foundations and naming institutions after them. In a way, maybe they're kind of harking back to to a few 1,000 years before and the way that we sort of started off understanding philanthropy, but at the time, no, it wasn't straightforwardly religious. I think, you know, religion and the city state were kind of quite separate in the ancient world. I think then religion and charity became very much merged through the kind of teachings of the Christian church. And it's, it's an interesting question, actually, does the the re-emergence of philanthropy later on mark partly a point at which they were trying to distinguish between a solely religious idea of giving away and a more secular idea of giving away to address issues in the world. I mean, that's one historians have argued about quite a lot already, so I think I might kind of stay out of it, but it's certainly one of the ways in which people try to define the difference.
RP
What do you think Fozia do those original definitions of philanthropy... Do they kind of ring true for you in the modern world?
FI
I think it's really interesting, because obviously we're looking at the word philanthropy from a Eurocentric point of view, and it's a very western concept of what we now consider as philanthropy, I would say, is quite transactional. It's about doing something. It's almost, it's a verb, almost. Whereas, I think when you look back to that sort of original love of humanity that implies a state of being or a characteristic, it's something that you possess as a person, and it's part of your characteristics. You have a love of humanity. Now it's, and I think, over particularly the last 100, 200 years, it evolves to being in action. It's about doing something. And you know, we have lots of definitions about, you know, public benefit and, you know, a social change. So implies some type of action from somebody who has resources. But I think it's interesting now, as we're starting to see pockets of work which are trust based philanthropy, which is very much, I would say, heart LED. It's very much about giving away power. It's very much about handing over resources and trusting in communities. I wonder if we're starting to get back to the origins of the word and move away from the transactional nature that we've evolved philanthropy into it. It's become institutionalised. You have huge foundations who do this. And I think in that institutionalisation, we may have lost something about that original spirit in terms of how we, how we, you know, how rich people give away. Rich people want to give away money, as you said at the beginning,
RP
That's really interesting. Yeah, just to kind of give some more background to how this this has evolved. So, so yeah, we mentioned the introduction of kind of Christian idea of charity, which was quite prominent for many years, and that was so that came from the Latin word Caritas, and I mean, similar kind of definition, I suppose, on the surface about achieving salvation through a kind of selfless love is, is that right, Rhodri?
RD
It is, yeah, I think, in its purest form, again, I guess where you get the the interesting point about the sort of transition from charity to philanthropy, or the the addition of philanthropy on top of charity is, I think, a sense that a lot of medieval alms giving had become very focused on the donor, and the idea that it was about the donor trying to kind of improve and redeem their own immortal soul and essentially, kind of buy their way to heaven. And by the time you get to, you know, people like Martin Luther getting very angry about Catholicism, that this was a big part of it was the idea that the church would go around kind of selling these indulgences, which would essentially, you know, kind of be a shortcut for rich people to buy their way to to heaven, and kind of very showy alms giving was was part of that. So when, when the Reformation came about in the 16th century, obviously, as a result of, well, partly as a result of Henry VIII deciding that he didn't want to be married anymore, and the pope not allowing him to get a divorce. The once, all of that kind of structure of Catholicism started to crumble or change, certainly in. The UK, one of the things that changed, you know, that was kind of central to that, was the idea of moving away from this model of alms giving, solely being about the donor and what it achieves their immortal soul, and moving more towards this idea of philanthropy, as it started to be called, which was more about what are you actually achieving in the world here and now, to try and sort of show your your love of God. So I think there's, it's quite an important part of this much bigger change that was going on in Europe at the time.
FI
Yeah, and we'll see it also in other world faiths as well, particularly the Abrahamic traditions, where you know the you know, for example, in the Islamic faith, charity, giving is one of the five requirements of your beliefs. So it's a fundamental part of, you know, everyday life for many Muslims. And again, that regulatory aspect, I would say, almost puts a different color on the word philanthropy and what it means to different communities. And if you look at communities, for example, in Japan, where they have a concept of gifting, rather than giving charity or giving money or redeeming yourself, it's about reciprocity, and it's about gifting. So philanthropy can take so many different shapes across the world. And we've got a particular model here now in the UK, which has evolved from all of these origins that Rodri has been talking about.
RP
Yeah, no, I think that's that's really interesting, because yeah, I mean particularly, yeah, today, and you mentioned Islamic giving, and how central that is to the faith. And yeah, I mean, the charity sector today in the UK, so much giving is down to people of Muslim faith giving a huge amount of money. And yeah, so be interesting to reflect on that more about how that's quite, I guess, probably quite a recent change, but some of the charities that are growing by the greatest amount today, yeah, Muslim Aid and Islamic Relief and, yeah,
FI
I mean, we could do a whole separate podcast about what that means. But essentially, I think it's really interesting because it's a requirement of faith. It's a it's one of the five fundamental beliefs. It is such an ingrained part of people's lives that you you don't think of it as philanthropy, you don't think of it as giving to charity. You just think of it as part of your normal day to day life. It's so ingrained. I think there are lots of interesting things, particularly about Islamic philanthropy, which, you know, within the UK context, which is a secular state, or, well, a Christian state. How does that model philanthropy now fit within this, this context that we have, and Islamic philanthropy, I think, is really interesting because it's also guided by the population context. So within the UK, we have the majority of the Muslim population are from Southeast Asia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India. And that, what that has meant is that a lot of philanthropy in the UK, which, as you said, is a huge proportion, you know, donated by Muslims, a large proportion of that is for causes abroad, which is really interesting, because there you have the argument about what is need, and a sense of that connection to your country of origin as well, which is a different shape of philanthropy for the Muslim community, and I'm sure it's exactly the same with other diaspora communities, is you will think of philanthropy and what that means to you in very different ways.
