Reimagining Government season 3 episode 2: transcript

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SFX Aleeza Lubin: In thinking about the design of the grants themselves and putting that emphasis on making sure that research components, that testing components are forefront, the voices of the community become incredibly important. 

[00:00:18] Adrian Brown: Hello and welcome to Reimagining Government. My name is Adrian Brown and I'm the Executive Director at the Centre for Public Impact.

Now, innovative new practices are needed for us to build a functional government, but in a world where funding models favour preconceived outcomes over risk, how do we find the cash we need to make the change we seek? Today I'm joined by Saumya Shruti, Senior Associate at the Centre for Public Impact to talk about funding models.

And how we can reimagine them to encourage more innovation, experimentation, and learning. Welcome Saumya, great to have you with us. 

[00:00:52] Saumya Shruti: Thank you for having me, Adrian. 

[00:00:54] Adrian Brown: Now, maybe we could start with the more traditional route for funding. What, what would, what [00:01:00] does it look like when we’re thinking about funding models in the more traditional sense in the development sector?

[00:01:05] Saumya Shruti: So I think the important thing to think about is that funding starts where funds sit. This is important to note because from the get go traditional roots of funding start far removed from local context. And I'm saying this all generally, but funding is all framed to address problems that are. To the funder's strategy in this traditional route around the world, rather than what local communities find most important.

And when it comes to the process of funding itself, they vary from organisation to organisation, but generally follow a path of: one, application, two review and selection, three, distribution and monitoring, and four, evaluating impact. 

[00:01:48] Adrian Brown: What are some of the biggest pitfalls then you see in summary? In, in terms of this type of thinking. 

[00:01:54] Saumya Shruti: I'll highlight the two that our guest speakers will also be speaking about today. Hoarding power [00:02:00] and funding for results. When funding is seen as a form of power, then when the funding process is not shared with community funders begin to exert power over community. And we've seen this over and over again, that not prioritising community voices and perspectives lead to poor and less sustainable results on the ground in the long term. 

And similarly, when the system was designed for accountability or for results, funding for specific results doesn't necessarily create the space for the complexity and adaptation to context in an ever-changing world. So all that to say basically that. What is being funded and what is being created is not necessarily the best that there can be for creating impact for people on the ground.

[00:02:54] Ankit Gupta: Uh, my name is Ankit Gupta. I live in Delhi in India where it's very hot right now. [00:03:00] I work with Global Fund for Women as a Programme Officer. I've been here for more than five years now, and I'm the chair of the Board of Red Umbrella Fund, where Umbrella Fund is the first and only global fund dedicated to supporting human rights or sex workers.

We've established in 2012, which was a result of several years of dialogues between funders and sex workers, activists. At the heart of our organisation are values and principles to support autonomy of sex workers and full participation of sex workers in every area of decision making that impacts the lives of sex workers.

We fund groups at local level, at regional level because we see value in both of them. Our grantee partners are in Amazon and uh, Asia Pacific, every small part of the world. But I also want to underline that we are one funder and we can also only do so much. I know it, it sometimes looks, feels like we've achieved so much, but our annual budget, our grant picking is around a million and a half dollars, which we distribute around the globe. So I think this is where we also need other funders to come in, uh, and support sex workers rights as well.

[00:04:12] Saumya Shruti: So why is it important that Red Umbrella's funding is focused on sex workers rights? 

[00:04:18] Ankit Gupta: We're talking about a community and system change for a community that has very systematically and institutionally been kept out of systems, be it health systems or legal systems. And in most countries, sex workers still can't report rape or violence to police.

I, in fact, in most countries, sex workers still report highest forms of violences coming through police brutality and through legal systems. A lot of sex workers report  extremely high level of discrimination when they try to access health services. They have reported being sterilised, forcefully when they went to seek abortion services without their consent, without even being informed.

