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Hello, everyone, welcome back to the exchange stage at generosity exchange. I am really excited for our next interview with Rhodri Davies, I'm gonna let him introduce himself that he's he's got a lot of things that he can introduce his background to you, especially for our US and Canadian audience who might not be aware of his work. We're gonna get into the idea of where did individual giving or mass philanthropy even come from as an idea? And Rhodri, why don't you tell us why you are particularly a great person to be talking about this with? Yeah, of course Tim. Thanks for having me, I guess Yeah, to introduce myself. So I'm Rhodri Davis, I do do quite a few things. The main one at the moment is I run a new organization called Why philanthropy matters, which is a website and also an organization where it's all kind of writing and podcasts and other things, thinking about philanthropy and giving in the widest possible context and kind of how it sits inside debates that are going on in the world today. But also, as you say, where it's coming from, what sort of the history is behind it, and how it can kind of inform what we do today. And certainly, you know, great to talk about this, because I think I use the word philanthropy quite readily. But then often people have very different views about what that means. And sometimes they think it means just given by very wealthy people or using structures, like foundations, but actually, other people will say, No, it's not just that it's about everybody, and kind of mass acts of giving and volunteering. And that's been a debate that's kind of run through the whole history of of this stuff for hundreds of years. So, yeah, it's really interesting, I think, and, and obviously, we cannot do justice to the history of philanthropy in 13 minutes, right? This is just kind of a quick, you know, Cliff's Notes version, philanthropy for Dummies, if you will, where where kind of did the the third sector, or the charitable sector, whatever we want to call it, kind of, where's the genesis of all of this? And then how did people like an average citizen start to become part of it? I guess, I guess the thing for me is there's there's a story about the creation of the sector, you know, as we know it today, and there's, there's a US version of that story. And there's a UK version of that story. And for a long time, they were the same story. And then they kind of diverge. And particularly in the 20th century, with the creation of some of the kind of big name general purpose operating foundations at the start the late sort of 19th century, early 20th century, the kind of Carnegie's Rockefellers forwards, and that kind of thing, that becomes the dominant model in the US, and the one that people sort of think of both in the US and the UK when you say the word philanthropy. But actually, if you go back before that, you know, there's there's a longer tradition of this stuff. Certainly in the UK, there are kind of charitable trusts that have, in some cases been around for getting on for 1000 years. But also, there's always been individual acts of small scale giving, the thing is, they tend to be a bit hidden, because the nature of history is it's only institutions and people with certain amounts of money, who kind of leave, leave, you know, something there in the historical record. There's all of this generosity that's clearly been there, because there's a kind of basic human compulsion to help other people. And it just kind of gets lost once those people are no longer around anymore. And I think it's it's really interesting, the moment that lots of people are noticing this, particularly when it comes to marginalized communities. So there's some fascinating work being done on the history of kind of Black and African American philanthropy at the moment. And a big part of it is precisely this point that it's been going on for ages. It's just that, you know, they weren't around writing books about it or kind of leaving, you know, annual reports, because they weren't big foundations. It was just acts on everyday giving by people within communities. History written by the winners, so to speak. Absolutely. Yeah. And that's fascinating, because even you know, if you go back to kind of Judeo Christian and Muslim cultures, there's a deep philanthropic element there, even back to book, you know, the Greek meaning, you know, of love of mankind, right. And, and so, maybe it might be helpful, though, to let's skip ahead a tiny bit into maybe the 20th century and beyond. And those kinds of divergences, because I want to end with where you think we're going. Yeah, but how did we get here if we start because because if you start with maybe those kinds of Carnegie Foundation, the Rockefellers, stuff like that the Gilded Age items, fantastic show on HBO, by the way, if you want to get into kind of that side of philanthropy, yes, it was a lot of rich folks.

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Even establishing "I

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Gotta Get out of my taxes" basically. Right? And so there's a difference between the tax designation side and being charitable and I want to focus on the charitable the generosity side. So how did the individual citizens, the people really start to become a noticeable part and influence in the sector? When did that start to happen? Yeah, I guess I mean, in the States, it's an interesting one, because as you say, at the start of the 20th century, we've got the creation of these big foundations, private foundations like Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford, and others. But actually, at the same time, you've got the beginnings of the Community Foundation model as well in the kind of early 1920s. So there's always been this recognition that it's important to take into account mass market giving and kind of people giving more, more modest levels. As I say, you know, that stuff's always been there, but it kind of slightly gets eclipsed by some of these, these sort of huge foundations and these big figures that have come to dominate philanthropy, I guess the the interesting thing is kind of both in the US and in the UK, as the 20 century wore on that, that bit of it becomes more prominent as people giving at sort of more modest levels,

