Once again this year — as every year — philanthropists, nonprofits, and people interested in philanthropists and nonprofits from all over the world descended on Oxford last week for the Skoll World Forum.
Skoll, which ran from April 1 to 4, is filled with thousands of organizations trying to change the world in an incredible range of different ways.
Unlike some other major conferences, the focus isn’t on the bigwigs on the main stage. The largest groups here were chief executives of midsized NGOs, and leaders of the midsized foundations that support them — midwigs, if you will.
It’s a place for conversations, furious networking, and alliance-building. NGO leaders spend a lot of time connecting with their funders — “donors and doers,” Skoll calls them. Work starts with breakfast meetings and continues all the way through a series of slickly inspiring plenaries into late night drinks at schmoozing events and pub get-togethers.
With such a wide-ranging event, it’s sometimes hard to pull together a consistent story of the conference. This year, though, with turmoil sweeping through the world of aid, it was easier than usual.
The cuts hurt everyone
Normally, Skoll is one of the world’s most upbeat conferences, brimming with people who believe you can achieve anything if you just believe hard enough. This year the vibe was a little more subdued.
Tens of billions of aid cuts will do that. Even when you’re an ocean away.
Skoll is not really a conference for people who rely on ODA funding from the U.S. and Europe.
But when Cheryl Dorsey, the president of Echoing Green, a funder of early-stage social enterprises, asked the audience for a one-word description of how they felt during one session, they responded with words such as anxious, transitional, and rebuilding.
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But it might not be as bad as we think
Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen the publication of a near-to-final list of canceled USAID projects, and a rough plan for how aid might be delivered under the Republican administration.
Those announcements were bad, but not as bad as some feared.
“It’s still a disaster but it’s no longer a calamity,” one CEO told me, which seemed to very much sum up the mood.
I asked several experts to venture an opinion on how much USAID funding they thought would be retained.
The median view: The most recent proposals to emerge from the State Department are at least relatively workable, and by this time next year, whatever will replace USAID could be spending around 55%-60% of the agency’s 2024 budget.
That’s obviously not good at all, but some of the same people told me that if I had asked them a month ago, they would have said closer to 30%.
It’s time for philanthropy to step up
The mood at Skoll was very much that philanthropy must step up to support organizations hit by the cuts. The philanthropic sector, despite its important contributions, can't substitute for official development assistance. To illustrate, the annual spending of top foundations totals about $11 billion, a fraction of the $223 billion in ODA globally, or even the $65 billion provided by the U.S. alone.
Philanthropists upping their contributions include Jeff Skoll himself who is back at the forum after several years’ absence due to ill health to promise an additional $25 million after calling aid cuts “careless, callous and inhumane.”
John Palfrey, president of the MacArthur Foundation, said his organization would increase giving from 5% of its endowment to at least 6% — likely around $75 million a year of additional spending. And the Trevor Noah Foundation — founded by the South African comedian and talk show host who shot to fame on U.S. late night TV — announced plans to provide a new venture philanthropy fund for South African education nonprofits worth $1.75 million.
That was the mood in front of the microphones. But behind the scenes, there were some mutterings from social leaders that they were not seeing philanthropy respond as promptly or as effectively as they might like.
Read: Big foundations say it's time to increase giving
To the global south, this could be an opportunity
I had the chance to chat directly with a lot of leaders from the global south, and hear them speak from the main stage. Feelings about the future were varied.
In some places, the withdrawal of aid was seen as an opportunity for countries to set their own destiny, away from the influence of the global north.
At a panel session on dealing with the new realities, leaders from global south countries India, Kenya and South Africa spoke about the importance of being optimistic, while also recognizing the realities of the situation.
But it seems likely that one’s view on the impact of the cuts depends on one’s vantage point. When I spoke to one Kenyan aid leader, they pointed out that the impact is being felt very differently in Kenya — which does take a lot of aid, but is nonetheless a powerhouse economy compared to its neighbors — than in countries like Zambia and Malawi, which depend on aid far more.
