Compliance: A Baseline, Not A Goal

Discussing compliance will not make you a popular guest at parties, but perhaps it’s a subject more deserving of an audience. It is a vital part of the plumbing of functioning societies, impacting and influencing everyone. Organisations must comply with industry and government regulations to avoid censure and investigation. Employees must comply with codes of conduct to keep their jobs. Social compliance keeps us all in line with the behavioural expectations of our peers, neighbours, communities, industries and governments.

Broadly, this is a good thing. Without rules, there is chaos, and without shared values and common goals, there is no glue to hold us together. But that glue starts to melt when regulations and laws enable injustice.

Today, we see compliance allow corporations with revenues equivalent to the GDP of a small country to pay no taxes. We hear of individuals hiding their immense wealth of dubious origin in offshore hideaways while millions of citizens cannot afford healthcare. We read about cost-cutting, profit-chasing multinationals allowed to poison our rivers, lands, and people or exploit cheap labour abroad.

Compliance is meant to protect people and the planet, but it’s also a shield for the perpetrators of injustice. When challenged on harmful and morally, ethically questionable practices, they hide behind it, shrug their shoulders, and say, ‘well, we followed the rules.’ But these are often rules they helped design in the first place.

Big business has a long history of camouflaging the risks of everything from alcohol and asbestos to sugar and cigarettes. The ‘tobacco playbook’ of yesteryear is still widespread today, sowing doubt and undermining the consensus with questionable science. Industry representatives are unknown to the public but familiar faces in government lobbies, where whispers of light touches and cutting red tape echo loudly and are influential in diluting the potency of new regulations. Citizens and activists call for change but are rarely invited to the table when decisions are made; industry, of course, enjoys permanent, cosy seats. And it wields such influence that regulations are often timid in design and application. This is administrative injustice, with hugely damaging outcomes.

As funders, we have seen this influence first-hand with many of our Fellows working at the regulatory level. Ugo Vallauri is co-founder of The Restart Project and a leading figure in the Right to Repair movement, a coalition of organisations championing the rights of consumers and ensuring everyone has the right to fix the products they own. After successfully petitioning the UK government and the EU to introduce new legislation, the right to repair is now a part of the legal landscape. But the new regulations are significantly watered down after lobbying from the technology industry and will only make a small dent in the vast mountains of electronic waste we produce every year. Ugo and the Right to Repair movement will continue to push for more responsible action, but it will take time, resources, and tremendous energy to deliver the regulations our environment urgently needs.

Shannon Dosemagen also sees the need to move beyond compliance. She is working on the Open Environmental Data Project to develop an open data repository and improve data interoperability for the public good. Access to essential, open data could inform communities of local public health issues and industry polluters. But despite the US government’s shift to publishing data openly, much of it is unfindable and unusable. Important information is buried on obscure pages of a website and exists in a multitude of formats that cannot be integrated with anything else. The combination of data segregation and asymmetric information infrastructure means no one can identify simple problems, let alone solve them. In this case, compliance does not create the value, justice, or innovation it was meant to bring about.

“We create intentional or unintentional boundaries that make things really difficult for people,” explains Shannon. “A decade ago, we made a case for governments and agencies to publish their data openly – and won. But now we have open data sets that are unfindable, inaccessible, and unusable – or usable beyond the original intent, which I think is vital for innovation.

“The onus is on citizens and residents to fit into these totally opaque and complicated systems of law, regulation, enforcement and compliance in the environmental world. It is an impossible system to wade through because it doesn’t have a singular framework. The complexity means people are unwilling or unable to engage with or question those systems, which results in a lack of political will or compulsion to go beyond that baseline. It is an injustice and a complete disservice to the people who are supposedly being protected.

“We have to start thinking more about how things could be better. People want to access environmental data or contribute data that would give us different angles and insights. But agencies can say they can’t, won’t or don’t need to change because they follow the rules. And in some cases, industry is allowed to self regulate, so it’s unlikely we will see the introduction of rule changes beneficial to the environment if they are not in the industry’s immediate interests.

“This is what we are trying to change with the Beyond Compliance Network. We want to enable greater data sharing across public and private boundaries and bring more U.S.environmental data up to FAIR standards – Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. I’ve experienced ten years of agencies saying they don’t have the capacity to take community data or the data from sensor readings that exist outside of their standards. It is reactive behaviour that doesn’t allow dialogue or conversations or different approaches to a community’s environmental problems. So, we want to break down those barriers around data accessibility and introduce a diversity of experiences and approaches around environmental governance to unlock new insights and innovations.”

Shuttleworth Fellow Delphine Halgand-Mishra is also shifting our thinking about compliance. As founder of The Signals Network, she supports whistleblowers and helps coordinate and disseminate international media investigations into wrongdoing. Whistleblowers do not comply. They refuse to follow orders and break gagging orders to expose corruption and abuses of power. And they do so at significant risk: they are often destroyed by persecution, prosecution, and punishing psychological and economic consequences.

“I do not encourage anyone to break the law,” says Delphine. “But we must accept that if the law can be used to silence people, it must be changed. And when regulations are changed for the better, it is often initiated by someone breaking the law or a contract.

“My work is necessary because legal frameworks do not protect whistleblowers wherever they are in the world. If you’re a whistleblower, you are fragile. Your employer has many ways to punish you for breaking an NDA for defamation. Your government can put you in prison for exposing its corruption. Even if you are the source for breaking a huge story with huge public support, you have little protection because what you are doing is illegal.

“We need compliance to work as a society, but we also need to change our mindsets. I would encourage people to focus less on the limits of compliance and more on questioning its boundaries. Laws and regulations are not static and are subject to trends. We all have limited time and busy lives, but if we just stepped back and took a moment to think or even dream of a different approach, we can change those unfair laws and regulations and start moving in a better direction.”

Compliance also poses an issue for philanthropy. It creates enormous burdens for grantees, especially those who cannot access funds in countries identified as high-risk by financial institutions. It encourages funders to avoid risk and play safe; in a field where playing safe rarely delivers real progress. Compliance makes philanthropy more controlling and less trusting. And it encourages conformity: funding strategies are informed by a top-down insistence to meet regulatory requirements rather than a bottom-up desire to make a good idea work.

Our drive to make philanthropy better started with a deep antagonism for the ever-present, unnecessary box-ticking exercises in the funding world. Years ago, we hired a monitoring and evaluation firm to give insight into the effectiveness of our projects, but there was an immediate problem: they could not measure what we were looking for with their own methodologies. So, we changed the metrics to adapt to their needs, and when the results came back, we had hit them successfully. This was surprising. We could see our projects were not leading to dynamic, positive outcomes at scale and were failing to make real change in the world.

It became crystal clear that when metrics – or regulations, laws, statistics – are employed, they inevitably become the goal. And this is how most people in society think about compliance. Meeting regulation requirements is seen as an end-of-game achievement rather than a platform to build upon, test, or explore further.

We should not be surprised. In business, regulations are a burden and an imposition. In governments, compliance is part of the bureaucratic machinery and the cause of delays to decision-making. The average citizen does not have the time or inclination to navigate and engage with the complicated, dry, multifaceted nature and minute detail of compliance, even when the rules are so obviously stacked against their interests.

