Philanthropy is an important source of funding for humanitarian action, but how is it different from the money that comes from governments? Is it a drop in the bucket or a different kind of money? And have we been too silent as a humanitarian community when it comes to challenging and shaping our donors, and what is the cost of our silence?
These and many other questions is the topic of this weeks conversation with Patricia (Patty) McIlreavy, the President and CEO of the Center for Disaster Philanthropy (https://disasterphilanthropy.org/)
Transcript
Welcome to Trumanitarian. I'm your host, Lars Peter Nissen.
Funding and the way it influences humanitarian action has been a recurrent theme on the show. We have had current and former donors talking about the way they have tried to influence the system to help it evolve and produce better outcomes. We've discussed new, smart types of financing such as parametric insurance. And we have of course had an in depth examination of WFP's attempt to get a date in space with Elon Musk to solve world hunger. Today's episode is about philanthropy and the guest is Patricia McIlreavy, who's better known as Patty. I've known Patty for a number of year, primarily through her work with InterAction and I invited her on the show because I found it really interesting that you had moved to something called the Centre for Disaster, Philanthropy, CDP. To be totally honest, I went into this conversation with a perception of philanthropy as an important, but also somewhat old fashioned way of funding disasters, old fashioned in the sense of being very simplistic or being based on a very simplistic narrative around the suffering of individuals, and with much less of a focus on all of the structural issues that lead up to that suffering. However, as you will hear in this conversation, Patty has a very different and quite radical take on what philanthropy is and what it should be and what it can be. It is a smart, principled and very encouraging vision she puts forward. Before we jump in, if you liked the show, and would like to support us, make some noise on social media, tell your friends and colleagues about it, leave a review wherever you can and if you're in a generous mood, you are more than welcome to also become a philanthropist to the show. We greatly appreciate that. And there is a PayPal link on our website communitarian.org where you can make a donation. However, the the most important thing really is that you listen and that you think and that you hopefully use the conversation to change and improve the way you work with and think about humanitarian action. Enjoy the conversation.
Lars Peter Nissen:Patricia McIlreavy, welcome to Trumanitarian.
Patricia "Patty" McIlreavy:Hey, thanks for having me, Lars Peter.
Lars Peter Nissen:Patty, we know each other from when you work with the InterAction, but then you suddenly disappeared and so you popped up again at something called the Centre for Disaster Philanthropy. And maybe that's where we begin: What is the Centre for Disaster Philanthropy?
Patricia "Patty" McIlreavy:So the Centre for Disaster, Philanthropy is an organisation that is a guide for philanthropy. We seek to, you know, leverage the power of philanthropy to minimise disasters and their impact on affected communities. And that's all... Okay, so that's a mission, what are those words actually mean? And we do it in three ways. We put out a lot of information, you know, free to air as I like to call it, you know? It's just open source that's out there for philanthropists. It's targeted more, you know, foundations and corporate philanthropy, but of course, even the individual will benefit from learning on our website. When to give how to give what to give, right? And that's all on our website. It's also What disasters are you looking at? What should I be concerned about? Then we have a second part of our work, which is consulting and that's, you know, a bit more when a foundation or a large, you know, philanthropic entity wants to figure out their giving strategy related to disasters. And that's where we will work with them on their mission on their strategy on their vision. We also do that with donor advised funds. We help provide lists, vetted lists, for them of when a disaster has occurred, who they might give to. So it's a service that we provide to philanthropy to kind of help up their game and they work with us on that. The third part of our work is we have funds. We stand up funds where... and we act as an intermediary. And that is where organisations, individuals, but also philanthropy can put money into those funds and we take it that last mile for them. They are interested, for example, to give to, you know, the people who've been affected by Hurricane Maria or hurricane Ida or a tornado or a typhoon or Ukraine, and they can come to us and we will take those funds, match it with other people's funds and get it as close as possible to those communities with a recovery mindset. And recovery, again from us is not a timeline, it's an approach. It's about looking at programming that will help people put the agency for decision making into the community's hands. Working with organisations as close as possible, we will work with non 501 C threes, for example.
Lars Peter Nissen:That you have to explain.