They have been sterilised because a lot of providers see [00:05:00] them as nuisance. I think we are thinking about system change and context of all of this, and in context of a world where we are seeing such a high rise of fundamentalism and anti gender movements and general roll-back on women's rights, like any form of system change, even for just women to be able to access services or young people to be able to access sexual reproductive health services takes decades of engagement, if not more.

And that needs sustainable funding. It needs core support, funding, and flexible funding for movements to do that engagement. So for us at Red Umbrella Fund, and we believe that by fundraising and catalysing funding to sex, sex workers led movement, we can contribute to a stronger sex workers movement that will be able to advocate for their own rights and counter stigma and discrimination, which means sex workers will have access to, right access to justice, and access to dignity and respect.

[00:05:51] Saumya Shruti: The Red Umbrella fund gives sex workers the power to fund what they see most valuable. This is a practice known as participatory grant [00:06:00] making. It gives autonomy to the community affected rather than relying on a group outside the community to make choices for them. 

[00:06:08] SFX Camille Emeagwali: This is a process in which all voices are at the table.

It's key to be able to ensure that the community is fully represented, to be at the table and help us make the decisions about where the dollars should go. 

[00:06:26] Ankit Gupta: I think what has been really groundbreaking is the organising sex workers have done for their rights. For example, Durbar Mahila Samanwaya in West Bengal in India formed a union of 65,000 sex workers just formed the their own organising with sex workers. When the HIV prevalence rate in Delhi and Mumbai were 50 to 90%, in West Bengal it dropped to 10% because they were constantly advocating for safe sex practices. They were able to negotiate with police.

They were able to negotiate with clients. They also formed [00:07:00] self-regulatory boards where they made sure nobody who was being trafficked could be brought into sex work in West Bengal. Nobody who was under the age of 18 could be brought into sex work, and they made sure the organising for the rights of sex workers was led by sex workers.

So I think this is how communities drive change for themselves. 

[00:07:22] Saumya Shruti: But how is the Red Umbrella fund funded? 

[00:07:26] Ankit Gupta: So one of our big pillars of Red Umbrella Fund's strategic plan is our philanthropic advocacy work. Knowing our budget, we know we can't be the only ones supporting sex workers rights, and we really want sex workers rights funding to be embedded in those institutional funders and family foundations and feminist funds.

So a big part of our work is advocacy with these funds. And I think I also want to highlight that this work comes from the knowledge that very little money goes to sex workers rights. Um, a very recent report launched by Human Rights [00:08:00] Funding Network, HRFN, which tracks all human rights funding, found that less than 1% of all human rights funding goes to sex workers rights.

So this is why this work for us is really important. 

[00:08:12] Saumya Shruti: Part of why sex workers struggle to find funding is down to the stigma of their trade. Ankit and the Red Umbrella Fund saw this challenge and created the Sex Workers Donor Collaborative as a solution. 

[00:08:25] Ankit Gupta: It's a collaborative of funders who are either currently funding sex workers rights, or are interested in funding sex workers rights.

What we've noticed is a lot of advocacy in these big foundations happens at programme officers level, programme officers, programme associates, managers want to fund sex workers rights, but they have leadership. They have board members, funders who are just too scared of stepping into this area of funding.  So we create a space for funders to come in an anonymous space. They can, they can be an anonymous member of sex worker donor [00:09:00] collaborative and create in a space with peer donors to ask questions, to see how can we support each other. So for example, as Red Umbrella Fund, we have organised sex workers 101 for other funders as well with their staff, with their board members.

When I came to Global Fund Women, we weren't doing much sex work funding and this was a huge part of my commitment to coming to a feminist fund and me and my colleague back then we started doing sex work funding, but we also wanted to make sure all of our colleagues are on the same page. So we organised a sex worker rights 101, with Red Umbrella Fund, so we can have an open dialogue.

Staff could ask questions anonymously, but we wanted people to be on the same page. I think a lot of work continues to go into this advocacy, but this is really important for us that other funders also start funding sex workers groups directly. 

[00:09:51] Saumya Shruti: Speaking of the Global Fund for Women, how are they helping movements around the globe?