Instead, it falls on activists, whistleblowers, and rebels with vision and tenacity to stand up against injustice. They do not comply. They perform ethical disobedience on everyone’s behalf. They are often belittled, harassed, surveilled, targeted, and imprisoned – or worse – by those with power and resources. It is philanthropy’s responsibility to support them.

So, for funders, it is not enough to just comply. Compliance is a representation of the status quo – or, more accurately, the status quo’s terms, conditions, and expectations – designed to maintain the systems we rely on to serve us. But if those systems create inequity, then it is our role to help change them. And that means thinking differently about compliance and how it affects our grantees and shapes our strategies, whether subconsciously or deliberately. The history of social movements, after all, tells us you can’t change the world by following the rules.

20 Years On: Reflections From the Frontier of Philanthropy

Last year, The Shuttleworth Foundation turned twenty!

Our experiment to re-imagine philanthropy has made the Foundation a very different organisation from the one it resembled in 2001. It’s been a long, sometimes bumpy, but mostly positive journey into maturity. As individuals, we have – hopefully – gained a little wisdom to accompany our wrinkles and wanted to collect our thoughts to pause and reflect on our story so far. We hope you will find something useful in Field Notes From the Frontier of Philanthropy and find it thought-provoking, helpful or adaptable in some way.

But mostly, we hope it inspires you to think differently and, maybe, take action. The world must change substantially and urgently. Even without the unknown, long-tail impacts of the pandemic, we live in an era of damaging social unrest, rising levels of inequality and rampant environmental destruction. It is a far cry from what technology promised in 2001.

We share a birth year with the launch of the iPod, iTunes, Wikipedia and the world’s first 3G network. Computerphobia of the ’80s and ’90s was peaking with the dot-com bust and the Y2K Bug, and entering remission as Web 2.0 emerged. Broadband was beginning to replace dial-up. A revolution was happening in our pockets as mobile phones became smaller, then smarter, changing the way we organise our lives and interact with each other in almost every conceivable way. Looking back, they were heady days. Technology was going to be the saviour.

But the opposite has proven true. In the post-9/11 world, our physical movements are tracked aggressively, more than at any other time in history. Surveillance capitalism is dining out at The Savoy on our private thoughts and personal data. A mix of extraction, exploitation and artificial scarcity remains the business model of our times. We bought smartphones in abundance, then just threw them away for the next upgrade, creating mountains of electronic waste, leaking batteries, and never-to-be-recovered precious metals in the process. And it’s not even fun anymore: social media was meant to engage us and bring us all together, not enrage us and rip us apart.

There is hope, however. New political, social and economic models are emerging during this period of global and technological disruption. Some are beginning to gain traction. People are turning their backs on the status quo as they realise its systems and power structures – designed and optimised for yesterday’s industries – do not and will not work in today’s context. Philanthropy must do the same if globalisation’s discontents are not to become its malcontents.

There couldn’t be a better time to start forging real change, despite the chaos and fear and trepidation about the future. That is why we will continue to fund individuals brave enough to introduce new ideas and innovations and build new systems for a more open and equitable world. Of course, we can’t guarantee a better future in the next twenty years, but we will spare no effort to get there. And we hope you will come along for the ride.

https://readme.shuttleworthfoundation.org/

Prison Philanthropy Sucks: A Reality Check For Funders

The discussion chimed with much of our thinking about the imbalanced power dynamics at the centre of traditional funding models. We invited them to join our CEO Helen Turvey and Dan Meredith of Reset.tech to discuss our Flash Grant programme and share ideas about how philanthropy can do more for its grantees.

In both sessions, Kelsey, Michelle and Christina illustrated the reality of prison philanthropy for the many people it claims to serve. It does not paint a pretty picture for anyone engaged in the distribution of charitable funds. They describe a wasteful funding system rife with elitism and a philanthropy that refuses to engage with the messy and complex reality of effecting social change, choosing to poke around at the periphery and court high-profile publicity instead.

These brilliant women have deep insight into incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people’s challenges and a long-accumulated understanding of what it takes to change lives. They do phenomenal work on shoestring budgets. With their immense expertise and experience, they could do a lot more if enabled with the power and necessary resources. Philanthropy should be taking notes. Instead, it questions their credentials, imposes rigid demands and asks them to jump through a million hoops just to be in the running for a grant, let alone in receipt of one.

Prison Philanthropy Sucks is a wake-up call for funders. Its message applies far beyond the prison sector and echoes many of the conversations we have with our own fellows. Simply put, we must all do better.

Hopelessly misguided

Kelsey Kauffman is a former correctional officer and has worked within the US prison system for fifty years. She understands its complex, chaotic and damaging outcomes more than most. In 2012, she created a highly successful volunteer-run college programme at Indiana Women’s Prison, operating with an annual budget of only $5,000. In 2015, Kelsey received a Shuttleworth Flash Grant for her work.

“It was the best grant I ever got in my entire life,” she says. “I’d take it over a traditional grant many times its size. It took none of my time. I didn’t have to apply for it, I didn’t have to explain how I spent the money, and I didn’t even have to track it. And that $5,000 paid for a whole year of our college programme.”

“But our programme was replaced, eventually,” she continues. “The new initiative is donor-funded at the cost of $500,000 a year, in the same prison with the same number of students. That money could have funded our work for 100 years, or more importantly, run our programme in 100 different prisons.

“Prison funding has become very trendy for philanthropies over the last five years. But it’s hopelessly misguided. Funders are spending hundreds of millions of dollars and pouring most of that into a few, high profile, extremely expensive programmes run by elite colleges.”

Where elite education goes, elitism usually follows. Kelsey’s higher education programme welcomed over 20% of the Indiana Women’s Prison population via open enrollment. It was hugely successful, incredibly cheap, and had the potential to be replicated anywhere else in the country – the perfect environment to build momentum for a funder with a smart strategy and a keen desire for real change.

Yet, the vast majority of today’s philanthropic dollar is spent in the opposite direction. Big foundations fund selective prison programming where only the brightest get the opportunity of earning an education and reducing their sentence time. These programmes are excellent, stresses Kelsey, but wildly expensive for their overall impact.

“If I had $50 million to give to prison programming, I would endow a fund at a regional college,” she says. “It would allow them to provide oversight and accreditation to all prison college programmes in that area for the next 10 years. All those programmes would be modelled on what we did at IWP and rely entirely on volunteers. You could have programmes in hundreds of prisons, serving thousands of students.”

Instead, philanthropy directs its fortunes to support the education of a few hundred graduates. From a prison population of over two million, it is not a shining example of system change in action. And while a new administration promises significant change to the United States prison system, Kelsey’s experience keeps her from getting overexcited.

She explains: “US prison college programs are about to change radically now that Congress has approved reinstating Pell Grants – the most common form of funding university studies in the US for low income students – for all prisoners, something they withdrew in 1994.

“That means that higher education programs in prisons will now become very lucrative for colleges and universities throughout the country, and they will rush to start programs in hundreds if not thousands of prisons and jails. Until, of course, Congress reverses itself once again, at which point most of them will once again rush for the exits.”

Excluded from the process

Michelle Daniel-Jones is currently a doctoral student at New York University and was formerly incarcerated at Indiana Women’s Prison, where she studied under Kelsey. Along with Christina and several other students, she became a founder member of Constructing Our Future, an idea that eventually grew out of the classroom and prison to become an organisation helping women manage their post-release lives. Today, Michelle sits on the board as President of this worthwhile and effective project that serves a growing network of over a thousand.

