Christa Lane Hooper, Director for Geneva Global, shares her experiences and learnings after visiting Oxford around the buzz of the Skoll World Forum.

It was my first time traveling to Oxford — let alone my first time experiencing the buzz and serendipity that occurs around the Skoll World Forum. I was excited to participate in the two parallel conferences — The Sidebar and Marmalade — and to reconnect with familiar faces and meet new folks.

The added bonus that I had no idea would happen: I more than doubled my average step count while navigating the historic streets of Oxford shuttling between mixers, happy hours, panel sessions, participatory small group sessions, lunches, dinners, and many teas. I planned to attend a walking tour, but that proved unnecessary with all the exploration that naturally occurs as you buzz around the city.

Co-Hosting our Session: “Philanthropy at the Crossroads”
We were quite looking forward to Thursday, when we asked many peers in the sector as well as partners and clients to attend our co-hosted session “Philanthropy at the Crossroads: Navigating Governance, Equity, & Democracy in Uncertain Times.” Knowing that most folks are double or triple booked with sessions, we weren’t sure how many would be able to come and were pleased when at least 50 of the folks we invited came.

Setting the Stage
We wanted to focus on building connections across attendees and act as a break from the norm of panels where the attendees are being spoken to only. We know time is very valuable and if folks chose to spend it with us, we were hoping they’d walk away with a kernel of a new idea or a new connection that might spark a collaboration down the road. There are such brilliant and interesting humans in the room together and we didn’t want the time to go to waste while they just listened when they could also be in dialogue with others and co-creating a new future vision together.

After our host, Anna Petherick from the Blavatnik School of Government, welcomed everyone to the space, I set the intention for our time so folks knew our goal was to create more connections and build relationships, while also going deep in small groups on three pertinent topics to uncover ways to meet the polycrisis moment. Each of our co-hosts shared about their work and one area that they’d like to focus their energy on right now in this moment — whether exploring mergers and acquisitions in the social impact sector, working with donors to unlock more support to organizations as cuts to bilateral development assistance continue, or encouraging coalitions of “less usual suspects” to work together to protect and expand crucial work in the years to come.

Going Deeper
After that we spread into three spaces in the room to go deeper, and we had three prompting questions:

1) How can we leverage this moment to think beyond organizational survival, and think collaboratively about how to motivate donors and funders to impact the most change?

2) How can we work to build internal resilience within our organizations/teams?

3) How can we collectively create and invest in a healthy democracy where government, civil society, and social impact organizations can collaborate, function, and thrive?

While the space we were in to share breakfast and connect was beautiful, it was also a cacophony of sounds with such a large group, and it wasn’t conducive for groups of 10 + to gather and discuss. As a facilitator who likes to have a road map and think of the different routes I might need to take based on what is happening in the room, it was a moment where I couldn’t help but think, what next? Will this have the outcomes we want and desire if I only go with the flow or should I be more active in creating space for dialogue? While many folks at the other two questions seemed to be engaging one on one or in smaller groups of four to five folks, the energy in my group felt different. People had a real desire to go deep on the issue and work together; after some discomfort to figure out how we could do that in the space, our group mostly came to consensus to go outside the room and take over some tables and chairs to hear each other and dialogue.

I was so focused on shifting to meet the group’s needs and my desire to capture the thoughts shared that I didn’t do my usual community agreements co-creation to design guidelines and ways to engage in the conversation (for the folks that know me, they know, for better or worse, how much I love this process to be a foundation before generative discussions and time together, e.g. know when to step back and step up, actively listen, etc. 😊). Despite that, the group found ways to hold each other accountable — when only two or three voices were taking up the most space, a couple folks piped up to ask for them to allow others to speak, and by the end of the dialogue, almost everyone had contributed to the conversation.

Leaning into Moments of Discomfort
There was definitely tension in the space at moments when folks disagreed on the best approach for philanthropy at this moment — and frankly, I found that discomfort to be a relief that real conversations and ideas were being exchanged. I have a deeply held belief that most people at their core hold the same values and largely disagree on the ways to manifest those values and put them into action; I suppose it is that belief that led me to the field of international peace and conflict resolution. There was a beauty to watching the conversation and dialogue unfold; people disagreed, built upon each other’s ideas and thoughts, and then posed new questions to the group to bring the discussion a level deeper.

Funders in the Room: An Opportunity for Real-Time Feedback
We had a representative from Skoll Foundation there who was present after the organization had just announced its plans to increase giving to its partners by 30% in 2025. As one of the people responsible for implementing this new fund, they asked the group: what do you [as recipient organizations] need in this moment from funders? In addition to more funding, what would be helpful for you? To be able to input this strategy and thinking so quickly and organically after the announcement the night before felt like a magical moment for all those present and it quickly generated more dialogue.

The initial ideas of general operating support (and more of it) evolved to ideas of increased pro-bono legal support, streamlined backend services so organizations could focus more on their programmatic work than their operational work, time for leaders to gather and find ways to collaborate, and potentially learn from ideas for mergers and acquisitions.