RD
I think I was just going to say it's worth just coming back to the history. It's worth saying that even though I've mentioned a couple of times the idea that the emergence of philanthropy marks a point at which things are secularising. I guess it is to an extent, in terms of what the focus of what people were giving to was that, you know, there were more secular causes that related more to problems in the world. The motivations behind it didn't suddenly become secular. I mean, most philanthropy was still very heavily driven by religious belief and religious teaching, and continue to be so through the sort of golden age of Victorian philanthropy, which is pretty inextricable from Christianity. And actually, even today, I'm always struck when I talk to donors by not all of them, certainly, but a lot of them still there is an element of faith that's informing their giving. So I think it's kind of, it's often a bit hidden in the background because people don't like to talk about it, but it, but it is a huge factor. And as Fozia says, you know, in in the modern context of Britain, faith no longer just means Christianity, it actually means, you know, quite a wide variety of religions. So it's sort of, perhaps unsurprising that we're seeing these pockets of growth in in places where they're organized. Associations that are faith based, or faith associated.
FI
I think there, there are two things that I think are quite interesting. The first is what is known as colonial philanthropy. So that philanthropy, which is all about raising funds for missionaries to go abroad, to Africa, to India, to inverted commerce, civilized the nations, and that was all based on, you know, religious principles, and, you know, disseminating the Christian faith on, you know, building populations of Christians, and that type of colonial philanthropy, I think, is also really, really interesting, because I still, I think it still has an impact today in terms of how we think about philanthropy, the structures that we've set up, etc. The second point I was going to make about faith is, I think in the US, the number of donors who have that faith-based element and foundations, and, you know, you see very sort of, you know, large Christian foundations who have a particular agenda, really shaping the politics of the US, so having a huge influence in in things like the debates on on the rights of women, on abortion access, etc, a lot of that narrative and politics shifting has been shaped by foundations or donors who are motivated by faith. So that's that trend, that stream is still really evident today, I think probably more so in the US than than in the UK.
RP
Seeing as you mentioned the US, I don't know if either of you saw JD Vance, the new vice president, made some comments last week in which he invoked the order of order of Christian love, or Even, I think, the order of charity, which is quite an old concept, I think I've made a note of what he said, oh yeah. So he was talking about love thy neighbor. And he was kind of, yeah, his interpretation of that was a bit controversial. So he was kind of saying that American citizens care too much about people in other countries, basically, and they needed to pay attention to the message of the Bible, which tells you to love thy neighbor primarily, so almost taking a bit literally, like your your next door neighbor. But yes, I did read up on that, and he because, he said he got into a spat, I think, with Rory Stewart online, and he said, Oh, look up ordo amoros, which is order of love, which was a Christian concept, I think St Augustine's concept. And he set up one of the first schools that's still a charity in the UK, I think the King's School Canterbury, but also related to St Augustine's order of love. There's also, there was an ordo caritatis. So the order of charity defined by St Thomas Aquinas and that also had a similar structure for how we should order our charitable hierarchy, I suppose, about what we should care about and where we should prioritize who we help. So I just found that quite interesting. I only read about it recently. Is that, are you aware of that, Rhodri and is was that a prominent thought process, I guess, in the Middle Ages?
RD
So it's interesting. I mean, JD Vance's comments obviously reflect a few different things, some some of which is the political chaos that's going on in the US at the moment, some of which is kind of well established strands of criticism of big, big or elite philanthropy in the US, which comes from both sides of the political spectrum. Actually, there's a certain amount of inbuilt skepticism about large scale philanthropy. But the particular bit that he was talking about there, and I guess relates to some of what's going on around the decision to kind of dismantle USAID, is partly this idea that, you know, charity begins at home, which is one of the most ill used phrases in the history of the English language, but this has a really, really long history, because if you look back to the the Victorian era in the UK, and one of the constant debates was over this idea that too much giving was what was called telescopic philanthropy. So it was kind of prioritising the needs of those overseas at the expense of paying attention to the problems right on your own doorstep. And lots of philanthropists got very heavily criticized and mocked for this. And some of it, as Fozia says, is kind of partly because they were doing it for evangelical reasons, or sort of colonial reasons, wanting to kind of impose their own views about morality and their own belief in Christianity on other parts. Of the world and to sort of helpfully educate other parts of the world. And in some cases it was because they were, I guess, paying heed to the one of the sort of true meanings of philanthropy, which is loving humanity as a whole, and actually paying attention to the lives of distant others, as well as those who just happen to be your neighbors. And that's an interesting debate, and always has been, and it, you know, kind of gets people very riled up on both sides. Do we have a responsibility to pay more attention to those right around us because they are, you know, our country folk, or, you know, share the same town as us, and and therefore charity begins at home. Or actually, should we give where there is greatest need, in which case we should be treating all lives equally, wherever they happen to be in the world. And, you know, I think JD Vance, to some extent, was kind of re invoking those sorts of debates that have been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
RP
Yeah, great. Okay, well, let's, let's try and get through a bit more of the historical background. So if we try and skip forward to you mentioned the English reformation, I think Rhodri so perhaps, if we move forward to the 18th century, and this marks a time when society was in the well, in what is now the UK, it was becoming more urbanised, and philanthropists were pooling donations together to meet changing needs, and this was kind of, for the first time that they'd started to do this as a collective. Is that right?