Patricia "Patty" McIlreavy:Which, for those non Americans on the call, are registered nonprofits in the US. It's tied to, you know, charity, deductions, etc. So we we will help, as well, in that sense, get funds into those communities. That's where we get a lot of attention often as our funds, but it's only one part of our work. And the reason our funds I think are so successful is it builds off the other two areas of our work; It builds off the expertise, the deep, deep expertise on our team on humanitarian and natural disasters, on crises, how you work within them, on philanthropy itself, and work on strategic, you know approaches. Very focused, as I said, on community led and equity. We want equitable recovery, we want people to come back better from crises. And that's where we try and focus our attentions and energies and guidance.
Lars Peter Nissen:What what are we talking about in terms of volume? How much money do you put in to, get in to, your funds and channel on an annual basis?
Patricia "Patty" McIlreavy:Well, I mean it's changed drastically over the last couple of years. Um, you know, I think in the past, or our average was probably more around, you know, 8 million a year that would come into our funds. In 2o2o, you know, 2o2o, and 2o21, our numbers have increased dramatically, for example, our COVID-19 fund raised 43 million.
Lars Peter Nissen 6:28
When you say philanthropy, what does that cover? Is it is it old ladies who are wondering whether to give it all to the cats or to these poor people who are suffering? Is it... What is it?
Patricia "Patty" McIlreavy:Well, I mean, it's interesting, you say that, because it's oh... That's an actual constant conversation we have within CDP is Who's our target? Who's our audience? Who are we trying to work with? Obviously, when you only have so many resources, you want to try and focus on the biggest bang for the buck, right? You want to try... A lot of our attention is on large philanthropic entities, high net worth individuals, trying to get them to increase their giving. But I would say that, you know, every organisation is made up of individuals. So your messaging can't be... There's no such thing as really a message to an entity. There's a message to the individuals within an entity that speaks to them. And so, in many ways, our work actually is just as relevant to, you know, the mom and pops, looking at how to give, you know, their $10 donation. And that's where I think the beauty of philanthropy is in the giving. It's about the... It's about wanting to help your fellow human. And that isn't something that's set by the origin of who you are, or where you sit. It's about how much you have and what you're able to give to help others. And so, I mean, we also talk about, you know, during COVID, philanthropy is not just money. It's not just cash. I mean, of course, in it in a response, in a recovery, activities were always about cash because cash is best and it's about giving agency to people to choose. But as we saw during the, you know, as we've still see, during the pandemic, a lot of it, but especially in those early days was about helping your neighbours. You know, going shopping for the person who was at risk and wasn't able to get out. All of those small things that we do for each other, is also part of philanthropy, because it's about being willing to put yourself out there to help others.
Lars Peter Nissen:Yeah, that really speaks to me, that outpouring of solidarity and willingness to help that we see in crisis often is very encouraging. But if I look at the other end of the spectrum, so the people receiving the system's, my question, I think, is, What is it that philanthropy can do that is not done better and more at scale by Save the Children? How are you... What's your value added. What's the unique value added of philanthropy, as compared to the big organisations raking in millions and millions of dollar through very effective, sort of, fundraising strategies. And also the back donors, right? So the government's giving. You know, we have four, five donors giving the bulk of humanitarian assistance, right? What's your role in that?
Patricia "Patty" McIlreavy:Well that's so... I mean, that's such a great question, because I think often people will think, you know, philanthropy somehow gonna to backfill or, you know, take over. There's, there's no way philanthropy can, or should, ever replace donors, governments. Governments have a responsibility to their own people, period. We all know that. Governments have responsibility to other peoples. We know that too. And we support that. That's absolutely critical to a functioning global society. What we ask, what we're seeking to do, is to ensure that philanthropy has a role... recognises that it also plays a role within this. That it can be a niche. That it can be a lever. That it can drive change. Because those same governments are also, and even the United Nations, they are huge bureaucracies. They are enormous ships. And philanthropy are the, you know, the little speedboats driving around them. You know, they can make a lot of change. They can alter things. They can gap fill. They can, you know. So we try and help philanthropy recognise that that space is so incredibly critical, so important, and that it is about looking at... you see it all the time, the amount of billions of dollars that go into philanthropy annually, but the question Centre for Disaster Philanthropy asks them is, How much of that is going into disaster, how much of that is going into equity programming, how much of that is covering the Achilles heel of your social justice programme, or your community development programme? You have a heavy... You know, you're very focused on a certain project, education, for example, but now we've seen the pandemic cripple education programming. Cripple it. Children... generation of lost learning, potentially, especially amongst those most marginalised, most racialized in our societies. And so what we at CDP say is, How are you targeting your assistance to recognise that those populations are even further behind than before? You can't go back to where you were. And what did you do within your original programming to assure that you were attentive to that, that you were mitigating those risks of those disasters? So that's where we try and look at it.