Michelle is one of many success stories to come out of IWP, despite the prison education system working against her. She has a thorough understanding of prison philanthropy’s abject failure to fulfil its promise of achieving impactful change.

“Incarcerated populations are excluded from the table when programmes are created, or funding decisions are made,” says Michelle. “But if you have a desire to help people who are incarcerated, then incarcerated people need to be part of that process. They need to be there crafting, distributing, and receiving the grants. The beautiful thing about the Flash Grant was that we actually got to talk about what we could do with the funds.

“We are hugely appreciative of our generous funders,” she continues. “Without them, COF would cease to exist. But I would like to see other donors start to privilege the grantee’s experience. We know where the funds should go because we’re down here in the muck of it, as opposed to the funders who use stats and academic reports to determine who gets what and why.”

As Michelle implies, it is philanthropy that holds the cards and is very much in control of its relationships. This top-down approach is hugely problematic across many interactions with grantees, whether applied consciously or unconsciously. Unhelpful criteria, funnels and processes restrict the grantee and leave them feeling more like the obligated subject of a master-servant relationship than a visionary agent of social good. Far from creating fertile ground for real progress, philanthropy stifles it.

Of course, foundations have the right to choose who they support financially. But once that decision is made, treating grantees as customers must be the norm instead of leaving them hanging on every whim, begging for scraps, and distracting them from the mission. And that includes redistributing some of the power we have as funders and sharing it with the real changemakers. They have the most profound understanding of where support should be directed, not us. Share power with them, and they will be more effective with it.

“Ultimately, there’s a disconnect,” Michelle continues. “Lots of small organisations are doing great things at the grassroots level. But they end up looking for a larger entity and sliding their project underneath its banner just to be seen, understood and accepted by philanthropy.

“You need money to get money. Sometimes it feels like philanthropy measures your legitimacy by how much cash you have on hand and in your bank account. Startup organisations who have amazing ground support can’t meet that standard because they’re right at the beginning of their journey.”

Chasing funds

Christina Kovats also studied at Indiana and became Kelsey’s clerk to run the higher education programme full-time. Today, she is Director of Development at Consulting Our Future and works closely with its network of formerly incarcerated women. It’s an incredibly demanding role, made harder by the interlinked complexities of the challenges faced by women as they navigate their post-release lives.

“Funders think they understand these challenges,” Christina explains. “They really don’t. When we get grants, they often come with a particular focus. It gets put in a box, and you can only use the money for that purpose. So if it’s housing, you can only spend it on housing, and so on.

“But there’s a wide range of issues that people face after incarceration, and sometimes they are impossible to see or understand. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, are easy to navigate, or aren’t interlinked. You have to manage all this through rigid outlines and expectations set by funders with no connection to the individuals they are supposed to serve and no idea of the challenges people face.

“We often end up trying to fit our programmes into the criteria of these grants just to keep them alive. In many cases, we were chasing money and drifting away from the core of our mission towards the requirements of the grant.”

Christina is neatly describing one of the fundamental issues we need to fix in philanthropy. She has a deep understanding of the complexities affecting the environment. She shares her knowledge with a growing community, and the community grows with implicit trust at the centre of the relationship. Combine that shared knowledge, trust, and community together, and you create an infinite source of power to build momentum and effect change. The only resource Christina lacks is money, which she seeks from philanthropy.

Yet from the application process onwards, funders are the disruptor, not the enabler. Their money is the goal and quickly becomes the centre of the relationship and the measure of success. Funding comes with extensive and inflexible terms and conditions that often corrupt the purity of an idea. It takes valuable time to apply for money, which small organisations on the frontline can ill afford to lose. And it leaves large, successful nonprofits employing grant writers to win funds, part of which is spent on hiring those grant writers to win more.

This is systemic in traditional philanthropy. It is also archaic. Funders may want themselves to look and sound modern, innovative, and progressive but squint your eyes a little from a particular position, and you might recognise the gruel-serving master from the workhouse in Oliver Twist. As a grantee, you’re expected to beg for more, dance to someone else’s tune, close the door on the way out, and be very thankful for the opportunity.

Shameful publicity

Ultimately, significant donors place more importance on protecting and growing their organisations than identifying individuals and projects or solving problems through creative collaboration. Nowhere is this more apparent than in prison philanthropy. Ploughing hundreds of millions into high-profile and successful prison college programmes isn’t hard if you have the money. And, as Kelsey says, it isn’t even all that smart. However, it is excellent for attracting publicity, which is hugely problematic and exclusionary in itself. Not only is philanthropy failing to improve the American prison system, but it is also dehumanising the population it serves.

“Philanthropies and colleges want lots of publicity for their programmes,” she explains. “They turn to mainstream media, which insists on revealing the crimes of conviction of people on the programme. We consider that to be real shaming.

“At IWP, we made a blanket rule that journalists must agree not to identify crimes of conviction. Journalists called this censorship and that it was their obligation as journalists to identify crimes of conviction. Well, that’s too bad. If they wouldn’t agree to treat our students with the dignity and humanity they deserve, they couldn’t come in.”

As a result, the IWP programme sacrificed publicity from the media for the good of its students and put more focus on empowering women to self-publish in papers, articles and books. To Kelsey’s knowledge, no other programme in the country employs a similar rule or philosophy – certainly not the high-profile college programmes supported by major donors.

As funders, we have an enormous privilege. At the very least, we must match that privilege with support for our grantees and enable them to succeed. We also need to be bolder and embrace risk, not run away from it. Despite philanthropy’s best efforts and collective resources, persistent social challenges remain unchanged. It’s time to discuss new ideas.

A way forward

The Flash Grant programme that prompted both FlashForward and this conversation is one such experiment. Through it, we are attempting to reimagine the funder/grantee relationship and move towards a more decentralised, trust-based form of funding. It addresses many of the issues that Kelsey, Michelle and Christina describe, albeit only on a small scale. It is not the solution, but there is something there to pick at and build upon.

Philanthropy needs more conversations like this if we want to hack the traditional funding model and explore more effective strategies. We do not have all the answers and must embrace uncomfortable conversations with the individuals we support – and even the individuals they support.

For example, Kelsey’s praise for our Flash Grant programme came with an interesting caveat. She asked the fellow who nominated her if we would award a fellowship to an incarcerated person or share it amongst several incarcerated people. She was told we would probably refuse.

Whether we would or wouldn’t is irrelevant. This is our fellow’s perception of us. It’s their truth. And without opening the door for this frank and honest discussion, we would have been none the wiser. As funders, how we are seen by our grantees – subconsciously or otherwise – is actually a barrier to change. It is entirely on us if the people we serve feel they cannot approach us and express their thoughts and ideas.

It’s not good enough to continue believing we always do things the right way or that our actions always have positive repercussions. Our money is not a proxy for wisdom or knowledge; it’s simply a resource. Social change and behaviour change are incredibly messy. We should recognise that real change happens gradually and support the individuals who know best, helping them iterate towards that change in their own way. It is not our place to map out their every move, or judge them on the criteria we set – they should be the judge of us.

*With thanks to Kelsey Kauffman, Michelle Daniel-Jones, Christina Kovats and Dan Meredith.