One aid worker told me that as far as they were concerned, the optimistic assertions of global south leaders were “bravado.” With thousands of jobs gone in many countries, they said, the knock-on impact of the cuts on economies would be massive.
There were also attempts by leaders from the United States to talk about the potential positive impact of the recent cuts. Gayle Smith, a former USAID administrator, spoke in one session of how aid in her country now had “a blank sheet of paper.” She told her audience that she wouldn’t have wanted to acquire it, but it was now time to make use of it.
Unfortunately, there was skepticism among other aid leaders about how useful that blank sheet of paper might be — or what, during the Trump regime, might sensibly be written on it.
Read: Will USAID cuts bring new opportunities for the global south?
We’re divided by a common language
I wrote last year about the debate over language and communication at Skoll, and this year it seemed to have stepped up a notch, with a lot of people thinking about whether we need to do more to make the case for aid.
Co-CEO of Accountability Lab Cheri-Leigh Erasmus, who spoke during the same session as Smith, warned that the sector was talking to itself in esoteric language in an echo chamber.
Smith warned that even during conversations with people in other parts of government, they would frequently say to her: “What are you talking about?”
AI is a worry and an opportunity
While the cuts dominated, it feels as if the theme of this year’s event might otherwise have been artificial intelligence, which was the subject of several sessions on the official program and was frequently referenced in other sessions. I heard more than once the statistic that only 1% of funding is dedicated to AI for good.
Right now, a key issue is the absence of AI in languages other than English – and certainly in the native languages of countries in the global south. One organization working on this is Lelapa AI, whose co-founder Pelonomi Moiloa spoke about how a lack of data made large language models — the technology underlying ChatGPT and other engines — completely impossible.
But there were many other issues under discussion at Skoll: Who owns digital infrastructure? Is it the public, or the tech sector? What will AI do to the jobs market? How can costs be driven down to make it affordable to people in the global south? Who will fund the tech for good initiatives that need to make that happen?
And whose job is it to think about all of these implications, asked Shashi Buluswar, founder of Institute for Transformative Technologies, during the same session. Is it the job of civil society to knock on Google’s door, or the other way around?
Related reads:
• Opinion: Localizing AI through languages is a 2025 imperative
• Want inclusive AI? Teach it to speak more languages
Skoll in brief
In no particular order, here are some things that weren’t big themes, but which caught my attention, for one reason or another.
BS in spades. When U.S. TV network PBS went to Indonesia, their local fixer kept introducing them as CBS, according to a story told during a session by PBS presenter Fred de Sam Lazaro. Eventually, infuriated, de Sam Lazaro confronted the man. “We’re PBS!” he told the man. “Not CBS!”
“Ah yes,” said the fixer. “I knew it was some kind of BS.”
Equipment graveyards. I caught up with one delegate from Gradian Health Systems, a nonprofit that supplies equipment to hospitals in the global south. Gradian’s equipment is designed for the conditions — in particular, it continues working if the power goes off. I learned about “equipment graveyards” – collections of donated medical equipment which isn’t suitable for African contexts, or which no one is trained to use, that sits unused in the sun outside many health facilities.
Seems excessive. Hands down my favorite name from the week is the Excessive Wealth Disorder Institute. Unsurprisingly, this nonprofit exists to suggest that we should do something about rich people hoarding all the cash.
The first inning. Don Gips, outgoing CEO of the Skoll Foundation, used a baseball metaphor to talk about AI last week. “We’re in the first half of the first inning,” he said — meaning it’s early on in the process.
Then he looked around, and realized he was in England. “I don’t know how to say that in cricket,” he said.
As an Englishman, I’m able to step in to translate. It’s “the first half of the first innings,” with an extra S at the end.
About the author
David Ainsworth@daveainsworth4
David Ainsworth is business editor at Devex, where he writes about finance and funding issues for development institutions. He was previously a senior writer and editor for magazines specializing in nonprofits in the U.K. and worked as a policy and communications specialist in the nonprofit sector for a number of years. His team specializes in understanding reports and data and what it teaches us about how development functions.