Lars Peter Nissen:Is that a hard sell? Is that something people are responsive to? Or is it like, No, we want to invest in development, because that really helps. You know, humanitarian action often is a BandAid on a broken leg. It's not necessarily a solution. And maybe people who are philanthropists prefer to do something more, quote unquote, constructive?
Unknown Speaker:I... It's interesting. I mean, I think, um, is it a hard sell? I don't think it's a hard sell. Have we, you know, legions of converts? No. I think people understand and they want to help but it's... there's always their own complexities of their own giving, their own processes, whether or not we've been able to fully bring them on board. It's also, I mean (I'm just gonna be honest. You're, you know... ACAPS is the data, kings), it's very hard to quantify whether you're actually reaching people because as i... We don't ask for funds to come to us to make success. We don't see ourselves as "You give to us and us we... that's the proven success". We want organisation... we want philanthropy to give to disasters. If you already know who you want to give to, you mentioned Save the Children before, give to them. You know, if you already know what type of programme you want to give to, a sector or geographic area, give. Our message isn't... you know, our mission is not, "Give to CDP to leverage the power of philanthropy", our mission is "Philanthropy, look at equity, look at recovery and put funds into those areas". So it's hard for us to quantify the impact we're having, we have some soft data that we believe shows that this message does resonate. We have obviously increased giving into our funds, which shows that the message is resonating. But we're not entirely convinced that we alone are the demonstration of whether that message has landed. What we would like to do is just continue that message and keep working with these donors to figure out how are they giving? Are they attentive to this? And are we collecting that data adequately enough to recognise whether that shift is coming? And those are things that--we have our new strategy coming up for next year--it's all things we'll be talking about this year is What do we look at? How do we explore gathering that better? How do we see that theory of change in action?
Lars Peter Nissen:And so, 25 words or less, the theory of change? What is that? What does success look like?
Patricia "Patty" McIlreavy:That philanthropy is attentive to the recovery needs of communities after disasters--and equitable recovery.
Lars Peter Nissen:They become smarter donors also investing in the same communities... that they factor in crisis as a ongoing reality of the communities they serve.
Patricia "Patty" McIlreavy:We want disaster, the impact of disasters, to be minimised through equitable recovery, through impactful recovery. And that, in some ways, can be demonstrated, Lars Peter, through mitigation, through risk reduction. So that's where the strategy... where their programming is attentive to this risk, and they are protecting against it. And as you know, that's hard to see because it didn't happen, right? So but that they're attentive to it. We also want, you know, a recognition that when these crises occur, that the responsibility of philanthropy is broader. It's beyond their backyards, beyond proximity. But it's about, you know, looking at at that broader interconnectivity and intersectionality that these communities have with all of us, and how do we bring that attention to serving those needs.
Lars Peter Nissen:But if we take Ukraine, for example, I'm sure there's an outpouring of solidarity, philanthropist wanting to help Ukraine in this incredibly terrible situation. What would you tell them? Go to an IRC cluster meeting? What, I mean, how do they...
