Learning to See Philanthropy from the Other Side of the Table

When I decided to undertake a Master’s in Philanthropic Studies at the University of Kent, I did so for a very practical reason.

At the time, I was closely involved with the Hortons Social Purpose Committee, the charitable arm of Hortons Estate Ltd. Hortons Estates is an independent, family-owned, commercial property company based in Birmingham. The committee had been established by the company to help people in Birmingham facing economic, social and personal challenges, and I had become increasingly involved in identifying organisations, undertaking due diligence and helping the committee decide where its funding could make the greatest difference.

I wanted to bring more expertise to that responsibility. If we were going to give substantial sums of money away, I felt we should understand philanthropy properly: not simply as an expression of generosity, but as a discipline in its own right.

What I had not anticipated was quite how much studying philanthropy would change the way I thought about being a funder.

Crossing to the other side of the table

One of the most influential parts of my studies was the fundraising module from Year 1, taught by ‘philanthropy force of nature’ Professor Beth Breeze.

Beth brought a perspective to fundraising that particularly resonated with me. Before becoming an academic she had herself worked as a charity fundraiser, and much of her subsequent research has sought to improve our understanding of those who give and those who ask. Kent’s fundraising teaching similarly emphasises fundraising as a complex practice involving relationships, organisational culture, ethics and the needs of multiple stakeholders.

Until then, much of my practical experience had naturally been from the funder’s side of the table. I was thinking about questions such as: Is this organisation well governed? Are its finances sound? Will this grant create impact?

The course encouraged me to cross the table and consider another set of questions.

What is it actually like to be the person asking us for this money? How much time has gone into finding an appropriate funder, preparing the application and answering our questions? What happens if we fund a project but refuse to fund the people needed to deliver it? And what does it do to a charity when it has to repeat this process year after year, never knowing whether the funding on which its work depends will continue?

That change in perspective was significant.

Fundraising is difficult. Good causes do not automatically attract sufficient money simply because their work is worthwhile. As Beth argued so strongly, charities need money to turn their missions into practice - including money for staff, equipment, training and the everyday costs that allow an organisation to function. Competition for voluntary income only intensifies that challenge.

It made me increasingly interested not simply in who we funded at Hortons, but how we funded them.

The problem with the word “overhead”

That question led me to research what is known as the nonprofit starvation cycle.

First articulated by Gregory & Howard in 2009, the starvation cycle describes a damaging pattern in which funders hold unrealistic expectations about how little charities ought to spend on overheads. Charities, knowing those expectations exist, feel pressure to suppress or understate their true indirect costs and underinvest in their own organisations. That behaviour then reinforces the funder’s original belief that effective charities ought to operate with exceptionally low overheads; and the cycle begins again.

The result can be an organisation expected to achieve more and more while being denied the resources required to remain healthy.

The research I undertook at Kent brought home the potential consequences: chronic underinvestment in infrastructure can ultimately damage a nonprofit’s ability to deliver its programmes at all.

This challenged an assumption that remains surprisingly persistent in philanthropy: that spending on the charitable activity itself is inherently “good”, while spending on administration, salaries, rent, technology, fundraising or organisational development is somehow less worthy.

But charities cannot operate without people. People need salaries. Organisations need premises, systems, financial management and leadership.

These are not unfortunate costs sitting alongside the mission.

They are what make the mission possible.

Later work on “pay-what-it-takes” philanthropy (Eckhart-Queenan et al., 2016) has made a similar argument: rather than imposing an arbitrary idea of an acceptable overhead, funders should understand what it genuinely costs a particular organisation to create the impact both parties want to achieve.

From academic theory to grantmaking practice

For me, this could not remain an interesting piece of academic research.

I took the nonprofit starvation cycle back to the Hortons Social Purpose Committee and presented my findings. We discussed what it meant for our own behaviour as a grantmaker and, importantly, used this research to inform our approach going forward.

Our grantmaking policy became more open to funding salaries and rent. We also became more conscious of the value of unrestricted funding, giving trusted organisations greater freedom to decide where money is most needed rather than assuming that the funder invariably knows best.

There is an emerging evidence base behind this approach. Research by Wiepking & de Wit (2024) suggests that unrestricted funding may support capacities ranging from financial and staff management to strategic planning, adaptability, innovation and an organisation’s ability to remain focused on its mission. Their work draws in part on the experiences of grantees receiving substantial multi-year unrestricted funding.

