GoodGeist
A podcast on sustainability, hosted by Damla Özlüer and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network. Looking at sustainability issues, communications, and featuring global guests from a wide variety of sectors such as business, NGOs and government.
GoodGeist
Philanthropy in Action, with Filiz Bikmen
This episode we talk to Filiz Bekman, of Constellations for Change and a passionate advocate for meaningful social impact through philanthropy.
We learn how an earthquake in Turkey became the catalyst for discovering her true calling in philanthropy and social change. We look at Filiz's take on 'trust-based philanthropy' -- a revolutionary approach that focuses not just on program funding but on supporting the holistic wellbeing of organisations to create sustainable impact.
We also talk about the psychology behind giving. She reveals how she begins donor relationships with a simple yet profound question: "What would you like to see more of in the world and what would you like to see less of?" Through this lens, we discover how philanthropy balances emotional connections with rational frameworks, creating bridges between donors and recipients who often navigate vastly different realities.
Listen in to this conversation with some totally dedicated to making a positive change in the world.
Follow GoodGeist for more episodes on sustainability, communications and how creativity can help make the world a better place.
Good Geist, a podcast series on sustainability hosted by Damla Özler and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello everyone, you are listening to Good Guys, the message on sustainability which is brought to you by the DNS Network, the global network of agencies dedicated to making the world a better place. This is Damla from Mira Agency, istanbul, and.
Speaker 3:This is Steve from Creative Concern in Manchester. This podcast series explores global sustainability issues, how they're communicated and what creativity can do to make positive change happen.
Speaker 2:So in this episode we're going to talk to the founder of Constellations for Change, phyllis Bickman, who is also a very dear friend of mine. Phyllis is a social investment and philanthropy advisor passionate about creating creating constellations for change by aligning strategy, values and assets to create high impact, meaningful and lasting social change initiatives.
Speaker 3:So Felitha specializes in organizational development and change management. This is a long biography, felitha, brace yourself. She's worked in nonprofit organizations and foundations at senior level with private sector leaders, family offices, supported policymakers and, of course, non-profit organizations. So when it comes to making change happen, you're the person to go to. Felice. Thank you so much for talking to.
Speaker 4:Damla and myself. My pleasure, very happy to be here. Thank you for having me so.
Speaker 2:Felice. We always love to begin with a personal touch. Tell us how did your organizational psychology training end up in philanthropy and changemaker path?
Speaker 4:Well, I think I have always been. I think it's in my kind of, in my makeup, in my genetic makeup, in my spiritual makeup, to make a difference in the world and do something good for the world. So when I studied organizational psychology, I was actually quite engaged with Martin Seligman's concept of learned optimism. This is back in the nineties and I was just fascinated and it led me into organizational psychology, thinking, well, you know, work is such an important part of our lives and to make it more meaningful and purposeful for people would serve me really well in terms of my own values. And once I started getting into organizational psychology and learning more about positive psychology per se, I transitioned into the private sector and started working as a consultant with organizational development and teams and groups and so on.
Speaker 4:And then a life change happened. I moved to Turkey in 1999, where my parents are from, but I was not born and raised there, but I'd been going there my whole life. And you might remember, that year there was a massive earthquake near Istanbul. We lost a lot of lives and there was a lot of destruction. And it was also, on one hand, a time of destruction but on the other hand, a time of construction, because civil society and the government started really working very closely together and there was an opportunity for the sector to develop and strengthen and just be able to do more for people.
Speaker 4:So at the time that I arrived, very soon after, I became aware of this movement of the sector, which I hadn't really known anything about before, neither in the US or Turkey, and I just felt like it was my calling. I realized that I had the skills and the interests and the passion to be able to make a difference. My calling. I realized that I had the skills and the interests and the passion to be able to make a difference and that's what I did. So that was the path and it continues today, nearly 25 years later.
Speaker 3:I know. So that's. That is awesome. So finding your calling in life is a beautiful thing, and I actually can I also say constellations for change is a great name, if we just have a little brand moment, love its bits. So on the podcast, we've talked quite a bit, faleth, about how you make change happen campaigning, rights, movements of one kind or another but obviously philanthropy has a really massive role to play as well, doesn't it, in that sort of change process. So could you give us a, if you like it's a cheesy thing to say and quite high carbon, but a sort of helicopter view of transition, the transition that philanthropy has gone through over the years and the kind of change it's bringing about?