Patricia "Patty" McIlreavy:[laughing] No, we don't tell them that. I mean, again, we tell those organisations to work with... that it... you know, you have a multitude of options, right? You can either, if you already have organisations with whom you work, and they are active in you in the Ukraine response, you know, provide assistance as needed to them. If you're not active in Ukraine, if you don't know any organisations working in Ukraine, but you know, and you don't necessarily have the staffing to understand and get to that level, then you can provide it to CDP, and we'll bring it to there. We want organisations that are collaborating, we want organisations that are attentive to what others are doing, but I'll be honest, in our guidelines, we're not asking whether or not they're going to IRC cluster meetings. We're asking is whether they are working with communities, whether their programming is, as much as possible, community led, (which is where we try and get to community organisations to, you know, work with national organisations). We want them... CDP also recognises that we're not the big money, right? In the United Nations appeal, the donors that are coming in, the bilateral donors, they're bringing in much larger money. So we don't want to just be, you know... we don't want to take the funds and be a small drop in a large pond. We want to take those funds and get into places where others aren't helping--get into programmes that are innovative, that are different. For Ukraine, I don't have that example yet, but for example, for the pandemic, on a national level, one of the projects we funded that I always comment on was, you know... grant came across my desk for signature, and it was to fund the census in the US in communities. And I said, "Well, how is the census, counting of people, actually a COVID-19 pandemic response and recovery activity". And the organisation was so thoughtful, they wrote me... they wrote back and they're like, "Because the reason we are suffering disproportionately from this pandemic, as a community, is because we are not counted. We are not counted. So we don't get the resources from the federal government and the state government that we should have. And now we are suffering disproportionately. Recovery for us means we are counted in future." And so we funded their census programming. So it's about being willing to listen. To take that time to listen to communities and be challenged. I mean, Lars Peter, you know, I mean, I have over 20 years experience working in response and recovery and I was like... me, I was like, How does this fit? And it's about recognising that your expertise does not trump other people's experiences. Your expertise is a guide, yes, but you have to be willing to stop, listen and learn no matter how experienced you are, to what the community is telling you. Because they may surprise you. And the programming you fund, the programmes you fund, may have, just, impacts you never even thought possible. And that's what we try and do at CDP. We try and find those programmes: the activities that others might not be willing to fund or communities that are overlooked because they are not mainstream into that larger population.
Lars Peter Nissen:So that sounds to me like you're also willing to take risks...
Patricia "Patty" McIlreavy:Mm-hmm.
Lars Peter Nissen:... and on things that may not work. Do you ever get pushback if something fails? Or what do you do if something fails? Do you shout it from the rooftops or do you hide in a drawer?
Patricia "Patty" McIlreavy:Well, I mean, what's failure?
Lars Peter Nissen:I guess it would be either that what you do has a negative effect on the community you're trying to do. That it goes so pear shaped that it doesn't seem to have any effects, or that it simply unfolds in a way that's very different. Could be somebody actually runs with the money instead of helping people... I mean, it can go wrong in a number of ways.
Patricia "Patty" McIlreavy:Right. So... those obviously different protections against those. I mean, we vet our organisations, we work with them. And, you know, I do think in terms of fraud, that's always a risk. We would hope that an organisation would come to us and talk to us if they had fraud and I... we, you know, have been lucky in not having situations of that sort. But we have had programmes, one or two, that have gone pear shaped. And to be honest, Lars Peter, what we've done is worked with them. We've worked with those organisations and said, Okay, well, this is what you have left. What is the better solution? No, this project isn't happening the way you wanted, or it's costing more than you expected. What is the better solution? And when you think about failure in our community, in the humanitarian and disaster community, it's incredibly impatient. You know, it's a one and done kind of mindset. When you look at it with the corporate world, you know, a high hedge fund manager won't even invest in something until it's failed three, four or five times, right? So why are we so impatient? And so when I talk to foundations, when I talk to others, we have... I say, we have to be willing to allow some level of, let's say, stumbling. You have to be nimble, you have to be flexible in your funding and in your approach. And that's the way we're going to find the new solutions and the new ways of working.
Lars Peter Nissen:Hallelujah. I mean, I couldn't agree more, right? I'm really... I'm with you. You had we had stumbled. But I think... What... Why why don't we do that in the mainstream? I think a lot of that has got to do with the risk profile of the back donors, right? There's a certain risk adverse approach from the large institutional donors. And so, is what you're saying that you don't get in trouble with your donors in the same way that you might if it was in an ECHO grant or USAID grant or Global Affairs Canada, or whoever it might have been: that you have to have more flexibility there.