Encouraging True Collaboration
The group landed on the idea that funders need to influence other funders to collaborate and organize amongst their peers. Hali Lee posed the question rooted in her new book “The Big We”: What can we do to decentralize bigger donors (aka Big Phil) in this moment? Inspired by others’ contributions, I offered to the group the idea of donor collaboratives to streamline the grant recipient organization experience. It would streamline the need to fundraise from multiple individual donors,  the experience of undergoing duplicative due diligence processes and reporting back to funders, and managing multiple ongoing donor relationships. Someone quipped: That’s not how donor collaboratives are — they’re more onerous, requiring more reports and donors to manage.

That’s when I realized that maybe the perspective I bring from being at Geneva Global for almost 12 years might be more unique than I knew. In partnership with clients, we’ve incubated and launched multiple collaboratives over the years focused on eliminating neglected tropical diseases (The END Fund), ending modern-day human trafficking and slavery, stopping child marriage globally (Girls First Fund), and educating out-of-school children. Functionally our intermediary role on these funds aims to reduce the burden on grant recipient organizations as well as to individual donors and foundations — instead of managing many relationships and duplicating efforts, we streamline the due diligence, reporting, grantmaking, and donor relationship management, and we act as the donor convener and stakeholder negotiator — while multiplying the impact of the donors’ collective funding. Often there is a timeline for these funds, after the initial one to two years of set up, that then makes most sense for them to spin out as their own organization or fiscally sponsored project.

A couple colleagues in this dialogue also warned of collaboration theatre: Many nonprofits feel that they must demonstrate collaboration to funders when in reality they still often feel like competitors fighting over the same small pool of donors. The group emphasized that if the donors and funders request or require collaboration, allow the organizations to make it their own to see where and if there are natural places for collaboration versus forcing it as an outcome. This is where someone suggested that donors could fund the convening space across organizations to find these points of intersection and help facilitate connection between organizations who can learn from one another.

Wrapping Up Our Session
We perhaps ended rather unceremoniously after the generative dialogue to join the rest of the groups as they wrapped up and shared their reflections. My colleague Móira brought everyone back together (with the help of our co-hosts’ vocals) to share what she heard in different group discussions. She reflected on the sheer diversity of perspectives in the room and the chance to be in conversation with peers from different corners of philanthropy, civil society, academia, and folks working with government — a chance to reach unlikely partners in unusual times, as shared by Anna Petherick and Aiden Eyakuze at the start of the session.

A few participants volunteered their takeaways, noting the palpable energy of folks in the room looking to tackle the most challenging of problems in new ways, inspiring stories of successful collaboration, and an anecdote of working with community members whose stories remind us to shift our own perspectives. Móira closed the session encouraging folks to connect with someone they met today, to think of one another as we continue finding pathways forward, and to keep helping each other connect the dots. So, while our one-and-a-half-hour session didn’t solve all the challenges in the sector, we’re hopeful that the meaningful connections made, and deeper generative dialogues, might plant some future seeds for ways to work together and collectively strengthen our sector.

And we know this work is never a solo effort. We’re very grateful to our co-hosts and partners who collaborated to bring this unique group of folks together. A big thanks to all our co-organizing partners — Blavatnik School of Government, Accountability Lab, IREX/Development Gateway, and Open Government Partnership — you were a pleasure to partner with!

Perspectives from Our Colleagues
“For me, selfishly, the gathering was a great chance to catch up with many professional collaborators and partners I’ve known for years or even decades. While Zoom is a helpful tool, nothing beats an in-person catch up, even if it’s briefly trading tidbits and stories over coffee and a croissant. These in-person touchpoints are indeed a privilege — not everyone can afford to travel to an event like Skoll World Forum — and they reminded me how important personal connections are to the work of social change. Strategies, plans, and resources all matter… but so does personal trust in your partners. It’s hard to establish or sustain that solely through grant proposals and strategy documents; sometimes, you need to do it over a dinner or a coffee.” — Nathaniel Heller, Executive Vice President, Global Impact Ventures

“In recent years, side events at Skoll have taken center stage. With Marmalade and The Sidebar’s expansion, there are essentially three conferences simultaneously occurring in Oxford, offering a free, no-invite option for more colleagues in the sector to participate. This leads to an inspiring, collaborative week and opens the door to a wider range of organizations, philanthropists, and funders to attend. This diversity of thought certainly helped contribute to the success of our networking breakfast. Even if your organization hasn’t been invited to attend Skoll, the side conversations, connections, and events are well worth heading to Oxford next year.” — Matt Gembecki, Managing Director, Global Impact

“It took one day for me to believe that ‘Skoll magic’ is real. As a first timer, I didn’t expect how often I’d serendipitously run into colleagues and friends on the streets of Oxford, the pure joy of witnessing reunions between complete strangers, nor how much the excitement from in-person catch ups would stick with me weeks later. Just as common as unexpected run-ins was the recurring theme of so many conversations: amidst the gravity of a polycrisis, asking each other, “Now what? How?” There was so much urgent curiosity behind peers wanting to listen to and learn from one another and exchange ideas. At our event, we had the privilege of listening to diverse perspectives from so many corners of civil society. Something I’m taking with me is the passion, curiosity, honest exchange, and creativity I saw in the room that day among people sitting together looking to figure out pathways forward.” — Móira Cahill, Senior Philanthropy Advisor