[00:09:56] Ankit Gupta: I think for Global Fund for Women, I think learning is very [00:10:00] important for us. We prioritise learning a lot with the movements. And what we also have done is developed a lot of learning tools our partners can use. We have our movement capacity assessment tool, which anybody can download from our website, use it, but it helps movements assess what are their strengths, what are their challenges, what should they be looking at, how can they have a stronger movement?

And then we have a movement mapping tool, which helps us and movements map who are some of the key actors who do people know in a movement and they're able to form like a network of organisations and activists and see who are they not talking to? What are the gaps in their movements? Who should they be talking to more?

Are they involving LGBTQI movements enough, are they involving sex workers movements enough? And so I think these are two learning tools we've been able to develop after like years of working with movements that have helped us a lot in the organisation. I think another thing we are very actively do is have learning [00:11:00] committees.

We have a gender-based violence learning committee, which. Just shares best practices with each other. Even when you look at violence, forms of violence has changed so much, and online violence, deep fakes have creeped into all of our lives. So how are we countering online violence? What are we learning?

Being able to create these learning spaces among partners is at the core of what we do. 

[00:11:24] Saumya Shruti: Anki highlights the importance of learning in this context as a way to improve the outcomes in their own funding work across different organisations. They are also advocates for the participatory grant making model of funding projects, but as Ankit will mention, sometimes funding from an outside body is needed in order to maintain trust with communities.

[00:11:49] Ankit Gupta: The idea behind shifting the power and being able to empower communities to make decisions is not telling them to make the decision, but asking them what would they like and [00:12:00] how would they like to be involved. I don't think the idea is that we tell communities this is what you're supposed to do, the decisions they're supposed to make, but asking them what works for you. 

That's how we have embodied participatory grant making at Global Fund for Women. Before we do any participatory grant making, we do a very in-depth landscape analysis and consultations with our partners because Global Fund for Women has existed for more than 30 years, and we have deep relationships with several movements, which helps us to have these conversations.

But for example, we funded domestic workers movement in India for a very long time, and when we asked them, would you like a participatory method? Would you like to make decisions on your own, form a committee? They said, no, you make these decisions. If we have to make decisions about who receives funding among our peers, this will break our alliances.

This will break our movement because then we'll be deciding who gets the funding and who doesn't, and these are people we have to sit in the same room with. We have [00:13:00] to make policy decisions with, we don't want to do that. You make these decisions. That's very important to hear for us as well, that one size just cannot fit everybody.

I think in some of the cases, it has worked really beautifully for us. We have a participatory grant making process in Western Balkans, and that primarily looks at rising anti gender movements, which have had such impact in Western Balkans vision. And we have a committee of 16 people from the movements, and we've been able to reach groups we didn't know about, we have not funded them for.

So I think that has had a lot of benefits for us. But I think also just asking movements, what do you want? How would you like to make decisions is so important. 

[00:13:44] Saumya Shruti: Finally, I asked Ankit if they had any reflections to share with other funders about what they've learned through their work at the Red Umbrella Fund and the Global Fund for Women 

[00:13:53] Ankit Gupta: As funders, I would like all of us and funders to be, to have a bit more appetite for risk taking. I think we are [00:14:00] very scared of taking a risk. A lot of funders feel like what has worked for years continues to work, and that is true. While that is true, I think there is a lot happening sometimes, you know, we fund a new group that may not exist by the end of their grant, but you take that risk.

They could also be a very important part of our movement. I think funders need to have a bit more appetite for risk-taking. Even with participatory grantmaking, I'm not saying everybody needs to shift to it, and everybody needs to shift completely, but there are a lot of ways communities can be involved in decision-making and decision-making around money.

Communities know, I think sex workers know better than anybody how much every dollar amount means, and I think involving them in these decisions is very critical. So I think having a bit of appetite for risk is good. 

[00:14:54] Adrian Brown: So it's fascinating to hear all of the innovations really that [00:15:00] Ankit is involved with there across the different funds.