Speaker 4:I think people often don't recognize or don't actually know that much actually about philanthropy in the general sense of things. I find that our sector and the people that work in it, we're kind of very small community and we use a certain kind of language and certain set of assumptions that don't always convey and make their way to the public, and so I would like to take this opportunity to reframe a little bit while I'm talking about that transition. So, first of all, philanthropy is part of the constellation. It's not the solution, it's just part of the constellation and it moves together with other dynamics and other movements that are trying to promote someone's idea of a better life, of a better world. And not all of these ideas are in concert, right, everybody has very different ideas. So philanthropy the kind of philanthropy we'll be talking about today, just so our listeners are clear about that is the philanthropy that I've been engaged in and that's the philanthropy that believes in universal human rights, that believes in a safer, better planet for all, that believes in sustainability, that believes in accountability, transparency, transparency, engagement and all those things. So there's a certain set of values around a particular type of philanthropy that I've been involved with, that I will continue to be involved with, but this does not mean that all the philanthropy is like this. So, as a constellation in that kind of in that universe, philanthropy in its ideal form should be there to support actors who are doing the work with communities, to help serve them, to help engage them, to help bring them better opportunities and more access to opportunities in life. And, as such, philanthropy has gone through, particularly the past few years, a process in which the term trust-based has become really important and the term meaningful engagement has become really important. And I'm just going to focus on those two things.
Speaker 4:So what does trust-based mean? It doesn't mean here's the money, do what you wish and good luck. It means I trust that in giving you this money, because this is what philanthropy for the most part in the Western world is. By the way, giving is not necessarily a construct in the East and in the global South and we can get to that later if you're curious but we're just talking about the concept of philanthropy being about giving funds right now.
Speaker 4:It is about being trust-based. It is about trusting the partners that you choose to deliver on a certain positive social impact action and when they say X needs to happen in such a way or Y needs to be involved, you trust and you support and you go with. It also means not focusing only on the programmatic output, like 100 kids are going to get this training, here's the money. That's it. It means as an institution, you need to exist, your governance needs to be healthy, your staff needs to be healthy, your finances need to be in order. You may need to use technology to do your work better.
Speaker 4:So trust-based philanthropy also means being a partner in an organization's well-being, not just in their programmatic delivery. On the engagement point we're talking about well, if you work with youth, engage in youth. If you work with women, engage in women. You can't believe how many grant applications I've seen in my 25 years that come from organizations that do not involve the people that they propose to help or support or work with. And so that lived experience and that engagement has become much more prominent in philanthropy these days, and I think that's a really good thing, just because we're so used to thinking that doing good things for people is enough, but actually we need to do them with people.
Speaker 2:Wow, that was quite a bit of summary of what was going wrong and what should be happening. Thank you, fidis, for that, and I want to go a little bit more deeper into that, because you emphasize impact when talking about philanthropy. How does an impactful philanthropic strategy differ? I mean, what more there is to it?
Speaker 4:Honestly, I think it's. This whole subject of impact has been a bit overcomplicated and overanalyzed and overdeveloped in such a way that there are so many methodologies that people are getting very confused about it. In my opinion, and when I work with foundations, nonprofits, family offices, whatever it be, I simply put it this way you know why you're doing what you're doing and you know what expected outcome you want to have. So if I do X, y will happen. Literally. Repeat this sentence to yourself enough times and you have what we call in our philanthropy lingo a theory of change. If I do X, y will happen. Okay, how do you know if Y is going to happen? You need to measure, you need to have some proxies, some indicators that are going to be able to indicate to you that Y has happened and that it's because of X. So, in a nutshell, for me this is impact, and philanthropy doesn't always want to think about impact because it can be very emotional and we assume that philanthropy always needs to be rational. Let's be honest if it's voluntary money, people's wealth now I'm talking about individual wealth and usually that's kind of the driver of philanthropy globally it's not money that's being raised, it's money that's being given. If you look back at.
Speaker 4:I think that I can't recall the name of the journal right now so I won't say it, but it's a major journal in the US around philanthropy. They just put out the top donors of last year and the hundreds and hundreds of millions and billions and so forth. I mean it is a huge, huge initiative, but a lot of it comes from people who have that extra wealth that they want to give back or they want to give, and so, again, this doesn't mean it's rational. Oftentimes it's very emotional and so impact may not find its way in there. But I think it's a positive indication that a lot of these larger donors, they know that giving away 100 million, 200 million, 300 million, cannot happen without any semblance of impact, without any understanding. So I think that's a really important step closer and so, yeah, that's my point on impact.