RD
Yeah, that's right. And I guess it's, it's two things. It's, as you say, it's the nature of need had changed because society was becoming industrialised and urbanised. So poverty and Ill ill health looked very different. And I think the sense was the models that had worked in the kind of traditional local parish in rural places of people individually giving alms to poor people and sort of deciding who was most deserving didn't really work anymore for practical reasons. And at the same time in the commercial sphere, this is when you get the birth of the sort of joint stock company, which is the idea of the kind of corporate form that most companies have today, where you sell shares and people pool together resources, and essentially, you get people who are making their money in that way saying: "Well, why don't we do our philanthropy in the same way?" So rather than trying to do it all individually and make these decisions ourselves, let's create a bit of structure, pull some of our money together, and maybe get some you know, professionals in there who know what they're doing when it comes to assessing need and distributing money. And essentially, that's where the birth of the the charity as an organisation comes about, which obviously makes a kind of massive difference to the landscape of philanthropy in the UK.
RP
Was there any concern, I mean, because, as we talked about the motivation of, kind of wanting to, I don't know, get, get a bit of look good, I suppose, get some good press as a philanthropist or a rich person giving money away, if you're pooling donations. Is it more difficult to kind of get that personal recognition? And would do you think there would have been any concerns about pooling your resources and kind of working as a team with other philanthropists at that time?
RD
I guess there, yes, there would have been, although I think they were also concerned that they were kind of overwhelmed with requests for need, which, again, maybe is quite timely at this moment where there's lots of question marks about whether grant making organisations are slightly kind of overwhelmed with requests for the need, and whether they should be kind of poor and their resources and collaborating. So, you know, there's always historical echoes. You can find a few if you look for them. Yeah. I mean, there were still plenty of donors who were doing things individually, clearly because they wanted some sort of status, and let's not pretend there weren't, you know, lots of kind of names going up on buildings and bequests happening when people died so that they could get eulogies written about them. But I think just in practical terms, this is when you start to see very, very rich people occasionally pooling but I think even more so, it's because you get this sort of growing middle class industrial wealth, and those people with, you know, some money, significant amounts of money, but not the Ultra Rich, starting to be in a position to do something philanthropically. That's where the real driving force of this kind of associated philanthropy comes from, I think.
FI
And I think it's really interesting that you know that those are the foundations of the institutionalisation of this work and the professionalisation, shall we say, of this work. You know, those are the roots within that context, within that society, which was very patriarchal, paternalistic. You know, it had a certain model of what deserving and undeserving poor were. And you know, a lot of those foundations, you know, still continue to exist, and you know, or their philosophy has inspired others. So that particular time, I think you know that expansion of institutional philanthropy was really. Interesting, and I want to come back to the point about collaboration. And Rodri is completely right in in seeing that more and more institutional philanthropy now is collaborating. That's what I'm seeing, that's what I'm experiencing, and that's what I'm involved in myself. And over the next few months, you're going to see some announcement from Children in Need, in terms of the work that we're doing in collaboration with each other, and we're facing the similar challenges that those philanthropists face 2-300 years ago, which is the level of need is so great that there's no single fund or foundation that can solve these problems on their own. And so it's interesting that those same challenges exist now as they did then. The question that I wanted to ask Rodri was about, you know, the massive philanthropists, you know the in the olden days, the Carnegies, the Rockefellers, you know, all of those philanthropists. And modern, contemporary philanthropists. Were there different societal expectations at that time? Do you think in terms of the societal expectations of huge philanthropists now?