IP Is Killing People, Your Government Can Stop It

“These extraordinary times and circumstances call for extraordinary measures. The US supports the waiver of IP protections on COVID-19 vaccines to help end the pandemic… ”

– US Trade Representative Katherine Tai

Joe Biden’s decision to support India and South Africa’s patent waiver proposal is a monumental moment in more ways than one. These are extraordinary times and this is an extraordinary message from a nation that built its constitution, economy and way of life around property rights.

We welcome the announcement, albeit with cautious optimism. US support only opens the door for talks at the WTO, not immediate action. It could take the best part of a year or longer before we see vaccines produced openly where needed and can deliver more shots in arms. And it might not happen at all. The pharma industry and its supporters will be voracious in their arguments. They already have significant backing, and deep-rooted motivations to keep the status quo intact.

Shuttleworth Fellow Achal Prabhala has worked tirelessly on access to medicine issues across two decades. His fellowship work demonstrates how Western-designed global intellectual property rules harm millions of lives in the Global South and describes the way corporations exploit overly-broad patent laws to re-patent drugs and preserve their monopolies. He is one of a small band of global researchers, activists and scientists who have been instrumental in building the wave of public pressure that influenced Biden’s decision.

It is critical that we do not allow that momentum to dip. Achal’s work reveals the truth behind the purposefully-complex IP landscape and allows us to deconstruct the pharma industry’s arguments. It’s time to make the case for open vaccines and access to medicine, and not only for the duration of the pandemic.

Public money, private profits

Taxpayers have already paid for the vaccines, twice. Public money funded the research and our governments guaranteed payment in advance for production of every vial. The companies have already been compensated. No ifs, no buts: the vaccines belong to the people. They are a public good, and should be open and accessible to all of us.

If companies have been paid, why is there a need for IP? The pharma industry claims it is an accelerator of vaccine innovation. But as more people die and threats of mutation increase, patent protections and knowledge restrictions look increasingly like tools of industrial-strength self-interest. The patents-first, people-second approach has proved both absurd and disastrous.

Government obligations

Governments are meant to keep their citizens safe. The best pathway to safety during a pandemic is to end it quickly by ensuring global vaccination. The quickest way to treat everyone is to share knowledge and enable tech transfer.

This waiver should have happened – in full – right at the very beginning. But world leaders are heavily influenced by the pharmaceutical industry’s loud and influential proponents and have been slow to connect the dots. Their widespread, narrow-minded belief in an inequitable patent system has curtailed the global response with a horrific cost to human life.

IP is the problem, not the solution

Which is more important: saving lives, or maintaining a proprietary knowledge system designed, optimised and protected by the pharma industry, behind closed doors at the WTO and in the lobbies of governments? Pharma is worried the waiver will destroy the current IP system and limit financial rewards from cutting-edge drug developers.

Frankly, that’s the point. IP and its monopoly-based model is the problem, not the solution. It creates barriers by concentrating production in a few areas and restricting it elsewhere. The system is fundamentally broken. The EU’s Ursula von der Leyen states that waiving intellectual property patents will “not bring a single dose of vaccine in the short- and medium-term”. She is right, but 18 months into a pandemic we are already in the long-term. If IP had been waived at the beginning, where would we be now? We must grasp the opportunity offered by this waiver to make the case for faster, better, more open and equitable approaches to solving global health challenges.

Working for shared interests

Without a healthy society, economies suffer, education systems suffer and populations suffer. Now is the time to look holistically at how economies are organised and plan them around equity, justice and fair rewards instead of around the interests of Big Pharma.

The pharma industry has been incredibly successful in lobbying governments around IP matters, and is a model for the creative industries’ adoption of a copyright-first approach. Upsettingly – and unsurprisingly – movie studios, music bigwigs and publishing giants are already expressing concerns about the TRIPS waiver. Their intervention – effectively: ‘we support defeating the virus unless it harms our margins’ – is both grim in sentiment and utterly tone deaf to the needs and demands of the moment.

The market is not the answer

The market cannot solve global health issues of this scale. Healthcare capitalism is failing the world now, has failed the world before, and will fail it again in the future. We need different thinking around intellectual property for medicine, diagnostics and infrastructure. Access to research and lifesaving drugs must be at the heart of any future plans.

If the market cannot or will not deliver lifesaving medicines, we need to embrace alternative approaches. Public money has always played an important role, and state-supported innovation is something to celebrate. Let’s recalibrate the message around public spending as an investment rather than a cost. And let’s be better at philanthropy. Fund research and commit to publishing it openly. And if you say you are open, mean it.

Closed Gates, Opened Gates

Bill Gates stepped back from his suggestion that intellectual property underpins innovation and does not present a barrier to equitable vaccine access. It’s quite a U-turn. He has a religious zeal for proprietary solutions and an IP system that made him unimaginably wealthy. And when Oxford University researchers wanted to make their vaccine formula open and more widely available for further study, Gates talked them out of it.

So while we applaud this decision, it’s important to remain critical. It only applies temporarily, and his perverse unwillingness to consider alternative ways of managing IP has a long and damaging history. He has a highly persuasive voice in the corridors of power, and has undoubtedly influenced the months-long delay in support for the waiver proposal. Hundreds of thousands have died in the meantime.

Shades of imperialism

Gates’s initial response to the waiver proposal also exposes another troubling issue. Vaccine research is published by the West and vetted by the West, for vaccines licensed by Western corporations to be manufactured for the West at great profit. While wealthy countries sat on vaccine stockpiles, developing nations went without. There is also a belief that countries with fewer resources are incapable of making treatments safely, despite the fact India is already at the centre of global vaccine manufacturing.

Another prevalent attitude is that knowledge exchange with countries like China, Cuba and Russia – who have all developed vaccines – is a national security issue rather than a solution to the pandemic. Surely it’s time to shake off the superiority complex, end the imperialistic prejudice, and give credit where it’s due. If solving global challenges involves working openly with the West’s traditional ‘enemies’, so be it.

This is just the beginning

Patents are only a part of the story. Although the US supports the temporary lifting of IP protections for coronavirus vaccines, it is less enthusiastic about sharing knowhow and tech transfer. Pressure is needed to ensure the world gets what it needs. Enabling the capacity to deliver vaccines everywhere is challenging but potentially achievable within months.

Once this pandemic ends we cannot return to the norm. Monopoly-based IP models that create artificial scarcity are not the answer, even when judged on their own terms. If patents are an incentive to innovation and medicinal progress, why is most of the world still excluded from access to treatments for diabetes, cystic fibrosis, or cancer?

We can do better. Let’s use this opportunity to reimagine global intellectual property rules and build a better, more open future that puts people over patents and profits.

Shuttleworth Foundation Application FAQs

Thank you to everyone who joined us for our first ever application information webinars. We found it a very useful process and hope you got as much out of it as we did. Recordings of each session are here if you need to recap or missed out entirely.

Session 1: 23 September 2020

Session 2: 14 October 2020

Below, we have created an FAQ to refine and explain more about the application process and include links to some further, relevant reading. The subject matter is split into distinct categories based on the many questions you asked:

Our funding philosophy
What we look for in your application
What happens during the application process
What to expect on the fellowship

If you have any further questions related to your application that are not covered by the FAQs or webinars, feel free to contact us at info@shuttleworthfoundation.org.

What does open mean?

What is open?

