Reconciling the What with the How: Dialogue Series with Philanthropic Leaders – Part 2
The dialogue series „Reconciling the What with the How: Self-Reflective Conversations with Philanthropic Leaders“ is part of the Future-Proof Funding Initiative. In the second interview of the series, Katherine Milligan sits down with Cheikh Mbacke Gueye, CEO of the Medicor Foundation.
Katherine Milligan: Our hope with this dialogue series is to say some of the things that need to be said in philanthropy – to give voice to the things we see and experience but rarely name. Of course, what we each see and experience depends on the lenses and perspectives we bring to the work. So let’s start there. What shapes your perspective?
Cheikh Mbacke Gueye: I draw mainly from three (re)sources. First: being born and raised in Senegal in a family living in disadvantaged conditions, I can relate firsthand to those affected by poverty. As a kid, I can hardly remember days when I was 100% sure I would have something to eat when I came home from school.
Second: as a philosopher by training, I try to be reflective. I tend to question everything and articulate alternatives. This helps me challenge some certainties in philanthropy.
Third: relying on these two (re)sources, I fulfil my role CEO of European foundation supporting projects in 30 countries around the globe, with a lot of self-examination and humility.
KM: Drawing on those perspectives, how would you characterise the dissonance in philanthropy? How do you experience the lack of coherence or the tension between what we espouse and how we behave as a sector?
CMG: Historically, our sector has held controversial attitudes and disputable narratives about helping and saving “the others” who cannot think and do on their own. It’s we who bring them the ideas and build their capacities. Although that worldview has been mostly discredited long ago, the practices still persist. That’s a dissonance I continue to experience.
Another discrepancy is the narrative most foundations tell around impact, particularly the unquestioned tendency to attribute the impacts of the projects we support to ourselves. A bit of humility and distance is needed.
But maybe the biggest tension I see in the social sector is that organizations sometimes latch onto buzzwords like collaboration and empowerment without actually doing the internal work that is needed.
KM: So many social change leaders will deeply resonate with everything you just named. Let’s dig deeper on your last point about doing the internal work that is needed. What does that internal work look like at Medicor Foundation?
CMG: That internal work starts with asking about the why.
We’re sometimes so busy following our processes and making sure we do things right. But we should be constantly asking ourselves: are we doing the right thing?
The new funding landscape offers an opportunity to critically assess and reflect on our own work. How can we achieve our objectives more efficiently while staying true to the “raison d’être” of our foundation? Creating a safe and empowering place for our colleagues and partners to contribute to this journey is crucial.
KM: How do you create that level of safety so that your colleagues and partners can express what isn’t working? Because it’s legitimate to fear reprisal or fear that speaking up could jeopardise future funding.
CMG: We build trust and try to view our relationship with our partners at eye level. That means disclosing as much as we can about ourselves and talking about the things that do not work on our end as well. Showing vulnerability is essential.
For example, we had a case where something went wrong and it was not the partner’s fault; it was ours. I had to look our partners in the eyes and say: ‘Sorry, that was our mistake. We will do our best moving forward.’
In that same spirit, I tell our partners we want them to report on what’s not working. It won’t negatively impact our relationship. Quite the contrary – it strengthens trust.
Telling the true story of project implementation fosters mutual learning on all sides.
This focus on honest feedback and mutual learning echoes the Future-Proof Funding Initiative’s Guiding Principles – especially Principle 2: „We strive to learn“. Want to know more? Discover all 5 Guiding Principles here.
KM: That’s such an important message, because so many non-profits are afraid that disclosing failure will preclude future funding. On the contrary – it builds trust, as you said. But you have to be the first mover, right? And create the space for them to meet you halfway.
CMG: Exactly. If you don’t do it as the funder, then it’s hardly going to happen because of the existing power imbalance. Like it or not, donors do hold some power. If there are no funds, projects may not be implemented, right? So breaking down those walls has to start with you as the funder.
My daily reflection is: as donors, how do we use our power? At the end of the day, shifting power is actually about creating space for voice and agency to enable co-creation.
KM: That’s such an important practice. A daily reflection on how to exercise our power is essential to bring it into our conscious awareness – and it’s precisely our conscious awareness that helps us use whatever power we hold with humility and respect.
One of the places the doer-donor power imbalance manifests is in measurement, evaluation, and learning (MEL). My sense is more philanthropy leaders are openly talking about the inherent tension between learning and control. What’s your view of impact measurement?
CMG: What I see is a sort of tyranny of numbers: we reached a million lives. We helped a hundred kids go to school. It’s tangible, but that is not the same thing as evidence. What happens to those kids afterwards? What is the medium-term and long-term impact? Numbers alone do not tell the whole story!
At Medicor Foundation, we are constantly working to reconcile the impact measurement logic of our partner organizations with our own impact logic. In doing that, we prioritise dialogue with our partners so it doesn’t become an artificial box-ticking exercise.
For example, we might have internal indicators that our partners aren’t even measuring. Do we require them to add new indicators? Do we squeeze the numbers they’re tracking into the indicators we’re tracking in our internal system? Only through dialogue can our respective impact measurement frameworks be reconciled.
KM: The “tyranny of numbers” – I love that. It’s so true, and it will ring true to many doers and donors. When I teach impact measurement to graduate students, we pull apart the numbers and think critically about what those metrics tell us about whether sustained change is happening. Often the figures are meaningless, but it’s like an impact arms race and everyone loves big numbers.
CMG: Yes, because numbers are concrete in some way. But that’s not the same thing as proof of impact.
KM: Let’s talk about the challenges of the new reality. What are you seeing?
CMG: It’s very hard times we are in. Budgets are being cut across the board. People come up to us who are desperate to find funding to continue their work. And too many times we have to say no, because our grant budget simply can’t attend to all of those needs.
It keeps me up at night because the needs are immense, and that is a horrible feeling. At a personal level, we need to find ways to deal with those feelings.
KM: You are naming something many philanthropy leaders are experiencing and feeling right now: we can’t attend to all of the needs, and the funding cuts and program closures are breaking our hearts too. Yet because we are in a privileged position, there’s a general reluctance to acknowledge our feelings and name the moral injury and pain and heartbreak we are feeling.
Somehow we have to learn to hold heartbreak and hope side by side. Where do you find hope in these hard times?
CMG: What makes me very hopeful is that we are starting to leave behind a traditional way of thinking about ourselves as philanthropy – the egocentric model with the foundation at the center – to focus on how much impact we could have together.
It’s happening slower than I would like, but it’s happening. We have to keep speaking to each other more, because the time for siloed thinking is over. We must be willing to give up more of our respective kingdoms to join forces. We need a consolidated and coordinated approach to use the best of each of us.
After all, aren’t crises an opportunity – philosophically speaking – to reflect deeply and critically on our being and doing?
The series was initiated by Katherine Milligan, elea fellow at IMD and senior lecturer at the Graduate Institute, and Suba Umathevan, CEO of Drosos Foundation. It is an invitation to a deeper dialogue that gets us closer to the heart of what really matters in philanthropy and what needs to shift.
Read the first interview with Suba Umathevan, CEO of the Drosos Foundation, here.
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