Patricia "Patty" McIlreavy:We don't take bilateral government donor funding. So yes, I mean, we don't get in trouble with our donors. But I also don't think there's a reason we should be getting in trouble with our donors. We are very open and honest with them that we fund in this way, that we are flexible, and that we're niche. But I think... And again, many of our donors are these very same corporate people who know what spillage means who know what it's like to... that you build this into your profit. So that's another aspect of it is we're working with people who recognise that this is the environment you work within. I think, Lars Peter, we've done our... the system, the humanitarian system, has done itself a major disservice over the years in a couple of ways related to this risk factors is: One, we've oversimplified the narrative, You know, we pretend, even though we know you can't really feed a village for the cup... for cost of coffee a day. That's the messaging we still give to people. We don't openly talk about the risks that we work within, and the cost of those risks. We don't openly challenge the bilateral donors about the risks transference that exist in our environment. I think that cost of silence has has been misunderstood as, "If I speak out, I'll lose my funding." Without looking at "If I don't speak out, what's the cost for me?" And by not speaking out the cost has been an oversimplification of our narrative, a misunderstanding of the risks we take incredibly, incredibly complex environment and we've almost got zero advocacy space to push against some of these new rules that are coming out. Because now if we push against them, the only alignment we have for some of these in the in the very politicised environment we exist in today is, Oh, you're pro terrorist, You don't want the EU. No, no! How did we get here? No, but because [laughing[ Like, no, no, I'm not pro terrorist. I'm pro people! They just happen to be in a country that happens to be [inaudible]... How do we... You know, it's almost like we've waited too long to speak out. And we've we've painted ourselves into a corner. And I think that's the challenge is, at what stage are we going to find a new narrative that brings the people, the population, the taxpayers along to an understanding that these are very, very complex environments, and we do the best we can but in the same way, Walmart has a certain allowance for cans falling off the shelf or walking out the door in someone's pocket we have to have a similar mindset in our work in the humanitarian sector. It doesn't mean to ill intent, it doesn't mean to bad practice, it doesn't mean through fraud or negligence, it's just a reality of what we work in, but we put every control in place to stop it from happening. And that nuance is... still has a lot of way to go in terms of being understood and accepted and pushed for.
Lars Peter Nissen:I very much agree with that. I also wonder whether that is what comes with big money, right? I mean, you obviously can do things that cannot be done with big money and you used to work with InterAction. You're very familiar with what the IRC world looks like and how the funding modalities work there. Do you think that what you are doing can be scaled to the mainstream system? Do you think we can actually transform the way in which that funding is given?
Patricia "Patty" McIlreavy:I honestly think we don't have a choice. I think we will have to do it. If we are serious about living our beliefs, and living the values and allowing, you know, communities to be... to have the dignity and choice and agency in their recovery, we're going to have to take our biases and check them at the door. We're going to have to move forward. And I do think it can be done at scale.
Lars Peter Nissen:Are they biases or are they audits and fiduciary risks and all of that stuff? Is it the is it not the is it really biases or is it the big bureaucracies being risk adverse?
Patricia "Patty" McIlreavy:But where's the risk aversion? What's the cause? What's the source of the risk aversion? It's a bias. It's a belief that working in these environments is more... there's more corruption, there's more fraud.
Lars Peter Nissen:That's interesting. The way I think about it is that I think it stems from ultimately a political system that is scared shitless of having a front page on a newspaper say, We gave all this money to this and this country and look, now it was stolen. I think it's the political cost associated with that, that then cascades down it means that the bureaucracy which is responsive to the political level. I'm really scared.
Patricia "Patty" McIlreavy:But the flip side of that is, if you have the controls in place, you cought that something was stolen, right? So it isn't an overcorrection. So what the zero tolerance interpretation, by too many governments, by too many of, you know, of these structures, is zero tolerance for incident. Zero tolerance for fraud, zero tolerance for sexual harassment, zero tolerance... You can't have zero tolerance for the issue. Because you know what it exists, humans exist in this. Unless we're going to take humans out, there will be fraud, there will be corruption, there will be a certain level of sexual harassment as much as I'd love to believe it will never... You can, you can... But you can't you cannot checklist that out of existence. It will exist.