Open is a philosophical pillar of our fellowship that provides a framework for exponential growth and development of your idea. You create something, share it with the world, and grant permission for anyone to use, adapt, or build on it.

Why is it important?

By working openly, you enable access, participation and replication by as many people as possible, who learn from it and can use it in different – and often surprising – contexts. This approach generates greater opportunities for achieving social change than found in traditional R&D, where the default setting for innovation and ideas is secrecy.

Do I have to use an open license?

Yes, but this fellowship is not just about licensing choices. It is more about having a certain mindset. Our definition of open is very broad, and we actively pursue new thinking around openness within the fellowship. With this in mind, we ask that you articulate your interpretation of openness in relation to ours.

What does open mean to you? What role does it play in your idea? Perhaps there is a component of your work where open is not advisable – citizen safety or privacy, for example? As long as your interpretation does not centre around something specifically proprietary or closed, and aligns closely with our ideas of frictionless, permissionless sharing, we are keen to hear from you.

How open is ‘open enough’?

We understand there is not an open solution for everything, and sometimes it’s necessary to explore proprietary avenues or close specific pieces of your project. This should not muddy any water with regards to your application, however. While these instances are suitable for the wider world, they are not a good fit for the fellowship. We seek natively open initiatives because our goal is to expand ideas, not lock them away for exclusive use and purposes.

If you are interested in a Shuttleworth Fellowship, think about your starting point. Are you comfortable with openness and is it your clear intention to be as open as possible from the very beginning? If not, you may benefit more from exploring different funding opportunities or taking the venture capital route.

How does open fit with sustainability and intellectual property?

We want you – as the person who can best drive your idea forward – to have ownership of what you create. Throughout the fellowship, we will explore how you’re going to achieve broader sustainability: it could be through service provision, other grants, or something else entirely. We believe in openness at the core, but are entirely agnostic about whether your idea manifests as nonprofit or for-profit further in the future.

Building sustainability is hard, whether it’s with open or proprietary intellectual property. There is no one model for success, and it is context specific. There are many creative ways to achieve long-term stability and progress by working openly, and our fellows have successfully established both non- and for-profit entities built on openness. If you are concerned that openness by its very nature will preclude future sustainability, this fellowship is unlikely to be a good fit.

What is innovation?

What does innovation mean?

Innovation does not have to be something new under the sun. When we talk about innovation, we mean fresh thinking that adds value. It’s about doing something differently and offering a new perspective to apply to current or emerging issues.

Think about this when you articulate your idea in your application. How are you going against the status quo? Tell us how applying a different way of thinking to your field of expertise might unlock, or become part of, a solution.

Why do you focus on innovation?

One solution never fits all. Many of the world’s problems have known solutions, but these solutions are not often implemented. This failure is due to social, political and economic reasons and requires massive systemic change to overcome.

Often, these issues are unsuitable for the attention of governments or multinational NGOs, who have a responsibility to avoid taking risks. We are in a privileged position to be able to absorb those risks. You get an opportunity to innovate, experiment, learn from failure, and share and build on your success.

Why do you focus on individuals?

Why do you fund individuals?

Individuals carry their learnings, experiences, passions and hopes for the future with them throughout their lives. Investing in and supporting you to work on what is broken in your world, equips you to continue affecting change far beyond the life of a specific project or organisation.

We fund you as an individual to offer the best, most efficient support, and help you iterate ideas and realise your vision. In our past life as a funder of projects and institutions, we found multiple issues often took precedence over the mission. An institution’s primary drive is always to take care of itself: it needs to survive, regardless of a particular project’s success.

Together, we can work out the best way to achieve your vision and target funds more directly at the mission, as opposed to supporting the constantly changing needs of an entire organisation. We also form close relationships within the fellowship and share, learn, and work together to gain a better understanding of how to create the most impact. This is impossible to achieve when funding a project or institution with multiple stakeholders.

What about my organisation?

We fund individuals, but that does not exclude people who are already part of an organisation. This is an independent, non-traditional fellowship that enables you to drive your own practical experimentation and learning. It gives you the opportunity to go out in the field as an individual and a leader.

You might be at an institution or involved with a nonprofit, or have plans to create an organisation yourself. You may be connected to an academic institution and wish to remain so because it offers natural support for the specific work you are doing. You may not need any of those things, or you may need all of them in different places at different times. By funding you as an individual, we can work together to determine the best legal structures to support your work.

What are you looking for in the application?

Why is the application designed this way?

The application form consists of three parts, which we review in this order: the video, the essay-based questions, and a set of data-based questions. We want to establish four key facts to help us fully understand your idea:

What are you going to do?
Why this idea?
Why now?
And finally, why you?

We are looking for you to tell us your story within the context of your idea and application, and give us a sense of your current status. The application process is designed to be as helpful to you as it is for us. It is not supposed to trip you up, but instead prompt thoughts on what you believe about the world and what you want from this opportunity.

What do you look for in the video?

Your video helps set the scene, showcase your passion for your work, and explain why a Shuttleworth Fellowship is a good fit for both you and your idea. It needs to be purpose-made for this application and fit for universal consumption. Sound quality and clarity of voice are the most important aspects to consider, so we can hear and understand what you’re saying. We do not expect Hollywood production quality: some of the best applications we’ve received have been in simple talking head format.

What is the purpose of the essay questions?

The questions start broadly by design, before slowly drilling down to the specifics of what you are trying to achieve. If the video sets the scene, this is your chance to tell us about the bigger picture, describe your specific problem, and discuss how you will apply openness and fresh thinking to solve it.

We ask you to put yourself into the eye of the storm, right in the middle of the issue. Why is this important to you and why are you the right person to make a difference? What unique skill or ability do you bring to the table? And what can you achieve in a year that will actually shift thinking and positively affect the status quo?

What is the purpose of the short questions?

Part three of the application is a simple data gathering exercise to tell us about the current status of your work. Understanding your present situation enables us to really dig deeper and spend time asking more interesting, intriguing and unusual questions if you reach the interview stage.

There are no ‘wrong’ answers. We do not have a preference for individuals with organisations or without, nonprofits or for-profit, jurisdictions or age. We welcome fellows from the age of 18 to 80 – and beyond. Our only requirement is that you should be of an age to legally sign your own agreements.

How many people apply, and how many get in?

Application numbers vary from 250-450 per round. We choose no more than four fellows per intake, but are not under obligation to choose anyone: there have been rounds where we haven’t found the right fit at all.

Only a small fraction of applications result in immediate success, but do not let this put you off: there is always a chance your idea shines through. Do not let failure get you down, either. Many people apply multiple times and have become fellows at the second or third attempt.

What happens in the application process?

What is the deadline?

The deadline for our next fellowship intake is 15 October 2021. We take time zones into consideration and will happily receive applications any time before the end of day Anywhere on Earth.

What is the timeline from submission to notification?

We get a large number of applications and are committed to reviewing every single one. You should find out where you stand within four weeks from the application deadline. It takes us about two weeks to get through the first round of review, after which we schedule interviews. Generally, the interview process takes another two weeks.

The final decision sometimes goes over into January, but by then you will know if you’ve been shortlisted and aware of the exact timeline going forward. We get back to everyone, and let people know if they don’t make it through any given stage. While it is impossible for us to offer much in the way of feedback for every application, we do try and answer your questions if you have any after the process is completed.