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people are able to kind of see that a bit more, because you have charities and nonprofits that kind of exist to allow people to give it those more modest levels. And, you know, also fundraising starts to kind of be focused more on them. So certainly in here in the UK, I mean, I think one of the big turning points maybe is around the kind of late 70s, early 80s, when you have things like Live Aid happening, this idea of kind of massive, big fundraising events where it's about, I mean, it's, you know, there's a whole other question about whether it's about justice or about charity, but sticking to the fundraising idea, it's not about we're going to try and tap up a few really wealthy people or foundations, it's about your average person giving a couple of pounds or dollars, but it happens at such a scale and enters the public consciousness that all of a sudden, this idea of kind of mass giving becomes becomes huge. And probably, you know, what most people now think of, and, you know, as has been noted, is, is the biggest source of income for the sector, certainly here in the UK. And as far as I'm aware, in the US as well, you know, correct. The Elite donors are important and the foundations are important, but they're eclipsed by, you know, when you add up all of these tiny donations from the likes of you and me, that's actually what's kind of driving the sector fundamentally. So one of the things that you do so well, and if you folks, I'm gonna make sure that that, you know, Rhodri's Twitter account and all the good stuff is available for people to check out because he's such a great follow. And it part of it is because you pull up the stories, that's ultimately what's so fascinating about history as a student of history myself, is, it's the individual stories, people tend to think it's just like this abstract thing that happens. And the reality is that like, people make it people make it happen. So is there a particular thing that you've researched or come across? That is just interesting on this point about, like, the evolution here? And, you know, one quick little story if we, if you will, I guess? Yeah, I mean, it's, it's more of a thematic one, but one that I think is really interesting in terms of this question of, sort of mass giving, that actually allows you to go back quite a lot further and spot this stuff is the history of people not giving regularly, but responding to disaster appeals. Because actually, that's somewhere where in these sort of one off instances, they've always appealed to the general public. So you can look, there's a history of kind of before we even had anything approaching a charity sector in the UK. And there were these things called charitable briefs, where when something happened, usually like a fire or something like that, they would issue a brief and it was kind of done under the government or the local government, but it was basically a fundraising appeal. And, you know, there was one after the Great Fire of London, and, you know, because towns were built out of wood back then there were a lot of fires. And so they would have these briefs, and it would be small amounts of money from from everyone within a town and from other towns giving in sort of solidarity. And I think you can trace that through. And then there's a sort of history of, you know, as, as the country industrialized, you know, mining disasters and sort of factory disasters. And these would capture the public imagination, because they could put themselves in the place of these people who are suffering. And you know, it would be the working classes giving very small amounts of money. And actually, that money would not even just come from the UK, it would often come from overseas, and there's like, fascinating stuff I came across about the Lancashire cotton famine, and there were all these people giving from Canada and New Zealand and all these other places, because, again, they just felt a sense of kind of kinship. So I think that's a really interesting one. And actually, you know, there's still a lot of interesting stuff to say today about how people respond to this

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asters and how that kind of matches up with their more regular giving, and what the psychology of these things is so, so I think that's a it's an absolutely fascinating area to look at.

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So what? I have a few questions that can probably be podcast episodes in themselves, but

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what do you think the role of technology is? Is playing and influencing things now? And how has technology even impacted? How people were doing these types of disaster relief and other types of engagements historically, to like, what's the role of tech in this? Yeah, I mean, it's something we've talked about a bit before, Tim, and as you say, it could, it could cover a few hours talking about this stuff. But I guess the I mean, the big things to me are, obviously the event, you know, the fact that communication allows, you know, the availability of information that just would have been very difficult to get hold of, in the past. And I think increasingly, what's really interesting is, that's not just sort of mediated information put out by traditional kind of information providers and news media outlets. Yeah, it's increasingly individuals talking to other individuals. And I think that's one of the things I find most fascinating. And again, it sort of brings us back to the history is that technology's taking this stuff forward, but almost bringing it full circle back to the oldest possible models of giving, which are kind of, you know, person to person, direct arms, giving at a parish level. But now we can do that stuff at a global level. And I think, you know, there's a lot of power in that, because people do respond to being asked by other human beings. And, you know, it's an old sort of truism that people give to people. And I think that's really positive. But I think maybe they're are also danger, because one of the reasons that we kind of created charity structures in the first place, was to try and maybe balance out the fact that people have a lot of unconscious biases, and tend to sort of give to people who look like they're more kind of fit a particular bill or able to tell a particularly compelling sob story, rather than necessarily giving to where there's the actual greatest need. And if we kind of disintermediate charities and nonprofits out of the picture, what's that going to look like in future? You know, I'm, I'm slightly concerned about that. Well, and you help transition into my final question for our quick hit today, which is, what can we learn from the past to inform the future?

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Yeah, I mean, I guess one is, you know, as we said, one of the things about everyday giving is, the reason maybe we don't appreciate the history of it so much is that it hasn't really kind of been there in a historical record. That's interesting in itself, but I think it also tells us something about making sure we understand which voices might be being left out. Now, you know, which communities are not necessarily having a say and are kind of marginalized. So as we do philanthropy, and as we tried to kind of harness people's generosity to address causes in the world today, who's on the outside of that, and then when we look back, you know, 100 years from now, we'll say, why was nobody paying attention to what these people thought about it? And I think, you know, that then has kind of practical knock on effects in terms of things like participatory approaches to grantmaking, and kind of making sure that people who would have been seen as the passive beneficiaries of charity, in the past maybe are now seen as kind of active participants in trying to address you know, problems and how the resources are kind of transferred over to them and some of the power as well. So So I think, you know, that's definitely something that we can take from looking at the past. I mean, what a beautiful sentiment and reality to I think we're seeing that come through and why I'm also excited because I think if I remember timing wise, folks, we're going to go right into our keynote discussion with Edgar Villanueva. And he's gonna be talking about this type of stuff. Rhodri, thank you so much for your time today. I hope everything's okay in the UK, and I'm looking forward to meeting you in person eventually. So absolutely, Tim, thanks for having me. And yeah, one of these days we'll definitely we'll meet in person that will be great. Love it. Love it.

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