Speaker 3:So I'm OK. So I'm going to let the mask drop a little bit for Leith, for our listeners, sometimes, damla and I have a little list of questions that we have in mind to ask our guests and then sometimes in the chat chat, we kind of tell each other we're ripping up that list to ask a different question. And I've just said, damla, do you mind if I go off script? And I am going off script. So, felice, I'm really fascinated by this because you you kind of already answered the question, my thought, my question, around a kind of new generation of philanthropists who are focused on sustainability, climate, circular economy, saving the planet, and that they're one tribe and there's another tribe who are the dark forces out there.
Speaker 3:You painted that picture a little bit, but actually I want to follow up on your emotional point. I think it's really fascinating and the psychology of philanthropy point. I think it's really fascinating and the psychology of philanthropy, and I've worked on a number of big programs with philanthropists and I'm almost in between the philanthropist and the. The don't need the people who are receiving money and whispering to them. Well, yes, of course they're being an absolute nightmare for you. It's their money. They really care, and I'm fascinated about your insights on the, the kind of psychology of the philanthropist and their emotional attachment to that, the change they make in the world and and the role they play, and sometimes are they overbearing. How do they, how do they stop themselves imposing their entire value set on a program that they support? It's such fascinating territory, so I'd love for you to go a little bit deeper into that.
Speaker 4:I love that heading, the psychology of philanthropy. And yeah, I'm also in a very similar position. I've always kind of been between the donor and the purpose of the donation, let's say whether that be a program that's designed or organization that's going to be funded or so forth. Few things. Number one when I work with donors, the first question I have is what would you like to see more of in the world and what would you like to see less of in the world? And depending on the answer to this question, you get a sense of, first of all, if they have a positive or a negative attribution style. Usually, if they say less, that says something about the way they're thinking about it. They say I'd like to see more of, so what would you usually like to see more of?
Speaker 4:Arts and culture, music, I don't know well-being, but oftentimes, as you can probably guess, you get the negative response, which is less poverty, you know, less unemployment, less inequality and so forth. So in the very essence of deciding what area you're going to be giving in, you start on the psychological journey, the emotional journey of what that actually means for you, and I think as a student of not just positive psychology I'm the daughter of a psychiatrist and psychologist and all this kind of wellbeing. I've done a lot of Zen meditation, I do my own practices and so forth. I've really started to now recognize how important that emotional link is in working with philanthropy. Now, when it comes to being the translator between the philanthropist and the recipients, I am balanced in the sense of I try to give the recipient an understanding of the reality that the philanthropist is experiencing.
Speaker 4:So that could be an individual philanthropist, that could be a family or that could be a foundation I'm working for, as I do now, that has a grant making program. It's a public charity, it raises funds, but I'm helping them, you know, make certain decisions about which organizations they can support, and so oftentimes I think it's also not just about emotional and rational, but it's about not understanding each other's realities. So on one hand, I have to explain the reality of the organization to the philanthropist, which maybe never even exposed themselves to a nonprofit or worked in one or had any interaction, and so they don't know their realities. For instance, what is this overhead? It's what they need to survive, it's how they need to work, how they need to employ people, how they need to function, and then so grantees will say well, what's this reporting? Well, I mean, how are we supposed to know if the funds are making a difference? So I think there I would say, our role is about balancing the emotional and the rational and exposing one another to the different realities.
Speaker 2:Well, that's very important and we're always talking about it when we are working with philanthropist organizations and the donation purposes together and when we're in between them. There is also another tech that the NGOs also need to learn about what they're getting into and maybe adjust the expectations accordingly. This is a very deep issue that we can talk about, I think, hours, but I want to go on to the change part because in the end, the philanthropists and the organization getting the donation they all want to make change happen, as we say in this podcast. Also, what is your take on change theory? How does change happen in the society? How can we really intervene and make change happen?