Lars Peter Nissen:I totally agree.
Patricia "Patty" McIlreavy:But what you can demand is zero tolerance for not having controls, zero tolerance for not exploring and not addressing it when you find it. Zero tolerance for not... It's zero tolerance for inaction. Proactive, and reactive.
Lars Peter Nissen:I totally agree. But it's not where we are.
Patricia "Patty" McIlreavy:Right, but why can't we get there?
Lars Peter Nissen:Well, I think there's two things right. I do think that the political risk, sort of, trumps everything, because bureaucracies are very vulnerable to that. And then I think on the on the recipient side, I think what you mentioned about are simplifying things and pretending to be the good guys solving this problem in a in a seamless manner. "Look how fantastic we are". I think that we almost have to live up to the myth we have created ourselves. And I think in between those two things, that's that's why we ended this situation. I think is very, very difficult to to change. And I maybe I have been thinking about it wrongly, I don't think of it as biases, I think of it as perverse incentives.
Patricia "Patty" McIlreavy:Could be that too. I mean, it's not necessarily the same thing for everyone in terms of why it originated. I don't even know, I mean... it's a little like what the racial reckoning that's going on in the US right now. It's biases... recognising your biases, recognising your privileges, isn't necessarily a dirty word. I mean, it's not necessarily a fault that you own as a personal choice. It's that you are existing within a society that has given you certain privileges or upon which you have believed in certain biases without even necessarily recognising or realising it. And when I use that term, I mean it more in that sense, not that everyone who is looking at risk is somehow making a deliberate choice of like, This isn't... I know, and I believe that these people in this country are more corrupt than others. It's that they've bought into a system where maybe someone had that thought. And they haven't challenged it, and they haven't pushed it, and now they have perverse incentives to maintain that. I agree. I mean, we... You know, perverse incentives, that's a reality and in so many things, but the question is, At what point do we try and change it anyway? Even if we don't necessarily believe we can make a change at scale, even if we don't see that within our generation, we can rid ourselves of all these ills in whatever we're trying to change. Inaction is just, you know, a willingness to say, "Well, it sucks, but oh well. Here we are". And I think, you know, for the... You had a podcast, you know, a few weeks back about national organisations, and then decolonizing aid and all of that and there's a lot of people who are saying, "But you know, what does that really look like? And can we do that?" And I think, I don't know what it really looks like and I don't know if we can have success in it, yes. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't still try. We shouldn't still figure out, What is the space? And how do we make it happen? Not we personally, because every one has to make it happen, right? But at a certain point, if we're truly living our values, if we're believing that this system should be led by communities, should be driven by their response, their their recovery, their desires, we have to recognise we're tools within that. And tools aren't the masters of it, and we shouldn't pretend we are the masters of it. So how do we how do we redefine the space that we fill? And that's, that's a challenge for all of us? I don't have I don't have answers beyond the fact that... whether CDP's model can go at scale? I don't know. I don't envision we would be at scale because it still has the role of governments and others. But I do think that no matter what we do, it's incumbent upon us to try--to try and be better and to try and make that change happen faster.
Lars Peter Nissen:It's quite likely that within the next 15-20 years, we will have much more frequent, much more violent, much more severe, crisis, especially due to climate change. How do you see philanthropy reacting to that Do you think, you know...Will they rise to the challenge? Will they get fed up with... will become numb to all of these disasters we see? What do you think will happen?
Patricia "Patty" McIlreavy:Let's bring us back to where we started, What is philanthropy? Right? So, there's very... it's very possible that people will get more localised in their philanthropy, if their needs are so enormous everywhere. But we also have high net worth individuals in on this planet who have more money than some countries in terms of, you know, the GDP of a country. So how much is too much to ask them to do, right? It doesn't mean they're responsible for it. I get that. They're not accountable to it. But at a certain point, will some of them lean in and say, "You know what? I am going to do more, because that's where the need is at the moment." I don't think it'll be across the board. I mean, I'm sure they'll still be libraries built and space exploration that will occur. But I also think there will be others who change who alter and see that their role is to bring more into into society. Corporate, you know, corporate philanthropy is, you know, they're environment, social, government, right? The ESG movement within corporate philanthropy pushes them to do more in those communities.