RD
Oh, I mean, interesting question, I think one that people in the US are grappling with a lot, because I think there's a lot of talk. I guess we'll come on to that bit at the beginning of the 20th century, in a moment when you get the real kind of high watermark of gilded age philanthropy and all of the Carnegies and Rockefellers and Russell Sages and all these others who still have their foundations existing today. I guess there probably there were some differences in expectation, partly, again, certainly in the Victorian era in the UK, I think it's important not to underplay the role that religion had, because I think the the expectations that came about, because of the the fact that Christianity was underpinning so much of this were were very important. I think also at a sort of more political level, the Victorian era in the UK is really interesting because it marks a point at which there maybe was the only time there's a genuine sense of, you know, could we basically rely on philanthropy for everything and not really need state action? Obviously, you know, it was before the state had taken on responsibility for lots of different aspects of society and of welfare, but it was increasingly apparent that there was pretty great need, you know, they'd started doing the census, and suddenly, kind of, they realised what the scale of poverty and ill health was in the country. And there was a question mark about, well, how are we going to address that? And given there was so much philanthropy around at that point, there was a, kind of, almost a, you know, a big debate going on, could we just get more of these wealthy people giving back through, you know, their own sense of decency and goodwill, and that will solve the problem, or do we need to go in another direction? And obviously, you know, in the end, as you move into the 20th century, the failure of philanthropy to kind of get, you know, kind of live up to those expectations is largely what drove the state to feel as though it did have to step in and and eventually that led to the creation of the welfare state as a whole. I guess the situation today, it's interesting. The context is very different. But I feel like some of these debates about, you know, the relative role of the state and philanthropy and the relationship between, you know, very, very large wealth inequality and philanthropy, and what we expect of philanthropists are coming back round again in new forms. So I think it's very useful to look at history at this point.
RP
Yeah, we've certainly heard there seems to be a bit of a push generally, from various institutions, including the, yeah, the Charity Commission, and I think the government, to kind of try and boost philanthropy in in the UK, and they, they obviously see that it's, it's got a part to play when public finances are quite tight. So, yeah, it seems like quite a relevant thing for today. I wanted to just, just to go back to the 18th century, one point that you mentioned on your website actually, Rhodri, was about how there were lots of hospitals set up at the time. And in response to our last podcast, we got a message from someone who I believe is related to the Coram family, because they wanted to highlight that there was the Foundling Hospital set up in 1739, to care for unwanted, unwanted orphans in Bloomsbury. And this institution became the Coram charity, which still exists today. And also they ran fundraising events long before Band Aid, they say, the most famous was getting the baroque composer Handel to perform the Hallelujah Chorus to raise funds. And they also got the painter William Hogarth to design the charity's logo, because he was a supporter of the charity. So, yeah, so it's quite interesting that there's things happening back then that, yeah, perhaps tactics that are still used today by charities.
FI
Yeah. And I think what's really interesting is, you know, obviously a lot of foundations nowadays just focus on grant making. They have their own private endowments, but there are still foundations like BBC Children in Need, like Comic Relief, like community foundations, which have that dual role of fundraising and then funding as well. So yeah, that, that old balancing act between fundraising and philanthropy started a long time ago.
RP
So let's, let's dive into well, approaching the golden age of philanthropy, as we've as we mentioned. So, so yeah, let's talk about, as you mentioned, Fozia so the the famous philanthropists of the 19th century. So yeah, you list Angela Burdett Coutts, George Peabody, George Cadbury and Andrew Carnegie as some of the big names. They became household names through their philanthropic deeds, as much as their business interests. So what can you tell us about this, Rhodri and why did this happen at that time? Why were these notorious philanthropists getting a name for themselves?
RD
I think it's partly because of the scale of wealth creation and probably inequality. You know, there are people who would point out that actually, the story of philanthropy in the 19th century is tells you more about the scale of need at the time than it necessarily does about, you know, the degree of generosity. But undoubtedly, there were some pretty remarkable things achieved, I think in terms of, you know, the vision, there are still kind of institutions, organisations, but also sort of bricks and mortar institutions that were built during that era that are still there, and very evident in lots of towns and cities around the UK. I think one of the things about it that's really interesting is that it was perhaps more distributed around the country than than it has been. Latterly, in the 20th century, where I think more and more wealth and philanthropy has been kind of concentrated in in London and the South East, whereas in the 19th century, there were still these regional centers of, you know, manufacturing wealth up in Liverpool and Manchester and Sheffield and other places and Newcastle. And as a result, there are kind of local philanthropists in each of those places who became very well, well known and were sort of significant donors. And, you know, their legacy still kind of lives on in in lots of those places. And I think the other thing is that they were a lot, you know, when you look at the the actual detail of it, they were doing some really interesting things. It's when you when you look at sort of late 19th century philanthropy, particularly, you mentioned Angela Burdett Coutts there. There were others like Edward Guinness. It wasn't just that they were straightforwardly giving away their money, and the way that you expect philanthropists to do although they were doing that too, they were doing quite interesting things, like Coutts, for instance, and Guinness were quite involved, along with Octavia Hill as well, who's one of the founders of the National Trust in this idea of percentage philanthropy, which was essentially, you know, one of the big problems is there's not enough decent housing, affordable housing for the working classes. Let's not just build it and give it away. Let's build it, but then we'll rent it out at sub market rates. And we'll just write off the difference between that and how much money we could have made as a form of philanthropy, which is essentially social investment by any other name. But they were doing this, you know, in the late 1800s and actually there are loads of estates still in parts of London that were built as Peabody estates, as Guinness estates and lots of others. And so actually, they were kind of testing out different ways of approaching problems. I guess the backdrop to all of that, as I mentioned earlier, and I think is really important when thinking about the Victorian era, is the reason they were doing it was the government was still dragging its feet, very largely when it came to taking responsibility for lots of the things that we now think government should do. So they you know, hospitals had to be voluntary because there weren't any other hospitals. Government wasn't going to build social housing because that wasn't yet a thing. You know, there were no national pensions at that point. So there was a big question about what older people who couldn't work were supposed to do. And so there was little choice, really, but to try and do it through, through philanthropy, see if that worked, and then if it didn't, start making the case for for a different way of doing things.