Speaker 4:I just realized that this whole conversation, since the beginning, we've been speaking very generally without taking into account global north, global south, east, west, different cultures, different approaches, different histories. So I want to just say now, hoping it's not too late, that everything is so contextual when it comes to philanthropy giving non-profits the way they operate, how change happens, what's impact, what's happening with next generations all the questions you have. For me, they're all very specific. So, just for the listener to understand that we're literally talking about this from a very distant place in a very general context, and that for the most part, I've seen I've worked a lot in emerging market countries so I can see a lot of similarities amongst our countries, for instance, between Turkey and India and Brazil and South Africa and so on. So there are certain divides that we have to be aware of, and so how change happens in the UK is going to be different than how change happens in Turkey and in India, and there's a lot of reasons for that. Right, there's so many social, political, economical factors that come into how that comes into play, and it also affects the way a philanthropist will act, whether it's a charity raising funds to give away or it's an individual making a decision about what they want to do, because the dynamic of the country and the society that they live in, maybe even the religion that they're from, will shape this kind of interaction. For example, in low power distance societies, you're going to have a different kind of dynamic. In high power distance societies, you're going to have yet another different dynamic. So the issue of power, by the way, is another topic to talk about. When it comes to philanthropy, in the past few years, philanthropists in general, at least the ones that are institutionalized and larger, are much more aware of this factor of power when it comes to the dynamic between their funds and the organizations receiving them. So let me fast forward now to your question about how change happens.
Speaker 4:In my observation, change happens through a couple of things, one the one. So if you're working on policy change, for instance, you need to be able to recognize that the reality of the policymaker and the person responsible for that process may not be the reality that you are exposed to. So what do you try to do? You expose them to new realities, you bring them to their peers. That are good examples, in your opinion, for the kind of change you want to see. Right, you try to expose people to new realities.
Speaker 4:When you're talking about programming, trying to create issues around, I don't know solutions for unemployment or access to education, again, it's about a reality. It's about an experience. You need people to experience change before they can change, because what is it that keeps them in that loop? It's their beliefs and their thoughts that affect their perceptions and their attitudes and the way that they live their life. So if you offer them another way to experience change, change the change that you want to see well then you offer them another way to think, another way to believe. And I would like to give an example.
Speaker 4:I've been involved in a program. I designed it and I've helped run it, and it's going strong for 10 years now here in Turkey. That's around youth unemployment, and what we have is a whole generation of young people that don't have access to opportunities for one reason or another. What we did was design a program that would give them that opportunity, so that they could believe they had a chance in life. All we needed to do is prove to them, signal to them that they were worthy of that chance and that now they have it and they can run with it. And that's exactly what they do. So you design that system and now that's changing their minds. It changes their family's minds, their siblings' minds, their cousins' minds, and that's how change happens through experience.
Speaker 3:Please, I'm staying off. I've warned Damla, I'm staying off script and I risk sending this to a whole different philosophical place, but I want to stay with that really vital point you've made around context and different global contexts global south, global north, um different levels of economic maturity in different markets and and how philanthropy lands in different cultural contexts across the world. Because I think that's absolutely fascinating. If you look at the, if you, if you imagine a kind of typology of change where you look at technology, markets, social norms and mass psychology, through to the faith, communities and religion, and then you have philanthropy in that mix as well and there are all these different drivers of change in our societies that are hugely powerful.
Speaker 3:And do you ever reflect or is that part of the conversation you have with philanthropists that there are some challenges in this world today where philanthropy isn't the right solution to land in a context and where actually we need to change the law, or actually we need women to have more power in that culture and we need to change the social norms there.
Speaker 3:Or, you know, are there some places where philanthropy doesn't belong? And then just to stretch it a little, um, two more thoughts and you can answer any of these, or you can just ignore it for leave and tell us some wonderful stuff. Are there moments where you look at a market failure that philanthropy is addressing and reflect on the irony of accumulated wealth being a potential application to that market failure? Um, and then the only other thing that's running around in my head is what you started you were so you put it so well at the start of this conversation around the nuances of the philanthropy you work on has a certain value, set around a more progressive future, but there are people out there spending their accumulated wealth to try and let's be frank block the progress that you want to see. So sorry, I've asked at least four questions there and it's our last question, virtually. So I'm so sorry, but what do you think so?
Speaker 4:where philanthropy belongs is actually in all those spaces that you mentioned, and it is very active in all those spaces. There is philanthropy that supports law reform. There is philanthropy that supports changing maybe not norms, because changing. Nobody can change norms right. Only people can decide that the norm is changing when it's not serving their purpose anymore. But what you try to do is promote better outcomes so that people believe that a new path is possible, that a better outcome is possible and that perhaps an older norm wasn't leading to a desired outcome and that a different norm will lead to a better outcome. So these are just to clarify. There's different kinds of philanthropy and different kinds of philanthropists, and they're thankfully working in a whole broad field of this.
