Ankita Bose and Kelley Buhles reflect on the discussions at Salzburg Global's latest Health and Health Care Innovations session
A relentless challenge remains when investing in community and essential social infrastructure – and that’s the gap between the goals of funders and the needs of communities whom the investments initiatives should most serve.
In June, more than 45 leaders contemplated this challenge at the Salzburg Global program Connecting Capital to Communities: How Investors Harness Financial Markets for Essential Social Infrastructure. Participants explored ways communities around the world are gaining more control over capital, and investors are better integrating the voices of community into regenerative investment decisions. During this group discussion, some of the more challenging nuances of community-led processes were discussed. Fellows named common concerns held about community-led processes, as well as shared examples of practices being used to mitigate those concerns.
Community knows best - or not?
The belief that communities always know what is best for them was challenged during the discussion. As an example, Tee Thomas, former State Water Finance Director at Quantified Ventures, recounted an experience with a US Midwestern community that had a cluster of cancer occurrences in young people that are highly associated with exposure to agricultural chemicals via water, air, and food. While at the funeral of a 21-year-old who died from this aggressive cancer, she noted that many people in attendance were wearing hats or clothing of the local fertilizer distributor. She felt that the community was unable or unwilling to see the impact of the industrial agriculture system on the health of their families. Even if they could be convinced that exposure to these dangerous chemicals was killing their children, it would require them to put their livelihood at risk by having to seek alternative employment in an extremely economically depressed area.
Another concern raised by the group was that sometimes communities don’t have the expertise they need. As Abrar Chaudhury, Research Fellow and Climate Expert at the University of Oxford, shared. In his native Pakistan, traditional knowledge of suitability for growing a particular crop (like cotton) in a region is challenged due to climate change. This burdens the community with a lot of technical decisions, sometimes leading to suboptimal outcomes.
The needs and interests of groups within communities often vary– sometimes they directly conflict. During the conversation, distinct groups within communities came to the forefront. An example of rural communities in South Asian countries like Bangladesh and India came up, which portray bifurcated structures between groups who hold power and those who do not. Distinctions can be based on landholding, monetary resources, gender, historical factors like caste hierarchy, and other social dynamics. What might appear as a homogeneous community to an outsider actually comprises these distinct sets of people who have their own expectations and varying authority within the community.
To be clear, the conversation wasn't advocating for eliminating community engagement, there was general consensus that community input is critical, and that top-down approaches are often more likely to fail and/or cause more damage. However, by naming some of the challenges and questions that come with community-led processes, the group was able to share practices that can help those processes be more successful.
For example, in Tee Thomas’s story, she felt that external interventions play a critical role in promoting a common understanding of community needs and supporting community mobilization. Without these capacities, the lack of social cohesion can be exploited by companies harboring extractive practices.
External interventions can be enabling
Building a solid foundation of communication, awareness and collaboration within a community is essential for investment partnership that truly meets the long-term, sustainable needs of those most marginalized. Monica Altamirano, Director of Climate Impact at WaterEquity cautioned that “external experts shouldn’t tell the community what to do; but instead, we should have expert facilitators that facilitate a participatory system analysis process. These need to work with community members to clear [up] any misconceptions, and by bringing external expertise into these processes at the right time and way support communities in zooming out from the symptoms they experience, connect the dots and gain insights about the mechanisms and root causes for the problems they face. It is from this shared understanding that they can then themselves propose effective plans and strategies”.
In working with marginalized rural communities in India, we would aim for “enabling external interventions” for the successful implementation of community empowerment programs. A predominant focus was getting the voices of the community involved right from the project building stage, with inputs from the community in program design. Once the project rolls out, feedback loops are a vital component - going back to the community and getting feedback at every stage helps in modifying the program as per the evolving needs of the community.