FI
And I think, Rhodri, I mean, we've spoken about this a lot, but the thing that really fascinates me about this period is, I think this is where you see the emergence of concepts like social justice, even if, even though it wasn't called social justice, that understanding and awareness of these are systemic issues that need to be dealt with in a systemic way. And so tackling, you know, poverty, you know, building Whole villages, you know, looking. All the tools that our funder and philanthropist has in their toolbox, I think was really, really important. I was just reading, actually, the household, which is a story about, it's a fictional account of Angela bedeck Coutts and Charles Dickens and their experiment to rehabilitate women, fallen women, I think they were caught in those days by providing them with a housing accommodation, but there were very strict rules about what they could and couldn't do. And I think that's really interesting, because, again, that's not grant funding, you know, and as funders, we just go automatically to philanthropy means grant funding. But they were trying a range of different tools, which included lobbying government, you know, trying to pass bills through things like the abolition of slavery. You know, those were active, what some would call political campaigns, which were much more wide ranging than what I think foundations of funders do nowadays. They considered the totality and sort of multiple tools to try and bring about social change, and they looked at it from a systemic lens. They weren't talking about, okay, let's just look at my little village in terms of poverty. They were looking at, what is the system here that's perpetuating inequality? And so that's when I think we start to see that that real model of social justice philanthropy beginning to emerge.
RP
That's really interesting. It sounds like there's a lot yeah that we can still learn today in modern philanthropy from practices that were happening at that time. And yeah, sounds very forward thinking some of the things that they were doing, one of the things that struck out as being quite different, I suppose, yes, you said, Rhodri, that the well, philanthropy was better spread around country than it is today. And that reminded me that there's, I think the government said they're trying to work on a place based philanthropy strategy. So it's obviously something that that we struggle with today. And you also mentioned there were industries were stronger in the regions of the country than they are today, where it's more London focused. Yeah, that's really interesting. Do you think does the industry have to come with it? Is that the kind of crucial part of this, or do you think we can sort of recapture that more even spread of philanthropy in this country?
RD
Yeah, I think the two have to go hand in hand, because you generally need the wealth for the philanthropy, and it's tied up with the sort of slow post industrial decline of places you know that previously relied on kind of industrial manufacturing in the past. And I think, you know, I've been involved in some of this work around trying to push for play space philanthropy before. And I guess my argument has been, actually, as lots of places in the UK are trying to find what their identity as towns and cities is, you know, looking ahead to the future, what is the role of philanthropy in that? So it's not about looking backwards and just sort of harking back to the Victorian era and saying, oh, it'd be great if everything was like that, because it definitely wouldn't, for many, many reasons. But it's about how can we take that idea that philanthropy was an integral part of these places when they were, you know, vibrant centers of economic activity, and as they try to to do that again for the future, find a new role for philanthropy within that. I absolutely think that would be a good idea, right?
RP
One other thing that I wanted to just pick up on with the with regards to the 19th century, so with some philanthropists, there seems to be quite a big Quaker influence on young charities being set up, and philanthropy generally. So I think it's the Cadbury family you mentioned has been one on the best known. Why was that, do we think, and why were they so prominent at that time, in the in the formation of some of the charities that still exist today?
RD
I mean, I think it's a few things. I think, you know, most people who studied this, my understanding is, the key thing is, because Quakers were a dissenting part of the Protestant faith, so they were kind of slightly sidelined, like some of the other kind of minority denominations. They were kind of forced to band together, and they almost kind of formed their own minority. When you combine that with the fact that within Quaker teaching, actually, sort of making money is seen as quite a good thing, as long as it's put towards good purposes. Suddenly you've got these kind of networks of people who see business and making money as an acceptable thing to do, if not a kind of a worthy thing to do, to demonstrate their their love of God. And they also kind of form these very tight knit, close networks of different business people. So you get, you know, lots of the businesses that we still have in the UK. I mean, Cadburys and Rowntrees, obviously in the confectioner area, which again, was tied to the fact that they were teetotal and were against alcohol, so they wanted to promote people drinking chocolate instead. But also other companies like Boots and Lloyds and others all have their roots in Quaker companies from various parts of Britain. And when they did make the money, as I say, they didn't see any sort of dividing line between the making it and the giving it away, that the two were kind of inexorably bound up together. So it was kind of probably unsurprising that they became very significant philanthropists.