Who decides, and how?

Every round, we invite a different Honorary Steward to choose new fellows from a shortlist derived by the core team. Each Steward offers an independent perspective, helping us identify different ideas and fresh thinking to bring into the fellowship.

The final decision is overseen and ratified by our board of trustees. Their concern is to ensure the process has been fair, the Steward has taken the role seriously, and they have thought about the criteria to find the best fit for the Foundation at this given time.

What determines a 1, 2, or 3 year fellowship?

All fellowships are assessed a year at a time, with the possibility to apply for a second or third year. While the reapplication process is similar in structure to the original application we will know you and your work better, so it is a more involved conversation about your progress.

We will consider how you’ve developed your work, discuss what we have learned together, and ask how you might advance the idea further. The most important question at this stage is: what’s next? What will you do with another fellowship year, and is it still useful for us to be in partnership?

Who gets to see my application?

The application process is not made public, and we are always respectful of your privacy to prevent exclusion of individuals discussing sensitive issues or who are in sensitive situations. We want you to have the confidence to discuss the problem you see in the world and how you will make a change without fear or repercussion.

What can I expect in terms of funding?

What is the time commitment and what does ‘full time’ mean?

You are the single most valuable resource to your initiative. This is your idea, it’s something you care about, and something you’re passionate about. It is a problem you’ve identified and understand, and you have the skills and experience and the vision to do something about this. That is why we ask you for 100% of your focus. It’s an opportunity to fully explore and advance your ideas with minimal distractions or pressures from other work.

This commitment doesn’t mean you can’t have other affiliations or participate in other roles, as long as these do not get in the way of your commitment to working on this idea. Your project or initiative could have all the money, funding and support in the world, but if it doesn’t have your time, attention and focus, it won’t reach its potential.

How much is the grant amount?

The funding consists of two parts. First, there is the fellowship grant, which is a salary equivalent. You are not employed by the Foundation, but we do want to cover the full cost of your time. This amount differs between fellow. Although we can’t afford to match every private sector salary, we ask you to tell us your realistic expectations. If we offer you a fellowship grant, we try and get as close to that as possible.

The second part is project funding. This amounts to $275,000 per fellow per year which is allocated for you to spend directly on your idea. You do not have to use all the money within a year, but we do encourage fellows to take the opportunity to be experimental and adventurous.

How can I use the project funding?

We have no outright exclusions on what project funding may be used for, other than it cannot be used to supplement the fellow’s personal income. Project funding can be used for almost any legal purpose that advances your knowledge, experience, experimentation, or testing of the idea. Funding can be used for core costs or project costs, or anything that can be used to advance implementation. As long as you spend thoughtfully and carefully, this will be the most unencumbered funding you will ever have.

We like to use the example of deciding to buy a party bus. If you are researching cellular agriculture, a party bus is unlikely to add value to your idea, which makes it a bad use of the funding. But if you are in Brussels trying to convince the European Parliament to change their stance on the Right to Repair, a party bus travelling through the streets might drive public support for your idea and help spread your message. We take this into account when assessing reapplications.

How do we define success?

As a Foundation, we are interested in behaviour change, but behaviour change is slow, messy, and doesn’t follow a linear process. We work with you to understand what you see as a success, and encourage you to set your own markers for progress. We hold honest conversations around these self-defined indicators throughout the fellowship.

We also understand that social change doesn’t happen overnight, and take a long-view approach. Five years after your funding ends, we look at the bigger picture and revisit your idea, look at your ongoing engagement with the fellowship, and ask if you are still working in the same or similar space.

Success within the fellowship is demonstrating best effort in implementing your idea, understanding the outcomes of those efforts and how they contribute to progress towards our agreed shared objectives.

Is commercialisation allowed?

We are entirely happy for fellows to commercialise an idea right from the start or later on in their fellowship and offer support accordingly. We recognise that positive social change can and does happen as a result of commercial activity.

Do you take equity in for-profit entities?

We expect an equity share of 30% for that commercial venture as we put in all the initial funding. This amount does not increase as we give you more money in the second and third year of your fellowship. There is no profit motive for us: if you become a runaway success, any money we receive will be used to find and support more fellows.

This approach is designed so you will remain with at least 51% control of your venture and allows us to remain in the thick of it with you; learning, experimenting and developing together as we go. We would like every fellowship project to be sustainable after your Shuttleworth funding ends, but there is no single model that is right for every open initiative. By having a seat at your table, we develop more of an understanding of what it takes to build a sustainable for-profit organisation and can filter that information back into the fellowship.

Power Plays

In his book The 48 Laws of Power Robert Greene describes how he believes power works. He sets out to simply describe, not encourage he says, the systematic gaining, wielding and retaining of power. The focus is entirely on power over or in relation to others.

Many have criticised him for producing what has become a handbook to those most keen on being or becoming more powerful in the world. Whether the laws he outlines should be seen as an instruction manual is a valid question. However, even his critics can’t say that these rules don’t apply and are not in active use.

In what Greene describes as somewhat of a counter measure, he has written Mastery, an exploration of how talent is developed, underpinned by the encouragement that you can rise above the oppression of power by being excellent at what you do, to the extent that nobody can argue with your results. Meritocracy 101.

The message is clear – power exists in this set form, and the only way to escape the ill effects thereof is to be exceptional, to be so special that others find it impossible to wield their power to your detriment. We’ve been socially conditioned to believe that those with more power deserve it more, and those without have somehow not followed the rules, done their bit, or lived up to their inherent potential. The system is rigged to keep everyone in their place.

What does this have to do with philanthropy? Power is the fuel that makes the system go. The flow of money creates a power dynamic that is all-encompassing, which affects every engagement and has a very real impact on the results achieved. Philanthropic funders (consciously or unconsciously) apply Greene’s laws to their interactions with grantees – taking credit for the work of others, guarding reputation at all cost, using selective generosity. Keeping grantees on their toes is seen as best practice, a way of weeding out mediocrity.

In turn, grantees are told that they can free themselves from the tyranny of funders by simply being excellent, staying the course, showing results. The idea is that they can claw back some of the power by being better than the system, better than their competitors, the best at playing the grantee game. Which ironically is supposed to then give them a bit more freedom to not have to play the game quite so hard.

We have a different perspective. We believe the system can and should be dismantled, turned on its head. Power is not something you should have over others, it is something you have in relation to others, in collaboration with others. Like knowledge it can (and should) be shared without diminishing its value to you. It would be wonderful for everyone to recognise their own power and how it contributes value to an ecosystem. To get there, a lot of hard work needs to be done. We have to examine every part of the system as we know it and actively build in practices that enable shared power to emerge.

We have been working with our Fellows on a system of philanthropic exchange that enables, encourages, enforces practices that disseminate and share power.

The Philanthropy Game

Money is an element of the relationship between the funder and those who it funds (in our case, the Foundation and the Fellows), but we’ve moved away from being simply a funder and towards being a holistic support system.

“Money is power” is a cliché because of the truth it holds. It’s also wildly incorrect. Traditional philanthropic models use money as a proxy for knowledge or wisdom, wielding the exchange of money as pay-to-play. This is because true power comes from knowledge, but money is a more tangible metric to measure.