That final point that they were making around risk seems particularly important because it's, it's really tough. I can absolutely see if you are, if you're a funder distributing money, you do not want to take risks really, you, it certainly feels scary to take risks. How do we, how do we think about that Saumya?

[00:15:26] Saumya Shruti: It's so natural for folks to feel wary of taking risks and financial risks that the funders take are huge. There are so many movements, uh, so much that's going on in the world that needs money right now. And if one investment fails, then that's honestly, taking resources away from where impact, in quotes, could have been generated.

It's a really natural feeling to acknowledge that the weight of risk on our mindset and how debilitating can feel. It's, it's very, it's very big and it's very tough. Um, but acknowledging it is a [00:16:00] first step at least, and recognising that in order to become less risk averse, it's a process and a journey of shifting mindsets and ways of being.

It requires a lot of reflection around what failure is too and how each failure, or how each success is rather, not that end point, but a broader continuation, an opportunity for us to learn about the changing world around us. It'll take time for sure to, this isn't gonna happen overnight, but through elevating the stories of organisations like the Red Umbrella Fund and the Global Fund for Women and the outcomes of their risk, we can start to normalise this alternative way of funding.

[00:16:41] Adrian Brown: Well, thanks so much for introducing us to An there and helping share their story from the different funds that they're involved with. After the break, we'll be looking at another funder who's striving for ambitious results in government change. Will Wade and Tom Pruunsild from Climate [00:17:00] KIC will be telling us how they are funding experiments to combat the climate crisis. We'll be right back.

SFX

Adrian Brown: Welcome back to Reimagining Government. 

[00:17:21] Will Wade: So I'm Will Wade, I work for Climate KIC, have done for six years now. I am an innovation grant making designer and producer. 

[00:17:29] Tom Pruunsild: Hi, my name is Tom Pruunsildd. I work for Climate KIC for the Systems and Innovation Learning partnership as learning facilitator and learning designer.

[00:17:38] Will Wade: Climate KIC is an EU innovation agency. Um, the KIC stands for Knowledge and Innovation Community. And historically, Climate KIC has been a convener of, of actors, institutions, research institutions, businesses, all working towards the goal of tackling climate change across the European Union. Seeding and supporting innovation and orchestrating innovation [00:18:00] programs that we call deep demonstrations of change towards deep change and systems change within our human living systems, um, towards climate neutrality.

[00:18:08] Saumya Shruti: The Systems Innovation Learning Partnership, SILP for short, is a collaboration between the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency or SIDA and Climate KIC. Its goal is to fund individuals and organisations working on alternative approaches to systemic challenges in order to experiment with ideas outside our knowledge and build a community of innovators in their respective fields.

[00:18:33] Will Wade: The Systems Innovation Learning Partnership is very much about exploring and experimenting with different ways in which we could effect systems change, whether it's through funding or through capability building and partnering and, and really starting to question the assumptions around kind of organisational practices or processes or collaboration paradigms.

Both SIDA  and Climate KIC came together to experiment with and try and learn about that through a collaboration together. One component of that was the idea of seeding some experiments [00:19:00] with some funding partly to, to see what's out there, to see what else is happening. To not presume that we have the cutting edge understanding of what actually the work of systems change needs to look like, but actually to find out what others think that might be.

As we were starting to design exactly what it is we wanted to do, we also started to question our own assumptions about how funding has to happen. Now we start thinking about, how do you write the documentation or a call for a systems experiment? What does that even look like and how can you do something that is the same for every different context?

As that became an increasingly awkward conversation with ourselves in a kind of small room, we realised that actually what we needed to do was take this as an opportunity for us to experiment ourselves with deconstructing the paradigm of funding. Whether that's to do with the process of designing a call and running an evaluation process of selecting projects in a kind of portfolio logic.

And indeed, what has become a significantly important part of this piece of work, I think for us is the process by which you then ask applicants to consider and understand the work that they want to do, what they target, what their ambition is, [00:20:00] how they have to come with those ideas, and then what the expectations are for implementation of those ideas.

