By Avila Kilmurray

Courtesy of www.alliancemagazine.org

‘This is how the verb “to participate” is conjugated – I participate, you participate, they decide.’ This comment relates to international development aid but could be echoed by grant recipients of many philanthropic programmes. Who decides on the allocation of resources and how?

By Suzanne Siskel and Anna-Nanine Pond

Courtesy of www.alliancemagazine.org

How powerful are foundations relative to other actors in society? With few exceptions, foundations and NGOs pale in size, programme scope and budgets beside governments, international development agencies and multinational corporations. Yet, too often, grantmakers act as if the limited transactional clout of giving away money affords them special power. To achieve anything of substance, foundations should consider themselves as actors within an evolving social change ecosystem.

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By Linda Guinee and Barry Knight

Courtesy of www.alliancemagazine.org

The first question is: what is power? The simplest and one of the most effective formulations comes from feminist psychologist Jean Baker Miller, who defines power as ‘the capacity to produce a change’.

Probing deeper, however, reveals a complexity that is hard to fathom. There are many books and articles about what power is, where it comes from, and how it operates. According to earlier conceptions, power is the ability to force people to do something they wouldn’t have done otherwise. This is a ‘coercive’ definition of power that remains at the root of our common vernacular.