I spend my days, and many a night, thinking about what inspires donors, the power of the collective and what it means to work in a field supported by the gifts of others. And in all those hours, spanning days, weeks, months and years, I rarely hear the word “risk.”
And yet, for me, philanthropy, in its most glorious state, is about risk, and especially the kind of risk that brings unanticipated reward.
Poor Risk! Calculated risk. Risky business. Risky behavior. Even risqué.
We shelter its very meaning with modifiers that restrain, and protect us from the menace, the threat that risk seems to mean these days.
Risk can mean loss, of course, yet it also is about taking a chance, taking action, about adventure, change and above all, possibility.
Risk desires. Risk hopes. Risk wants more from each of us than we can give.
So, risk requires that we trust each other, trust the greater society, and indeed trust ourselves as we find a way, together, to create the kind of change that only risk brings.
Foundations can do risk.
Foundations can champion emerging issues and new problems (See Gates and AIDS research!). Foundations can identify and support new and truly innovative solutions that would otherwise flounder (See vaccine development and delivery!). Foundations can support both leaders and institutions (see Kellogg!) and ensure a stronger sector. Foundations can do all this and survive failure, too. Their own and that of others, as long as lessons are learned from failure (see the actions of the Heinz Foundation’s regarding the Pittsburgh public schools).
Foundations embrace and act on risk, take the chance and, in the best examples, inspire the greater reward we all share in.
Individual donors can take risks with great reward, too. Donors, like foundations, learn about what works but trust their own learning and their instincts when it comes to leaders, when it comes to solutions.
Risk in philanthropy is not blind, nor is it calculated. Risk in giving acknowledges the problem, the challenge, and inspires us individually, and at The Women’s Foundation, collectively, to embrace the possibility of change.
We live in a time where risk is discouraged, where impulse is controlled, yet the very spark of possibility that philanthropy invites can only grow to action when risk is invited and accepted as essential to the act of giving.
To give is, at its very essence, to live. And being alive is a risk in and of itself.
