(by Flaviano Bianchini)
You probably do not know this, but our Martin is a gaming freak. He loves to play games, and wherever he goes he always brings games with him (I won’t spoil your first meeting with him by telling you which games, because that is what he normally does the first time he meets someone).
Martin wasn’t able to attend the penultimate Leap retreat in Ibiza (I know it sounds weird, but it was off-season in January and we were actually working!). We decided to honour him by creating a new game in his absence, a game that he would have had to play!
Let’s change the scene for a moment. The EDGE conference is one that normally brings together funders and philanthropists from all over the world. The 2025 annual meeting was held in Bogotá, Colombia. This time, they also invited activists and civil society organizations. Martin and I were both supposed to be there representing Leap, so we decided to propose something to the EDGE conference: we would host a game in Martin’s honour! We designed a role-reversal game in which donors become activists and civil society members, and activists become donors and foundation staff members. As simple as that!
We divided people into three groups: first donors (activists in real life), then activists (donors in real life), and the third group were the observers: people taking the role of watching the dynamics and highlighting any contradictions or key findings. After that we assigned participants specific roles and money (from an old Monopoly of my niece, please do not tell her).
There were the huge philanthropic foundations, very bureaucratic; the small progressive foundations, quick and efficient but with little money; the big government funds, with lots of money and their own political agenda; the mid-sized donors, quite progressive but often with quite a narrow scope; the huge private donors that have plenty of money to give but want to avoid having their names attached to any specific political actions, etc.
After a few turns, we gave participants an evaluation form and then we had a 30 minute discussion. The obvious purpose was to flip the script and give people the opportunity to put themselves in the others’ shoes. I will not dig into the dynamics of the game or the purpose of it, but I will share some points of reflection that emerged from the evaluation papers and discussion.
Real-life activists roleplaying funders
- How frustrating it is to represent a foundation, knowing that you have money in your pocket but also having so many pillars to respect; not being able to give the money where you really want to give it.
- Surprised at how different a funder can actually be from its public statements and the real work it does.
- How big foundations and organisations have the power to disrupt a whole process (note: at a certain point during the exercise, we simulated an earthquake in the Philippines, and the Red Cross came in and got a lot of funds for the emergency relief).
- Surprised how strongly a single individual’s character comes into play when it’s about asking for money.
- How it was much more difficult than expected to get the right match between funders and activists.
Real-life funders roleplaying activists
- Surprised that the activists did not unite and join forces to receive funds together (strength in numbers/stronger together).
- How much activists have to adapt to funders’ requests — it’s a bit like wearing a new costume for each interaction with a new funder.
- Feeling frustrated in the program officer role: while you do have the money, you may or may not have trust in the movement. Your main priority is to avoid risks, which is very similar to real life, and very frustrating.
- More frustration with an overall political change that might change everything (note: during the game we also simulated a change of government in Norway, such that the available government funds were not permitted to finance anything that contained the words ‘climate change’).
- Surprised by the extreme competition for funding on the activist side.
- Both sides have their complexities, but the imbalance of power is obvious (and well-known for quite a long time).
- We need more empathy on both sides.
On a personal note, I do think the last comment is one of the most important (which is why I put it at last!). In Leap, we value empathy in an extreme way. How can you pretend to change the world if you cannot feel empathy for others?
In my opinion, a missing bridge between foundations and activists is exactly this lack of empathy. Foundations do not feel empathy with activists who are trying to run their organizations on a shoestring, and who often sacrifice their entire lives to a cause. On the other hand, activists often lack the empathy to understand that being part of a foundation does not necessarily mean being able to do whatever you want with the money, and that there are a lot of constraints and frustrations on the other side, too.
(all photos courtesy of the author)