Speaker 4:That doesn't mean that a majority of philanthropy goes to what we call systems change, and I think that's what you're alluding to is. We are sometimes seeing a lot of funding on the outcome of the symptom rather than the root cause, and this approach to changing the system is really important. Yet I've had a philanthropist come to me, someone I really admire and just am so in awe of the things that he's done with his philanthropy. He's established two foundations, neither of which he'll ever see, maybe make a very specific outcome in his lifetime, and he's now 80. He said to me Fides, please design for me a program where I can at least see actual change in someone's life before I leave this planet. It's a valid request. It's a very valid request because philanthropy is emotional and rational and we have to respect and understand that. Sometimes it's about their parents, their legacies, their families. I meet people in which family is a really important factor that brings families together to give together. So all of this to say is the emotional and the rational will affect the way that the philanthropy is designed and the patient capital that we like to use this term often. Will that capital be patient or will it be a little bit impatient and say I'm going to solve the problems of today? Maybe you'll remember, remember Atlantic philanthropies, very famously known for being what we call a spend down foundation. He wanted all that money spent, by the time you know, in a very set amount of time. It wasn't supposed to go on in perpetuity.
Speaker 4:So you know, we just we enjoy the diversity of philanthropy and what we do is we try to make the best of it and we try to bring as much progressive philanthropy to the stage as we can. But let's be honest there's different political views, different ideological views, different value sets in this world. We cannot all be the same person in the same spirit. That's just never going to happen. So we just do our best to work with what we have when it comes to market failures, government failures, state failures.
Speaker 4:At the end of the day, we also see failure everywhere around us and what we try to do there is or maybe failure isn't even the right word. It's maybe more about the paradox, right, that we're living in in a sense, or sometimes even the hypocrisy of it all. And you know you are faced with a lot of this when you work in civil society and philanthropy. You know you're very well aware that sometimes these massive endowments that are bringing the returns that foundations use to make grants with are actually invested in sectors that are very bad for the planet, right. But there's good news of foundations being more woke, being more divesting from these sectors and making that effort. And I think, in general, we have more awareness about this than we used to.
Speaker 4:And I think, to bring in a little bit of the finance angle of this, because wealth and philanthropy are so connected that I have a tendency to be close to finance communities because that's where a lot of wealth is generated, and so I have a way of explaining philanthropy to finance professionals in a kind of buy side, sell side manner.
Speaker 4:So, bringing that all together ESG important for your sustainability issues, your podcasts and all the work that you're doing I think it's had a very important impact and I hope that that impact can continue in terms of creating a more common language and understanding framework. I think CSR kind of fell short. It was what it was for the time that we had it, but now we have ESG and I think we can do more with that, because it focuses on the way money is invested and also the way that it's spent, and a philanthropist with a significant amount of wealth or any kind of interest in finance and knowledge of finance is going to know that those concepts need to kind of translate into the philanthropy in the world that they're trying to build.
Speaker 2:I really want to go very deep in the framing part of this. How do we frame the general values of this? How do we create a shared vision and a shared vocabulary for the philanthropists, for the finance community, for the business, but also for the NGOs and the society? And this is so, so, so interesting. But I'm sorry we ran out of time so we have to wrap this up, but please promise me that we're going to do another session going deep into the contextual frame of this. I'd be more than happy to. Our final question is here. Our network is ironically called Do Not Smile, because we need to make the sustainability a subject that brings happiness into the world. British humor, as you said. So what object, place or person always makes you smile?
Speaker 4:Ah, always makes me smile. Honestly, this is going to sound very rehearsed and scripted, but my work is so inspiring and I mean I don't know if you've noticed, but I've been smiling this whole time, right when you can feel it in the way that I'm speaking. I mean there's a smile on my face, even if I'm talking about issues that are really challenging and sometimes heartbreaking and the injustice just kind of, you know, finishes your spirit. My work makes me smile, this purpose makes me smile and I feel really grateful to have it in my life. Inspiration makes me smile, let's put it that way.
Speaker 3:Well, we're all smiling now, Felice, it's the whole beaming Podcast. Listeners will have to imagine three smiles on a screen blazing away. It's been so wonderful talking to you, felice, and, as Damla said, we could go deep into some of this because there's so much more to talk about, but sadly we'll have to wrap it up. So over to you, tamla.
Speaker 2:So thanks to everyone who has listened to our Good Guys podcast, brought to you by the Do Not Smile network of agencies.
Speaker 3:And make sure you listen to future episodes, where we'll be talking to more amazing people like Felice about how we can work together to create a more sustainable future. So, felice Tamla, see you soon.
Speaker 4:Bye. Thank you, bye, the DNS Network.