How does this increase, um, or enhance outcomes? How does this increase and enhance capability and understanding within the systems, within local context, within funding? Effectively what happens? It was a bit of an experiment and exploration ourselves. So what happens if you do it this way? 

[00:20:23] Saumya Shruti: In order to decide who would get the funding climate KIC, and SIDA had to build a group of individuals who shared knowledge of funding for learning.

Everyone needed to be on the same page. They needed to form what Tom describes as a community of purpose. 

[00:20:38] Tom Pruunsild: Essentially, we figured out that we needed to devise a community of purpose that shared the a common inquiry towards understanding how to do funding for learning and funding for learning about systems change and systems change approaches.

We then, uh, devised this community by getting in contact with opening a call for interested parties to come and [00:21:00] join us in this co-design. And then we got to a group of, uh, 15 community grant makers, as we called them, who then with our facilitation helped us co-design the, all of the mechanics of the funding mechanism, all down to the bits of, of how the application forms look like, what was the application process and how the experiments were selected.

Seven experiments were chosen by the community grant makers who were then the group who also designed the fund as Climate KIC or SIDA and the Systems Innovation Learning Partnership did not make the decisions of of who were going to get the grants. And now we're connected with, uh, seven of these experiments all over the world, guiding them through or facilitating this learning journey with them, we then sort of establish this multi directionality of learning flow as a process throughout the organisations, throughout their communities that they're working on the ground with and, uh, to our own organisations. 

[00:21:59] Saumya Shruti: To ensure [00:22:00] the fund was an equal playing field for all, a responsibility was felt to build trust and show vulnerability by those selecting the experiments 

[00:22:09] Will Wade: Trust, you know, on the, on the, the other side of that coin is also vulnerability, I guess, in a way. And it's the same for us as it would be for, I, I expect grantees not exactly the same, but there, there is a certain sense of risk and vulnerability for us when we take this approach being kind of the grantor.

Where it's, I think, traditionally much easier to fall into patterns of control and, uh, risk management than it is to actually focus on learning and failure as, as, as being core to the work and core to the, the nature of experimentation and innovation. We had this kind of original set of ideas around how we wanted to lean into trust.

We didn't, didn't call it that at the time, I think. And then we had emergent things, or there are things that are still emerging. So as Tom is describing with the community grant makers that we convened together as a group, we talked through what we each understood to be the nature of the work, the nature of systems change, and then where there were differences with that, [00:23:00] there was some unfolding conversations about, well, how do we collectively understand so that we're assessing in a, in a way that is similar. There was also a, a kind of point in time where it was wonderfully suggested from, I think maybe one of the community grant makers, but all of them took to it very strongly and as did we. 

They were very conscious of, what they brought to the process. And I think that's, that's a place of vulnerability and trust that that plays in both directions with each other, but also with the applicants who are putting their trust in a group of people who are making decisions, who might not fully understand their context.

That they were encouraged and they surfaced that, that, I guess fear in a way, but that they would collectively try and pull their knowledge to make sure they were making the best kind of decisions, um, or most informed decisions they could make. And they were very keen on this idea of bringing in their own positionality or making a sort of positional statement for themselves about, this is my background, this is my experience, this is my expertise.

These are potentially my biases. These were kind of emergent areas of trust that [00:24:00] came up in the process that we probably couldn't have anticipated, but now I think we've learned a lot from, and, and we'd certainly be much more conscious to in, in the design of future programmes. 

[00:24:10] Saumya Shruti: The traditional model of funding for innovation is based on preconceived outcomes for Tom and Will, this mode of working sounded a little bit contradictory. How is it innovation if you already know the end result? 

[00:24:23] Tom Pruunsild: Right now a lot of funding for innovation is done in a sort of half-baked way, uh, so to speak. We are leaning to some of the uncontrollable or unknowns, but we're, we're trying to really hold onto some of the other parts of it, which then kind of come in the way of the other parts that where you're trying to be innovative.