A similar example in the African context came up during the panel discussion. Chanda Banda, Government Relations and Policy Manager at the One Acre Fund, shared that their work on carbon agro-forestry with communities in Zambia depends upon building a strong channel of communication with all stakeholders involved, including the community, traditional leadership, and government officials. For example, spending the initial two years on community conversations before starting the project helps in building the trust of communities and avoid skepticism about the project. Maintaining a high level of engagement throughout is crucial to ensure that the project is informed by community voices, thus facilitating capital absorption within the communities.
Creating feedback loops as a theme also emerged among the social enterprises that shared about their community engagement practices. Michaela Kauer, Director of the Brussels Liaison Office for the City of Vienna who promotes Vienna’s uniquely successful model of social and affordable housing, pointed out: “It is important to keep revisiting the decisions made to ensure true empowerment and transparency, keeping in mind human and women rights, a long-term perspective and a high quality of living for all citizens.”
An enabling external intervention, when it respects and engages a community’s knowledge, wisdom, and expertise, can work with the community to highlight factors of influence that can lead to greater communal freedoms. Bi-directional knowledge flows help to “grow expertise within the community by bringing together multiple forms of non-financial capital like social or relational capital, as opposed to “experts” coming in and telling the community what they should do.” as Cathy-Mae Karelse, Systems Change Lead at Resilience Capital Ventures highlighted.
External experts also should appreciate the multiple ecosystems that exist within a community. It is the interaction between both external and internal players that helps in collaborative decision-making towards greater capital absorption where it is needed most.
Trust-based and participatory process
Building long-term relationships, creating feedback loops, capacity building, and collaborative decision making are practices that we also see in the growing movements of Trust-based Philanthropy and participatory methodologies, such as Participatory Action Research, Participatory Grantmaking, Participatory Budgeting, etc.
They point to a trend towards re-thinking some of the assumptions that underpin our typical investment processes, such as hierarchical power structures, qualitative measurements, and profit driven decision making. With trust-based and participatory processes, the process is the point. The empowerment of communities is one of the returns on investment.
Community-led doesn’t need to mean that communities need to be the experts or even have a clear understanding of their situation from the start - community-led means that communities have a voice, as well as decision-making authority over decisions that affect their livelihoods and wellbeing.
Ultimately, community needs are best understood by members of the community themselves. External experts need to keep an open mind to appreciate the multiple ecosystems that exist within a community. Interaction between external and internal players can help in collaborative decision-making that results in greater capital absorption capacity by communities.
Ankita Bose has worked extensively in social impact for more than 8 years. She is currently pursuing her Masters in Public Policy at the Lee Kuan Yew School of National University of Singapore. Prior to this, Ankita worked to provide access to water for marginalized communities in inherently dry areas in India. She attended the UNLEASH global lab 2022 to curate innovative solutions for addressing sustainability challenges related to water and sanitation. Earlier in her career, Ankita was a documenter for UNICEF project and worked towards the elimination of communicable diseases in India. Ankita has a holistic outlook, having engaged directly with communities at the grassroots level and in strategy as part of a corporate donor team. She holds a bachelor's degree in Economics from St. Xavier's College, India, and a Master's in Social Work from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India.
Kelley Buhles is a consultant working at the intersection of philanthropy and community governance. She is passionate about liberating charitable money to provide non-extractive capital to entrepreneurs and movements, and to create economic models that build and retain power and wealth in communities. She has over 12 years of experience with participatory grantmaking, has designed and led over 20 participatory processes, and is a founder of the Participatory Grantmaking Community. Kelley also has 15+ years of expertise working with integrated capital, Donor Advised Funds, and philanthropy. She is a fellow of the Just Economy Institute and sat on the Transformative 25 2023 review committee. Previously, she was a Senior Director at RSF Social Finance, where she co-created the integrated capital approach to financing, ran the philanthropic programs, facilitated community pricing conversations, and supported organizational culture. She volunteered with Showing Up for Racial Justice and enjoys sketch comedy writing. Kelley holds a B.A. in anthropology from San Diego State University.
