(Illustration by iStock/rudall30)
In the report "Shaping Inclusive Markets" from FSG and The Rockefeller Foundation, I and other authors found that some of the most significant progress in creating sustainable and equitable market systems has come during crises. Amid the responses to COVID-19, there are also opportunities for innovative solutions that can further the vision of equitable societies that serve all of their members. To identify, create, preserve, and augment these steps toward more just systems, civil society must support and expand the efforts beyond the immediate response to this crisis.
Foundations have a particularly important role to play. There are more than 260,000 of them around the world. They command roughly $1.5 trillion in assets and spend more than $150 billion a year, according to the Hauser Institute for Civil Society at Harvard University. At FSG, we have partnered with dozens of foundations that are working toward a more equitable world by changing the practices, regulations, and informal norms that make up complex social systems, from business markets to health care to education. Based on this experience, here are three steps foundations can take to play an important role amid a crisis to bring about lasting, positive change:
Use New Crisis Responses to Reassess Old Systems | To further the long-term goals of equitable and inclusive social systems, foundations need to identify and explore the innovative solutions taken in response to the pandemic that may be worth continuing beyond the end of the crisis.
For example, in most developing countries, the traditional measure of education has been children being present in school rather than the quality of education. The crisis offers a unique opportunity to challenge this belief and reshape education as remote learning replaces physical classrooms. The shift allows people to newly inspect the details of the educational experience to find what works best. Activity-based learning, which has been a common part of remote learning and which FSG has been promoting in India to improve educational outcomes more than rote-based learning, may become a more permanent and greater part of educational experiences after the crisis ends.
Empower Champions | New movements and their champions often come to the fore during a crisis. Identifying and empowering them to talk about longer-term issues and pulling them into an agenda for social change will help foundations strengthen their local alliances. In general, the initial identification of such champions in local systems has been a weak point for foundations that sometimes operate from a great distance. One effective method to find them is to partner with local organizations that can identify local individuals to carry a cause forward. In India, an example is Wadhwani Initiative for Sustainable Healthcare (WISH), which identifies senior leaders and officials in government who are open to changing rules that could significantly improve health outcomes. WISH also seeks out and supports civil servants and technical experts within the health system who are willing to innovate.
Move Quickly | This crisis too shall pass, and the window of opportunity to solidify the changes it has sparked will close. Foundations need to deploy resources and form alliances now, not in weeks or months.
Nothing shows the importance of agility as the crisis itself. A recent study indicated that a three-day delay in introducing social distancing measures in Wuhan could be responsible for the 35 percent increase in the number of cases that occurred outside of the area in late February.
Foundations must realize that this short window of opportunity will not be amenable for multiple approval rounds and the decision-making hierarchy that works in normal times. Empowering teams to make investments, not all of which will be successful, will be a key to success.
Forging Ahead
Getting through major crises like COVID-19 is extraordinarily taxing for a huge array of organizations. Foundations—along with nonprofits, governments, and many others—must address urgent problems within their own ranks and their partners'. At the same time, they cannot simply abandon the long-term goals that are core to their missions—a crisis of course does not make serious inequities suddenly go away. If anything, a crisis exacerbates longstanding social problems, increasing the need for organizations who understand them and know how to respond to them.
By learning from this crisis and others before it, it is my hope that foundations can do more—individually and as an alliance—to identify and prepare themselves and their partners for major threats in the future and their impact on long-term efforts to solve serious social problems. Doing so will help ensure that the opportunities for innovative solutions created by a crisis today become the building blocks of a more just world tomorrow.
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Read more stories by Rishi Agarwal.