FI
I think it's interesting that if you look at those foundations today, particularly Barrow Cadbury, the Joseph Rowntree trusts the work that they do, I would say, is about pushing the boundaries and advocating for the most marginalised. So there's, there must be something in the history and their philosophy and the type of work that they do, which is, you know, not more generic, like the larger foundations, but it's very targeted, very focused, using advocacy, using, you know, campaigning with a small c, and really focusing in on those that are the most underrepresented and the most marginalised. And they've been incredibly successful, I would say, as well.
RP
Absolutely right. We're doing quite well for time in terms of rattling through the various touch points. But let's move into the 20th century. So, so as you mentioned, I think Rhodri said, been an idea brewing since the first census in 1801 that philanthropy wasn't enough to kind of deal with the problems that existed, particularly in the country. So then there was we obviously, there were two world wars in the early start of the 20th century. And also, yeah, the birth of the welfare state and the NHS that came out of that. Yeah. What can you say about this time, and what effect that had, this introduction or this growth of the welfare state, state pensions as well national insurance? How did that affect philanthropy and its role in society?
RD
The broad shape of things, as you said, is that, you know, philanthropy was given, you know, fair crack at the whip, at trying to address and meet the kind of welfare needs of society. And it came up short. And so it became increasingly apparent something else was required. And you have the kind of the liberal governments of the early 20th century introducing things like state pensions, national insurance. And around 1911 I think, then obviously you have the First World War, which kind of throws a huge spanner in the works. But there's a brief sort of period of collectivism, and there are big social changes as women are kind of brought into the workforce. You then I think things kind of revert slightly back to normal, because you have this sort of inter war period where, you know, wealth is on the rise again, and actually everybody's sort of going, oh, it's, you know, things are fine again. Now I think then the World War Two is a kind of real turning point, because there it kind of shifts people's mindset towards collectivism. And, you know, the need for everyone to work together. And so the grounds kind of laid then for the introduction, you know, shortly after that, of the NHS and kind of other elements of the welfare state. And it's a really interesting point in terms of thinking about philanthropy. Because certainly some of the people in the labor movement, people like Aneurin Bevan and others, you know, they were very clear that they thought they spent the end of philanthropy, and essentially, kind of good riddance to it. Because, I mean, Bevan said, you know, philanthropy is a patch quilt of local paternalisms, and it's, you know, basing healthcare provision on this is extremely undesirable. So he was delighted by the idea, and, you know, others who'd been involved in that. So William Beveridge, who was the liberal, who was kind of one of the architects of the welfare state, you know, he was much clearer that he thought philanthropy still had a very important role to play alongside the state, but there was definitely a point in the, you know, in the 50s when philanthropy slightly lost its way, and it wasn't really clear what it was for anymore, and lots of charities had to sort of rethink what they were doing. And then when you get into the 60s and the 70s, you have this kind of this new generational shift where people are interested in a whole new bunch of kind of rights based issues, and in kind of campaigning and activism and some of the more traditional charities as well as kind of newer ones sort of pivoted and repositioned their role as well. You know, we'll focus more on our campaigning and advocacy role and on, sort of seeing our role as challenging the state when it doesn't meet our expectations or when there are gaps in it. And this is where you get some of the, you know, the big sort of protest movements and campaigning charities. And you get the formation of things like Shelter and the Child Poverty Action Group that have, you know, really kind of reshaped the whole of the voluntary sector, and the look of it in the latter half of the 20th century.
RP
That's it. So, yeah. So do you think, did philanthropists and charities kind of have to adapt at that time, or did, kind of, did some of them just fall away and then there had to be a new, new generation coming through, like, like the charities that you mentioned there, like, shelter, etc. Do you think, yeah, kind of a new wave of charities came along. Is that kind of what happened at a big picture level?
RD
Yes, although, again, I'd say, you know, philanthropy was probably there bubbling along in the background. And I wouldn't pretend that every philanthropist suddenly became a political radical and started supporting activism. I mean, there was plenty of it, just kind of going on doing the sorts of stuff that philanthropy always had done. But I think the landscape overall definitely shifted. I guess the other thing is that argument that, well, we don't need philanthropy anymore because we've got the welfare state. The theory of that proved not to play out in practice, because no matter how well you create these things, you know, there are always gaps in them. There are always failures to be pointed out. There are always things that that actually the state's not necessarily very good at delivering in terms of more kind of person centered services, or things that kind of enrich the human experience, rather than just making life possible. And so actually, it was just a case of state and philanthropy finding the right balance. I mean, we probably still haven't got that balance right, but we're, we're working on it.
FI
And I think this is, you know, this manifests in a very tangible way in the work of foundations today, this constant going back and forth between where the border is, between private philanthropy and the state. You know, in my 10 years of working in philanthropy, that has shifted so much so, services which were provided by the state 10 years ago are now being funded by philanthropy. And I know that funders foundations, have had so many conversations about, should we be stepping in? You know, are we there? Is that our role to pick up the pieces? You know, when things aren't working, when the state retreats from a certain issue, are we expected to fill that gap? And that calls calls into question. You know, one of Rhodri's most important questions and the title of his book, what is philanthropy for? Funders really have to grapple with that still tangible issue about where, what is philanthropy role, and what is the role of the state, and how do we negotiate that space in between?
