The Reckoning of Philanthropy
By Hilary Hamm
Similar to how one popular dating app is designed to be deleted, I am hopeful that philanthropy can precipitate its own demise. In the current state, philanthropy is vital to funding initiatives that the public sector deems too risky. But what if our systems functioned so well that philanthropy was no longer needed? Could philanthropy catalyze systems change to make its utility obsolete? These are some of the questions that inform my current approach to giving.
At a young age, my parents instilled in me a deep awareness of the access and power bought by capital accumulation. My dad is from a family of sharecroppers who were rich in children but poor in every other measure. The last child of 14, he grew up sharing a single bedroom with his parents and siblings. At the age of 6, he began to work with his family picking cotton to make ends meet. My mom did not endure the same degree of financial hardship as my dad, but she grew up in the thick of the Bible Belt during the civil rights movement. Her mother veiled her Jewish faith in order to fit in among those of the dominant Christian belief, and she witnessed the daily exclusionary practices aimed at her Black best friend, Mildred. These stories, among others, made me acutely aware of the unique privilege of my situation.
Throughout my childhood, my mom would regularly ask my sister and me if a single sperm should dictate the path of someone’s life, to which we would obediently answer “no,” not quite understanding what a sperm was at the time. She explained that where you were born and to whom you were born were chance events, and wealth was not tied to worth. Many years later, I can confidently say my answer is still “no.” Yet, in most cases, where you start in life is the biggest determining factor for your life trajectory.
Our capitalist system is designed to benefit the lucky few “sperm lottery winners,” and it leaves the rest with little hope for social mobility. As socioeconomic inequality worsens, incomes stagnate, and the wealth gap grows, I believe philanthropy should be aimed at the system that enables it. My giving philosophy is centered around the question of, “how can my own wealth be used to create systemic change so that everyone has a fair shot?”
In 2016, I joined Maverick Collective by PSI (Population Services International), a community of women philanthropists making catalytic investments in health and reproductive rights. In our first conversation, they asked me—a then 23-year old—which areas of their work I was most interested in funding. This question caught me off-guard. How could I know where resources would be best spent? I barely knew how to survive outside of Hanover, NH. Instead, I asked them where they needed funding, and we started to discuss how declining international development funds were beginning to impact their ability to provide life-saving sexual and reproductive health (SRH) products in places like East Africa. They pitched me on their goal of creating a social enterprise to deliver these services in a manner that does not rely on donor dollars. I was sold. The whims of donors and grant availability should not dictate the health outcomes of those overseas, I thought.
Over the next four years, I learned alongside PSI how to create a social enterprise that meets the SRH needs of women and girls at little cost to the customer while sustaining the business. Since our conversation in 2016, Maverick Collective has reimagined its donor-recipient model—now placing the recipients at the center of the decision-making process.
More recently, the racial reckonings and public health crises over the past year have brought to the forefront many of the institutional barriers that prevent systemic change from taking place. Not shockingly, these barriers are present in the institution of philanthropy, too. A New York Times article outlined some of these barriers, citing that in 2016, only 0.6 percent of foundation giving was targeted at women of color. Individual giving was not much better. On top of this, philanthropy is overwhelmingly controlled by white donors and staff, so money is circulating from white people to other white people.
As a direct response to this, my sister, my mother, and I brainstormed how we could apply a racial justice lens to our family foundation’s work. The foundation works intricately in the Oklahoma criminal justice system, a system that overwhelmingly targets Black individuals by imprisoning more Black people per capita than nearly anywhere else in the US. Policy measures are needed to change institutional barriers that lead to this racial disparity, but reinvestment in the Black community is also needed. With this in mind, we created the OKC Black Justice Fund to connect donors to Black community leaders around the goals of: 1) generating research to determine the current state of racial equity in OKC; 2) advancing economic and leadership development in historically under-resourced communities; 3) supporting partnerships between law enforcement and the Black community and 4) implementing community-led policing reforms.
After providing a $150,000 donation match to the funds we raised, we removed ourselves and let the Committee (composed of local donors and Black leaders) independently evaluate how to advance racial equity and justice around these parameters. They chose to disburse the funds to 17 different organizations, all led by Black individuals. One of the critical lessons this taught me is that the people who are recipients of funding—as experts in their lived experiences and the systems they reside in—are often better placed to make funding decisions than removed donors and foundation staff.
While these examples alone will not close the wealth gap and spell the end for philanthropy (real policy change is needed for that), I believe they move the needle toward a decolonized institution of philanthropy that has the power to redistribute wealth through systemic change, thus moving towards a more equitable future.
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This exclusive essay is part of a series between The Conscious Investor and The Maverick Collective by PSI. To learn more about The Maverick Collective click here.
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Hilary Hamm believes that long-lasting social impact requires cross-sector collaboration. Through this lens, Hamm has partnered with Population Services International to create a social enterprise that delivers affordable access to family planning methods across East Africa. Previously, she was a Partnership Development Associate at Concordia, where she brokered partnerships to address global challenges such as labor trafficking and food sustainability. In 2020, she graduated with her Master’s in Public Policy and Administration from Columbia SIPA and worked for the Biden Campaign as a Field Organizer in Colorado, helping to flip a Senate seat. She received her BA from Dartmouth College in Geography, International Studies, and French.
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