Working with the active mindset of not knowing has been a personal journey here and really trying to be aware of those moments where I assume that I know something and then actually actively questioning that in every step of the [00:25:00] way. And I think this speaks to, you know, coming up with, um, interesting ways of, you know, solving or addressing challenges in large and small scopes in inside all kinds of projects, programmes.

But it also really, really speaks into creating that trusting environment because if there is a dynamic of somebody knowing better than the other in a funding mechanism that creates that, that power dynamic of somebody being sort of a more in the expert and then the other. And oftentimes that actually becomes the detrimental factor when the assumed experts or the assumed people who have the analysis that they've made does not actually fit the reality of the people who are then need to, need to actually do the programming or actually go into and do the work. 

So actively coming together and saying, okay, we don't actually know, but we want to figure out together creates this kind of way of actually [00:26:00] going about it in an innovative way. So that's, that's like an enabling condition for doing something innovative. 

[00:26:06] Will Wade: There's also the, the sense that working in complexity in complex systems or wicked issues, there are so many of those unknown unknowns and there are so many of those connectivity challenges, which when you do something more locally or more singularly, you might have a degree of success, but they might not scale or replicate because there are so many systems issues and conditions that militate against, that becoming something that's replicable and scalable.

The process of doing grant funded innovation and the process of exploring these challenging, complex issues with, um hypotheses or experiments of how you might overcome them is also, as far as I'm concerned, meant to be a learning opportunity that builds capability of those who are undertaking that work and those that they're engaging with as well.

So you get that kind of ripple effect, that it's not just about a project that starts and then finishes and then what, what were the outcomes? But there is a retention of knowledge, a retention of capability that that can then be repeated or it can be deployed in a similar way, across a different challenge area, or that new [00:27:00] relationships are built in communities that then can take on challenges themselves and find different ways of approaching them.

And this speaks very much to the word learning we, we keep coming back to learning is being kind of a present continuous verb. Um, if that's the right kind of grammatical definition, whereas when we talk about success and failure, where you're already bringing in the kind of end of something, the kind of postdoc evaluation, did this work or did this not work?

But I think what funding for learning has really helped us to open up is the, the benefits of learning, the benefits of developing capability, and removing the tyranny of success or failure as the ultimate arbitration of whether or not the money was spent well.

[00:27:38] Saumya Shruti: So, what did they learn? 

[00:27:41] Will Wade: Well, one of the fundamental things it's taught me is there is a different way.

I don't think I, from what I'm seeing in the work we've done is that this, this isn't a kind of bogus approach or it's not a sort of fluffy approach to, to grant making. It can work and I really think it will work. What can happen when there is a sense of vulnerability or a sense of risk as the first port of call when you're doing [00:28:00] design and then doing implementation of calls for funding and then the selection.

And if that's your first port of call is, how do I control assure, reduce risk and ensure statistically, technically, the best outcomes possible for every cent that's going in. You're naturally going to move towards more controlling processes, processes that are much more rigid. Um, they, they cannot deviate, uh, in any way, shape or form.

Even if the deviation that's right in front of you is the right one, is the, you look at something and say, oh, we designed this six weeks ago, six months ago. It's not really gonna work how we thought. But we can't change it now because of X, Y, Z, and these rules and these risks and these things, these compliance problems, right?

The role of vulnerability, risk and failure in the funding system is one of it, quite it. It can quite easily petrify or calcify structures in place that aren't conducive to the outcomes that we might otherwise want.  Now, I'm not saying that doing the opposite or doing what we are doing is going to absolutely always guarantee you those outcomes.

There might be a a third way, you know, a fourth way, a different way. But I think what we're trying to do with this experiment is just see if you did it [00:29:00] this way, what works, what doesn't? What happens with the outcomes is that, is that gonna be repeatable? Is that consistent? Is it contextually? Always depending on what kind of fund it is, how long it is, who's involved?