RP
Yeah. I mean, it's a really interesting continuing discussion, and one thing that occurs to me is that the the idea that the welfare state has kind of made philanthropy redundant, is that quite a domestically focused idea? Because what about, I don't know what international aid was like in those days, like through, certainly through the government, but did that? Did people's interest in things like that into kind of delivering aid to other countries? Did that grow during the 20th century as well? I know Oxfam was started in the early part, I think, during the Second World War in the 20th century. And before we get on to the likes of Band Aid, Children in Need, and various other more recent, more charities. Yeah, what do you think, Rhodri is that was there? Was there a link there?
RD
I think, yeah, that's absolutely right. I mean, I the word of caution I give is when you as ever, when you look at the history, you can often find examples of it much further back. So if you look in the Victorian era, actually, the response to disaster appeals is fascinating because it was often very international in nature, both, you know, disasters occurring like mine, disasters, for instance, up in Lancashire, yes, you'd get lots of giving from within the area and elsewhere around Britain. But you'd get all of these donations coming in from overseas as well, from kind of other places where there were mines and they'd had kind of similar experiences. And, you know, the same would happen in the opposite direction. I think it always partly reflects the communication technology available at the time. And so the more that people are aware of their position within a, you know, global world, and get news about it, the more likely they are to respond. And obviously, you know, that's where, following the creation of Oxfam and sort of growth of Save the Children in the mid 20th century, you combine that with the increasing awareness through television coverage of issues that are going on elsewhere in the world, and sort of famines and things. And then I guess you move into the 80s, and you get the the added bit of kind of celebrity led fundraising and big one off campaigns like Band Aid and others. And actually, that kind of mass mobilisation of awareness and willingness, and desire to give to international causes is one of the sort of big themes, I think, that you see in the second half of the 20th century in the UK, yeah.
RP
Do you have reflections on that Fozia as, I mean, Children in Need, one of the big charities that emerged in the latter part of the 20th century, and kind of bringing philanthropy to the masses in some way?
FI
Yeah, it's really interesting period in that you see this huge increase in terms of fundraising, you know, national campaigns, etc. And I think it is down to what Rodri said in terms of awareness, in terms of communications, publicity. What I think is interesting to reflect on is that at that point in time, you know, the creation of organisations like Children Need, Comic Relief and others, was still important because of a belief that putting an institution or funding an institution was the solution to the problem. So fundraising would be channeled through an institution and would then reach whether it's an international group or domestic. And I think that's interesting to contrast with what we have now, which is you still have huge generational social change, such as, for example, the Black Lives Matters, movement, or, me too, movement, but not necessarily that same fundraising focus to put into an institution. It's, it's almost as if people are more interested in the cause, and using communication as a way to bring about social change, rather than necessarily, let's raise some money and give it to a charity and let them distribute it. So there's something about that model, which was set up in the 80s and 90s, which I think we need to reflect on as a sector, about whether or not that's still as relevant.
RP
Why do you think that's changed, Fozia? Do you think it's because of things like social media have meant that we can communicate more easily, and because it was more much more limited in the 80s, when campaigns like this started off.
FI
Absolutely and it's a it's a reflection of the change in way the changes in the way social change occurs. So now you have, you know, social media platforms. You have the ability to tell stories widely without, you know, having to call in a TV broadcast or etc, and that ability to build grassroots movements for social change, I think, is something new, something exciting, and also young, the younger population that resonates with them a lot more so if I said to them, you know, this is, this is an issue in relation to children's mental health, this is what we need to do about it. That would be much more powerful to them, rather than saying, give this funding. Raise some money for an institution or a charity so that focus on that shift from institution to issue, I think, is really, really important.
RP
Yeah, absolutely. And one other touch point in the the 20th century, so in the 90s, the introduction of gift aid came in, which going back to the point about the government and its relationship with charitable giving, that's, it's kind of an endorsement by the government, saying that they think that this is an important part of society. They wanted to encourage the general population to give money.
RD
Yeah, and I'd say, I mean, it touches, it reflects, to an extent, what we were saying there about the sort of growth of these mass movements and sort of mass fundraising, because there were tax reliefs for giving before that, but you had to set up a covenant, and it was only really available to people to have relatively large amounts of money. The interesting thing about gift aid is it was an attempt to say, actually, everybody's donations should be taxed advantaged, maybe not at first, because actually the bar was quite high. I think it was donations of over £600 when they introduced it, but that very quickly dropped down. And then in 2000 I think under Gordon Brown, they got rid of the lower limit altogether. And that that was a significant shift, because I think it was sort of a message from government saying, we value, you know, these donations and this, this engagement from people in in charities, and that should be open to to everyone. So I think, yeah, that's definitely kind of an important shift.
