Giving Compass' Take:

• Jeff Raikes reflects on a recent discussion he had with Anand Giridharadas and outlines how wealthy philanthropists can effectively use power: Defer to communities in need. 

• Who in your community could help you use your power effectively? 

• Learn more about wielding power well. 

Must wealthy people like me lose for society to win?

Even if you haven’t read his recent book, many of you are likely familiar with Anand Giridharadas. The author of Winners Take All is everywhere these days – Twitter, the BBC, Morning Joe – taking on the elite and indicting them for using their status to cement their gains while doing small amounts of “good” designed to burnish their reputations rather than make real change.

Giridharadas and I had a discussion on stage at the Center for Effective Philanthropy conference in Minneapolis recently and I think a lot of people assumed that since I’m a wealthy white man and a philanthropist, I would disagree with his critique. But my biggest takeaway from his book is this: Giridharadas is a provocateur and we needed to be provoked.

What stuck with me was our discussion of zero-sum thinking. It’s the idea that if you win, I lose and vice versa. I describe in my last column why this thinking is damaging for society. A twist on this is the critique of the type of philanthropy that Giridharadas describes in his book as the “win-win.” It’s when a philanthropist “wins” by getting the public relations boost for “doing good” while not really changing the system that sustains his privilege; and the recipient of the largesse “wins” by getting a new wing for their hospital, or new computers for a group of students, while not moving the needle on changing the deep inequities in the health or education systems.

I often say privilege is invisible to those who possess it. And power is wrapped up in privilege. When you have it – especially when you’ve had it for a long time – you don’t notice the myriad ways your ideas are the first to be heard; that your calls get returned before others; the benefit of the doubt you are given at every turn. You must pay attention to see it.

So, once you see it, what do you do? The first lesson of ceding power in philanthropy is this – you alone cannot fix it. In fact, you should probably just cut the check and get out of the way.

The people you need to listen to – to both correctly identify the problem you are trying to solve, and to come up with ways to address it – are those with lived experience. In homelessness, that means talking to people who are homeless and who have been homeless. No one else knows the barriers to stability better than they do. It means working alongside the communities you seek to impact and letting them shape and guide the direction of your work.

Read the full article about power by Jeff Raikes at Forbes.