How can philanthropy fund narrative power at scale?

Does philanthropy have a scarcity mindset that is holding us back from transformative change? This is one of several questions we explored at the recent Philea Forum on how philanthropy can fund narrative power at scale.

As a member of the communications professional network at Philea, when we were asked to develop a session at this year’s forum, we decided to focus on funding narrative power at scale in order to demystify a popular yet frequently misunderstood topic in the philanthropic sector: narrative change.

The session attracted more than a hundred participants and featured Isabel Crabtree-Condor (Oxfam Novib), Abi Knipe (Global Narrative Hive and Funders Initiative for Civil Society), Chiara K. Cattaneo (Elemental), and Mandy Van Deven (Both/And Solutions and Elemental),who provided valuable insights and practical guidance on how to effectively resource narrative strategies.

Isabel Crabtree-Condor

Beginning with a practitioner perspective, I asked Isabel: how have you used narrative strategies in your work?

Isabel: "I see narrative as a powerful and moving system of stories, which we are part of, that helps us make sense of the world. We reinforce, challenge, or transform narratives in our work, our lives, and how we show up in the world - shaping narratives by what we say and what we do.

"Looking at narratives through a power lens is helpful. Doing so, we see that a web of stories - made by us - is holding in place ideas of what is acceptable and possible. As narrative practitioners, our interventions need to be diverse to unpick those webs and weave new ones around the solutions and the world we want. Who gets to dream, and whose imagination gets to shape the future and the stories that bring it into being, is a question of power and privilege.

"The complexity of the world calls us to move beyond single issue analysis and solutions. This work must move beyond the output of a 'new narrative', beyond one campaign, one organisation, or one funder. It requires intersectional collaboration to be the starting point, not the end goal."

Abi Knipe

Since we know that no single campaign, organization, or even movement can create narrative change on its own, and that collaboration is key for scaling narrative change, I asked Abi to share: how does the Global Narrative Hive play a role in building a narrative ecosystem across issues, identities, and places?

Abi: "We’re seeing some of the narrative infrastructure that philanthropy needs to support. Too often, people aren’t aware of what’s going on elsewhere in the ecosystem – because we are siloed by movements, language, geography, and even by the tools we use to approach narrative change. And it can be hard to bridge those gaps, especially when so many of the tools and research are only produced in English or when narrative work is better resourced in some parts of the world than others.

"The Hive is working to connect activists, communications, and cultural workers, with a particular focus on bringing people together across movements and geographies. Working collectively takes time and continuous resources in order for narrative workers to come together to build trust and meaningful relationships that lay the groundwork for effective efforts that are aligned and reinforced by each other.

"The Hive’s small team works in two ways: curating spaces where relationships and shared strategies can develop and resourcing the vital administrative work that underpins collaboration – translation, travel coordination – and enables people to develop collective narrative strategies."

Chiara Cattaneo

To illuminate the connection between narrative and the Forum theme of 'trust and philanthropy', I asked Chiara to explain: why is trust important for European funders that support groups that promote narrative change, especially in the migration space?

Chiara: "The dominant narrative on migration describes it as a problem, a flux, a crisis, a threat, and through a dehumanising lens of pain and suffering. This framing has very concrete consequences that lead to emergency responses, policies, and a lack of trust in and suspicion between entire groups of people.

"Philanthropy has the opportunity to intentionally sustain a more generative narrative of migration; to shed a light on the beauty, the joy, and the power of people on the move; to create space for migrants’ voices and for the richness of their identities; and to trust their capacity and legitimacy to bring about positive changes for the benefit of the whole society.

We need philanthropy to recognise its current power and its full potential in the narrative space by contributing resources to a vision of a collective future we all care about and nurturing this vision of the future in the present through concrete actions. Some of those actions include: working across silos, uplifting and funding narrative change efforts and ecosystems, sharing risk, allowing uncertainty, and resourcing adequately and consistently the individuals and organisations that are already working in this space."

Mandy Van Deven

Earlier this year, Mandy shared practice insights from four narrative funders (including my Oak Foundation colleague Medina Haeri), and she has conducted research to identify the philanthropic principles and practices that lay the groundwork for successful interventions. I asked her: what is the role of philanthropy in promoting narrative change?

Mandy: "The operational norms of philanthropy reflect and reinforce the very narratives our sector seeks to change, including scarcity, individualism, competition, and presumed expertise.

"All funders can contribute to narrative change, even if they don’t have a grant-making budget to fund that work specifically, by getting involved in learning and practice spaces like Elemental that are doing the work to identify and unravel the myths that dictate how our sector operates.

These myths are standing in the way of more just and transformational possibilities, because when philanthropy invests with short-term, reductive, and reactive thinking that is driven by manufactured scarcity, we are creating a context that sets us all up to fail. But when we identify the narratives that underpin common philanthropic practices and unpack the ways these faulty logics have created habits that don’t actually serve us, it opens up the possibility to adopt a different set of logics and behaviours that allow us to imagine and live into the world we want, and let go of the ways of operating that are not fit for purpose."

Final reflections

I left the session feeling energised. And, I believe all of us left the session feeling a great sense of responsibility to continuously learn, evaluate our own thinking, and come together - across issues - to resource and reinforce narratives that propel our work forward. I hope this will leave us and others inspired for a journey that builds a safer, fairer, and more sustainable world.