If money could solve all the world’s ills, it would have long since fixed poverty, health, and the other great challenges of our times. But money is a blunt tool and change doesn’t happen by simply banging things with a hammer. We need thinking, experimentation, bravery, policy, technology, and a myriad of other pieces of magic to fall into place in order for true social change to take root.

Money is a resource, not a goal. Centres of power in most funding models lack balance. Any power gained from a finite resource like money is also finite. Giving away money means giving away power.

Conversely, shared power born of infinite resources like knowledge, community, and trust is limitless. The more you share power the more you create. Collective power and its growth lie in paradox – you must give it away to expand the community and grow the knowledge and trust that fuel collective power.

Money is an effective tool, but a poor substitute for community. When power is exerted by the use of money and placed at the centre of the relationship ideas are created and experiments undertaken in order to obtain or unlock further funding. Money ultimately becomes the measure of success which leads to the purity of the idea being abstracted and the original undertaking rendered corrupt. By focusing on infinite resources and collective power we build stronger futures for everyone at the table.

The central idea of empowering social change isn’t just funding it, but broadly redistributing power. Distributing money alone doesn’t redistribute power. We want to enable people whose lived experiences best suit the challenges they are trying to solve. A member of a community uniquely understands the challenges faced by that community better than an outsider and it’s for this purpose that we bring them to the table rather than assuming we know better than they do. When thinking through ideas of social and ultimately behaviour change, we recognise the markers of progress are not easy to count or measure, but are messy, protracted and sometimes obscured. It is important to create space between the source of the money and where the money is going in order to feel progress and render money a resource and ensure it doesn’t become a corrupting influence to collective power.

The system is rigged, 2020 has shown us how much

Unprecedented losses in livelihoods along with previously unimaginable restrictions placed on the movement of goods and people have drastically increased food insecurity, among much other suffering, around the world. We imagined it would be a matter of weeks until things got “back to normal”. We were completely wrong. Things may never go back to the way they were, and that might not be a bad thing.

In the wake of the effects of the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement has gained traction well beyond its origins in the US. It is becoming increasingly apparent to a much broader audience that the social and economic systems that underpin the “normal” we were so keen to get back to has not been good to many of us.

These systems are rigged to make us believe that the only reason one does not succeed is because they aren’t good enough, they don’t follow the rules properly, they don’t make the most of the ample opportunities on offer. We judge ourselves and others by our ability to ascend the capitalist ladder and avoid adversity along the way. We condemn others and chastise ourselves for not meeting the standards of these systems, established over centuries, generations, by those in power to make sure they stayed in power. This thinking has infiltrated every level of society, from internal dialogues to global governance, propped up by unjust economic, healthcare, education and justice systems.

The world is at a turning point. Business as usual has been interrupted. We can either go back to the familiar, hoping that we make it, trying our best to keep up with the rules and beat out others in an environment of artificial scarcity. Or we can acknowledge what we have learned, take the time and do the work to build towards systems of abundance, which are equitable, sustainable, open and share power.

Taking time to reimagine our world is a luxury not many have. But we are far closer than we think. There are people, projects, communities, organisations that have taken the time, taken the risks, embraced the uncertainty, and started building their piece of a reimagined socio-economic system long before others even recognised the problem. These are ready to build upon.

The Shuttleworth Foundation works with individuals brave enough to reimagine the world we live in through its fellowship programme. Fellows have a vision for a better future and a clear idea of how we might get there.

The Shuttleworth Foundation: An Open Book

As a small organisation operating at a fraction of the budget enjoyed by many other funders, we must continuously and closely scrutinise our work. Our philosophy remains the same, but new fellows, ideas and experiences contribute to our knowledge pool and influence where we go next – and how. We adapt our methods accordingly, weaving in best practices and weeding out roadblocks to our fellows’ mission progress. Just as our views on systemic shifts are centred in a conviction for evolution, not revolution, we believe positive, lasting organisational change is best achieved gradually and incrementally.

However, it is also vital to take stock of long-term progress. In 2018, we took a deep dive into the previous decade of our fellowship model, revisiting highs – and lows – and speaking to fellows about their experiences. We intended to uncover wrong turns and to explore areas where we could improve. There was plenty to chew on but, overall, we were pleasantly surprised: discussions with our growing community of past and present fellows revealed our alternative model of philanthropy holds up well.

We started this experimental model in 2007 with the belief that philanthropy could be better. Our idea was to instil openness, collaboration and community into our approach. We wanted to replace the hierarchical structures typically seen in traditional funding with a focus on co-ownership, agency and empowerment. There have been some tweaks around the edges since but, today, we believe those fundamental elements continue to offer our fellows greater agency to make progress and unlock more benefit for society.

Which brings us to our book. In one part, it tells our story as a community and offers hat tips to those who have contributed along the way. We don’t like to talk about success or failure and prefer to focus our thoughts on progress and learning. But on reflection, it is striking how much our fellows move their fields forward.

Consider our funding efforts in telecommunications, where we see a trend towards bottom-up connectivity and community-owned networks. Our fellows have played a significant role in this blossoming movement. Individual projects by Steve Song, Paul Gardner-Stephen, Peter Bloom and Luka Mustafa have built on each other to great effect to democratise access and empower communities, reduce costs, and shift thinking at policy level. Elsewhere, in a world dominated by global finance, Astra Taylor’s work with The Debt Collective community poses important questions about money and debt: her efforts so far helped eliminate over a billion dollars of student debt owed to predatory lenders.

These impressive examples of fellowship projects impact millions of people – even more extraordinary when you consider they were achieved on a relatively meagre budget of around a million dollars per fellow, over a three-year fellowship. In our view, it is clear this demonstrates that size of grant – often the central component of the funder-fundee relationship – is not a lone indicator of success. There is far more to consider, which is the second source of inspiration for our book.

We seek system change in our domain just as our fellows seek change in theirs. Several major funders have borrowed from our ideas, as we have borrowed from others – just as it should be. Yet our community’s frustrations with the traditional philanthropic world remain. Changemakers with vast potential are still overwhelmingly restricted by top-down approaches to funding, arbitrary metrics, short-termism, and more. If we want to live in a better, more equitable world, this must be addressed.

We aim to do this in our book and add some practical flesh to the philosophical bones of Open philanthropy to better explain the hows and whys of our working methods. It is not a how-to guide or instruction manual – our processes fit our intent and purpose, and we know they may not work for others. Instead, we hope it provides inspiration and shows the strength of openness as a foundation from which to build viable alternatives to unhelpful funding practices. We hope it makes you think. But mostly, that you enjoy it…

https://shuttleworthfoundation.org/book/

Fellowship forward

Over the past 6 months we have dissected every aspect of this model, from recruitment to alumni, from Fellowship highs to Fellowship lows, to really understand the value and effect of every component. We have examined the arc of the programme over the past 10 years, Fellow by Fellow as well as cumulatively. What we learned has helped us determine how we might continue our Open Philanthropy experiment.

What have we learned?

The fellowship programme we have today will be almost unrecognisable in its implementation to the first Fellows of 2007. What they will recognise is the essence of what we set out to do, the values that underpin that and the central role Fellows play.

We went back to basics, to the Letter of Wishes we wrote when we started this programme. The ethos described centred around fellowship “because we believe that people, rather than projects, are the true change agents.” Our Fellowship is supported by funding, openness, innovation and governance. We wanted to examine the outcomes of our programme against what we set out to do, and this provided the perfect compass.