Lars Peter Nissen:Sorry, ESG?
Patricia "Patty" McIlreavy:So, environment, social, government. It's the way that... It's the new corporate social responsibility mindset for a lot of organisations. It's tied to how their giving is connected to their product, their mission, their bottom line. And but it's also about recognising, you know, that there are certain ways that that plays out for the environment, for society, and for, and within, you know, government and governance. And so how are they going to lean into that? What does that look like for them? I think it's going to vary per organisation. But I do think a large part of it is driven by the climate change movement, by the fact that there's a threat of a lot more when disasters coming. And they may not have the same reason for working in these environments that you are I do (it's not like, you know, they, you know, aren't humanitarians to their core, they didn't say like, I want to help I want to be out there I want to be assisting) but if if the driver for them is I need to, you know, protect my bottom line and my bottom line means I need to invest in these areas, I'm... to be honest, I'm okay with that. You know, I would love if they gave as well for value based reasons and at an individual level they probably, they very much do. But at a corporate level, again, an entity doesn't have feelings. They're going to give for a different reason. And that's okay.
Lars Peter Nissen:For me, to steal a phrase from the military, we need non-humanitarian force multipliers.
Patricia "Patty" McIlreavy:Yeah, exactly.
Lars Peter Nissen:We need some people to do the heavy lifting. The resources in other parts of society are far bigger than what what we can ever hope to leverage and so influencing the way that is used and engages with crisis is key to ensuring that the residual needs that then needs to be addressed by humanitarians is smaller.
Patricia "Patty" McIlreavy:And they also can play a huge role, Lars Peter in diminishing the number of disasters, right? So what is a disaster? It's when a hazard meets a vulnerability. If the programming from philanthropy, decreases vulnerabilities, and decreases the size of hazards and disasters that aren't as bad as they could be, or don't exist at all, or don't happen at all, that's also valuable to me. So invest in climate change, programming, invest in, you know, social equity projects. Those all help because they decrease the impact. And so for me, that's where we also try and bring the conversation to is, disaster philanthropy is not only after, it's also before.
Lars Peter Nissen:Maybe one last question, Patty. So what are your three pieces of advice to Big Aid? To all of your old colleagues from the big NGOs? From the UN, from the Red Cross Red Crescent? What has your new life in philanthropy taught you that you'd like to share with them?
Patricia "Patty" McIlreavy:Oh, wow. That's a big question. Um, I think the first is just really, you know, let live our values. And I don't mean to say that as if they're not doing it already. But we, we have to continue to find ways to live the values that we have as organisations, as individuals, in the humanitarian sector, and be open to the changes that may come as a result of that. I think the second is really again, I wouldn't say this is so much from my new perch, this is even something I used to say in my old job, is collaborate, collaborate, collaborate. We are too much defined by our competitiveness. You know, the who gets the money, who does what, whose flag is planted, who's seen as the lead. I recognise the the rationales for why those occur. I've probably been there myself in some places. But it's... Communities don't want us to compete. They don't care, to be honest, whose flag or whose logo is on the service that they're receiving. They just want the service to be there. And I think we have... So it's like humility of sorts. We have to look at how to be more collaborative, how to push against the drivers of competitiveness. And I think my last piece would just be to be bold, you know, courageous. We have to... I mean, it's similar to the first two, right, like but it's easier said than done to want to make change, to be part of a change. And it's the time at the moment right now is really challenging us to be different, challenging us to recreate ourselves. And that's a really, really scary space to be. So we have to be courageous in living through it. And not only living through it, because that makes it sound like we're passive, but being active participants in that change. You know, that we want to see for the system, for the people, for the recovery.
Lars Peter Nissen:I think that's an excellent place to end this conversation. Patty, thank you so much for for coming on Trumanitarian and sharing your insight into the work that CDP is doing. It's a great organisation and, yeah, thank you.
Patricia "Patty" McIlreavy:No, thank you for having me. Appreciate being here. Appreciate your work.