That combination is important to me: adequate funding, greater flexibility and, where possible, longer-term commitment.

A multi-year pledge gives a charity something that another succession of short grants cannot: a degree of certainty. Unrestricted funding acknowledges that those running an effective charity are often better placed than the donor to know where the next pound is most useful. Funding legitimate overheads recognises that impact has a real cost.

None of this means abandoning due diligence.

Quite the opposite.

During my time with the Hortons Social Purpose Committee, I managed the grant process from identifying potential charities through governance, financial and safeguarding checks to visits and ongoing relationships with the organisations we supported.

The lesson I took from that experience is that due diligence should give a funder the confidence to fund well, rather than become an obstacle course through which a charity must pass.

Once you have satisfied yourself that an organisation is well led, responsible and capable of delivering, there is a powerful argument for trusting it.

Philanthropy is a relationship

There was another lesson from the fundraising module that has stayed with me: funding is ultimately relational. This was reinforced through the invaluable teaching of Emma Beeston, an independent philanthropy advisor, and co-writer of the go-to book on the subject ‘Advising Philanthropists: Principles and Practice’ (now on its second reprint), with Beth Breeze. Emma convened a later module on the course titled ‘Advising Donors’, and made me realise two key things. Firstly, my role in the Hortons Social Purpose Committee was essentially a philanthropy advisor position, I just hadn’t codified that. Secondly, she made the persuasive case that good philanthropy advice is not primarily about telling donors where to give, it is about helping them become more thoughtful, intentional and responsible in their generosity.

A grant is a financial transaction, but philanthropy should be more than that.

Charities invest considerable effort in finding funders, making approaches, submitting applications, reporting and maintaining relationships. Funders therefore need to recognise the imbalance inherent in that relationship. We control a resource that the organisation needs.

That places a responsibility on us to be clear, proportionate and respectful.

It also means thinking beyond the moment at which a cheque is written.

Some of the most valuable parts of my work at Hortons involved visiting organisations, meeting the people doing the work and maintaining relationships afterwards. An application can tell you a great deal, but it cannot tell you everything. The most impressive organisations are not necessarily those able to produce the glossiest proposal. Often, they are those whose leadership understands its community deeply, whose finances are candid rather than cosmetically perfect, and whose impact becomes unmistakable when you see the work for yourself.

That is why I increasingly came to see good grantmaking not as a process of controlling charities, but of finding good organisations, building confidence in them and creating the conditions in which they can succeed.

Taking those lessons forward

Looking back, I began the Master’s because I wanted to add expertise to the work I was already doing at the Hortons Social Purpose Committee.

It achieved that. But it did something more important too.

It changed my perspective.

I was encouraged to understand the experience of the fundraiser as well as the donor. Researching the nonprofit starvation cycle forced me to question conventional attitudes towards overheads. Studying unrestricted and multi-year funding made me think harder about trust, power and what charities genuinely need from those who support them.

Most importantly, those ideas moved beyond the classroom. They influenced real grantmaking decisions and helped change our policy.

Simon Gulliford, who chairs the Hortons Social Purpose Committee, recently reflected that my postgraduate study had made a significant contribution to the committee’s work. I value that observation because applying what I was learning was precisely why I embarked upon the course in the first place.

Today, as I begin a new chapter advising others on philanthropy alongside two colleagues from that same Master’s course, those lessons come with me.

We want to help donors give thoughtfully and confidently. We believe in supporting meaningful change, with clear strategy and rigorous decision-making. But we also believe good philanthropy requires something else: an understanding of what life looks like on both sides of the funding table.

For me, progressive grantmaking means being willing to fund the real cost of good work. It means recognising salaries and overheads as essential rather than embarrassing. It means considering unrestricted and multi-year support where appropriate. It means reducing unnecessary burdens on charities and building relationships founded on trust.

Above all, it means remembering that the objective of grantmaking is not to make the funder look efficient. It is to help good organisations become stronger, more resilient and better able to achieve their mission.

That is the grantmaker I became through my time at Hortons and my studies at Kent. And it is that approach to philanthropy that I carry into our advisory work today.

If you’d like to talk about how your own giving could be more thoughtful and confident, get in touch.