Where the money is coming from. Is it public? Is it private? There's, there's a whole host of questions. For me, it's the kind of attitudinal or mindset approach to begin with that is fundamental here. It's what are you trying to achieve, how can you achieve that, and what is the way in which you can achieve that together with people collectively holding each other up in a kind of trusting way and a kind of collaborative and co-inquiring way.

So you're collectively moving towards the outcomes you all want to see, rather than kind of getting crushed by the waterfall of several layers of, of risk, compliance and control that normally get cascaded from frameworks and legal documents, which I understand why they exist. I'm not saying you can get rid of them, but I think it's just this, this is the really complex and tricky and sticky space of this kind of work.[00:30:00] 

[00:30:03] Adrian Brown: There's so much wisdom there and, uh, food for thought from, from both Tom and Will. I was noting down lots of quotes, uh, that are just in terms of the, the phrases they have for describing their way of thinking and their way of working, which are just fantastically succinct and, and, and really pack a lot of knowledge and experience, that they've got.

But let me just quote one back to you, Saumya, and then you can tell me what you think of it. So right there at the end Will said “there is value in going the long way round”. What do you think of that? 

[00:30:35] Saumya Shruti: It's, it's such a good quote and like you said, both Will and Tom are speaking to everything that we've been saying so far, um, in such beautiful language as well as Will says himself, like asking the question of what is valuable is a bold statement and one whose answer often flips current practices on their heads.

Once we start to answer this question, we start to ask other questions of, well, [00:31:00] where does the current understanding of value come from and who shaped it? Who is it for? What is this doing to our current systems and the way that we live in and is this the life and the system that we want to live in?

Pulling at the thread of value helps us see how the system of funding and impact has been designed, and also how we can start to reimagine it. 

[00:31:22] Adrian Brown: Well, thank you Saumya, for walking us through those fascinating examples from different contexts, but, but many of the principles I think that they were being described were, were quite similar around trusting those that are best placed to know what the problem is and, and, and how to address, address the issues. Being humble, I guess, about who's an expert, who's not an expert, being open, being collaborative. These were all themes I heard through, through both the examples. The people we've spoken to here, I think it's fair to say are probably [00:32:00] exceptions rather than the rule within the broader funding landscape.

I don't want to sound too judgmental there, but these people are clearly pushing the envelope. They, they want to break or they want to challenge at least the mindsets and the models and the processes that sit behind the more traditional funding model, but what can be done to encourage the mainstream to change?

How can we encourage funders who are, uh, perhaps more traditional in their outlook to adopt these more progressive forms of funding?  

[00:32:34] Saumya Shruti: It comes back to what we were saying earlier where the traditional forms of funding have their own logic. And these newer forms of funding have a different logic. And so to challenge the original logic is not just a process thing, it's not just a system thing, but truly, it's a personal journey that people have to take. There are all these questions about value, about risk, about [00:33:00] humility, about impact that need to be evaluated and reflected on from the individual level at the logic that has been internalised in this system. 

And it's a very scary journey. Questioning some of the fundamental assumptions of why systems exist in the way that they do is, is a difficult task for anyone in any sector, any part of the world. But the good thing is that there are movements around the world focused on trying to do this and so many incredible leaders to look up to, and there's so many people to reach out to. But even at CPI, we're exploring how we can bring funders interested in this work, but don't know where to start on a learning journey with us.

And in our own humility, we're still exploring what this looks like, but if folks are interested, please don't hesitate to reach out. 

[00:33:48] Adrian Brown: Well, that concludes this episode of Reimagining Government. Thank you again to my co-host for this episode Saumya Shruti.

And if you're a public servant or a policymaker, we want to hear from you, what do you [00:34:00] think needs to change in funding? You can call into the show through our answer machine. Head over to speak pipe.com/reimagining government and leave us a message. Please be aware that we may play these out on the show. If you prefer, you can write to us the traditional way. You can email comms@centreforpublicimpact.org to let us know what topics we should cover in future episodes.

And finally, please remember to leave us our review on your favourite podcast platform and let us know your thoughts on the series. Until next time I've been Adrian Brown. Goodbye.