Throughout the evolution of the model these have held up, and we believe they still do as we move forward.

1.) Individuals

The long term impact of the Foundation lies in the people at the heart of it. The Fellow (and the teams they assemble during their fellowship) take full ownership of an idea, they have the direct experience of implementing it, and they internalise the learning to take into the next phase, regardless of whether the idea proved viable.

Projects and organisations come and go. Many ideas do not result in successful outcomes upon the first try. These individuals are willing to take that risk for the greater good and if we can bet on the right people, they will succeed in bringing about positive change, over time, by building on their fellowship experience. As long as we believe in them and the change they want to make, they have the strength to get up and try again, each time adding to their knowledge, turning that belief into reality.

2.) Alone together

Each individual Fellow has a part to play in their field, and on the fellowship. While they have the freedom and agency to act independently, the relationships and interactions between Fellows provide a valuable sounding board and fertile environment for new ideas to be tested and blockages to be removed.

This is as true for Alumni as for current Fellows. Individually they are pushing the boundaries of conventional wisdom and the status quo. There is no-one who has the exact knowledge or experience they need. Bringing them together creates a space in which ideas can be tested and dissected, alongside trusted and respected peers, who share a common hope for the future but come with very different perspectives.

Diversity of thinking and experience is essential. It is not by interacting with those that have a similar set of skills and frame of reference that truly revolutionary ideas grow. It is by being challenged and inspired by others who are trusted and respected because of, not despite, their differences. Sharing their wisdom and combining expertise within the group is what enables them to take their mastery to the next level.

3.) Over time

During or directly after an intervention you can at best assess the implementation of an idea. To recognise impact, you need distance and time for the knowledge to be shared and changes in behaviour to occur.

We review the impact of each fellowship 5 years after the Fellow has exited the programme. Time allows the Alumni to settle into the next phase, for others to test and build upon the outputs, and for the true influence of the Fellow and their idea to become clear. It is actually only now, after 10 years, that we can see the broader contribution the collective Fellows have made in the world.

Each individual investment should be selected thoughtfully to make a contribution to our own thinking in a field, and then given enough time to mature in the world. Patience is key.

4.) With room to fail and learn

Whilst there are some social challenges with known solutions – vaccines for example – this is not the space we are in. We specifically look for individuals with fresh perspectives, with ideas that are not yet staple dinner party conversation, who want to tackle problems with as yet unproven solutions, and who challenge conventional wisdom.

When you know something is broken, it is easy to throw a spanner in the works of the establishment, to disrupt what exists. What is much harder is building something new. This comes with the risk of failure. To create the best environment for these ideas to be tested and honest learning to emerge, we have to accept the risk involved in trying to build something new and make sure that our behaviour within the group reflects that.

Even failing at solving a problem offers a valuable opportunity to learn more about both the problem and potential solutions. If it happens in an environment that is supportive, recognises the value of failure and captures those learnings, no investment is wasted. The outcomes will influence both theorists and practitioners in the field. The real failure would be not being deliberate about the experiments we do in the world and not paying careful attention to how it plays out, during and post fellowship.

5.) Openly

Actively capturing the outputs of each fellowship and sharing those openly, enables others to engage with the idea, learn from the implementation, build upon the progress made and expand the impact of our efforts and investments well beyond our own reach. Openness is what ensures that every attempt, whether it succeeds or fails, creates foundational assets and becomes a positive contribution to change in the world. We started by looking for openly licensed products at the heart of every fellowship. Open source was key to unlocking economic potential and self-reliance.

The next frontier for openness lies well beyond intellectual property. Individuals now produce and share more data, information and resulting knowledge than ever before, yet the centres of economic control have not shifted substantially. Privacy and security has come to dominate this conversation. We still need to find the appropriate equilibrium that balances the greater good and individual rights.

6.) Engaging with technology

10 years ago we were asking how can technology be used for good, especially if access was democratised. There was a sense of promise and opportunity associated with getting technology into the hands of everyone. Today the use of information and communication technology has become near ubiquitous, yet depth of contribution and equity in participation in the knowledge economy has not.

While pockets of constructive engagement exist, increased access has served to further divide, not create a shared sense of community, ownership or purpose. The commons is being eroded and the meanings of democracy, freedom, economic justice and human rights are being fundamentally challenged. The struggle around access to data and the resulting knowledge has been turned on its head with individuals generating more and more data while struggling to retain access to it themselves.

The mere inclusion of a technological component in an idea is no longer of interest to us. Questions on freedom, control and self-determination around how technologies and their byproducts interact are now far more important.

What questions are we asking now?

Progress means new questions and challenges.

1.) Society (Public goods)

In numbers, there has been no better time in history to be alive. At the same time, there has been no time in history for us to be so starkly aware of what we lack. At every level – individual to national, regional to global, even interplanetary – it is possible to know and try to understand the impact of each of our actions on those around us, near and far. Democracy, capitalism and the implied social contracts of the 20th century are no longer sufficient to effectively support the complex and connected societies needed to steward public goods for public good.

There is no more room for a zero sum game. Disruption is already happening. Now is the time to rebuild.

2.) Systems (Money flow)

The systems enabling the flow of money are becoming increasingly complex, and increasingly obfuscated. Controlling and tracking gives as much power and authority, if not more than, owning the money in the first place. While it has become easier to be a global citizen, moving money through the global banking system has become much harder for anyone other than standard corporations. Before we could just do a bank transfer in x currency to y’s bank account. In some instances that has now become impossible, in others innovations have emerged.

How should/could/does money move and reach those most able to put it to constructive use? What organisational structures and data measures do we need to provide adequate protection while not stifling innovation? This is a system that needs unblocking.

Similar questions apply to how we create and exchange value at every level of society, how we govern, share ownership and give agency. What new social, political or economic systems might offer a more relevant alternative? How might we test these theories as close to reality as possibly, while tracking and containing unintended consequences?

We would like to experiment with new approaches, starting small, and passing our experience on to others who have the potential to collaborate and influence across borders as we know them today.

3.) Substance (Themes)

Access to telecommunications technology has come, and will keep coming, at a monumental rate. It is a challenge which has been taken up widely, with social, public, commercial and philanthropic interventions on offer. The quality and quantity of initiatives, both top down and bottom up, and the high level of innovation, is encouraging.

Technology is also one of the spokes in the wheel of the future of education. There is general agreement on the importance of universal, quality education, especially around Maths and Science. While there is no single solution for achieving that, there are many inspiring models being explored all over the world. Uniform delivery at scale is no longer the ideal. The most appropriate, contextualised approaches will thrive.

Neither of these areas specifically need our attention any longer.

We have been experimenting on the periphery of these themes for a while. On the one hand we’ve expanded our focus on technology from telecommunications to medical devices, environmental monitoring, bio-printing, cellular agriculture, small scale manufacturing and scientific research. On the other, our Fellows’s focus started with formal education and evolved to access to knowledge and self-directed learning. Their work now includes access to the resources and enabling environments you need for self-actualisation, including open government, internet freedom, digital human rights, data driven decision-making, access to medicines, fact checking and food security.

Over the next year we would like to go even further, asking what challenges the new normal has created, and which old ones needs a fresh perspective to shift thinking.

The next round of applications opens on 1 February 2019.