RP
And so, so going into the 21st century, so yeah, we've mentioned, we've talked about social media and how that's that's changed the kind of way that younger people these days interact with causes, rather than necessarily charities themselves. What other changes have things like the internet brought to philanthropy and the way people give money, and I guess it's to do with the kind of method by which people will donate, I suppose, as part of that as well?
RD
I think it definitely has, I mean, my sort of big picture view of this is the most interesting thing is, has it brought everything all the way back to where we started with this, which is the idea that when we're talking about philanthropy or about giving, it's about individuals, giving to individuals. And the kind of the process we've been going through since the Middle Ages is essentially, let's, you know, add more and more structure to this to try and make it possible to do what we want to do. And actually has technology caught up, and does it now say, actually, no, you can give. You know, if you care about something, you can find individuals or small groups pretty much anywhere in the world. You don't need to give to a big organisation. You can give directly to those using a payment platform, a social media platform or a crowdfunding platform. Or you can even give, you know, directly to an individual who's asked you for help with their, you know, medical bills or something like that. And actually, in a way that's brought us full circle, back to the model of individuals within the same locality, giving to individuals based on kind of direct interaction. And there's probably some good stuff about that. It might be more immediate. It might kind of renew that human connection that's at the heart of philanthropy. And I think there are all sorts of downsides as well, and we'll probably be reminded about why it was that we, you know, created charities in the first place in order to sort of, you know, kind of intermediate those those relationships. But it's, it's a really interesting point in time.
FI
I think there's something there about the way that social media works in terms of popularity of causes. And that's the danger is that you know, there are some causes, there are some people, there are some communities for whom it will be easy to get funding, and there are other causes which are unpopular, you know, difficult to talk about, uncomfortable, you know. And you know, not, you know, where people do not have a natural or attractive story to tell in order to raise funds, because you need a hook. So if we're depending on a hook to get fundraising, then those who have those attractive hooks will be able to get the fundraising. Those who are fundraising for unpopular issues will then really feel the detriment.
RP
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah. I mean one, one point that you mentioned Rhodri about, kind of we might go back to seeing why we we use charities so much and go back that way. I guess we haven't really covered regulation, I suppose, which is one of the things that allows people to trust donating money to charities, I suppose. And it's perhaps a little bit a bit more of a wild west when you're not going through that route, I suppose. Yeah, we've done really well to kind of rattle through some key touch points in in good time as well. So I just wanted to finish by asking whether you both had any further reflections on what we've discussed. And I guess, what do you think's next for philanthropy? We've got people obviously trying to wrestle with AI in various technologies at the moment. Yeah, what do you think is going to the future's got in store? Don, who'd like to go first? Perhaps Fozia would you like to tackle?
FI
I think philanthropy is going to face increasing challenges on a practical, tangible basis. Funders are under increasing scrutiny, which is a good thing, but our funding is limited, and the need is huge. So I think that's one issue in terms of, how do we really tackle some of these issues? How do we perhaps become more focused? How do we work in collaboration? I think there's also a question about our credibility and validity, and whether we're or not, we're set up for success. You know, the institutions that we set up were for a reason, but and essentially it's to do with social change. But social change that we see now is really fluid. It's unstructured, it's uninstitutionalised. And so how do we adapt to that and still be part of the solution in bringing about social change rather than being part of the problem.
RD
Yeah. And I mean, I think you know, the landscape for philanthropy is already changing, and as Fozia says, there are all sorts of pretty fundamental questions being asked about what the role of philanthropy is, where its legitimacy comes from, where it fits within a democracy, lots of these things. And I think, to me, that one of the really interesting questions is, what does history usefully tell us about this? And there's, I think there's all kinds of practical things you can learn from what worked in the past and what didn't work in the past. But in a way, as you look ahead to the future, the thing that's even more. Interesting is, if you look back to the past, sometimes I think it kind of broadens your sense of what the possible is, because you It's easy when you're in the present to say, well, this is the only way things could have been. You know, everything kind of inexorably ended up here. But when you look back at the past, you realize there were all of these different possibilities and choices and things just happened sometimes for the stupidest of reasons, to go in one direction or another, and actually realising that the domain of possibilities for how you know, how philanthropy could work, but even how society as a whole could be is much bigger than we sometimes think. As we look ahead to the future, I think it's really important to keep that in mind so that we don't limit our horizons artificially.
RP
That's great. Yeah, it's really good to finish on an optimistic tone. So yeah, thank you both. It's been great to speak to you both. Thank you so much for joining me on this podcast episode, and I've learned a huge amount from both of you. So yeah, thanks. Thanks once again.
Thank you for listening to this latest episode of the Civil Society Podcast. Hopefully there was some interesting insights about the history of philanthropy and reflections on how the origins of charitable giving affect the sector today. Thank you again to Fozia and Rhodri for joining us. You can find many more details on Rhodri's excellent Why Philanthropy Matters website, please like and subscribe to the Civil Society podcast, and we hope to see you again next time.
